https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2005-11-17 23:42:002005-11-17 23:42:00Why Libby's Defense Relies on Richard Nixon
Anonymous says:
Thanks EW…*NOW* their clamor for the reporters’ notes makes sense…
Anonymous says:
Yeah, I kept thinking, â€What are they THINKING?!?!?! Fitzgerald will go to town if he gets Judy’s notes.†Now I get it.
Anonymous says:
emptywheel, its just a side-show.
The real crime is that people have been sent into a death-trap (Iraq). Just like the poor dopes put into helicopters over Afganistan had to deal with Stinger missles (Where are those puppies now? Last I heard there were about 500 missing.), Our brave boys have been deployed to an an area in a formation which leaves them open to the new reality that armour doesn’t matter.
Anonymous says:
There is one aspect that I wonder about though. If they go berserk asking for all kinds of reporters notes, there is no stopping Fitzgerald from asking for all kinds of notes relating to the White House, including classified reports and such. Or am I just being naive about this assumption?
Anonymous says:
Fascinating, EW… Looks like the Libby crew will be covering their fire with no end of smoke. So much to look forward to…
Regarding James Baker, I counsel restraint in over-linking him with Bush II. Baker was against this Iraq War, and is personally much more aligned with the Scowcroft camp. I doubt Baker and Jeffress share much of anything besides letterhead.
And there may be something to the rumors that Bush I and II aren’t so conversational these days.
Somewhat relatedly, over at FireDogLake, Tom Maguire tosses the suggestion that Armitage could be Woodward’s source. Which sounds interesting. Is this conceivable?
If Libby’s camp maneuvered Woodward into his present tight spot, it would certainly help the neocons to drag in their semi-nemesis Armitage, a semi-realist aligned with Powell…
Perhaps the Neocon v. Realist faultlines shall be emerging more distinctly, before Fitz heads back to Chicago.
Anonymous says:
Armitage couldn’t be Woodward’s source. He was out of the country. In fact, it’s not clear that he had read the INR memo at the time of the Woodward leak. He knew of it, I think, but didn’t actually see it until he got it from Carl Ford on July 7.
eRiposte
I think that’s why this is a First Amendment campaign. The classified stuff is still protected by executive privilege, which I’m certain BushCo will make extensive use of. But the reporters won’t have any privilege, because their sources will have all waived privilege. And as a journalist, you can’t really make a case for keeping your notes private.
I’m suggesting they’re going to use a very selective process of publication (and why wouldn’t they? It’s what they do best!). Showing things like Novak’s notes (maybe he did hear of this from a journalist first). But hiding the parts of Judy’s notes that would be lethal for this administration.
Anonymous says:
whether they will go through with this gambit i dont know.
whether the courts will agree with their reasoning, i dont know. one case is a precedent, but not much of one. judges nowadays might think twice about shielding political misdoings, particularly if there was great public anger at the time.
but what i can see, now that you have laid it out like this, is that this gambit will tie the overly ethical, analytically-challenged editors of the washington post and new york times in knots. how can we expose our reporters notes? will we ever again be given access if we do? wo will trust us?
many, many large tears will be shed in the editorial pages. much angst and hand-wringing by abrahmson, keller,collins, hyatt, downie and woodward.
and that’s just for starters. maybe cnn, fox news, and la times will join in.
ethics, like partiotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. this i learned from observations of the academic world, but the same clearly applies to news organizations.
what a nice way to see that things are reported your way or at least that the press is a little more sympathtic to your case, or paralyzed about how to report it.
Anonymous says:
EW, do you think Fitz knew about Woodward the whole time? Fitz’s 11th hour call to Wilson, just before Miller’s testimony, is quite interesting. â€Hey Joe, was this particular detail something Woodward was saying, or something Miller was saying?â€
Fitz could never have nailed Judy if he had gone after Woodward first (or concurrently).
