I definitely think if you put together Allen’s treatment of Bartlett here, and what you get in Hubris, that Bartlett is a good candidate for being 1×2×6. There is something a little disingenuous about the notion that Bartlett was against using the wife as a talking point in mid-July 2003: after all, he’d emphatically pointed Dickerson in the direction of the discovery of Wilson’s wife’s CIA affiliation just a few days earlier. But perhaps that reflects Bartlett’s later thinking, which would be consistent with him turning on his administration colleagues in confessing to Allen in fall 2003. Adam Levine remains possible too.

And then the candidate who just occurred to me today for the first time, I believe, is Gerson. He was in the middle of the whole 16 words controversy, as Hubris makes pretty clear, though we know very little about his role, if any, in relation to the Wilsons. But by that very token, he’d both be in a position to know about what went on in the attack on the Wilsons, and would be in a position to feel distanced from and disapproving of it.

Plus he’s the guy Allen went to yesterday for his story on Bartlett, suggesting a connection there.

Gerson now, of course, is at CFR and writes for the Washington Post.

MikeM – Read the post â€Buh Bye Bartlettâ€, which is 3 or 4 posts earlier than this one. Specifically read the comments thereto, yes all of them, and you will know more than you could possibly want to about the 1×2×6 theory.

More background on 1X2X6 from Swopa back in July 2006

If these trends continue, we’ll have no need for main-stream-media at all in another decade or so.

They might as well stop the dead tree versions of â€newsâ€, except for perhaps local advertising circulars. That will save forests, cut pollution (paper manufacturing is a dirty business), slow littering. And the Russert-style â€reporters†who wait by their phones for somebody important to call them can go out and find real work.

The government has suborned the media to such a point that it would be more honest to simply set up a branch for domestic propaganda.

These reporters are already shaping public opinion rather than reporting upon what is real. When you have male anchors and male hosts commenting to each other that â€women love a real he-man†while they swoon over Commander Cod-Piece’s package, you have to wonder where they got their information about what women want, whether they are projecting their own male weaknesses because women don’t want them, or they are working hard to make obvious aggressiveness acceptable and desirable in a leader. We women were snickering and wondering what the flight-suit was stuffed with (Presidential socks for giveaways?)… because penis size has no relation to leadership, except that men with insubstantial ones feel a strong need to over-compensate.

That worked so well, these guys are back at it with Romney’s hair (women like a touch of grey) and strong chin, or Thompson looking the part. Sheesh! They think we ladies are so stupid that we vote based upon mere appearance? And that any sock puppet will do as long as it has a button in its ear or other tag labeling it as a product of mass marketing? They deride Edward’s haircut or Obama’s fit body with the same fixation upon manliness as a surface trait, and use physical appearance as the only meter for determining Presidential suitability.

A thousand years ago, kings were exposed naked to the populous as part of investiture… because the health of the king was the health of the land. But even they didn’t care what color hair was under the crown. Healthiness was an issue because kings led the battle charges and had to endure what their men endured.

Do these pundits pick race horses based upon coat color and fancy name? If it is a crowded field and a muddy track, I wouldn’t want them pre-selecting the winner because Patrician Primus is a handsome bay with frisky legs! Isn’t our government and the leaders who make decisions affecting the lives of people all over the world worth a bit more consideration than a moment in the winner’s circle?

I chose race horses specifically, because of the quadrigas and chariots of Rome. If the emperor favored the green chariot, it was wise to place one’s bets similarly. Losing money was nothing compared to losing favor of these semi-divine dictators. Bush believes that God appointed him as Smiter-in-Chief to set off the End Times; this is no less delusional than Caligula’s expressions. In neither case are the senators of any party willing to stand up for right and reason.

As our Administration remakes itself into a dictatorship, with tentacles extending throughout all the branches in partnership with corporations and lobbyists, it will have less need for newscasting and more need for propaganda. The editors of the WaPo and NYT won’t be summoned to the White House and ordered to squash a story. That story will never have been investigated nor written, and the editors will be federal employees like all the other minions and enablers.

By maintaining the fiction of independence, the media can continue to circumvent and obscure the truth.

People who seek truth, data, scholarship, informed opinions will search elsewhere.

I’d say that Mr. Bartlett might still be a good source for a more independent sort of ’inside the WH’ stories.

I was thinking that moving Bartlett might be a response to those Republicans who went to Bush and told him that he has ’no credibility’… his subsequent immigration statements seemed quite sincere in response, and so maybe there’s a push for a different approach to communications in the WH. (ok, enough dreaming, back the the unreal world of the Bush WH)

So Bartlett is the source for 1×2×6 as far as Allen is concerned.

