Most Transparent Government In History

The Obama Administration has really taken to this executive power and official secrecy thing. Duck, meet water. This has all happened in the past week:

MSNBC:

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

The Guardian UK:

A rift has opened between the Obama administration and some of its closest allies - Democratic leaders and environmental organisations - over its refusal to publicly disclose the location of 44 coal ash dumps that have been officially designated as a "high hazard" to local populations.

The administration turned down a request from a powerful Democratic senator to make public the list of 44 dumps, which contain a toxic soup of arsenic and heavy metals from coal-fired electricity plants, citing terrorism fears.

The LA Times:

He was appointed with fanfare in December as public watchdog over the government's multibillion-dollar bailout of the nation's financial system. But now Neil Barofsky, inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is embroiled in a dispute with the Obama administration that delayed one recent inquiry and sparked questions about his ability to investigate without interference.

The Treasury Department contends that Barofsky does not have a completely independent role. That claim prompted a stern letter from a Republican senator, who warns that Obama administration officials are encroaching on the integrity of an office created to protect taxpayers.

The Washington Post:

A federal judge yesterday sharply questioned an assertion by the Obama administration that former Vice President Richard B. Cheney's statements to a special prosecutor about the Valerie Plame case must be kept secret, partly so they do not become fodder for Cheney's political enemies or late-night commentary on "The Daily Show."

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan expressed surprise during a hearing here that the Justice Department, in asserting that Cheney's voluntary statements to U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald were exempt from disclosure, relied on legal claims put forward last October by a Bush administration political appointee, Stephen Bradbury. The department asserted then that the disclosure would make presidents and vice presidents reluctant to cooperate voluntarily with future criminal investigations.

The Plum Line:

On Friday, there may be a major development in the torture wars: The CIA is set to release portions of a 2004 report that reportedly found no proof that torture foiled any terror plots, which would dramatically undercut Dick Cheney’s claims that torture worked.

But a news story this morning raises the question: Is the CIA trying to keep chunks that would undermine Cheney under wraps?

That last one may concern the CIA, but I'm pretty sure they work for somebody in the White House. And that's just from this week, there are countless other examples of using the state secrets privilege to shut down lawsuits, breaking a campaign promise to post every bill passed by Congress on the White House website for public comment before signing, and on and on and on.

Progressives battled George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on their unprecedented offical secrecy on the merits, but also out of a recognition that there is such a thing as Presidential precedent. If one President can get away with aggrandizing their power, the successor would certainly watch and learn. Which is exactly what has happened.

Still President Bush

There are 19 days until a general election replacing George Bush (I'll wait for the cheers to die down). We all know he can still cause a lot of pain, and not just to 401(k) accounts. But there are things occurring in the shadows that aren't getting enough attention.

• He's still making signing statements exempting himself from current law.

President Bush asserted on Tuesday that he had the executive power to bypass several parts of two bills: a military authorization act and a measure giving inspectors general greater independence from White House control.

Mr. Bush signed the two measures into law. But he then issued a so-called signing statement in which he instructed the executive branch to view parts of each as unconstitutional constraints on presidential power.

• The laws he doesn't amend are really crappy.

President Bush on Monday signed into law legislation creating a copyright czar, a cabinet-level position on par with the nation's drug czar.

Two weeks ago, the House sent the president the "Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act" (.pdf), a measure the Senate approved days before creating a cabinet-level copyright czar charged with implementing a nationwide plan to combat piracy and "report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic international intellectual property enforcement programs."

• He continues to break the law and ignore Congressional oversight.

Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) came together today to criticize the White House for their use of executive privilege in the Valerie Plame leak scandal.

The two lawmakers called Bush's refusal to disclose the report of the FBI interview with Vice President Cheney "legally unprecedented" and "inappropriate." The committee seeks the document in order to establish the White House's role in the leak of Plame's name to the media.

• Like I said, he continues to break the law.

A draft Committee report circulated by Chairman Waxman finds that in the months before the 2006 elections, the White House Office of Political Affairs “enlisted agency heads across government in a coordinated effort to elect Republican candidates to Congress,” directing them “to make hundreds of trips – most at taxpayer expense – for the purpose of increasing the electability of Republicans.”

