Needlenose

Ever since they were released last Friday, I’ve been meaning to write about the FBI notes of Dick Cheney’s interview with Plamemania special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.  As is her wont, Marcy Wheeler has already critiqued Cheney’s non-answers from a variety of angles, and multiple media reports have commented on the ex-Veep’s nearly all-encompassing amnesia, best summarized by Watergate whistle-blower John Dean (via Raw Story):

Dean told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that Cheney attained “something of a record” by refusing to answer or claiming to not recall the answer to 72 questions posed by the FBI during a May, 2004, interview.

“If you’ll recall, former Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman did 150 ‘I don’t recalls’ during his three days before the Senate Watergate committee,” Dean said. “This is 72 in less than three hours, that’s right up there.“

Among the many things that Big Dick pretended not to remember or to have cared about, what stood out to me were these attempts to portray his chief of staff–the now-convicted felon Scooter Libby–as merely answering media questions in such a mundane way that Cheney was barely aware of them:

Routine press inquiries would have gone to Cathie Martin, while some of those involving more substantive matters, particularly in the area of intelligence and national security, would have likely been handled by Scooter Libby.  He [Cheney] provided press guidance to both of them at times … though he can’t recall any specific advice he gave them in the May/June 2003 time frame….

… Vice President Cheney advised he was aware, prior to the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s identity in Robert Novak’s newspaper editorial on 7/14/03, that Scooter Libby was speaking to reporters about Joseph Wilson and his trip to Niger.  He stated that Libby was not required to clear every public statement and press contact because the Vice President had confidence in Libby’s abilities and experience in handling such inquiries….

… The Vice President advised that it was possible while on the return flight [from Norfolk, VA to Washington, DC on July 12th], that he and Scooter Libby discussed media responses to inquiries regarding Joe Wilson’s charges about the use of flawed intelligence.  Though he cannot recall any specific conversation, he would not be surprised to learn that he had such a discussion with his Chief of Staff.

… Vice President Cheney reiterated that Libby’s 7/12/03 handwritten notes look and sound like something he might dictate to Libby, but he cannot specifically recall having dictated such instructions to him on that occasion….

… The Vice President advised that if Scooter Libby had any discussion with any reporters on 7/12/03 upon his return from Norfolk, VA, he must have viewed those discussions as unremarkable, inasmuch as the Vice President was never told the outcome of any conversations, discussions or interviews with the media by Libby.

Why do I find all of this no-big-deal spin noteworthy?  Because of how Cheney attempts to explain away a seemingly damning piece of evidence–a note written in early October 2003 demanding that the White House spokesliar Scott McClellan publicly (and, as events would reveal, inaccurately) exonerate Libby from involvement in the Plame leak:

The vice president stated that the portion of his handwritten notes which read in part, ‘… sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others’, was his reference to the efforts of Libby who was forced to respond to numerous media inquiries involving Joe Wilson because of the incompetence of the CIA.

Uhh, Dick, what happened to your “confidence in Libby’s abilities and experience in handling such inquiries”?  How did conversations with reporters that were “unremarkable” when they occurred in July suddenly become the equivalent of putting one’s “neck in the meat grinder” three months later?

Kind of makes you think that the real “meat grinder” must have been something else, doesn’t it?

I’ll have more on that soon (schedule & circumstances permitting)…

From Josh Gerstein at Politico:

A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release notes and summaries of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2004 interview with Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, but is allowing the deletion of what may be some of the most interesting details in the documents.

In a ruling issued Thursday morning, Judge Emmet Sullivan flatly rejected claims by both Bush and Obama appointees at DOJ that the entirety of the records should be withheld because their disclosure could discourage White House officials from cooperating in future investigations. . . . He said the impact of such an argument would be “breathtakingly broad” and “be in direct contravention of ‘the basic policy’ of”  the Freedom of Information Act.

The judge’s ruling came in response to a FOIA suit filed by liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. . . .

In a likely disappointment to aficionados of the CIA leak case, however, Sullivan appears to have okayed the withholding of details about Cheney’s talks with CIA Director George Tenet about Ambassador Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger, talks with National Security Adviser Condi Rice, discussions regarding the 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union Address, discussions about how to respond to press inquiries about the leak of CIA officer Valerie Wilson’s identity, and Cheney’s involvement in declassification discussions.

But… but… that’s all the good stuff!  Oh, well, maybe we’ll be able to learn something from the fragments that aren’t redacted.

See emptywheel and CREW for more information, speculation, etc.

Swopa must be off doing something either more productive or more entertaining. Therefore I must post Cheney’s disclosure that he worked on the Plame press talking points.

