Archive for category: emptywheel

My mother is in town, so I’ll be visiting rather than writing. I’ll start catching up to my blogging on Saturday. But I did want to make an initial comment on the letters written in favor of leniency for Scooter. Sidney Blumenthal has a superb column at Salon on the letters in general:

One after another, the letter writers declare that Libby’s "character"is "inconsistent" with the jury’s verdict. These same words –"character" and "inconsistent" — appear dozens of times.

[snip]

The act of procuring these letters is further evidence of Libby’sstove-piping of disinformation. Libby could not reasonably haveexpected to sway the judge, but there is a higher authority to which heis appealing. These letters constitute the beginnings of the LibbyLobby’s pardon campaign.

Blumenthal is right. The letters weren’t going to win Libby the Probation that his supporters were seeking. And judging from the look on Judge Walton’s face as Ted Wells read the Wolfowitz letter (which, incidentally, was submitted after it became clear that these letters would be released publicly), the letters were too saccharine to do the job.

But I’d like to poach from my Guardian column of today, addressing much of the same ground Blumenthal did, to point out the glaring conflicts some of these letter-writers had.

On June 8, 2003, George Stephanopolous and Condi Rice had the following exchange:

S: But let me stop you right there, because many in the United States goverment knew before then that this…

R: George, somebody, somebody down may have known. But I will tell you that when this issue was raised with the intelligence community–because we actually do go through the process of asking the intelligence community, Can you say this? Can you say that? Can you say this? — the intelligence community did not know at that time, or at levels that got to us, that this…

S: But let me show you something here, this is…

R: …serious questions about this report.

S: [Reads from Kristof’s article] That’s hardly low level, the vice president’s office.

R: Well, the vice president’s office may have asked for that report. [snip] … this particular report, it was not known to us that it was a forgery.

The next day, the very first thing Scooter Libby recorded in his notes was that the President was interested in the Kristof report about the SOTU.

In his grand jury testimony, Libby couldn’t provide any details regarding the circumstances of the note, beyond suggesting that he told the Vice President of the President’s interest in the issue.

Lurita Doan’s lawyer, Michael Nardotti, has responded to the OSC report condemning Doan’s politicization of the GSA. It’s one of those reports that read like a lawyer threw a bunch of stuff at the wall in the hopes that some of it will stick: he blames Henry Waxman for tainting OSC’s witnesses, he shifts the focus away from Doan’s description of employees as inferior toward one claiming bias, and he claims that, when Doan asked "how can GSA help our candidates?" she addressed it exclusively to Scott Jennings, not any of her subordinates.

Of course, Doan claims she can’t remember saying such a thing (so I do wonder how Nardotti can be so sure, since there are so many witnesses who believe otherwise). But in a misguided attempt to prove that Doan’s characterization of her statement–that she was making a very specific comment about getting Bush to attend the opening of the SF Federal Building–was correct, Nardotti provides the following email.

Lurita, thanks for expressing my (and I’m sure other RA’s) exasperation (during today’s call) in not getting the WH to recognize all the good GSA does around the country for the Nation’s taxpayer and federal agencies and that we are successful as we are because we are following the President’s agenda. He and his Administration are NOT getting proper recognition for this IMHO.

See, the overwhelming bulk of the testimony suggests that the only discussion of the SFFB came after Doan’s question–after she asked how to help candidates. And not only does this email not support Doan’s claims, but it shows the thinking of the first GSA employee who responded to Doan’s question about helping candidates. He responded by thanking Doan for presenting GSA activities as an outcome of Bush’s agenda. And he goes on to complain that Bush doesn’t get credit for the accomplishments of GSA.

How does this help Doan combat the claim that her question was perceived to be a request for ideas on how to use GSA to political advantage?

The Ongoing Saga of the Liberated OSC Report

The other interesting tidbit from this exchange was more details on the liberated OSC report. As I reported last weekend (when you were all taking a long weekend with family–and therefore not blogging, and I was taking a long weekend with Jane–and therefore blogging up a storm), it appears that an early, harsher version of the report against Doan was liberated so the press could know that, at one time, OSC strongly recommended that Bush fire Doan.

Well a letter exchange between Bloch and Doan’s lawyer–particularly this response from Doan’s lawyer–suggests how that liberation may have happened. In an earlier letter, Scott Bloch had explained that, "someone from GSA had received OSC’s report to your client from your client and then faxed it and then faxed it to the press." Nardotti disputes this claim entirely:

it is absurd to claim that Administrator Doan released this extremely damaging report herself or through someone else at GSA for any reason, and she strongly denies your charge of a "ruse". The damage done to Administrator Doan by the public release of the report in any form–without mitigating effect of a meaningful response–cannot be undone. To compound the possible injury to the Administrator, the report was leaked to at least three major media outlets, none of which has shown any bias in Administrator Doan’s favor.