I suspect that Wilson’s friend, who pigeonholed Novak on the street in Washington, was no coincidence. Remember, Wilson knew the smear was in the works…he was tracking it, probably with the help of his buddies. Even before the July 6th editorial, Wilson knew he was going to be outed along with his wife, the CIA employee, who sent him on a â€boondoggle.â€
Maybe I’m in a minority, but I just don’t think Woodward kept quiet. With that Pincus admission, he’s all but said that he told other people, too, and that he didn’t think the information was classified…
Anonymous says:
Emptywheel – The mechanics of this back and forth shuttling of information require a blueprint. Jeffress is clearly part of the santitation engineering team with practical experience from watergate days…and the only other technical expert with a good blueprint overview of the White House, press corps, intell plumbing is strangely – Pincus. Am I wrong?
Anonymous says:
Emptywheel – The mechanics of this back and forth shuttling of information require a blueprint. Jeffress is clearly part of the santitation engineering team with practical experience from watergate days…and the only other technical expert with a good blueprint overview of the White House, press corps, intell plumbing is strangely – Pincus. Am I wrong?
Anonymous says:
QS
I don’t really know. I think Fitz probably got to a point where he had indictments on enough people he thought he’d jump to loosen up more information. I do think some people (possible including Hadley, who had said he would be indicted and is reputed to be Woodward’s source) may have thrown a few things Fitz’ way to stave off indictments.
That is, Fitz may genuinely have decided he couldn’t draw a full picture until some heat were on. THe smoking them out theory.
If Fitz wants to eventually take an IIPA or Espionage case, he’s got to be absolutely positive that he knows who leaked first. His indictment of Libby has gotten him significantly further down the road of understanding that. Which, presumably, will make it significantly easier for him to indict on espionage in a way that will stick.
Anonymous says:
umzuzu
I’m not sure what you’re asking. I think Pincus knows intelligence than anyone. But his specialty has never been primarily the WH. And certainly not this one.
Anonymous says:
I think Libby’s full court press on the press is a sideshow just like his â€reporters told me†defense. It is designed to stall everything though various motions that will have to go all the way to the Supremes and then, after the 2006 elections, Libby plans to cut a deal.
Of course what Libby has to deal with depends on what moves Fitz makes between now and then and whether he has anything important left to sell.
And the outcome of the elections, and a lot of other things.
But I think it is a distracting strategy to get people whipped up and off the main topic, which is always and ever how they lied us into war, hyped the intel, have outsourced the intel process and are still trying to cover it all up with more coverups and misdirection plays.
Anonymous says:
Wow. If only I could have subpoenaed and indicted people in my journalist days: I would have had some really great stories.
Once again, EW, you’ve been right and I’ve been wrong. I figured Fitz was pretty much done after the Libby indictment. So, really, the only time I’ve been right in this whole affair is back around October 2003 when I was arguing on rightwinger sites that the Plame outing was going to be a very big deal. Come to think of it, I believe I’ve won some wagers in that regard that I haven’t collected.
Anonymous says:
Mimikatz
I hear you. There is a very good chance this won’t go to trial. But Libby hired to take this to trial. He hired two trial guys, not a plea bargain guy.
So long as this doesn’t get to Cheney around Libby, then I think it will go to trial. It goes to trial, Libby’s Nixon lawyer prevents the evidence used in the trial from getting out, and BushCO has successfully bottled up a wide conspiracy with one person going down or not (Libby’s defense team is good, and as I understand Tweety will show tonight, there seem to be a lot of people willing to invest to make sure he gets a good defense).
Anonymous says:
Emptywheel: What if WOODWARD was the â€original†source for all the WH leakers, so Rove, Libby, etc were right all along that they got it from the press, and they can show it? â€original†in quotes as in Woody was set up to be that source by Mr. Y, as is not coming out. Now Mr. Y may be Mr. X, or Cheney, or even Bush? If it was Bush, then it would become a constitutional question of whether he can ever be prosecuted, while the rest go free. A truly Rovian play, n’est-ce pas?
