The Law Catches Up To Fourthbranch?

This is intriguing (h/t Think Progress):

A two-year-old letter by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed a controversial Alaska natural-gas pipeline bill is getting renewed scrutiny because of recently disclosed evidence in the Justice Department's corruption case against Sen. Ted Stevens. In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006, Stevens discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits. According to a Justice motion, Stevens told Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look … you gotta get this done'." Two days later, Cheney wrote a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly enact" a bill to build the pipeline.

Fourthbranch should know his Nixon - the tape will get you every time. And was there any doubt that a corruption scandal involving pay for favors between government and the oil industry would involve him?

This should absolutely not be investigated any further. Like Scott McClellan said, it would be "divisive".

Did These Walls Just Get Closer Together?

I think some White House lawyers got a phone call today.

President Bush's former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will testify before a House committee next week about whether Vice President Dick Cheney ordered him to make misleading public statements about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

McClellan will testify publicly and under oath before the House Judiciary Committee on June 20 about the White House's role in the leak and its response, his attorneys, Michael and Jane Tigar, said on Monday.

In his new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan said he was misled by others, possibly including Cheney, about the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the leak. McClellan has said publicly that Bush and Cheney "directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby."

The statements prompted House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., to invite McClellan to the hearing "concerning reported attempts to cover up the involvement of White House officials in the leak of" Plame's identity.

Village reporters are already leaking that the White House is freaked out by McClellan testifying, and the potential that Patrick Fitzgerald could follow him. The Press Secretary in particular has a lot of secrets, and the Plame case is one that Bush and company don't want reopened.

Nor does the Administration want to hear any more about Jack Abramoff, but that's rearing its ugly head today as well:

The White House had stronger ties to disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff than it has publicly admitted, according to a draft congressional report released Monday.

President Bush met Abramoff on at least four occasions the White House has yet to acknowledge, according to the draft report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

And White House officials appeared as comfortable going to Abramoff and his lobbyists seeking tickets to sporting and entertainment events, as they did seeking input on personnel picks for plum jobs, the report found.

President Bush himself met Abramoff on at least six occasions, the report said, citing White House documents; the White House had previously acknowledged only two.

Amusing that McClellan was the front man for those particular lies. That's conveniently left out of his book.

To the extent that any of this derails the late-term policy agenda of the Bush Administration - immunity, permanent bases in Iraq, and bombing Iran - it's very significant.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, and Dennis Kucinich is introducing articles of impeachment on the House floor as we speak. Anything we can do to throw these guys off their game.

Closing In

Karl Rove has been extremely slippery with what he was able to get away with while in service at the White House, but over the past couple weeks events have probably made him gulp and pull the collar away from his neck a couple times. Same with his former bosses.

First you have Scott McClellan basically admitting that Bush and Cheney gave the go-ahead to Scooter Libby to selectively leak contents of the 2002 Iraq NIE, and in the process the identity of Valerie Plame. Henry Waxman, upon hearing this, immediately set to work.

New revelations by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan raise additional questions about the actions of the President and the Vice President. Mr. McClellan has stated that "[t]he President and Vice President directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby." He has also asserted that "the top White House officials who knew the truth - including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney - allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie." It would be a major breach of trust if the Vice President personally directed Mr. McClellan to mislead the public [...]

In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby stated that it was "possible" that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about Ambassador Wilson's wife to the press. This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President's FBI interview.

The interviews with senior White House officials also raise other questions about the involvement of the Vice President. It appears from the interview reports that Vice President Cheney personally may have been the source of the information that Ms. Wilson worked for the CIA. Mr. Libby specifically identified the Vice President as the source of his information about Ms. Wilson. None of the other White House officials could remember how they learned this information [...]

In his FBI interview, Mr. McClellan told the FBI about discussions he had with the President and the Vice President. These passages, however, were redacted from the copies made available to the Committee. Similar passages were also redacted from other interviews.