From all-but-admitting that he was the force behind the waterboarding and Gitmo to casually almost admitting to this felony, Cheney is just laughing at us, knowing that he ‘got away with it.’

Matt Yglesias caught this bit of double-talk about the Rod Blagojevich indictments coming from the Washington Post’s Shailagh Murray in an online chat yesterday:

There isn’t a reasonable person around who thinks this scandal will taint Obama in any meaningful way, but at the very least, it reminds people of the political world from whence he came. This story could be a useful preamble to something bigger down the road.

Seeing Murray’s eagerness to tolerate phony claims of corruption in the hopes they will prove “useful” in reporting on a hoped-for presidential scandal later, I immediately flashed back to her comments in the summer of 2007, reacting to the actual corruption of a President commuting the sentence of a criminal in his own administration:

Yaawwn. That’s my view of the Libby flap. What on earth did people expect Bush to do?

Apparently her enthusiasm for White House scandal depends greatly on which party is occupying the White House.

From Howard Kurtz’s Monday column for the Washington Post:

Fox News is expected to announce today the hiring of a new contributor, a veteran national security correspondent who has shared a Pulitzer Prize.

Her name is Judith Miller, and she is nothing if not controversial. Miller left the New York Times in 2005 after testifying in the trial of former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby that he had leaked her information about a CIA operative. Miller’s conduct in the case, which led to her serving 85 days in jail for initially refusing to testify, drew rebukes from the Times executive editor and some of her colleagues.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Miller reported stories on the search for Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be untrue, some of which were cited in a Times editor’s note acknowledging the flawed coverage. Miller, now with the conservative Manhattan Institute, wrote when she left the paper that she had “become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war.”

Miller will be an on-air analyst and will write for Fox’s Web site. “She has a very impressive résumé,” says Senior Vice President John Moody. “We’ve all had stories that didn’t come out exactly as we had hoped. It’s certainly something she’s going to be associated with for all time, and there’s not much anyone can do about that, but we want to make use of the tremendous expertise she brings on a lot of other issues. . . . She has explained herself and she has nothing to apologize for.”

Given her background in ideologically motivated snipe hunts, Miller seems like a perfect fit to join Fox News’ round-the-clock coverage of ACORN’s alleged vote-fraud activities.

This morning, former White House spokesliar Scott McClellan is due to testify to the House Judiciary Committee. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal offered a preview:

At a hearing Friday before the House Judiciary Committee, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan will get a chance to reprise some of the charges he made in his recently published book and in subsequent media interviews.

The hearings will also give Democrats an opportunity to dig back into the scandal over the outing of former Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame.

. . . Â Michigan Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, explained his reason for this week’s McClellan hearing this way: “In his book, Mr. McClellan suggests that senior White House officials may have obstructed justice and engaged in a cover-up regarding the Valerie Plame leak. This alleged activity could well extend beyond the scope of the offenses for which Scooter Libby has been convicted and deserves further attention.”

Although I wish Rep. Conyers luck in finding proof of criminal conduct, I’m not optimistic (and that’s even assuming the Shrub-in-Chief doesn’t pull some executive-privilege shenanigans to block McClellan’s testimony). Â As I’ve mused on occasion in the past, it seems to be ingrained in the liberal mindset to seek some kind of legal/procedural redress for the Bush-Cheney administration’s misdeeds, when they might be better off making the simpler political case regarding their lack of a moral compass. Â

The speed with the guilty pleas and forced resignation of the Nixon regime were followed by Ronald Reagan’s misrule, with only a one-term Democratic president in between — and the failure of the Iran/Contra lawbreaking to produce even that much — should make it clear that the ultimate remedy for the GOP’s gangster approach to government isn’t impeachment or prosecution; it’s convincing the American public not to elect Republicans in the first place. Â Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves fighting the same uphill battles to impeach or indict the fuckers every 8 or 12 years.

With that in mind, I think that rather than try to create the grounds for reviving special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation, the Dems on the House Judiciary Committee should use my favorite overlooked revelation from last year’s Libby trial to shed light on the Bushites’ moral bankruptcy.

