Worse than Watergate

Stephen Hayes has a must read piece that should trigger earthquakes in DC.

Al Qaeda Wasn’t ‘on the Run’

Why haven’t we seen the documents retrieved in the bin Laden raid?

In July, Lieutenant General Flynn left his post as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a year earlier than scheduled. Many intelligence professionals believe he was forced out, in part because heand many who worked for himaggressively challenged the administration’s view that al Qaeda was dying. Flynn’s views were shaped by the intelligence in the bin Laden documents.

Before he left, Flynn spoke to reporter James Kitfield, of Breaking Defense, who asked why he pushed back on the White House’s view that al Qaeda had died with Osama bin Laden. “There’s a political component to that issue, but when bin Laden was killed there was a general sense that maybe this threat would go away. We all had those hopes, including me. But I also remembered my many years in Afghanistan and Iraq. We kept decapitating the leadership of these groups, and more leaders would just appear from the ranks to take their place. That’s when I realized that decapitation alone was a failed strategy.”

Flynn recalled pushing to get information to policymakers with the hope that it might influence their decisions. “We said many times, ‘Hey, we need to get this intelligence in front of the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the national security adviser! The White House needs to see this intelligence picture we have!’?” He added: “We saw all this connective tissue developing between these [proliferating] terrorist groups. So when asked if the terrorists were on the run, we couldn’t respond with any answer but ‘no.’ When asked if the terrorists were defeated, we had to say ‘no.’ Anyone who answers ‘yes’ to either of those questions either doesn’t know what they are talking about, they are misinformed, or they are flat out lying.”

Hayes also gives us another reason why ValJar and Co. where so eager to accept the resignation of Gen. Petraeus:

Officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency and CENTCOM responsible for providing analysis to U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan wanted to study the documents. But the CIA had “executive authority” over the collection and blocked any outside access to them.

The ensuing bureaucratic fight, reminiscent of the intragovernment battles that led to the reorganization of the intelligence community after 9/11, unfolded over the spring and fall of 2011. It was resolved, at least temporarily, when then-CIA director David Petraeus weighed in on behalf of the team from CENTCOM and the DIA, a move that did little to improve his standing with the CIA bureaucracy. Petraeus was angry when he learned that the CIA hadn’t been actively exploiting the documents, and as the former head of CENTCOM, he was sympathetic to the pleas from military intelligence. The dispute made its way to Clapper, who met with representatives of the warring agencies and agreed that DIA and CENTCOM should be allowed to study the documents.

The CIA provided access on a read-only basis, but even that limited look into bin Laden’s world made clear to the military analysts that the Obama administration’s public story on al Qaeda reflected the president’s aspirations more than reality.

Hayes article makes Max Holland’s work on Watergate journalism and Mark Felt/Deep Throat especially relevant. People like David Ignatius and Peter Bergen have some explaining to do.

You can see a talk by Holland here. The whole thing is interesting (as is his book Leak). But there is one point that now has new resonance.

Near the end of his talk Holland says this:

"The idea that Nixon would misuse the CIA for his own political purposes-- that really was the most serious count that led to the bill of impeachment."

Hayes makes the case that this White House found CIA much more helpful than Nixon’s did. Which is why, if Hayes is even half right, then we have a problem much worse than Watergate.

RTWT and share it. Plus, it doesn’t hurt the shame a few journalists for not pursuing this story.

Related:

An Inconvenient Book (review of Max Holland Leak)

An inconvenient book (Part two)

For the sake of history

Cliff May recounts the inconvenient facts that "Fair Game" ignores.

Vanity Fair Game

I'm not surprised that Hollywood fictionalized the story. They are more interested in drama than truth.

It is much more troubling that the Washington Post and other news outlets keep pushing an outdated and largely discredited narrative.

Fair game and the Libby case

Stan Crock fights the good fight against Hollywood's false history:

'Fair Game' Glamorizes Distortions and Perpetuates Myths

The movie conforms to a pure and simple Hollywood story line complete with hero (Wilson), villain (Libby), and innocent, distressed damsel (Plame). That story line is gospel for the Left. A corollary story line is gospel for the Right: that Libby took the fall for Cheney.

