Early today I buzzed by the MSNBC convention coverage site (probably through the ad link they're running on this and other blogs) and was flabbergasted to see that they've absorbed the blogging model to something like a mind-bending degree. Fineman's

I've never been much for the blog triumphalism that seems always to be so much a part of the blog universe. Blogs make up a small, specialized niche within the interdependent media ecosystem -- mainly not producers but primary or usually secondary consumers -- like small field mice, ferrets, or bats.

When I see the mainest of mainstream outfits buying into the concept or the model I really don't know what to think. The best way I can describe my reaction is some mix of puzzlement and incredulity.

I've always thought of this as just a vehicle for writing -- a mix of reporting and opinion journalism, done in a format that allows a maximum degree of flexibility, not bound by limitations of space -- the need to write long or short -- or any of the confining genre requirements that define conventional journalism.

The whole thing is mystifying to me.

And, yes, I just arrived late this evening in Boston.

From ABCNews ...

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader's quixotic presidential campaign says it submitted about 5,400 signatures to get on the Michigan ballot, far short of the required number of 30,000. Luckily for him, approximately 43,000 signatures were filed by Michigan Republicans on his behalf, more than meeting the requirement.

Speaks for itself.

Idiots ...

A good editorial from Ha'aretz on Ariel Sharon's misguided call for the Jews of France to emigrate en masse to Israel.

Harry Jaffe has an interesting piece in the Washingtonian about the declining circulation of the Washington Post.

That might not sound like such a big surprise

The article speculates on, but doesn't quite arrive at an explanation of why this is happening. And the thrust of the piece is that Post management can't figure it out either.

The broad story seems to be that the newspaper world, which was once built on big city newspapers, is polarizing towards a crop of, in effect, national newspapers and a larger universe of much smaller ones that are intensely local in their focus. The Post, for a series of reasons, seems to be getting caught betwixt and between by that polarizing trend.

One personal note, though, that I should add. I'm sometimes caustically critical of the Post -- particularly a few specific reporters and members of the editorial page. And I've always had an instinctive preference for the New York Times, though I freely grant that's in part a matter of cultural prejudice of a sort. When I'm travelling or getting on a train and want something to read, for instance, I'll almost always grab the Times rather than the Post.

Yet, writing TPM day in and day out for years now has given me a certain brass-tacks way of evaluating the quality of reportage over time. Allow me to explain. I do a fair amount of original reporting for this site. But most of what I do is, inevitably, a matter of mining other news sources for bits and pieces of information and piecing them together with other pieces of information, showing too-little-noticed connections or explaining or trying to interpret their meaning.

Over time you get a good sense of which news outlets consistently generate new information and which don't. And by this measure -- on the issues I follow closely, which I'd say are foreign policy, defense policy, intelligence and national politics -- the Post consistently outclasses the Times, particularly on the first three topics. When it comes to who's generating fresh information rather than summarizing the story a few days later or relying on hand-fed stories, my experience putting together this site tells me I usually end up finding new information -- which stands up over time -- in the Post.

Needless to say there are a number of Times reporters on these topics who are first-rate, peerless and a number at the Post who, to put it coarsely, suck. But on balance -- and to some degree to my surprise -- that's my experience.

A different take (see post from last night) on what the new presidential Air National Guard payroll records mean -- this from Reuters: "Some of President Bush's missing Air National Guard records during the Vietnam War years, previously said to be destroyed, turned up on Friday but offered no new evidence to dispel charges by Democrats that he was absent without leave."

Of course, the fact that the White House has wrangled this issue down to poring over a million different records that I myself can hardly keep track of means they've largely neutralized this issue through that classic Washington method of the death of a thousand docs.

An article in the Post reports that a special prosecutor in Mexico, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, has asked a judge to issue an arrest warrant for former Mexican President

As the article notes, "bringing charges against Echeverria also marks a milestone in Mexico's efforts to investigate the government's so-called dirty war against pro-democracy activists from the 1960s to the 1980s."

What strikes me though is that the crime he would be charged with is "genocide."

I know the definition of 'genocide' is a highly contested matter -- in philosophical, political and legal contexts -- particularly in emerging international law. The term can be highly mutable. And, of course, withholding the term 'genocide' in no way mitigates or excuses state-terror or political murders used as a tool of repression. But its use in cases such as these seems to blur it almost beyond recognition.