McClellan’s primary involvement in the Plame leak was during the reaction to the Washington Post’s “1 by 2 by 6″ story on Sept. 28, 2003 (“a senior administration official said that before Novak’s column ran,  two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife”).  A follow-up story by the Post’s Mike Allen the next day was even more specific about the circumstances (“the two White House officials had cold-called at least six Washington journalists and identified Wilson’s wife”)

Strangely, no one (save for this humble blog, as longtime readers know) has attempted to nail down the exact leakers/leaking referred to by this story. Â But this section of Ari Fleischer’s trial testimony discussing events during the week of the Plame leaks seems to be a very obvious clue:

Q … Is it a fact, Mr. Fleischer, that you and Dan Bartlett, on July the 12th on the plane headed back from Africa, agreed to contact several print and television media journalists?
A Â That’s my recollection, yes.
Q  And did you decide that you would contact the New York Times and The Washington Post?
A Â That’s my recollection.
Q Â And Mr. Bartlett would contact the Sunday talk shows?
A Â I don’t recall who Mr. Bartlett contacted. [...]
Q Â … When you called [...] somebody at The Washington Post as well, that was Walter Pincus?
A Â Correct.

Pincus, of course, was leaked to about Plame in that conversation, although Fleischer claimed not to recall it. Â It seems very clear that if Pincus got what he describes as an unsolicited leak, the other reporters Fleischer/Bartlett called on July 12 did, too — and if someone on Air Force One (say, Colin Powell) overheard and went to the Post, there’s your 1×2x6 story.

So the questions to McClellan would be, after running down the evidence above:

Presumably, Scottie will say no to both questions. Â Having already hinted at a White House oddly uninterested in getting to the bottom of a leak of classified information, Democrats can then allude to McClellan’s/Bush’s statements at the time of not being able to track down anonymous “senior officials” and bring out the clincher:

“Let’s say the President had a senior staff meeting… he could have asked the Vice President if he knew anything, and the answer would have been yes. Â He could have asked the Vice President’s chief of staff [Libby]. Â He could have asked his top political adviser [Karl Rove]. Â He could have asked his communications director [Bartlett]. Â He could have asked his Secretary of State [Powell, to whom his deputy, Richard Armitage, had admitted talking to Robert Novak]….”

The point being that Bush was literally surrounded by people who leaked about Plame or knew about the leaking — but never showed the least bit of curiosity, because he was more interested in not getting caught than in finding the truth.  That’s the way Republican presidents operate, and that’s what I hope McClellan’s Democratic questioners in the House try to establish in today’s hearing.

Via Think Progress, Rep. Henry Waxman is still chasing after information on how Valerie Plame Wilson was outed as a CIA employee — and, judging from the letter he released this morning (sent to Attorney General Ashcroft Gonzales Mukasey), not quite as quixotically as I’d assumed:

On December 3, 2007 , I wrote to request that you arrange for the production of documents relating to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of the covert identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson, including copies of FBI interview reports of White House officials. I appreciate that you have since made redacted versions of the interview reports of Karl Rove, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and other senior White House officials available to the Committee.

I am writing now to renew the Committee’ s request for the interview reports with President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to request unredacted versions of the interviews with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, and Cathie Martin. I also request that the Department provide all other responsive documents that were approved for release to the Committee by Mr. Fitzgerald.

So Fitz authorized the release of investigative files, and Mukasey actually turned some stuff over?! I hadn’t realized this.

In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby stated that it was “possible” that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about Ambassador Wilson’ s wife to the press. This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President ’s FBI interview.

It’s not really “a significant revelation,” since Libby said the same thing in his grand jury testimony, which was made public during the trial. But I guess it’s handy for keeping the pressure on.

The interviews with senior White House officials also raise other questions about the involvement of the Vice President. It appears from the interview reports that Vice President Cheney personally may have been the source of the information that Ms. Wilson worked for the CIA. Mr. Libby specifically identified the Vice President as the source of his information about Ms. Wilson. None of the other White House officials could remember how they learned this information.

The last sentence is noted solely for humor value. If only links to Needlenose 2.0 weren’t still messed up, I’d cite one of my posts on the “theory of Immaculate Dissemination.”

In his FBI interview, [press secretary Scott] McClellan told the FBI about discussions he had with the President and the Vice President. These passages, however, were redacted from the copies made available to the Committee. Similar passages were also redacted from other interviews.

There are no sound reasons for you to withhold the interviews with the President and the Vice President from the Committee or to redact passages like Mr. McClellan’s discussions with the President and the Vice President. Mr. Fitzgerald’s investigation is closed and he has indicated that it would be appropriate to share these records with the Committee. There has been no assertion of executive privilege.

Moreover, withholding these documents would create an unfortunate double standard. During the Clinton Administration, the Committee requested the records of FBI interviews with President Clinton and Vice President Gore in 1997 and 1998 as part of the Committee’s campaign finance investigation. These records were turned over to the Committee by the Justice Department without any consultation with the White House.

Obviously these quaint notions of independence and oversight are now defunct, and I presume that the Bushites have no intention of turning over anything that is genuinely incriminating. But kudos to Waxman for trying, and for exposing the lack of any fig leaf to cover their mendacity.