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.

But now we’ve got George Bush, confirming that he, the President of the United States, authorized the leaks of "this information."

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.

Think of how much sense this makes. We have evidence that George Bush ordered Libby to respond to Joe Wilson on June 9, 2003. We now have Bush’s own confirmation that he authorized the leak Libby made to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003–which included the leak of Valerie Wilson’s identity. We know on July 10, Condi told Stephen Hadley that Bush "was comfortable" with the response the White House was making towards Wilson. And we know that–when Cheney forced Scottie McC to exonerate Libby publicly that fall, he did so by reminding people that "The Pres[ident] [asked Libby] to stick his head in the meat-grinder." We know that Libby’s lawyers tried desperately to prevent a full discussion of the NIE lies to be presented at trial. And we know that–after those NIE lies did not come out, for the most part (though one juror told me that NIE story was obviously false, even with the limited information they received)–the President commuted Libby’s sentence on July 2, 2007.

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.

“There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” he writes. “It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. … Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], … Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.

“I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. … At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. …

“The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. … I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people’s involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence.” [my emphasis]

This meeting had to have taken place between July–when it became clear Rove was a source for Bob Novak and Matt Cooper–and late October–when Libby was indicted and subsequently resigned. Probably, it was in July, when Scottie McC was under a great deal of fire for vouching for Rove, and in precisely the time frame when Robert Luskin offered to have Rove testify again (for the fourth, not yet the fifth, time). Which, incidentally, means it was before Libby wrote an Aspen letter to Judy Judy Judy and released her to testify–so it was during a period when Libby believed his ruse of hiding behind "journalists" had succeeded (though it would have been just after Judy went to jail).

Scottie describes Rove, not Libby, initiating the meeting, which suggests that if Scottie McC is correct and they were comparing notes, it would be about something Rove knew and not Libby. If I had to guess, I’d say one or several of the following was the subject of the meeting.

• Luskin’s upcoming plan to claim he found the Rove-Hadley email after having "learned" from Viveca Novak that Rove did have a Matt Cooper problem. It would have been important for Rove to alert Libby to this plan if this email was not what it appeared to be or if there had been a concerted effort to destroy incriminating emails. Which, of course, there appears to have been.
• Either the news that Richard Armitage was Novak’s "source" and/or Rove’s plan (implemented the night before the indictment) to smoke Armitage out by pushing Woodward to reveal he had received a leak from Armitage. Don’t forget Woodward’s comment, suggesting he told Rove himself that Armitage had leaked to him: "Well, you talk to people, you talk to somebody in the White House or the CIA or the Democratic Party, and you say, ‘I’ve heard or I understand; what are you hearing?’ And one of the discoveries in all of this is that reporters, in asking questions, convey information to even somebody like Karl Rove."
• Rove’s recognition that he would have to testify again–making it more likely that Fitzgerald would learn more about the July 9, 2003 Libby-Novak conversation that both men had tried to hide. In particular, depending on how Rove testified in October 2005, Rove might have made it clearer to Fitzgerald that Libby had–at a minimum–leaked the still-classified CIA report on Joe Wilson’s trip to Novak during that conversation.
• Update: This was also the period when (presumably) Rove was spreading a false story about Ari Fleischer being a big source here. I can imagine why he might want to clue Libby in on that smear–and Libby did try to use it in his defense.

In Libby’s trial, Patrick Fitzgerald presented a good deal of evidence to suggest that Libby and Cheney met several times in October 2003 to get their story straight. It takes no great leap of imagination to believe that everyone involved in leaking Valerie’s identity was doing so repeatedly.

And there are several reasons why Rove might have felt the need to compare stories with Scooter Libby in July 2005.

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. As faulty as I believe that decision to be, at least with that subpoena Clement could twist an argument into claiming the issues at stake were solidly presidential. But the basis for executive privilege would be very different here–in fact, the stronger argument would be for DOJ to argue that it cannot disclose information relating to charging decisions, rather than the President invoke executive privilege. But no one seems prepared to do that. In addition, Clement will be gone by the end of next week, meaning some one else would have to take one the nasty task of invoking privilege when it so clearly seems to be an attempt to cover up a potential crime. It’s possible that DOJ is less willing to do so in this case–we shall see.