Both are wrong. The fundamental problem is that Hollywood’s narrative needs and political leanings often conflict with reality. Hollywood needs a straightforward story line. Washington is more complicated. The usual explanation for bad outcomes inside the Beltway is not evil or corruption but incompetence or poor judgment. And there are rarely heroes.

An extraordinary memoir

One of my Christmas presents was Robert Novak's The Prince of Darkness. It is an amazing memoir-- honest, opinionated, and unflinching. Novak shows us the inside of Washington journalism and how it changed over the past half-century.

The book is worth reading simply for the inside story of the Plame/Wilson "leak" and the phony scandal it produced.

Novak on the Plame hearings


Novak's column on the Plame hearings is outstanding.

Was She Covert?

He raises issues that the White House could have made three years ago:

Waxman and Democratic colleagues did not ask these pertinent questions: Had not Plame been outed years ago by a Soviet agent? Was she not on an administrative, not operational, track at Langley? How could she be covert if, in public view, she drove to work each day at Langley? What about comments to me by then CIA spokesman Bill Harlow that Plame never would be given another foreign assignment? What about testimony to the FBI that her CIA employment was common knowledge in Washington?

But more to the point there is this, which highlights once again, the odd nature of the relationship between this White house and CIA:

Instead of posing such questions, Waxman said flatly that Plame was covert and cited Hayden as proof. Hayden's endorsement of Waxman's statement astounded Republicans whose queries about her had been rebuffed by the agency. That confirmed Republican suspicions that Hayden is too close to Democrats.

For more on that point see:

Do we know there's a war on?

More too clever by half

Patterico has been excellent on the firings of the U. S. Attorney's and the press distortions of the matter. He is also willing to call the Admsinistration on their missteps.

The Indefensible Aspects of the U.S. Attorney Firings

Kyle Sampson got burned for the same reason Rove and Libby got burned on Plame/Wilson.

The Kyle Sampson plan to sneak in U.S. Attorneys under a little-known Patriot Act provision had a weaselly appearance to it. It had the immature feel of a little boy saying; “Hey, look! A new bike! Let’s ride it on the freeway!” And I am very upset with his scheming to lie to Congress about it.

It is really hard to defend an administration that plays games like that.

The Libby case

One thing puzzles me about the White House’s handling of the whole Wilson imbroglio: Why did they choose to fight such a sneaky, shadow war against Wilson when they could have presented a powerful rebuttal in public?

Why were Rove, Fleischer, and Libby leaking and gossiping with Judith Miller, Matt Cooper, et. al. when they could have gone on the record and said:

The sixteen words were and remain accurate. British intelligence stands by their report and the Butler Commission supports their position.

VP Cheney did not send Joe Wilson to Niger nor did he receive a report from Mr. Wilson on his investigation.

Had they taken the high road, we could have had an honest public debate on pre-war intelligence. Instead, we have had this distraction of an investigation clouding the issue for over three years.

From outside the Beltway, it appears that Rove and Libby helped their enemies because they were too clever by half. I cannot work up a lot of outrage on their behalf because their cleverness hurt the country.

The jury found that Libby lied to investigators and grand jurors. How can anyone excuse that and then support Bill Clinton’s impeachment? Since I believe that Clinton deserved to be impeached and that Martha Stewart deserved her jail sentence, I have to accept that Libby deserves punishment as well.

Beldar has several good posts on the subject that I find persuasive.

Joseph Bottum has a poignant portrait of Libby before he went into the White House.

As hard as Bottum tries, I still find it hard to like or respect Libby. Beyond his missteps with Wilson, there is also the fact that he pocketed huge fees working for Marc Rich during the 1990s and called to congratulate the traitor when Clinton pardoned him.

Plame-gate: The Revised Standard Version

I watched the first part of this Frontline program. Color me unimpressed. They bounce from one interview to the next and skip from one idea to another. Plame-gate keeps appearing and disappearing in their narrative. The disjointed storyline allows the charges linger because the key revelations that refute them get lost in the clutter.

For instance, they never make it clear that Wilson was less than honest in describing his trip to reporters and in his famous op-ed. Nor do they pin Ambassador Joe down on his accusations that Karl Rove was the ring leader in the effort to out his wife.

The net result is that the viewer is left with the impression that “something bad happened” with pre-war intelligence. Joe Wilson knew it and said so. Then the White House “did something else bad” to Wilson’s wife in retaliation. Then great harm was done to the press and the First Amendment.