• And he's making rules that could have deleterious effects far into the future.

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials, in their last weeks in office, are pushing to rewrite a wide array of federal rules with changes or additions that could block product-safety lawsuits by consumers and states.

The administration has written language aimed at pre-empting product-liability litigation into 50 rules governing everything from motorcycle brakes to pain medicine. The latest changes cap a multiyear effort that could be one of the administration's lasting legacies, depending in part on how the underlying principle of pre-emption fares in a case the Supreme Court will hear next month [...]

These new rules can't quickly be undone by order of the next president. Federal rules usually must go through lengthy review processes before they are changed. Rulemaking at the Food and Drug Administration, where most of the new pre-emption rules have appeared, can take a year or more.

We haven't even come to the inevitable pardons. Or the illegal programs he has started and continues to run. Or the failed policies.

What a terrible President. No wonder nobody wants anything to do with him.

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.

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.

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.

Bang The Gavel

There were a couple Congressional hearings today of import, both of which deal essentially with the view of executive power and how this White House has consistently acted above the law.

First, White House political director and Rove protege Sara Taylor had a quiet day of testimony where she refused to answer the most pressing questions about the President's involvement in the firing of 8 US Attorneys late last year. By the way, the GOP talking point on this is always that US Attorneys "serve at the pleasure of the President," so how could Bush NOT be involved?

A former senior White House aide told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that she never spoke or met with President Bush about plans to fire a group of U.S. attorneys last year.

Sara M. Taylor, who left her job as the White House political director two months ago, also testified that she had no knowledge that Bush was involved in the dismissals at all.

"I did not speak to the president about removing U.S. attorneys," Taylor said. "I did not attend any meetings with the president where that matter was discussed."

In addition, if Bush was not involved in the firings at all, how can you claim executive privilege in refusing to talk about the firings? The whole basis for the claim is that a President must be able to receive candid advice from aides without it being disclosed to Congress and the public. Um, she's saying that she NEVER GAVE HIM ANY ADVICE on this matter!

I suppose executive privilege now means "anybody talking to the President, or anyone in the executive branch, or anyone related to anyone in the executive branch, and everyone they had sex with, and so on, and so on." It's the Pert Shampoo commercial theory of executive power.

Oh yeah, and when Taylor did manage to answer, she apparently revealed that she doesn't know shit about anything, as if we needed a reminder. Another former aide, Harriet Miers, is supposed to appear tomorrow, but Bush just ordered her not appear (I guess because she's not done memorizing the phrase "I don't recall").
The White House is turning the GOP into the Know-Nothing Party, in the literal sense of the term. And this in large part is because they all feel there will be no forthcoming sanctions on them, so why not act above the law and thumb their noses at investigators? Bush has a pardon pen and he's not afraid to use it.

Speaking of which, the House is holding a hearing today on the commuted sentence of Scooter Libby and Presidential clemency power. Joe Wilson gave a stirring address to kick off the hearing:

President Bush promised that if any member of the White House staff were engaged in this matter, it would be a firing offense. However, the trial of Scooter Libby has proved conclusively that Karl Rove was involved, and although he escaped indictment, he still works at the White House. We also know as a result of evidence introduced in the trial that President Bush himself selectively declassified national security material to attempt to support the false rationale for war. The President’s broken promise and his own involvement in this unseemly smear campaign reveal a chief executive willing to subvert the rule of law and system of justice that has undergirded this great republic of ours for over 200 years.

Make no mistake, the President’s actions last week cast a pall of suspicion over his office and Vice President Cheney. Mr. Libby was convicted of, among other crimes, obstruction of justice – a legal term used to describe a cover-up. The Justice Department’s Special Counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said repeatedly that Mr. Libby’s blatant lying had been the equivalent of “throwing sand in the eyes of the umpire”, thereby ensuring that the umpire, the system of justice, cannot ascertain the whole truth. As a result, Fitzgerald has said, “a cloud remains over the Vice President.” In commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence, the President has removed any incentive for Mr. Libby to cooperate with the prosecutor. The obstruction of justice is ongoing and now the President has emerged as its greatest protector. The President’s explanation for his commutation that Mr. Libby’s sentence was excessive turns out to be yet another falsehood because the sentence was quite normal, as Special Counsel Fitzgerald noted. The President, at the very least, owes the American people a full and honest explanation of his actions and those of other senior administration officials in this matter, including, but not limited to the Vice President [...]