There are no sound reasons for you to withhold the interviews with the President and the Vice President from the Committee or to redact passages like Mr. McClellan's discussions with the President and the Vice President. Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation is closed and he has indicated that it would be appropriate to share these records with the Committee. There has been no assertion of executive privilege.

Well sure, when you line it all up like that, it looks like a conspiracy.

What's more, Marcy Wheeler thinks Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted the Plame case, might be ready to talk about allegations about his potential firing that came out during the investigation into the US Attorneys scandal.

Later in the Rezko trial, two witnesses said that Rezko told them not to worry about the criminal investigation, because the Republicans—Rove and Kjellander—would get rid of Fitzgerald. Hastert would install a friendly federal puppy who wouldn't bother the Combine, according to the testimony. "The federal prosecutor will no longer be the same federal prosecutor," testified Elie Maloof, a Rezko associate who is now a cooperating witness.

And a state pension board lawyer who has already pleaded guilty told grand jurors that Cellini told him "Bob Kjellander's job is to take care of the U.S. attorney." [...]

"If I owe a response [about the putsch to remove him from his job], I owe it to Congress, first," Fitzgerald said when asked about all this after the verdict.

But that's not all. As pressure grew on Rove for answers about the railroading of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, prosecutors
abruptly dropped their appeal that sought longer sentences for him and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy in the "bribery" case, also known as "a politician appointing an ally to a board." And 54 former state attorneys general from across the country filed a brief on Siegelman's behalf with the appellate court where he is contesting his conviction, asking that it be overturned. And now the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating.

The US Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is investigating the conduct of at least two specific US Attorneys in the “selective prosecution” of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, sitting Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver E. Diaz Jr., and Mississippi attorney Paul Minor, according to attorneys close to the investigation.

In a May 5 letter sent to House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI), OPR Director H. Marshall Jarrett wrote that OPR “currently has pending investigations involving, among others, allegations of selective prosecution relating to the prosecutions of Don Siegelman, Georgia Thompson, Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor.”

RAW STORY has confirmed that Leura Canary (above right), the US Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and Dunnica Lampton, the US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi , are under investigation. Their offices are also being probed.

This leads back to Rove - the Siegelman case, the politicization of US Attorney positions, firing prosecutors who wouldn't play ball, leaking classified information in the Plame case. Rove is a slippery creature. But there are a lot of investigations all happening at once.

The Scottie Show

Well, I never thought that the name "Scott McCllelan" would return to the lips of every American, particularly because he was a lying hack as a Press Secretary who decided to release a book which, as Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel note, isn't news. But as I've also said, what's news is the defensive posture taken by the Administration and the news media about their conduct in the run-up to war, as Landay and Strobel have also noted.

Bush loyalists have responded in three ways:

1) Scott, how could you? This conveniently ignores the issue of what Bush did or didn't know and do about intelligence on Iraq, converting the story line into that of wounded leader and treasonous former aide. (That canard was the sole focus of a CBS news radio report Wednesday night).

2) Invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Okay. When do Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, et al *not* say that? Dog bites man.

3) It was an intelligence failure. The CIA gave us bad dope on WMD and, well, they're the experts. More on this in a second.

The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war.

Here's ABC News' Charles Gibson: "I think the questions were asked. It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. It is not our job to debate them. It is our job to ask the questions.” And “I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently."

Really?

Or this from NBC's Brian Williams: “Sadly, we saw fellow Americans — in some cases floating past facedown (after Katrina). We knew what had just happened. We weren’t allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors [in Iraq]. I was in Kuwait for the buildup to the war, and, yes, we heard from the Pentagon, on my cell phone, the minute they heard us report something that they didn’t like. The tone of that time was quite extraordinary.” And this: "“It’s tough to go back, to put ourselves in the mind-set. It was post-9/11 America."

So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?

Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.

That's a damn good blog post.

I think most notable of all the vituperative responses comes from both a Republican and a commentator, Bob Dole, who was raised from the crypt to bare his fangs at Scottie.

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," Dole wrote in the personal e-mail. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique." [...]