Particularly given the frequentness with which Rove has commented on this publicly–as he did once against this morning. It’s an increasingly ridiculous argument to say that Rove can talk about this to 60 Minutes, GQ, Fox, and now George Stephanopoulos. But he can’t talk about it to John Conyers.

And finally, add in the fact that when faced with a marginally antagonistic questioner, Rove’s denials look increasingly like empty spin.

Steph: But to be clear, you did not contact the Justice Department about this case?

Rove: I read about–I’m gonna simply say what I’ve said before which is I found out about Don Siegelman’s investigation and indictment by reading about it in the newspaper.

Steph: That’s not a denial.

Rove: I, I, I’ve, you know, I heard about it, read about, first learned about it by reading it in the newspaper.

If Rove repeatedly goes on the telly to deny he was involved, but also refuses to say he had no involvement in this, it’ll be tough to argue he shouldn’t testify.

That said, there’s an underlying issue here that makes this weak claim to executive privilege even more dangerous.

Josh claims that if Rove is implicated in the Don Siegelman firing, it’s the most scandalous revelation that might come out of the USA Purge.

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

I disagree, strongly.

You see, Rove is treating this HJC request as if it’s a duplicate of the USA Purge subpoena he received from the Senate. As I’ve argued above, Rove is actually being asked to testify about politicized prosecution, and not about USA firings. And that should distinguish it from the Senate subpoena, not to mention disqualify it for executive privilege.

But what Rove appears to be truly afraid of is not answering questions about Don Siegelman. It’s answering questions about the other politicized prosecution that several witnesses have recently sworn that Rove was involved in: that of Bob Kjellander.

I also can’t help but wonder whether Karl wants to limit testimony to Siegelman because of something he noticed on HJC’s website. HJC has put PatFitz’s QFRs right there alongside all the material on politicized prosecutions. The only thing PatFitz mentioned regarding politicized prosecutions had to do with the revelations that have since come out in the Rezko trial–revelations that put at least 3 people, some of them solidly corrupt Republicans like Turdblossom, on the record with hearsay evidence about Rove working to fire PatFitz. And since Rove has already sent his BFF Michael Isikoff out to figure out what evidence there is against him, it sure seems like Rove doesn’t want to testify about the conversations he had with Bob Kjellander about firing Patrick Fitzgerald.

But this is one area that has the evidentiary justification of the Siegelman case (several people, also including Republicans, with hearsay evidence stating Rove was acting improperly). Like the Siegelman case, it pertains to politicized prosecutions.

But it also pertains to the USA purge, which makes Rove’s claim to executive privilege pertinent again.

Now, in general, Rove freely admits (to GQ, but not to Congress) that he conveyed complaints about USAs to the White House. He also asserted that that was perfectly okay.

What about the U.S. attorneys? Should you have had a role in hiring and firing?
[a little peeved now] What was my role in firing those U.S. attorneys?

Your position has been—and tell me if I have this wrong—that you basically relayed complaints?
To the counsel’s office. Correct.

And that was an appropriate thing to do?
Oh sure. Sure it is. Sure it is.

Oh sure, Karl Rove is saying, it would be perfectly fine if I told Gonzales that our big corrupt Chicago donors were pissed that they might be prosecuted for their corruption.

Except that, in this case, Rove would have been relaying complaints about a prosecutor not only prosecuting corrupt Chicago Republicans (and Democrats–Chicago is a bipartisan den of corruption). Fitzgerald’s oblique answer to the QFRs from the House strongly suggests that Rove was relaying complaints about Patrick Fitzgerald from Kjellander while Fitzgerald was actively investigating Rove’s own involvement in outing Valerie Wilson.

Rove’s alleged role in the prosecution of Don Siegelman is pretty terrible. But the allegation that Rove appears to have even more disinterest in answering has to do with his own efforts to get Fitzgerald fired during the time when Fitzgerald was investigating Rove himself.

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. I would have had to consider whether my ability to be effective had been undercut and whether any decision I made to prosecute or not prosecute a case (or whether to further investigate any matter) might reasonably subject the investigative team to the criticism that I (or others on the team) might harbor a bias against the administration which had relieved the prosecutor of his Presidential appointment. This would be a determination heavily dependent on the particular factual circumstances which led to the termination of my appointment as United States Attorney.