I would like the committee members and all Americans to think about this matter in this way: If senior American officials take time from their busy schedules to meet with a foreign military attaché for the purpose of compromising the identity of a CIA covert officer, what would we call that? Although that scenario is hypothetical, the end result is no different from what happened in this case – the betrayal of our national security.

There's a good thread on the hearing at Daily Kos.

UYPDATE: Brilliant:

"I took an oath the president, and I take that oath very seriously," Sara Taylor said in answer to a question early in the hearing.

And right after a break, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked her if she was sure about that. "Did you mean, perhaps, you took an oath to the Constitution?" Leahy asked. It was a telling exchange.

"I know that the president refers to the government being his government -- it's not," Leahy reminded her.

They really don't know anything about this country.

The Libby Follies

So the White House asserted the desire to have the supervised release and probation stand for Scooter Libby, even though the law clearly denotes that such a sentence can only come after time has been served. Since all sides are in agreement and executive clemency is pretty absolute, it's likely that Judge Walton will rule that the probation can stand. Last week Jeralyn Merritt had some thoughts on what that probation can look like:

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the Judge finds Libby can be put on supervised release even though his prison sentence was commuted. What does it mean for him? How does it affect his life?

It means he’s under the supervision of a probation officer and he has to follow rules and conditions set by the officer and the court. If he’s charged with violating these rules, he gets a hearing. If the Court finds at the hearing that he was in violation of the conditions, he is subject to having his supervised release revoked and being sent to jail. Or, the Judge could continue his supervised release but impose additional conditions, like home detention and electronic monitoring [...]

Libby’s terms of supervised release were set and announced by the Judge on the day he was sentenced. The Order is here (pdf). In addition to the general terms applicable to everyone, the Judge added two special conditions:

He shall maintain full-time employment, the circumstances of which shall be in the discretion of the Probation Department, subject to the court’s review.

He shall perform 400 hours of community service, “as approved and directed by the Probation Department.”

The standard conditions Libby will have to abide by include these:

the defendant shall not leave the judicial district without the permission of the court or probation officer;
the defendant shall report to the probation officer and shall submit a truthful and complete written report within the first five days of each month;
the defendant shall answer truthfully all inquiries by the probation officer and follow the instructions of the probation officer;
the defendant shall refrain from excessive use of alcohol and shall not purchase, possess, use, distribute, or administer any controlled substance or any paraphernalia related to any controlled substances, except as prescribed by a physician;
the defendant shall not associate with any persons engaged in criminal activity and shall not associate with any person convicted of a felony, unless granted permission to do so by the probation officer;
the defendant shall permit a probation officer to visit him or her at any time at home or elsewhere
the defendant shall provide access to any requested financial information.

As you can see, supervised release is no walk in the park. It’s a lot better than jail, but there are significant restrictions on your freedom.

Given that there was no penalty for breaking the law the first time, I don't expect much of a penalty if any of these rules were broken. But it's something that everyone should be keeping their eye on as Libby no doubt hits the lecture circuit to whine and cry about his awful treatment.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate are ramping up efforts to investigate the commutation. John Conyers will convene a hearing on Wednesday, with Joseph Wilson and a host of attorneys with experience in the pardon process, to see if established rules were broken in association with the Libby decision (short answer: yes). Meanwhile, the Senate is setting its sights higher:

The Senate Judiciary Committee may seek testimony from controversial prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the obstruction of justice case against vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, two senators said on Sunday.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican member of the committee, said he wanted to hear from Fitzgerald because, "I still haven't figured out what that case is all about." [...]

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said that with Specter's blessing, Fitzgerald would likely be called.

"If he has no objection to Mr. Fitzgerald coming forward, I think you may very well see Mr. Fitzgerald before the Senate Judiciary Committee," Leahy said on the same CNN program.