Dole, the former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, also tells McClellan he is likely looking to "clean up" as "the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm."

"When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me,'" he wrote. "Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years."

Dole also made clear he has no plans to read the book.

"I have no intention of reading your 'exposé' because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job," he wrote. "That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively."

Pretty awesome that the guy who defended Nixon during Watergate is now talking about someone not having the guts to speak up about malfeasance when it occurs.

The thing is, though, that there is some actual news in the book. McClellan admits that the President authorized the leak of the NIE on Iraq in 2003, selectively, to rebut charges made by Joe Wilson in his op-ed. Marcy Wheeler explains the importance.

Now, though Scottie refers, obliquely, to "this information," he explicitly refers only to the NIE. But as I've described over and over again, it's not just the NIE Bush authorized Dick to order Libby to leak.

As a review, here's what Libby's NIE lies are all about. This is all documented in this post, and here is the court transcript in which most of this is revealed.

• Scooter Libby has instructions in his notes to leak something to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003

• When questioned about the notation, Libby claimed the instructions related to the NIE

• Libby went further to make certain claims about the NIE leak--that the leak was authorized by Dick Cheney and George Bush, that such an authorization was totally unique in his career, and that Libby was so worried about leaking the NIE to Judy that he double checked to make sure he was authorized to do so

• Libby later made claims that directly contradicted these assertions--most importantly, even though Libby claims the Judy leak was totally unique in his career, he also leaked the NIE to three other people: Bob Woodward, a journalist [David Sanger] on July 2, and the WSJ

• Also, in spite of the fact that Libby says he was really worried about getting authorization to leak the NIE to Judy, he's not really sure whether he was authorized to leak the NIE to Woodward; his concern about the leak to Judy only extended to whatever he leaked to Judy

In short, Libby is almost certainly lying about what he was authorized to leak to Judy on July 8, 2003, in a meeting where Judy Miller admits he talked about Valerie Plame, and where Libby tried to get her to falsely attribute the story.

At this point, Scottie McC is still accepting Scooter Libby's lies, though I suspect he sees the dangerous frailty of them. With Bush's clear admission to Scottie that he was in the loop, and the evidence that, subsequent to receiving an order from Cheney (authorized by Bush) to leak classified information to Judy Miller, Libby leaked Valerie Wilson's identity, the circumstantial evidence shows the President was directly involved in the deliberate outing of a CIA spy. The only question now is whether Bush realized he authorized the leak of Valerie's identity, in addition to a bunch of other classified documents.

The White House has so far not denied the allegation of a Bush-to-Libby leak of Plame's identity. And McClellan, for his part, has said he'd be happy to testify before Congress about the remarks. What you have here is the President of the United States, by commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby, indirectly pardoning himself for federal crimes. That's a big deal - and while the circus is about other parts of the book, this should be the central point.

Reduced To Yelling "Faggot"

The all-important weighing in from Jeff Gannon on the McClellan book.

What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan I knew for two years. I can say without fear of contradiction, that I knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter.

Yes, you've got the implication right, there isn't any other way to parse that.

Gannon's a team player. Of course he's implying a relationship with McClellan to smear his reputation (if he was lying about sex, surely he's lying about Bush!). It's comtemptuous.

Enthusiastic Puppets

I didn't pay a ton of attention to Scott McClellan's scathing new book because it's not like he has an image worth rehabilitating, and I figure he's already sold enough books based on the hubbub. And anyway, there isn't a lot that's new there. As the Bush Reelect eCampaign Director Mike Turk said in his Twitter feed:

Feeling for Scott McLellan. Nice getting savaged for saying what everyone knows to be true anyway.

The midlevel operatives have all come to this conclusion about Bush, just like 80% of the country. Lying us into war, running the country like it were a campaign, deception in the CIA leak case - this isn't groundbreaking stuff.

But two things about the book are revealing. Well, actually, two things about the reaction.