That is, since Rove never managed to get him fired, Fitzgerald never had to think these things all the way through. But if he had been fired as USA, he would have had to be reappointed to some other position to continue the investigation in a constitutional manner. In any case, though, the threat of firing would present the difficulty that, even if he were appointed to some other position, his investigation might be tainted by the appearance that his prosecutorial decisions might be biased because he had been fired.

In other words, the threat of firing a prosecutor investigating top Administration officials does present a possible problem.

But that’s not the version of the "what if you got fired" question that I find most interesting. Rather, there’s a question that asks specifically if Fitzgerald became aware of efforts to fire him during the course of the CIA Leak investigation. Fizgerald refuses to answer … because of the ongoing Rezko case.

11. When one U.S. Attorney concurrently serves as a Special Counsel, is it appropriate for the Justice Department or the White House to consider firing all 93 U.S. Attorneys? Please explain.

National Public Radio has reported that, according to "someone who’s had conversations with White House officials, the plan to fire all 93 U.S. Attorneys originated with political adviser Karl Rove. It was seen as a way to get political cover for firing the small number of US Attorneys the White House actually wanted to get rid of." Ari Shapiro, Documents Show Justice Ranking US Attorneys, NPR, April 13,2007. Many have speculated that Mr. Rove’s goal in proposing the U.S. Attorney firings was to pressure and intimidate you. When Mr. Rove made the suggestion to fire the U.S. Attorneys, he had already been before the grand jury several times in the Scooter Libby case. To your knowledge, is this account correct? Please explain why or why not.

During the CIA leak investigation, were you aware of any conversations that you might be asked to resign? If so please describe all such conversations, including the substance of the conversations, when they occurred, and the names of those who participated.

I do not know if the referenced account of events is correct or not.

As to whether I was aware during the relevant time period of the investigation that I might be asked to resign, I will respectfully decline to discuss matters currently at issue in a trial ongoing in the Northern District of Illinois.

Fitzgerald is referring, of course, to the multiple times during the Rezko trial when a witness has testified that Rezko and Bob Kjellander talked about having Rove fire Fitzgerald to scuttle the investigation into Chicago corruption. But that’s not, of course, what HJC asked him–they asked him about the CIA Leak case, and they made a reference specifically to coverage of the USA Purge.

To understand why this is interesting, consider the timing. These QFRs almost certainly went out within a week of February 26, when Fitzgerald testified before HJC. While there had been speculation that Rezko and Kjellander might have tried to get Fitzgerald fired, that speculation wasn’t confirmed during the Rezko trial until April 23. Now, the date on Fitzgerald’s repsonse (which went through DOJ’s minder) is May 2–after, but not long after, the revelations in the Rezko trial. And here HJC has it, conveniently before the closing arguments finish in the Rezko trial, so Fitzgerald can’t legitimately answer when he learned–over the course of the Rezko investigation–that Kjellander was working with Rove to get him fired.

But unless Fitzgerald learned that fact "during the CIA leak investigation," the answer wouldn’t be on point at all. That is, as Fitzgerald suggests with his other answers, he didn’t learn he was on the USA Purge list until the media started asking DOJ about it last year:

I first learned about an evaluation of me by Mr. Sampson at the time of an inquiry by the media to the Department of Justice indicating that the media was aware of such evaluation. A colleague from the Department of Justice told me about the media inquiry and the substance of the document inquired about.

But, by his answer to this question, Fitzgerald suggests he did learn of efforts by Kjellander and Rove "during the CIA Leak investigation." Now, I’m not convinced that means Fitzgerald learned of Kjellander’s efforts before he gave Rove the all-clear in June 2006–but it sure suggests that’s a possibility.

Update: fixed basic grammar per watercarrier. 

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.

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. (This is a March 21 Chicago Trib article by John Kass behind the firewall, but here’s a blog post that cites most of it.)

How many conversations did Karl Rove–the political Rasputin of the Bush White House–have with top Illinois Republicans about U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald?

Ten? Fifty? None?

Did Rove speak directly to Big Bob Kjellander, whom Rove engineered into the job of treasurer of the Republican National Committee?