There was also the obligatory detour to Watergate and Deep Throat and the importance of anonymous sources in breaking Nixon’s cover-up.

Judith Miller was interviewed and she came across as a surprisingly sympathetic figure when she defended her reporting on WMDs.

Plame/Wilson

Hitchens slaps Corn and Isikoff around a bit. Goodness know they need it.

After you have noted that the Niger uranium connection was in fact based on intelligence that has turned out to be sound, you may also note that this heated moral tone ("thuggish," "gang") is now quite absent from the story. It turns out that the person who put Valerie Plame's identity into circulation was a staunch foe of regime change in Iraq. Oh, that's all right, then. But you have to laugh at the way Corn now so neutrally describes his own initial delusion as one that was "seized on by administration critics."

Hitchens is still on the Niger beat

Brick by brick he shows that the MSM has the whole Wilson/Plame affair wrong from beginning to end.

Case Closed

The truth about the Iraqi-Niger "yellowcake" nexus.

To summarize, then: In February 1999 one of Saddam Hussein's chief nuclear goons paid a visit to Niger, but his identity was not noticed by Joseph Wilson, nor emphasized in his "report" to the CIA, nor mentioned at all in his later memoir. British intelligence picked up the news of the Zahawie visit from French and Italian sources and passed it on to Washington. Zahawie's denials of any background or knowledge, in respect of nuclear matters, are plainly laughable based on his past record, and he is still taken seriously enough as an expert on such matters to be invited (as part of a Jordanian delegation) to Hans Blix's commission on WMD. Two very senior and experienced diplomats in the field of WMDs and disarmament, both of them from countries by no means aligned with the Bush administration, have been kind enough to share with me their disquiet at his activities. What responsible American administration could possibly have viewed any of this with indifference?

Do we know there's a war on?

Heather MacDonald launches a scathing a attack on the New York Times for publishing secrets about the way we wage the war on terror.

National Security Be Damned

Clarice Feldman goes further: she wants to arrest journalists for writing and publishing the stories.

It's Fish or Cut Bait Time, Mr. Attorney General

Bashing the Times is good sport and I think the Times was wrong to publish the details of such sensitive and useful programs. OTOH, I doubt that much harm was done or that the blame belongs only on the reporters shoulders.

The reason I think that the harm may be minimal is summed up in a comment I left over at Miriam's Ideas:

Frankly, on Sunday i want to read that several dozen employees of State, Treasury, and CIA spent their Saturday being interviewed by the FBI and undergoing polygraph exam.

Remember, this is an administration that sent FBI agents into the House of Representatives to gather superfluous evidence against a corrupt congressman they already had dead to rights. SO why have they been so lethargic when it comes to finding the people who break their oath and leak "critical" information?

The AG has a powerful tool at his disposal. The Libby/Miller precedent means he can subpoena journalists to find out who blabbed. What his he waiting for?

Is it possible that the White House wants the issue more than they want to identify the leakers and punish them?

If they cannot find the leakers, then the relevant agencies need to discipline or reassign the senior managers who ran such lax, insecure programs. After all, they were responsible for security as well as getting the intelligence. They failed. There should be consequences for that failure.

Instead we have this alarmist rhetoric combined with near total inaction. It suggests that the Administration does not view this security breach as a serious issue. If they do not, why should I?

Side notes

1. My view is bolstered by their bizarre handling of CIA. Why push out a man who was rooting out blabbermouths? Why bring back a guy who covered up for security lapses? (See here.)

2. I no longer believe that this is an administration that "abhors leaks". It is clear from the Plame/Wilson mess that it is as willing as any other administration to play the game. Rove, Libby, and a host of others were happy to leak to the New York Times, Washington Post, and other MSM "villans".

What they abhor are leaks they do not control and leaks about the internal maneuvering of the Bush team. That is fine as a general rule, but I have to wonder: is it team loyalty that is keeping AG Gonzalez from moving aggressively against the leakers?

Partisans assume that the people who leaked the intelligence information are "at war" with Bush and his GWoT. Reporters, however, get their information from many sources and those sources leak for many reasons. Did someone boast too freely about the successes? Was a loyalist baited into revealing too much? Was a would-be Lothario indiscrete? If the leaks were so bad, the motive should not matter.