Specter is lying through his teeth with the whole "no underlying crime" argument, lying to federal prosecutors is a crime in and of itself, and furthermore Libby's leaks and Armitage's (and Rove's and everyone else's in the excecutive and fourth branches) were concurrent and wide-reaching. AND, this came out in open court:

In his closing argument, Bill Jeffress (the DEFENSE lawyer) described the events surrounding Libby's July 8 meeting with Judy as a "secret mission" known only to Bush, Cheney, and Libby.

The prosecution has focused on this July 8th meeting with Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. They said, could Mr. Libby, how, if he was so busy, did he have two hours to go out and have lunch with Ms. Miller on July 8th. The reason he took two hours to have lunch with Ms. Miller is that Mr. Libby understood that the Vice President of the United States had directed him to go meet with Ms. Miller and that the President, President Bush was behind it too.

[snip]

I mean this is basically a secret mission that three people in the world know, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Scooter Libby. Because he goes and does what he is asked to do by the President and the Vice President and meets with her for two hours, suddenly they're trying to find something bad in that because, in Ms. Miller’s notes at the lunch, she’s got the word WINPAC. [my emphasis]

The President and Vice President directed Scooter Libby to meet Judith Miller and release her information that includes covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity, and there's no underlying crime? Mind you, that was the DEFENSE lawyer talking. There was other information in the classified NIE that was possibly leaked at that meeting as well, which Libby claims the Vice President declassified (for explicitly political reasons, mind you). But the nature of that declassification, indeed the nature of that meeting, was exactly what Libby lied about, claiming he only heard about Plame from Tim Russert. He was trying to cover up the details of a secret meeting, still not fully known, authorized by the President and the Vice President. He was throwing sand in the eyes of the umpire and deliberately obstructing the investigation at the highest levels.

Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Wexler is moving forward in the House with a motion to censure the President for his actions in commuting Libby's sentence. It's a feel-good measure, but Wexler is certainly being bold about it.

Finally, this is an all-timer of a quote, but not for the reason Fred Thompson thinks it is:

"If nothing else, we've apparently convinced the Clintons that it really is a bad thing to lie under oath."

So Fred Thompson just admitted that he spent a year of his life defending and raising money for a convicted felon named Scooter Libby, who he admits lied under oath. And he's proud of it. He is dumb as hell, isn't he?

Hail To The Victors

You really need to watch David Shuster, subbing for Tweety on Hardball, just annihilate neoconservative fraud Fouad Ajami, who had the gall to liken Scooter Libby to a fallen soldier serving in Iraq who needed to be rescued. Shuster actually reported on the Plame case, he was actually in the courthouse, and unlike these idiot made-for-TV pundits and hosts he actually has a command of the facts of the case. So he absolutely wasn't going to let Ajami get away with nonsense like "Libby didn't leak anything to anybody" for a second. It's a hell of a moment, seeing a host dispense with the "he said/she said" game that characterizes our modern media, and actually enter the fray and referee on the side of truth and honesty.

And he's a Michigan man, too. Mike Wallace also came from the U-M. And Carole Simpson. Yeah, and Jon Chait too, but we don't get EVERYTHING right. (Actually, I don't mind Chait, except for his mindless establishment "hate the hippies" vibe and the fact that he accepts a paycheck from Marty Peretz every two weeks. Actually, I'd like to see Shuster take on Peretz, who also doesn't know a goddamn thing about the Plame case, and has decided that Republican prosecutors and Republican federal judges are somehow rabidly partisan Bush haters.)

Go Blue.

All Things Plame

(This, incidentally, is my 4,000th post. Go read them all if you have a spare week and a half.)

One thing about Valerie Plame, she's a fighter. Despite suffering all the slander from the right, the end of the career for which she was trained, heaps of abuse, she's still as strong as ever.

Valerie Wilson, the former Central Intelligence Agency operative at the heart of an investigation that reached into the White House, sued the agency in federal court in New York today over its refusal to allow her to publish a memoir that would discuss how long she worked for it.

Although that information is set out in an unclassified letter to Ms. Wilson that has been published in the Congressional Record, the C.I.A. insists that her dates of service remain classified and may not be mentioned in “Fair Game,” the memoir Ms. Wilson hopes to publish in October.

