George Bush Authorized the Leak of Valerie Wilson’s Identity

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Scottie McC doesn’t know it yet. But that’s basically what he revealed this morning on the Today Show (h/t Rayne).

During the interview, Scottie revealed the two things that really pissed him off with the Bush Administration. First, being set up to lie by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. And second, learning that Bush had–himself–authorized the selective leaking of the NIE.

Scottie McC: But the other defining moment was in early April 2006, when I learned that the President had secretly declassified the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for the Vice President and Scooter Libby to anonymously disclose to reporters. And we had been out there talking about how seriously the President took the selective leaking of classified information. And here we were, learning that the President had authorized the very same thing we had criticized.

Viera: Did you talk to the President and say why are you doing this?

Scottie McC: Actually, I did. I talked about the conversation we had. I walked onto Air Force One, it was right after an event we had, it was down in the south, I believe it was North Carolina. And I walk onto Air Force One and a reporter had yelled a question to the President trying to ask him a question about this revelation that had come out during the legal proceedings. The revelation was that it was the President who had authorized, or, enable Scooter Libby to go out there and talk about this information. And I told the President that that’s what the reporter was asking. He was saying that you, yourself, was the one that authorized the leaking of this information. And he said "yeah, I did." And I was kinda taken aback.

Now, for the most part, this is not new. We have known (since I first reported it here) that Scooter Libby testified that, after Libby told Dick Cheney he couldn’t leak the information Cheney had ordered him to leak to Judy Miller because it was classified, Cheney told Libby he had gotten the President to authorize the declassification of that information.

Thus far, though, we only had Dick Cheney’s word that he had actually asked Bush to declassify this information. We didn’t have Bush’s confirmation that he had actually declassified the information. In fact, we’ve had Dick Cheney’s claims that he–Dick–had insta-declassified via his super secret pixie dust declassification powers.

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Now This IS Interesting Scottie McClellan News

Back in November, when Scottie McClellan’s publisher first started to pitch Scottie’s book, he made a stir when he posted the following blurb about the book.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself.

That set off a minor firestorm, as people misread the plain language of the blurb to mean that Bush had knowingly asked Scottie McC to lie about Libby’s and Rove’s involvement in the leak of Valerie Wilson’s identity. As I pointed out then, the firestorm probably contributed to making little Scottie rich.

Scottie McC’s publisher has pulled off quite the coup–taken a detail that was, largely, already known, and used it to cause a stir about a book that will not yet be published for another 6 months. Already, Dodd is calling for an investigation, folks are calling for HJC or Waxman to hold a hearing. What the left has done is read one publishing blurb designed to generate this kind of buzz, and played right into the plan. Congratulations. You’re all making Scottie McC rich.

And while I still don’t advocate that you all go out and buy Scottie’s book (tell you what–I’ll buy it and tell you the interesting bits), this little revelation is interesting news.

McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case.

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Rove Once Again Saying Things on Teevee He Claims He Can’t Say to Congress

Thanks to TPM’s reader GB for watching Rove on Stephanopoulos so I don’t have to. Rove claims he shouldn’t have to appear before Congress because–in a different subpoena–the White House invoked executive privilege.

Rove: Congress–the House Judiciary Committee wants to be able to call Presidential Aides on its whim up to testify, violating the separation of powers. Executive Privilege has been asserted by the White House in a similar instance in the Senate. It’ll be, probably be asserted very shortly in the House. Third, the White House has agreed–I’m not asserting any personal privilege, the White House has offered and my lawyer has offered several different ways, if the House wants to find out information about this, they can find out information about this and they’ve refused to avail themselves of those opportunities.

Two things here.

First, the circumstances between this and the Senate subpoena are actually somewhat different. Rove’s documented involvement in the USA firings is actually much more minor than that in the USA purge. In the USA purge, he briefly attended on meeting at the White House strategizing how they would respond to Congress’ investigation and instructed the DOJ folks to come up with one story about what they said had happened. And some Republicans have said they asked Rove to fire Iglesias and later–in December 2007–that Rove told them Iglesias was gone. The discussions of what Rove did subsequent to those requests is based on anonymous sources claiming that Rove intervened directly. Those same anonymous sources, though, say that Rove had to get Bush involved personally, which would implicate the President and then–except insofar as someone was arguing that the firing constituted obstruction–executive privilege.

Here, though, we’ve got a sworn source saying she heard references to Rove directly contacting DOJ, bypassing the President and therefore bypassing executive privilege.

Also, given Rove’s involvement in Alabama politics, it’s hard to say whether his activities were those of a presidential aide or a powerful GOP operative.