Then again, if the leaks really were so bad and if the stakes really are so high, a competent administration would take vigorous action.

UPDATE 6/30: Howard Kurtz has a round-up of the reactions to the Times. I was struck by the fact that rightwing bloggers sounded more reasonable than rightwing media like NRO and The Weekly Standard. But the most over the top reaction came from James Wolcott of Vanity Fair. He, of course, was not bashing the Times: he was bashing the conservatives based on what he assumes we said:

I didn't bother listening to talk radio, but I'm sure they're baying for
blood between commercials for bladder control.

"What a gummy uproar. One so loud and ferocious that there almost has to be some follow-through, otherwise you are going to have one frustrated batch of highly indignants.

So much for the elite press and their journalism of verification.

Hitchens on Joe Wilson

Take that permanent smirk off your face, Ambassador (and the look of martyrdom as well, while you are at it). It seems that your contacts in the Niger Ministry of Mines—the ones that your wife told the CIA made you such a good choice for the trip—didn't rate you highly enough to tell you about the Zahawie visit. It would, interestingly, have been a name you already knew. But you didn't even get as far as having to explain it away—or not until last week—because you were that far in the dark. It was left to Italian, French, and British intelligence to discover the suggestive fact and transmit it to Washington. And it's been left to someone else, most probably in the Niger embassy in Rome, to produce a much later fabrication, either for gain or in order to discredit a true story. The forged account has no bearing at all on the authentic one: It bears the same relationship as a fake $100 bill does to a genuine bill. The rip-off remake movie, "Mr. Wilson Goes to Niger," now playing to packed houses of the credulous everywhere, has precisely the same relationship to its own original.

From Slate: Clueless Joe Wilson

See also this by Hitchens: Sorry everyone, but Iraq did go uranium shopping in Niger.

Gee, i wonder if any of those hard-nosed journalists at ABC will ask Joe about this when they take him to dinner?

UPDATE: Transcript of recent interview with Hitchens.

Plame/Wilson

Fitzmas turned out to be less decisive than most hoped. I wonder what the next phase holds?

Tow straws in the wind are op-eds by Victoria Toensing and Zell Miller. Now that Fitzgerald came up dry in terms of an immense White House conspiracy to "punish" Wilson, maybe a few reporters will look into Wilson, his lies and the unanswered questions about his mission.

Macsmind and AJ Strata are still the two must read sites. Frankly, each speculates more than I would, but they are unearthing a lot of interesting information. To my eye, they have uncovered more dots and better connections than were found in the Phoenix memo or on Moussoui's laptop.

Clarice at American Thinker has some good questions that an enterprising reporter could ask. Some of those questions have been bothering me since 2004.

I doubt there will be many volunteers from the MSM for reasons set out here:

The rotten heart of investigative journalism

Clinton Taylor made a vital point here when he noted:

While the CIA may back Wilson's account to reporters, it has now twice contradicted him when the chips were down and the threat of perjury loomed.

Whether Libby is guilty or innocent, the activities of some in CIA have been disturbing. Time after time anonymous CIA sources have fed lies to journalists. Such active disinformation operations in the US are supposed to be strictly off-limits to Langley. Nor are CIA personnel permitted to lie or stonewall Congressional investigators.

From Just One Minute:

Among other things, the Senator discussed the question of whether Valerie Plame was involved in the selection of Wilson for the trip. The Senate staff had asked her that very question in January; the Senator asked them to check the transcript, and he was astonished by her answer - "I honestly do not recall if I suggested it to my boss".
I do not fully share his surprise at her conveniently lapsed memory. Ms. Plame is a highly trained covert operator, schooled in techniques that will enable her to resist the most vigourous of interrogations by Russkies and other baddies (not that the Russkies are baddies now, but... oh, forget it). We did not know that the training technique included listening to old Steve Martin routines, but it is still impressive to see a top pro in action.

From The Weekly Standard:

"Some CPD [Counterproliferation Division] officials could not recall how the office decided to contact [Wilson]," its report says. "However, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip." There's more: "The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name,' and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife, says, 'my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.'"