Agency employees sign agreements requiring them to submit manuscripts to the agency for permission before they are published.. Ms. Wilson’s suit said she worked with agency officials for 10 months to avoid disclosing national security information. But the agency’s refusal to allow her to include material already in the public domain, the suit said, violates her right to free speech.

The CIA is in different hands than when Plame worked there, remember, and this is a textbook case of bureaucratic incompetence. They said that they sent Plame a letter with her dates of employment by mistake. The information, then, is public BUT classified at the same time. There's probably a good deal of political pressure to keep this book off of the shelves, as well.

Meanwhile, the judge involved in sentencing will make public all of the panty-sniffing letters sent by the conservative movement on Libby's behalf, so we'll be able to see out in the open their love for a criminal. Here's a sample, from Libby's lawyers:

Prosecutors want Libby to serve up to three years in prison for lying about his conversations with reporters regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose 2003 outing touched off a leak investigation.

Libby's lawyers said Thursday would be unfair. Citing numerous letters from former colleagues and friends, they said Libby deserved only probation.

"His dedication to promoting freedom abroad and keeping American citizens safe at home is beyond question," the attorneys wrote [...]

One letter quoted by Libby's attorneys, from a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: "I always came away from our encounters thinking how lucky the country was to have someone of his caliber helping think through the great security challenges we all faced."

How lucky indeed to have someone so angry at criticism that he goes after the critic's family the way the Mafia would. How lucky to have someone who believes national security should be defined by his ideological beliefs alone.

And just to put a cap on this sorry episode, read this bit from leading intellectual light Glenn Reynolds, who pretty much admits that nothing in the insaneosphere is true at all.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Just talked to a reporter from Salon who wanted to know if I was going to "retract" an earlier blog post in which I said it looked as if Plame wasn't covert. I noted that one normally issues a retraction for original reporting, not commenting upon other people's news stories.

In other words, I don't have to be responsible for anything I say, nor does anyone else on the right, because we just comment on other people's news stories. That's the dedication to the truth we've come to expect from the insaneosphere.

Today's Obligatory Liberal Blog Post

I would not be the rock-solid liberal blogger that I am without mentioning that Valerie Plame was covert.

While assigned to CPD, Ms. Wilson engaged in temporary duty (TDY) travel overseas on official business. She traveled at least seven times to more than ten countries. When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity — sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether official or non-official cover (NOC) — with no ostensible relationship to the CIA.

At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson's employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.

Not that this fact will disrupt the insaneosphere's shriekings that "she had a desk job!" Reality has a well-known liberal bias and all that.

Scooter Libby should get the full penalty of the law for lying about outing a covert CIA agent working on WMD in a time of war. He obstructed an investigation into a very serious crime. And he certainly delivered information on Plame to Judy Miller and Matt Cooper and Tim Russert. He's a convicted criminal and a shame to this nation.

Cloak of Invincibility

It's really breathtaking what the Vice President is asserting in the Valerie Plame civil trial. This is what he'll be spending the rest of his natural-born life saying in the courts. It's in line with the wackiest of the unitary executive branch theories. Just pay attention to the argument here:

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge yesterday that they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

The officials, who include senior White House adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, argued that the judge should dismiss a lawsuit filed by the couple that stemmed from the disclosure of Plame's identity to the media [...]

The lawyers said any conversations Cheney and the officials had about Plame with one another or with reporters were part of their normal duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went further, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.

If the President does it, that means it's not illegal has apparently migrated to the Vice President as well. Mighty convenient.

That's what the Vice President is arguing. He's saying that nothing he can do, in this case or any case, will open him up to prosecution, whatsoever. That's the logical reading of his argument. Even the judge caught on to the real insanity of it all.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked: "So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment," whether the statements were true or false?

"That's true, Your Honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy," said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division. "These officials were responding to that criticism."

The Vice President is asserting the right to deliver classified information to anyone he wants, information that can ruin careers, put CIA agents in the field at risk and punish enemies by selective disclosure. And that's just if you read this narrowly. More broadly, he's saying that he has the unique right, by being the guy who, until his tenure, had the job of laying wreaths at state funerals, to commit any violation of the law at any time, during or after his elected role as Vice President, without ever being held accountable by the courts. At all.