Anonymous says:
Emptywheel: ** CORRECTED SPELLING MISTAKE: â€not coming out†-> â€now coming out†What if WOODWARD was the â€original†source for all the WH leakers, so Rove, Libby, etc were right all along that they got it from the press, and they can show it? â€original†in quotes as in Woody was set up to be that source by Mr. Y, as is now coming out. Now Mr. Y may be Mr. X, or Cheney, or even Bush? If it was Bush, then it would become a constitutional question of whether he can ever be prosecuted, while the rest go free. A truly Rovian play, n’est-ce pas?
Anonymous says:
whenwego
I don’t see it. He’s too much of a snob for one. And at least according to what he has said, he didn’t get the leak–that is, Plame’s covert status and her name. He got just a piddling old leak.
Anonymous says:
You all saw yesterday the news Pincus’ notes lost a motion to quash in the subpoena in the Wen Ho Lee matter, though I wonder what court that action is in. RCFP is reporting a tripling of subpoenas of reporters notes over the timeframe since Patriot became rule of the land. They should put it in bar graphs on their website, no pun intended.
Anonymous says:
Pincus and Wen Ho Lee’s civil suit at http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..1567.html. Not sure how its related, but since we’re talking about first amendment and anonymity…
From reading this, my feeble brain notes primarily that Woodward is saying that he, rather than Mr./Ms. X, instigated this latest turn of events in which Mr./Ms. X released Woodward and volunteered info to Fitzgerald.
How sayeth thee, great oracle of the empty wheel?
Anonymous says:
Check the TruthOut site Waxman has a lot of current material including links and original investigative journalism; everything I reviewed thusfar is expansive; his site sprang to life after a long quiescence. You all are probably referencing that information hub, as well. He is good when he gets going. It seems like the news and events of this week have galvanized a few democrats in congress.
On the Pincus comment, right now it is true enough it is peripheral, but as Fitzgerald and SSCI enter their respective Phase IIs maybe his centrality in these matters will be relevant to both investigations. The only part of his setback that sounded a harmonic chord for me was the Libby-Rove adroit media attack. Ted Koppel took his leave this week after a long career. I worry about media fragility. I think EW has the Nixon Statue of Liberty play mapped to perfection. According to the Waxman articles, some of which I have read, little yardage is there for Libby to gain postWoodward news this week.
Anonymous says:
Oh the tangled web we weave….
Whats to prevent the reporters from publishing thier notes if they get subpoenaed? Er, maybe we should have kept Ms. Run Amok in house at the NYT where they could have forced her to….oh, yeah, nevermind.
Thanks EW…*NOW* their clamor for the reporters’ notes makes sense…
Yeah, I kept thinking, â€What are they THINKING?!?!?! Fitzgerald will go to town if he gets Judy’s notes.†Now I get it.
emptywheel, its just a side-show.
The real crime is that people have been sent into a death-trap (Iraq). Just like the poor dopes put into helicopters over Afganistan had to deal with Stinger missles (Where are those puppies now? Last I heard there were about 500 missing.), Our brave boys have been deployed to an an area in a formation which leaves them open to the new reality that armour doesn’t matter.
There is one aspect that I wonder about though. If they go berserk asking for all kinds of reporters notes, there is no stopping Fitzgerald from asking for all kinds of notes relating to the White House, including classified reports and such. Or am I just being naive about this assumption?
Fascinating, EW… Looks like the Libby crew will be covering their fire with no end of smoke. So much to look forward to…
Regarding James Baker, I counsel restraint in over-linking him with Bush II. Baker was against this Iraq War, and is personally much more aligned with the Scowcroft camp. I doubt Baker and Jeffress share much of anything besides letterhead.
And there may be something to the rumors that Bush I and II aren’t so conversational these days.
Somewhat relatedly, over at FireDogLake, Tom Maguire tosses the suggestion that Armitage could be Woodward’s source. Which sounds interesting. Is this conceivable?
If Libby’s camp maneuvered Woodward into his present tight spot, it would certainly help the neocons to drag in their semi-nemesis Armitage, a semi-realist aligned with Powell…
Perhaps the Neocon v. Realist faultlines shall be emerging more distinctly, before Fitz heads back to Chicago.