Answers might tell us why Fitzgerald, honored in 2002 as one of the top prosecutors in the Justice Department–and the fed most feared by the bipartisan political Combine that runs Illinois–was abruptly downgraded in March 2005.

[snip]

Conventional wisdom from Washington is that Fitzgerald fell out of favor with the Republicans because of his pursuit of the CIA leak case, which led to the recent perjury conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

But why not consider an alternative?

Just as that March 2005 memo downgrading Fitzgerald was making its way to the White House, Fitzgerald’s office in Chicago was proceeding in a fascinating political corruption probe involving alleged kickbacks requiring state approval for the construction of hospitals.

That case would mushroom into Operation Board Games, revealing bipartisan political influence in hundreds of millions of dollars invested through state pension funds.

There have been so many distractions that you’re bound to have forgotten about Operation Board Games. The distractions include City Hall’s Olympic dreams that won’t cost taxpayers a dime and whether Lord Conrad Black’s wife thinks reporters covering her husband’s federal fraud trial are a bunch of vermin and sluts. With all this talk of Olympics and sluts and so on, you probably haven’t had time to figure the Fitzgerald timeline.

But as that 2005 memo was sent to the White House, Fitzgerald was formally unmasking the Combine in what would later become Operation Board Games.

[snip]

One fellow in the federal documents of the Operation Board Games case was listed as "Individual K." And his buddy appeared several times in those same documents as "Individual A," for Alpha.

Individuals A and K have not been indicted. But the Tribune identified them as Big Bob Kjellander (pronounced $hell-ander) and his buddy, Big Bill Cellini, the political boss of Springfield.

Kjellander is the Republican committeeman of Illinois who flaunts his friendship with Rove and who recently resigned as treasurer of the Republican National Committee. Kjellander also represented the famous Carlyle Group before the teachers’ pension fund board and he received $4.5 million in questionable consulting fees.

Did Kjellander discuss Fitzgerald with Rove? I don’t know.

In other words, knowledgeable observers at least suspected–as Fitzgerald’s presence on the firing list came to light last year–that Kjellander, and not Rove in Plame, was the cause. (Me, I think both might have been the reason Fitzgerald made the firing list; far be it for Rove to be choosy about his reasons to fire a USA.)

Since the suggestion is not new, I’m not so much surprised by the announcement as I’m interested in the way the USA NDIL introduced this evidence and the implications it has for the whole investigation of politicized prosecutions.

You see, I believe–based on somewhat attentive observation of Patrick Fitzgerald over time–that introducing this kind of evidence is one of his favorite MOs. He introduces information that pertains to a case but is actually much more valuable for the way it points to much graver criminal issues that Fitzgerald is not in a position to address at a given moment. Thus, Fitzgerald introduced a great deal of evidence to show that Dick Cheney had, indeed, ordered Scooter Libby to leak Valerie Wilson’s identity. Because of constitutional reasons and pixie dust reasons and the inadequacy of Judy Judy Judy’s recall, he was not able to indict either Libby or Cheney on IIPA. But he got the evidence out there that that is, indeed, what happened. Unfortunately, Congress and the press were too busy trying to get Fitzgerald to release grand jury information that they failed to look closely at the information already in the public domain, and the information was never used to good effect.

I suspect that Fitzgerald has figured out the limits of Congress and the Press, because this time he has made it a bit easier. Golly, the press actually even reported on a non-trial conference, something that rarely happened in the Libby trial.

Fitzgerald’s office (though not Fitzgerald personally) has just said to John Conyers, "Hey, I see you’re still looking into politicized prosecutions. Well, here’s a witness who can testify that a Rove crony was working with Rove to get Fitzgerald fired–just before Fitzgerald almost got fired." This adds another witness–like Dana Jill Simpson–who is willing to testify that Rove got personally involved in prosecutions affecting his political allies. But it also brings someone from the requesting side to the fore–someone who (unlike the GOP cronies in Washington who got John McKay fired and unlike the GOP cronies in NM who got Iglesias fired) is apparently willing (and presumably has already signed an affidavit to the effect) to testify that Karl Rove entertained these demands for firing seriously. Conyers will, undoubtedly, take a few days to respond (he’s not so quick as Henry Waxman), but I imagine he will respond.