Wow. That this isn't headlining the news every day for a year is stunning to me. Actually it isn't, as we don't really have anymore what you would call "news." If I were the Democrats, however, I would put out a press release a day showing what Dick Cheney has decided he's allowed to do that day. "Vice President Asserts Right to Carjack." "Vice President Says He Can Beat Up Woman In An Alley." "Vice President Allowed to Burn Crosses On Church Lawn."

Ho-Hum

The White House broke the law.

Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, revealed today that to his knowledge the White House has never ordered a probe, report, or sanctions as a result of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. “I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office,” he said.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said he was “shocked” by Knodell’s testimony, adding that the White House’s lack of action was a “breach on top of a breach.”

Watch the exchange here:



Never mind that Bush claimed, OJ-like, that he would get to the bottom of the Plame case and find the real leakers. There's a specific executive order that should trigger an investigation any time there is any breach of security clearance. The White House just didn't do it. They didn't bother. Because they didn't care about Valerie Plame, didn't care about CIA officers having their career ruined, didn't care about normal governmental procedures. Because they have contempt for government.

Incidentally, this was missing from most of the news accounts of the Plame hearing, despite the fact that it was the biggest bombshell.

Rep. Waxman also wants a word with Condi Rice. Man, does control of Congressional committees matter, or what?

"And Robert Novak, of all people..."

That was Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) this morning at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, where she and the rest of the panel heard the testimony of Valerie Plame, her first public words in four years since her outing as a spy.

Plame was very impressive in her opening statement (here it is). But the most interesting part of the testimony to me came under questioning from Rep. Elijah Cummings, where he revealed that (a) CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged that Plame was covert, (b) the CIA vetted Rep. Waxman's opening statement which included phrases like "Valerie Plame was covert" and "her position at the CIA was classified," and (c) Plame had been on secret missions outside the United States within the past three years. All of that was new information to me.

The blogosphere is acutely interested in the Plame case because it encapsulates everything that this Administration has done, which can be boiled down to: rewarding political friends, punishing political enemies. We see this again in the case of the Purged Prosecutors, but the CIA Leak Investigation was even more cut and dried. Valerie Plame was serving her country, working to keep America safe from WMD, and because her husband - not even her but her husband - criticized the White House and particularly the Vice President, her career was ruined. Her life's work was trashed. Her life and that of her colleagues were torn upside down. And in a very real way, lives were put into jeopardy. All to rebut criticism. And then the progenitors of this smear started lying about their role in it, which led us to Scooter Libby's conviction last week.

We now have a Congress that will not take this kind of thuggish behavior from the White House any longer. Rep. Stephen Lynch mentioned during testimony that he and his colleagues have been trying to get Plame to testify for four years. Only now, with the Democratic majority, has this been realized. And in every case where Democrats have gone searching for malfeasance so far in the 110th Congress, they've found it. And there's plenty to find:

We're sitting here listening to the Plame testimony in the House. And the exchange has just come to focus on the 2004 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Iraq intel report. If you've been a longtime reader of this site, you know that the Niger story was one I reported on extensively for almost two years. The fallout from the story has now spilled out in many directions, not least of which was the recent Libby conviction. But I do hope we can finally have review and scrutiny of that report. The section of the report dealing with Niger, Wilson and Plame is simply a tissue of lies. It's a shame on the Democrats who served on the committee who got gamed into approving it.

You can read through our archives for detailed discussions of the report's contents. But it is a deliberate construction of half-truths, flat out lies and intentional misdirection -- all quite conscious on the part of the authors -- meant to discredit Wilson and thus protect the president. Then-Chairman Roberts (R-KS) prostituted his office by working in concert with the White House to obstruct and misdirect the investigation he was supposedly in charge of leading. And of course the conclusions of the report have become socially acceptable lies repeated endlessly by virtually every Republican in Washington and every conservative editorialist, most recently David Brooks in the Times, but certainly by many others.

This is going to be a long 22 more months for the President and his staff, and it's all their own fault.