First is that, as I expected, conservatives are throwing the mother of all hissy fits in response to this. The wingnut blogosphere is blaming the messenger as they always do, attacking McClellan as a liberal, a liar, a charlatan trying to sell books, and claiming they never liked him anyway, a point TBogg does away with in minutes by finding the posts from the day of his departure as Press Secretary.

Power Line today:

"When Scott McClellan was the president's press secretary, I usually winced when I heard him speak. The wincing finally ended when Tony Snow replaced McClellan.

Now, with the publication of his new book, we get the chance to wince once more. It's an opportunity I intend to pass up."

You know what is coming...

Power Line then:

"Scott McClellan resigned as White House press secretary this morning. I think McClellan has done a capable job, and it's probably wishful thinking to imagine that the President would appoint someone who would take a more combative attitude toward the White House press corps. To be fair, McClellan has sometimes pushed back. But I think there is a lot of room to take a more aggressive approach."

The White House is perhaps even more spittle-flecked than the bloggers, calling McClellan "disgruntled" and even a traitor.

But I don't think this would be getting the kind of attention it has if McClellan didn't include some choice words for the media. Note to self - that's the way to get a book on the best-seller list:

If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. . . . In this case, the "liberal media" didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.

Now he's pointed the finger at the almighty PRESS. He's accused them of not living up to their responsibilities. So the press, naturally, had to push back. One way is to line up a cavalcade of Bush supporters to trash McClellan and damage his credibility. But because they're sensitive about their conduct during the war, among the most shameful in history, they had to defend themselves from these charges. It was quite remarkable:

Yesterday was actually quite an extraordinary day in our political culture because Scott McClellan's revelations forced the establishment media to defend themselves against long-standing accusations of their corruption and annexation by the government -- criticisms which, until yesterday, they literally just ignored, blacked-out, and suppressed. Bizarrely enough, it took a "tell-all" Washington book from Scott McClellan, of all people, to force these issues out into the open, and he seems -- unwittingly or otherwise -- to have opened a huge flood gate that has long been held tightly shut.

Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan's claims. One media star after the next -- Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer -- materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are "deferential, complicit enablers" in government propaganda.

David Gregory was particularly amusing in defending the White House press corps, even though his own questions are in the public record, questions like "should we capture Saddam or just kill him?" The press was completely cowed by the Bush Administration, willing to reprint their propaganda and unwilling to challenge the most basic assumptions about the cause for war. This is in part because a lot of media figures are incredibly stupid and can't even judge praise from insult:

Potomac, MD: McClellan needs to get over himself. The nerve of blaming the media for their failures in the run-up to the War. Elisabeth Bumiller so eloquently explained how things work the night before the Iraq War started, 4,000 dead American soldiers ago: "it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.".

Anne E. Kornblut: That's a good point. (I'm a huge Bumiller fan).....

But the other part of this is much more insidious. There were massive amounts of corporate pressure to grease the skids for war with Iraq. Contrary opinions were not allowed on television, or if allowed were countered by multiple pro-war views. The corporate bosses wanted to capitalize on what they viewed as a patriotic fervor in the nation by hyping war. This is well-known. Phil Donahue was fired from MSNBC as a result of his antiwar stance despite being the most popular show on the network. And Ashleigh Banfield spoke out about this censorship in public shortly after the war began, and was instantly consigned to the scrap heap of history.

And everyone else knew their place. But yesterday, discussing the book, Jessica Yellin went off the reservation and told the truth about the media conduct during the war - and the corporate pressure.

Cooper: Jessica, McClellan took the press to task for upholding their reputation. He writes “the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington. The choice of whether to go to war in Iraq…the ‘liberal’ media didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.” Dan Bartlett, former Bush advisor, called the allegation “total crap.” What’s your take? Did the press corps drop the ball?

Yellin: I think the press corps dropped the ball in the beginning when the lead up to war began, uh the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the President’s high approval ratings and my own experience at the White House was that the higher the President’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives, and I was not at this network at the time, but the more pressure I had from these executives to put on positive stories about the President. I think over time….

Cooper: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the President?