Armitage couldn’t be Woodward’s source. He was out of the country. In fact, it’s not clear that he had read the INR memo at the time of the Woodward leak. He knew of it, I think, but didn’t actually see it until he got it from Carl Ford on July 7.
eRiposte
I think that’s why this is a First Amendment campaign. The classified stuff is still protected by executive privilege, which I’m certain BushCo will make extensive use of. But the reporters won’t have any privilege, because their sources will have all waived privilege. And as a journalist, you can’t really make a case for keeping your notes private.
I’m suggesting they’re going to use a very selective process of publication (and why wouldn’t they? It’s what they do best!). Showing things like Novak’s notes (maybe he did hear of this from a journalist first). But hiding the parts of Judy’s notes that would be lethal for this administration.
whether they will go through with this gambit i dont know.
whether the courts will agree with their reasoning, i dont know. one case is a precedent, but not much of one. judges nowadays might think twice about shielding political misdoings, particularly if there was great public anger at the time.
but what i can see, now that you have laid it out like this, is that this gambit will tie the overly ethical, analytically-challenged editors of the washington post and new york times in knots. how can we expose our reporters notes? will we ever again be given access if we do? wo will trust us?
many, many large tears will be shed in the editorial pages. much angst and hand-wringing by abrahmson, keller,collins, hyatt, downie and woodward.
and that’s just for starters. maybe cnn, fox news, and la times will join in.
ethics, like partiotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. this i learned from observations of the academic world, but the same clearly applies to news organizations.
what a nice way to see that things are reported your way or at least that the press is a little more sympathtic to your case, or paralyzed about how to report it.
EW, do you think Fitz knew about Woodward the whole time? Fitz’s 11th hour call to Wilson, just before Miller’s testimony, is quite interesting. â€Hey Joe, was this particular detail something Woodward was saying, or something Miller was saying?â€
Fitz could never have nailed Judy if he had gone after Woodward first (or concurrently).
I suspect that Wilson’s friend, who pigeonholed Novak on the street in Washington, was no coincidence. Remember, Wilson knew the smear was in the works…he was tracking it, probably with the help of his buddies. Even before the July 6th editorial, Wilson knew he was going to be outed along with his wife, the CIA employee, who sent him on a â€boondoggle.â€
Maybe I’m in a minority, but I just don’t think Woodward kept quiet. With that Pincus admission, he’s all but said that he told other people, too, and that he didn’t think the information was classified…
Emptywheel –
The mechanics of this back and forth shuttling of information require a blueprint. Jeffress is clearly part of the santitation engineering team with practical experience from watergate days…and the only other technical expert with a good blueprint overview of the White House, press corps, intell plumbing is strangely – Pincus. Am I wrong?
Emptywheel –
The mechanics of this back and forth shuttling of information require a blueprint. Jeffress is clearly part of the santitation engineering team with practical experience from watergate days…and the only other technical expert with a good blueprint overview of the White House, press corps, intell plumbing is strangely – Pincus. Am I wrong?
QS
I don’t really know. I think Fitz probably got to a point where he had indictments on enough people he thought he’d jump to loosen up more information. I do think some people (possible including Hadley, who had said he would be indicted and is reputed to be Woodward’s source) may have thrown a few things Fitz’ way to stave off indictments.
That is, Fitz may genuinely have decided he couldn’t draw a full picture until some heat were on. THe smoking them out theory.
If Fitz wants to eventually take an IIPA or Espionage case, he’s got to be absolutely positive that he knows who leaked first. His indictment of Libby has gotten him significantly further down the road of understanding that. Which, presumably, will make it significantly easier for him to indict on espionage in a way that will stick.
umzuzu
I’m not sure what you’re asking. I think Pincus knows intelligence than anyone. But his specialty has never been primarily the WH. And certainly not this one.
I think Libby’s full court press on the press is a sideshow just like his â€reporters told me†defense. It is designed to stall everything though various motions that will have to go all the way to the Supremes and then, after the 2006 elections, Libby plans to cut a deal.
Of course what Libby has to deal with depends on what moves Fitz makes between now and then and whether he has anything important left to sell.
And the outcome of the elections, and a lot of other things.