In any case, the White House has not yet invoked executive privilege here. And a few things are going to make that harder to do. First, who will provide the legal review to justify it? Paul Clement did the heavy lifting the last time the White House invoked executive privilege here–but it pertained solely to the hiring and firing of USAs. Read more

Fitz on Firing

In their Questions for the Record submitted after he testified, HJC managed to ask Patrick Fitzgerald one obvious question they didn’t manage to ask when he testified at their hearing on Special Counsels (h/t MadDog). What would have happened–or would happen to John Durham, investigating the torture tapes destruction–if a Special Counsel got fired during the course of the investigation? Actually, in the QFRs Fitzgerald got asked about 5 different versions of the question, only one of which elicited a really useful answer (at least as it might reflect on John Durham’s investigation):

13. If you had been fired as a U.S. Attorney, what impact would that have had on the CIA leak investigation? What impact would that have had on your appointment as Special Counsel?

During my tenure, this question did not present itself. It is not clear to me what the legal implications would have been had I been relieved of command as United States Attorney while serving as Special Counsel. (This might be an issue that should be specifically addressed if there is a delegation of power to a sitting United States Attorney in the future as it is entirely possible that a United States Attorney could be asked to resign after a change in administration.) It would appear that unless the United States Attorney were specifically retained in some other capacit (such as a Special Assistant United States Attorney), he or she could no longer serve as a Special Counsel who was employed by the Department of Justice and whose authority had been delegated by the Attorney General. It would be possible that a new appointment could be made for such a former United States Attorney which would provide that he or she would serve as a Special Counsel from outside the Department of Justice pursuant to the appropriate regulations.

Had I been relieved of command as United States Attorney while conducting the CIA leak investigation, even if a legal basis were established for me to continue as Special Counsel or in some other proper capacity, I would nevertheless have had to determine whether it would be appropriate for me to continue representing the government under all of the circumstances. Read more

Reggie Steps To The Plate And Stirs The Drink

In baseball, one of the most charismatic players ever was Reggie Jackson; he was a great talent, bold and his own man. Always. Jackson was known as "Mr. October" for his ability to always come through in the clutch during playoffs and the World Series. Reggie was also a bit of a self promoter, and once referred to his place on the Yankee team by saying "I’m the straw that stirs the drink".

Well, here at this blog, we have our own favorite Reggie, Judge Reggie Walton of the DC District Court who presided over the Libby trial. While Reggie Walton is by no means a self promoter, quite the polar opposite actually, he is an immensely talented judge, is bold and is his own man. And, yesterday, he stirred things up a bit. In Milwaukee to give a speech on the importance of literacy and education, reporter John Diedrich of the Journal-Sentinel caught up with Walton for a few questions.

"The president has that authority and exercised it, and that has to be respected,"
….
"The downside is there are a lot of people in America who think that justice is determined to a large degree by who you are and that what you have plays a large role in what kind of justice you receive. . . . It is crucial that the American public respect the rule of law, or people won’t follow it."
….
Walton, who said he and his family were threatened after he handed down the sentence, said the time he gave Libby was at the low end of federal sentencing guidelines.

"I believe firmly you apply the law and apply it strictly," Walton said from his chambers in Washington. "I don’t give white-collar criminals a pass."

In so many words, Judge Walton is saying that President Bush directly undermined the rule of law in this country when he erased all responsibility and accountability for Libby from his criminal conduct. Judge Walton is absolutely right. And the worst part is, that by doing so, Bush was shamelessly covering up his, and Vice-President Cheney’s, own crimes. It is important that people not be allowed to forget this concept in the whirlwind of all the other Bush/Cheney blights on our society. Judge Walton has my thanks for making these statements, give him yours.

Fitz v. Rove, Part VI

The suggestion that Bob Kjellander was working with Rove to have Fitz fired is not new.

In a hearing before court began, prosecutors said they hoped to call Ali Ata, the former Blagojevich administration official who pleaded guilty to corruption yesterday, to the stand.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carrie Hamilton said she believed Ata would testify to conversations Ata had with his political patron, Rezko, about working to pull strings to kill the criminal investigation into Rezko and others when it was in its early stages in 2004.

"[Ata] had conversations with Mr. Rezko about the fact that Mr. Kjellander was working with Karl Rove to have Mr. Fitzgerald removed," Hamilton told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve.

Back in the days when there was question whether Fitzgerald would be ousted in 2006 (before the USA purge broke), Chicago commentators regularly noted how badly Chicago pols–and Kjellander in particular–wanted to see Fitzgerald gone.

And there’s good reason to think he might be [fired], aside from the president’s non-assurance. One of the chief practitioners of Illinois establishment politics is Republican operative Bob Kjellander, who brags (whether true or not) about his friendship with Bush chief political strategist, Karl Rove. Despite Kjellander’s engineering Bush defeats in Illinois and other Midwest states, the White House (Rove?) thought he was pretty hot stuff and brought him to the Beltway where he is engineering who knows what political disaster.

Kjellander also will be credited with the coming GOP election disaster in Illinois, thanks to his help in selecting state Treasurer Judy Barr Topinka to run against incumbent Blagojevich. She’s a dear lady, a treasured "moderate," but not a gusty independent willing to stand up to the political establishment.