Yellin: Not in that exact…they wouldn’t say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive. Yes. That was my experience.

I hold very few hopes for Yellin's future at CNN. Bravo to her for telling the truth.

I'm sure that this is a one-day story, and the press will consider the matter concluded, in their favor, and move on. But people know this in their bones. The coverage did nothing to enlighten and only to heighten the frenzy over invasion. This was William Randolph Hearst getting his Spanish-American War all over again, and these blowhards can't come to terms with it because their whole world would come crashing down. They were puppets, enthusiastic puppets for an imperialist agenda. And they have to live with that forever.

Yeah, That's The Ticket

This Karl Rove spin didn't pass anyone's smell test:



You can "hear about" an actual prosecution from the paper and still be involved in the getting of that prosecution. I think that's pretty clear to everyone. Rove needs to stop going on these shows and he really shouldn't even be in the country, considering the mess he's in, between the Siegelman case and Scott McClellan's charges of deception in the CIA leak case. But it's really the Siegelman case where Rove has major vulnerabilities, as evidenced in that media appearance. Here's Josh Marshall.

There's never been any doubt in my mind that Siegelman was the victim of selective prosecution. Even the government's theory of the main case against him amounted to something that is standard in contemporary American politics and actually much less worse than lots of other stuff that no one thinks twice about. Cracking the nut of White House involvement has always been more difficult; but the evidence for it is substantial.

If Siegelman's and Alabama GOP lawyer Jill Simpson's stories are true, that would make this case the centerpiece example of the corruption of the DOJ revealed by the US Attorney firing scandal. In fact, it would make most of what we know now seem minor by comparison.

Good luck staying out of jail, Karl.

Release The Memoirs!

RELEASE THE MEMOIRS!... There was a hint last November that Scott McClellan's memoir was going to be unrelenting on George Bush, Karl Rove and the gang, but that was quickly dismissed as overhyped. The book is now on the verge of being released, and in fact was on sale over the weekend at D.C.-area bookstores. So Mike Allen picked up a copy, and the revelations appear to be as originally advertised:

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

This could be cherry-picking as well for the sake of selling some hardcovers. But that's not a phenomenon that will be limited to Scott McClellan (and who knew he had this in him, huh?). The spate of memoirs that always roll out near the end of an Administration will take on an even greater "every-man-for-himself" quality in this one. From the lowest-level staffer to his personal food-taster, Bush will see half of his underlings or more trash him to every publisher in the country. If someone like McClellan, who was at Bush's side from the Texas days, is willing to go nuclear to preserve his own reputation, it'll be a free-for-all.

The Posting, It Will Be Light

I'm getting ready to hop a redeye out to Philadelphia for the Thanksgiving holiday, so posting will be sporadic between now and then. In the meantime, here are a few flights of fancy.

• This is awesome. At the same school where the infamous "Don't tase me, bro" incident went down, Alberto Gonzales was heckled by a student in an Abu Ghraib jumpsuit and another holding a sign saying habeas corpus. Neither of those protesters were tortured or held without charges after being led away by police, AFAIK, so perhaps things are looking up.

• The big story is this excerpt from Scott McClellan's forthcoming book, which apparently blames Bush, Cheney and Rove for forcing him to lie about White House official's role in the outing of Valerie Plame, but somehow I think these will generate a lot more heat than light. I bet that McClellan offers little more in the book itself (that's the report, anyway), and will demur at any attempts to get him to testify before Congress about the issue. Chris Dodd is calling for investigations, but it's like, just throw it on the pile. It's clear that practically everyone in the White House committed crimes by illegally releasing the identity of Plame to reporters. That has been proven time and again. It came out in the trial. So far nobody has been held accountable, and we're four years gone from the outing. I want to be optimistic, but can't be.

• Troops leave, violence drops. It's really a simple formula. Worked in Basra, would work in the rest of Iraq. But we stay, accomplishing approximately nothing of substance instead of turning the country into a series of armed encampments.

OK, gotta go. Enjoy.