But I think it is a distracting strategy to get people whipped up and off the main topic, which is always and ever how they lied us into war, hyped the intel, have outsourced the intel process and are still trying to cover it all up with more coverups and misdirection plays.
Wow. If only I could have subpoenaed and indicted people in my journalist days: I would have had some really great stories.
Once again, EW, you’ve been right and I’ve been wrong. I figured Fitz was pretty much done after the Libby indictment. So, really, the only time I’ve been right in this whole affair is back around October 2003 when I was arguing on rightwinger sites that the Plame outing was going to be a very big deal. Come to think of it, I believe I’ve won some wagers in that regard that I haven’t collected.
Mimikatz
I hear you. There is a very good chance this won’t go to trial. But Libby hired to take this to trial. He hired two trial guys, not a plea bargain guy.
So long as this doesn’t get to Cheney around Libby, then I think it will go to trial. It goes to trial, Libby’s Nixon lawyer prevents the evidence used in the trial from getting out, and BushCO has successfully bottled up a wide conspiracy with one person going down or not (Libby’s defense team is good, and as I understand Tweety will show tonight, there seem to be a lot of people willing to invest to make sure he gets a good defense).
Emptywheel:
What if WOODWARD was the â€original†source for all the WH leakers, so Rove, Libby, etc were right all along that they got it from the press, and they can show it? â€original†in quotes as in Woody was set up to be that source by Mr. Y, as is not coming out. Now Mr. Y may be Mr. X, or Cheney, or even Bush? If it was Bush, then it would become a constitutional question of whether he can ever be prosecuted, while the rest go free. A truly Rovian play, n’est-ce pas?
Emptywheel:
** CORRECTED SPELLING MISTAKE: â€not coming out†-> â€now coming outâ€
What if WOODWARD was the â€original†source for all the WH leakers, so Rove, Libby, etc were right all along that they got it from the press, and they can show it? â€original†in quotes as in Woody was set up to be that source by Mr. Y, as is now coming out. Now Mr. Y may be Mr. X, or Cheney, or even Bush? If it was Bush, then it would become a constitutional question of whether he can ever be prosecuted, while the rest go free. A truly Rovian play, n’est-ce pas?
whenwego
I don’t see it. He’s too much of a snob for one. And at least according to what he has said, he didn’t get the leak–that is, Plame’s covert status and her name. He got just a piddling old leak.
You all saw yesterday the news Pincus’ notes lost a motion to quash in the subpoena in the Wen Ho Lee matter, though I wonder what court that action is in. RCFP is reporting a tripling of subpoenas of reporters notes over the timeframe since Patriot became rule of the land. They should put it in bar graphs on their website, no pun intended.
Pincus and Wen Ho Lee’s civil suit at http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..1567.html. Not sure how its related, but since we’re talking about first amendment and anonymity…
Link to Time/Woodward article
From reading this, my feeble brain notes primarily that Woodward is saying that he, rather than Mr./Ms. X, instigated this latest turn of events in which Mr./Ms. X released Woodward and volunteered info to Fitzgerald.
How sayeth thee, great oracle of the empty wheel?
Check the TruthOut site Waxman has a lot of current material including links and original investigative journalism; everything I reviewed thusfar is expansive; his site sprang to life after a long quiescence. You all are probably referencing that information hub, as well. He is good when he gets going. It seems like the news and events of this week have galvanized a few democrats in congress.
On the Pincus comment, right now it is true enough it is peripheral, but as Fitzgerald and SSCI enter their respective Phase IIs maybe his centrality in these matters will be relevant to both investigations. The only part of his setback that sounded a harmonic chord for me was the Libby-Rove adroit media attack. Ted Koppel took his leave this week after a long career. I worry about media fragility. I think EW has the Nixon Statue of Liberty play mapped to perfection. According to the Waxman articles, some of which I have read, little yardage is there for Libby to gain postWoodward news this week.
Oh the tangled web we weave….
Whats to prevent the reporters from publishing thier notes if they get subpoenaed? Er, maybe we should have kept Ms. Run Amok in house at the NYT where they could have forced her to….oh, yeah, nevermind.