Hilarious: â€as far as Allen is concerned.†You’d rather ask Jason Leopold and get the answer that it was Grossman than Allen who, you know, sorta knows who it was since, after all, 1×2×6 was his very own source? Which is not to say we know it’s Bartlett, because in fact Allen has not made clear that it was Bartlett.

That said, like you, I’m interested in how much accuracy there is in the original story, because it’s pretty clear that some elements of the story were inaccurate. That makes the question of the identity of the source that much more interesting. At the same time, the essence of the story – that two top White House officials disclosed Plame’s CIA identity to multiple reporters – appears to be true. Which in fact is what Fitzgerald indicated at trial, in contrast to what you suggest.

I’m getting ready to move and cleaning closets out while I type.

Nightmare, my sympathies.

The story is probably mostly accurate as far as what Allen’s source told him. How much of what Allen’s source told him is true is a different question. I don’t know why you would assume that Bartlett would be talking about his own phone calls, if Bartlett was the source, especially since we don’t know that Bartlett blew Plame’s cover to any reporter at all. (We know he came close in hinting around about it and pointing Dickerson in the direction that, he evidently hoped, Dickerson would find it. but that’s still different.) And Bartlett would certainly have been in a position to know what Libby and Rove were up to, so he very well could have reported to Allen on their activities in blowing Plame’s cover.

But you’re evidently in agreement with Swopa that 2 were Fleischer and Bartlett. I think they were Rove and Libby, though I could potentially believe that one of them was Fleischer (specifically, if Rove were 1).

Actually, I’m not decided who was what. Bartlett and Fleisher supposedly made calls, but Fleisher doesn’t think he told Pincus but does think he told Dickerson and Gregory. Libby thought he told more people than he actually did, and Rove would have been saying he didn’t tell Cooper, right? In the end, I think the story is too flawed to determine who the players were. Bartlett might have told Allen about the 2×6, but if he wasn’t correct, it doesn’t matter who he thought did what. There is no real 2 and 6. Which is not to say there weren’t people talking to reporters, obviously.
And it all changes if the report that 1 meant this all happened after the Novak article came out is accurate.

Per, â€because of the doubt of the accuracy of the story.

FWIW, not all memories are equal, but 1×2×6 is the type of memory that researchers have shown to be quite stable.

Suppose someone told Allen that pi squared was a circle whose circumference measured 81275 meters. No one should be surprised if Allen failed to accurately recollect the precise number of meters, nor the pi being squared. (Unless that specific number, or that circle, had some huge emotional significance for him.)

1×2×6 falls into the realm of memory that’s closer to: ’Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ ’Where were you when you heard about the Shuttle explosion?’

The 1×2×6 is a deeply engaging memory. Allen received dope about a very secretive, information-controlled WH. It was out of the ordinary, it conveyed emotional information, and it was a tiny peephole into the WH at a time when Bush, McClellan, and others were bluffing that there were no WH leaks, that anyone who’d leaked would be fired, yadda, yadda…. thereby giving the 1×2×6 conversation even more salience. (Think Renaissance painters and chiarascuro.)

1×2×6 was important for the recipient, and also for the speaker.
It was out of character for the WH organization.
In addition, Allen wrote about it, meaning that he would have replayed that conversation in his mind, mulled it, and that would have increased the likliehood that he recollected it fairly accurately.

Sometimes the devil skips the details and hides in the obvious.
1×2×6 happened; the ambiguity of just who was involved in each of those ’roles’ (1? 2? 6?) primarily means people have ’mentally chewed’ on it. That process simply made it more, and more, and more memorable.

It would be interesting if the WaPo ever released web stats on the number of hits on that 1×2×6 article; given the amount of rumination and conjecture over that article, it’s probably been viewed many, many times. The article was memorable because of its nature; it has become even more memorable because of the discussion it has engendered.

This all could have been avoided if people hadn’t lied. When they then lied about lying about the lie, they caused everyone to go remember the earlier information.. And then when they covered up lying about lying about the lie, it was the equivilent of a cognitive ’slam dunk.’ People aren’t going to forget it.

â€Memorable†is the kindest of terms to use for that 1×2×6 conversation.

I made a bad guess there.

I think you’re being too hard on yourself and by implication your fellow JOMers. It wasn’t a guess; you were just wishfully following the lead of some reporting.