See also these two Powerline posts which discuss the disinformation spread about Curveball and the INC:

The Cloak of Anonymity

The media's curveball

Under normal circumstances this would have the MSM in a frenzy over the actions of "rogue elephants" at CIA. Instead we get this odd piece on the Washington Post op-ed page:

It is not surprising that your White House distrusts and/or despises the media, the CIA, the State Department's career officers, the United Nations and a host of other institutions that you could not control, but that you could not accept that you could not control. Like most paranoia, yours is not totally unfounded: People in those institutions were out to defy and/or get you.

But you and yours helped them accomplish the mission. One lesson available in this story is that amateurs are no match for the CIA in disinformation campaigns. The spies are far better at operating in the shadows than you politicians will ever be. They have a license to dissemble.

The hidden management of the criminal justice process and the news media practiced by spooks in Wilson-Rove-Libbygate is nothing short of brilliant. So you were right to fear the agency. Where else do you think the one-page crime report that triggered the investigation and then the pressure-building leaks disclosing its existence came from?
Fear probably caused you to keep the Clinton-appointed leadership in place at the CIA long after some of its top operatives mounted a rebellion against the White House, in part to shift attention from their failures to yours. I know that George Tenet charmed you, and the rest of us. That's what spies and spymasters do, sir. You should have been taking that into account.

The raw cynicism takes your breath away. Apparently, it is OK for rogue elements of CIA to undermine an elected government if that government does not play the game the way reporters want it to play. Hoagland's piece also gives lie to the idea that shield laws protect our freedoms. All too often, the press and unelected insiders use anonymous leaks to undermine our elected officials.

Plame/Wilson: Loose Ends

A few nagging questions while we wait for Fitzgerald to wrap up.

1. Maybe where there’s smoke there is fire. Many conservatives have argued that no crime was committed because Plame’s employment at CIA was widely known in DC before the Novak column. If this is true, why haven’t we seen a flood of on-the-record interviews by people who knew her and knew where she worked.

2. Is Rove that stupid? If you look at the reporters at the center of the storm—Miller, Cooper, Novak—they are odd vessels for a “neocon smear campaign.” Miller is married to an iconic figure of the leftish New York literary scene. Cooper is married to a Democratic operative. Novak opposed the Iraq War. Why would the White House use them for nefarious purposes?

3. The other, other shoe. No matter what Fitzgerald does, Bob Novak still has not told his whole story. He could change our understanding of the matter when he does.

Questions for CIA

Originally posted Monday, July 19, 2004

A. Is it a common practice to use private citizens who are also "international business consultants" as investigators on delicate missions such as the Niger matter?

B. What steps are taken to ensure that there are no potential conflicts of interest when assigning private citizens to such missions?

C. What steps are taken to ensure that those selected for such missions do not have partisan commitments which could politicize their intelligence gathering mission?

D. Why did CIA not take steps to ensure that the Niger mission would remain confidential?

E. Why was Amb. Wilson not required to submit a written report?

E(1). Didn't the reliance on oral briefings risk losing valuable intelligence?

F. Did any officials of CIA discuss the Niger-Iraq question with Amb. Wilson after March 2002?

F(1). Did anyone at CIA discuss the forged Niger documents with Amb. Wilson after they were received in October 2002?

G. In the period May-July 2003 Amb. Wilson provided numerous pieces of misinformation to the press (both openly and on background). What steps did CIA take to correct these dangerous and slanderous assertions?

G(1). Did CIA attempt to correct the false assertion that the forged Niger documents came to CIA from the office of the Vice President?

G(2). Did CIA attempt to correct the false impression that the Niger forgeries were received prior to Feb. 2002?

G(3). Did CIA attempt to correct the false assertion that Amb. Wilson's report went to the office of the Vice President?

H. Why did a "senior intelligence official" tell Newsday that Amb. Wilson's report was "widely disseminated" through the administration when this was not so?

I. CIA officials provided false information to the New York Times about intelligence source codenamed CURVEBALL and his relationship with the INC. What steps are being taken to prevent future cases of such disinformation activities against the American press and the American people?

I(1). Is CIA concerned that those officials harmed intelligence-sharing arrangements with Germany-- the country that provided access to CURVEBALL's intelligence?