This will make it much easier demonstrate the criminal behavior needed to successfully subpoena Karl Rove to testify about this case, about Siegelman, and about Iglesias. It is, presumably, someone who is willing to go on the record to say that Karl Rove willingly intervened to fire a USA with the clear intent of stopping an investigation in one of Rove’s allies.

Notice that Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin was very quick to issue a very insistent denial.

But Robert Luskin, Rove’s attorney, today issued an unequivocal statement about all of this to the Tribune on behalf of Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President Bush, architect of Bush’s presidential campaigns and a private consultant in Washington now.

"Karl has known Kjellander for many years,” Luskin said, "but does not recall him or anyone else arguing for Fitzgerald’s removal. And he (Rove) is very certain that he didn’t take any steps to do that, or have any conversations with anyone in the White House — or in the Justice Department — about doing anything like that.”

Ha ha! Gold Bars! You thought you had beaten Fitzgerald once and for all, didn’t you? Ha. Ha!

Of course, there’s one more witness to this issue: Kyle Sampson. Now, even in HJC’s preliminary report on the USA firings, there was clear evidence that cliquemembers at DOJ conspired to cover up the real reasons behind the firing of David Iglesias. As Glenn Fine reportedly draws near to finishing his investigation into the matter, those who participated in that cover-up may be getting antsy about their own role in the cover-up. I don’t know whether such antsiness will or has made Kyle Sampson recall in more detail how or why he suggested Patrick Fitzgerald be fired. But I would imagine there is about to be a whole lot more pressure for him to remember those details.

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.

“I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.

The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.

“You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months.

So let’s see. General Vallely,

• Believed it was more important to lie to the public than let them question the purpose for war
• Took Pentagon talking points and used them for a WSJ op-ed
• Is documented by NYT’s sources to have stated publicly the precise opposite of what he acknowledged observing in Iraq

All in the name of hiding the fact that Rummy had no credibility with his generals and in an attempt to sustain support for the war.

So why should we care?

Well, you might recall that Paul Vallely claimed, in November 2005 (just days after Libby was indicted), that Joe Wilson had outed his wife to Vallely in a Fox green room in 2002.

A retired Army general says the man at the center of the CIA leak controversy, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, revealed his wife Valerie Plame’s employment with the agency in a casual conversation more than a year before she allegedly was "outed" by the White House through a columnist.

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WorldNetDaily that Wilson mentioned Plame’s status as a CIA employee over the course of at least three, possibly five, conversations in 2002 in the Fox News Channel’s "green room" in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts.

[snip]

Vallely says, according to his recollection, Wilson mentioned his wife’s job in the spring of 2002 – more than a year before Robert Novak’s July 14, 2003, column identified her, citing senior administration officials, as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

Now, far be it for me to suggest that General Vallely lied–outright–when he invented a story that would protect Libby, Novak, and Cheney. After all, that claim has been made before, so I don’t need to claim it anew. And I notice that Libby’s defense team ultimately decided that Vallely wasn’t going to help their case–though Vallely was listed as a witness in Libby’s trial, he spent precisely as long on the witness stand as Dick Cheney did.

So I’m not claiming the news that Vallely is a lying hack is new. Rather, I’m pointing out that Vallely’s stated motives for lying about the war…

• Believed it was more important to lie to the public than let them question the purpose for war
• Took Pentagon talking points and used them for a WSJ op-ed
• Is documented by NYT’s sources to have stated publicly the precise opposite of what he acknowledged observing in Iraq

… So closely parallel the motives he might have had for lying in order to pretend that Dick Cheney wasn’t desperate to hide the fact, in 2003, that he had lied us into war.

That, and I think it’s rather sweet that Rummy lent his old friend Dick Cheney one of his Rent-A-Generals in his time of need.

Update: Joe Wilson responds (via email):

I too was curious when I read the NYT piece but my disgust that he would leave the troops hanging out to dry in order to do the Pentagon’s dirty business overwhelmed any thoughts of his feeble attempts to suggest I had told his wife of Valerie’s covert status.  Our troops deserve not just our support as fellow citizens but even more the support of generals in whom they entrust their lives.

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)

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…)

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?