The point is that Kjellander (pronounced Shelander), a Republican national committeeman who has received $800,000 in unexplained fees through a state bond-borrowing deal engineered by Democrat Blagojevich, is no fan of Fitzgerald’s either. No one, in other words, in the political establishment in Chicago or Washington, is pushing for Fitzgerald’s reappointment. [my emphasis]

And after news broke last year that Fitzgerald had been on the firing list, at least one Chicago commentator predicted that Kjellander was the reason, and not the Plame case. Read more

Did Cheney Rent One of Rummy’s Rent-A-Generals to Try to Refute Joe Wilson?

I’m working on a catalog of Rummy’s Rent-A-Generals. But I couldn’t help but notice this particular Rent-A-General.

On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the “Generals’ Revolt” dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show. When an aide urged a short delay to “give our big guys on the West Coast a little more time to buy a ticket and get here,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office insisted that “the boss” wanted the meeting fast “for impact on the current story.”

That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld.

“Starting to write it now,” General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. “Any input for the article,” he added a little later, “will be much appreciated.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office quickly forwarded talking points and statistics to rebut the notion of a spreading revolt.

“Vallely is going to use the numbers,” a Pentagon official reported that afternoon.

[snip]

Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war.

This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam.

“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”

[snip]

Back in Washington, Pentagon officials kept a nervous eye on how the trip translated on the airwaves. Uncomfortable facts had bubbled up during the trip. One briefer, for example, mentioned that the Army was resorting to packing inadequately armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets. Descriptions of the Iraqi security forces were withering. “They can’t shoot, but then again, they don’t,” one officer told them, according to one participant’s notes.

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Turdblossom Writes Letters

Dear Bob Novak:

It boils down to this: as a journalist, do you feel you have a responsibility to dig into the claims made by your sources, seek out evidence and come to a professional judgment as to the real facts? Or do you feel if a charge is breathtaking enough, thoroughly checking it out isn’t a necessity?

I know you might be concerned that asking these questions could restrict your ability to make sensational charges in your column, but don’t you think you have a responsibility to provide even a shred of supporting evidence before sullying the journalistic reputations of the Washington Post?

People used to believe journalists were searching for the truth. But your column increasingly seems to be focused on wishful thinking, hoping something is one way and diminishing the search for facts and evidence in favor of repeating your fondest desires. For example, while you do ask the CIA whether Ms. Plame sent her husband, you did not press Armitage and Libby when they said "Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger."

The difficulty with your approach is you reduced yourself to the guy in the bar who repeats what the fellow next to him says – “Wilson’s wife suggested sending him! Wilson’s wife suggested sending him!” – only louder, because it suits your pre-selected story line ("the CIA is attacking the Vice President") and you don’t want the facts to get in the way of a good fable. You have relinquished the central responsibility of an investigative reporter, namely to press everyone in order to get to the facts. You didn’t subject the statements of others to skeptical and independent review. You have chosen instead to simply repeat something someone else says because it agrees with the theme line your sources fed you, created the nifty counter-attack to shield the Vice President.

Oh I’m sorry. Did I say this was a letter to Novak criticizing him for his column outing Valerie Plame? I meant it was a letter to Dan Abrams to, once again, say things to the press Rove is unwilling to say under oath to HJC. (h/t TP)

One Corrupt Lawyer Disbarred

An entire party full of corrupt lawyers yet to be disbarred.

A three-judge panel on the D.C. Court of Appeals stripped Libby of his ability to practice law after he was found guilty last year of obstructing the investigation in the CIA leak investigation, WTOP radio reported.

Next up, Alberto Gonzales? Harriet Miers? John Yoo? David Addington?

(I suspect Mary has a prioritized list in her back pocket…)

January 23, 2006

Sorry. I’m afraid Waxman has me hooked on these damn email documents.

But I wanted to point out a curious bit of timing. I’m working on a mega-timeline, but note this mini-timeline:

January 20, 2006: McDevitt and friends determine that there are gaps where the missing emails should be.

January 23, 2006: Fitzgerald informs Libby’s lawyers "via Telefax and regular mail" that:

In an abundance of caution, we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.

January 23, 2006, 11:18 AM: McDevitt writes Susan Crippen,

Someone needs to fill in some of the blanks.

January 23, 2006, 1:19 PM: Crippen responds,

SIS has "filled in" the blanks.

January 24, 2006: Someone in the White House writes a document claiming to have found the missing emails.

According to a document dated just four days later that was shown to Committee staff, but not provided to them, the White House team recovercd 17,956 e-mails from these individual mailboxes on the backup tape and used these as their basis to search for e-mails responsive to the Special Counsel’s request.

January 31, 2006: Fitzgerald’s letter entered into PACER, alerting the press and DFH bloggers to the missing emails.

February 2, 2006: Addington prints off email for discovery.

February 6, 2006: Fitzgerald receives "missing" emails.

February 11, 2006: Dick shoots an old man in the face.

Okay, okay, I just included Dick’s lawyer-hunting for fun (though I have long believed the revelation of Cheney’s NIE cover story and the missing emails contributed to his carelessness that day).

But does anyone else find it odd that the WH "found" the missing emails the day after Libby’s lawyers learned that news of them would imminently become public?

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