BACKGROUND FOR THE QUESTIONS

The Cloak of Anonymity

Joseph Wilson, Liar

Our Man in Niger

The Rise and Decline of Joe Wilson

A Little Literary Flair

Mark Steyn

See also
Mission to Niger and a Cautionary Tale from Vietnam


Conned big time which reminds us that the "Bush lied about nukes" thing has taken some odd twists before. Remember Terrance J. Wilkinson?

Joe Wilson's Mission

Macsmind has a post that should finish Wilson's posturing as a truth-teller who tried to warn the president:

Plame Game - What Happened Joe?

I say should. The evidence of Wilson's hedging and lying has been before us for two year. But most of the media just avert their eyes.

See also:

Plame/Wilson

Joe Wilson's carefully calibrated "courage"

Plame/Wilson

I have not blogged recently about the Plame/Wilson scandal, but I have been reading the posts at Just One Minute, The Strata-Sphere, and Macsmind. For my money, they have just the right balance of analysis and speculation.

This post by AJ Strata caught my eye because it hearkens back to my firs post on Joe Wilson. Strata quotes Wilson's friends in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS):

We appeal to those still working inside the Intelligence Community to consider turning state's evidence. Daniel Ellsberg, one who knows, recently noted that truth telling, in time, can stop a misguided march to war. Ellsberg and our former CIA colleague, Sam Adams, spoke out courageously to expose the lies of the Johnson administration and to put the brakes on the war in Vietnam-but, sadly, not in time. Sam is now deceased, but Ellsberg recently appealed to insiders at intelligence agencies "to tell the truth and save many, many lives." We Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity join in that urgent appeal.

Back when I thought Wilson might be an honest whistle-blower, I offered Sam Adams as a cautionary example of what happens when an analyst falls in love with their conclusions and confuses disagreement with a cover-up. You can read the whole thing here.

Mission to Niger and a Cautionary Tale from Vietnam

Bottom line: Sam Adams "exposed" no "lies". On the critical issue of the enemy order-of-battle, Sam Adams got it wrong. The "liars" were right in 1967.

It is somewhat scary that VIPS still thinks the CIA was right on a matter where history has refuted the Agency's analysis. It is disgusting that they think a correct assessment was a pack of lies.

Sidenote: VIPS's citation of Ellsberg-" Daniel Ellsberg, one who knows, recently noted that truth telling, in time, can stop a misguided march to war "-- is interesting in light of Joe Wilson's behavior in 2003. See: Joe Wilson's carefully calibrated '"courage".

UPDATE: Off to OTB's Beltway Traffic Jam.

Plame/Wilson

Macmind does some interesting reporting and analysis.

Plame- Wilson

The two best sites i've found for wide-ranging and even-handed coverage are Just One Minute and The Daily Howler. They do more than just chew over the day's headlines, they know the difference between fact and speculation, and they are willing to broach issues that complicate simple partisan positions.

Take JOM's follow-up on one of the early positions adopted by the Bush/Rove camp:

It may well be that insiders were well aware of her employment at the CIA. However, almost two years have passed and none of these insiders have come forward to say so. If Mr. May could amplify or clarify his anecdote, there is no time like the present.

Here's the Howler on why Wilson's credibility should matter to liberals:

Starting in July 2003, the mainstream understanding of this issue was largely framed by Wilson. Many of the things you assume to be true came to you from Wilson’s account. But, for all his manifest virtues, Wilson has frequently been a shaky witness; unfortunately, his misstatements have been bold and fairly common. From that, we would draw the following judgment—if you want to know what really happened, you probably shouldn’t simply assume that his frameworks are accurate. By the way, how do you know that Plame was still connected to valuable US security assets? You mainly “know” that because Wilson told you. As we have said, we get the impression that Fitzgerald agrees. But we are going to hold our judgment until we learn from a documented source.

There’s a million good things to be said about Wilson—but accuracy hasn’t been one of his strong suits. In the next few days, we’ll continue to sketch what we have in mind by all this—the frameworks which have come from Wilson, and the reason to be careful about assuming they’re true.

Plame/Wilson

The Junk Yard Blog looks at some of the ex-CIA-types who are pouring fuel on the get-Rove fire. It makes for interesting reading. I wish some enterprising journalist or Congressman had the guts to follow-up on JYB's leads.

Speaking of which, most of these questions are still unasked by the MSM.

This from the Powerline archives still makes interesting reading.

The media's curveball