Merriam-Webster defines the term as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group."

A couple weeks ago we noted reports that a group of payroll records, which might have clarified President Bush's Guard service during a part of 1972, had been "inadvertently

That grabbed my attention because from my history research days I knew that the sort of microfilm accident described is exceedingly rare. Indeed, this is the reason so many institutions still use microfilm, even though its been around for something like a century -- because of its excellent archival value, which for various reasons still far outpaces various new digital storage media.

Today though we have an example of just how archival microfilm is. Even after having been destroyed, the files in question managed to turn up at the Pentagon late Friday afternoon.

Now that is archival!

In any case, as announced this afternoon the announcement that the documents in question had been "inadvertently destroyed" itself turned out to be the product of an "inadvertent oversight." (And, no, in case you're wondering, I'm not making this up. Those are quotes.)

And the AP has written the story up with this lede ...

The Pentagon on Friday released newly discovered payroll records from President Bush's 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard, though the records shed no new light on the future president's activities during that summer.

A Pentagon official said the earlier contention that the records were destroyed was an "inadvertent oversight."

Like records released earlier by the White House, these computerized payroll records show no indication Bush drilled with the Alabama unit during July, August and September of 1972. Pay records covering all of 1972, released previously, also indicated no guard service for Bush during those three months.

The records do not give any new information about Bush's National Guard training during 1972, when he transferred to the Alabama National Guard unit so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of a family friend. The payroll records do not say definitively whether Bush attended training that summer because they are maintained separately from attendance records.

I have to say that I think I'm with Atrios on this one: I don't understand.

I concede the point that payroll records may have been wrong, or rather simply not have recorded times when the future president showed up for duty. But no new information? These new documents seem to provide at least some added confirmation that the president never showed up for drills as he said he did, right? What am I missing?

Recently, many TPM readers have written in to tell me that they thought the broadside of attacks against Joe Wilson might be timed to blunt, head off, or someway affect expected indictments in the Plame affair. I discounted that notion -- in part

Now, though, I'm not so sure.

Today there's an article in the Washington Times entitled 'CIA officer named prior to column'. The article says that Plame's name was twice compromised prior to the Novak column -- once by a Russian spy in 1990s and then again in a snafu when a bundle of documents sent to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana were sent unsealed, and apparently read by the Cubans.

First of all, this isn't even news -- at least not the more sensational example.

As was reported here and elsewhere almost a year ago, Plame's identity may have been compromised by CIA arch-turncoat Aldrich Ames. My understanding is that there was a range of agents and assets that the CIA wasn't sure Ames had compromised or not. And she was in that category, thus leading her bosses to avoid placing her and others in her position in more vulnerable positions. As for the other example, I've never heard of it before.

These are interesting details, to be sure. But if you read the article the angle of the piece is definitely along line of arguing that this undermines any legal case against the potential leakers.

To quote the last three grafs of the piece ...

However, officials said the disclosure that Mrs. Plame's cover was blown before the news column undermines the prosecution of the government official who might have revealed the name, officials said.

"The law says that to be covered by the act the intelligence community has to take steps to affirmatively protect someone's cover," one official said. "In this case, the CIA failed to do that."

A second official, however, said the compromises before the news column were not publicized and thus should not affect the investigation of the Plame matter.

There does seem to be a rush of articles aimed not simply at discrediting Wilson but specifically at arguing that there is no legal basis for a prosecution of the folks who leaked Plame's name. Who's so concerned? It makes me wonder.

A difference of opinion between Tucker Carlson and the 9/11 Commission ...

There is nothing random about the documents he took. Berger stripped the files of every single copy of a single memo which detailed the Clinton administration's response to the Y2K terror threat.

Tucker Carlson
Crossfire
July 22nd 2004

Then there's 9/11 Commissioners Gorelick and Gorton ...

DOBBS: Let me ask you, not necessarily directly on point, but certainly related. Sandy Berger, the former head of the national security -- national security adviser under the Clinton administration, accused of, and admitting taking classified documents from the National Archives, those notes, whether copies or originals still unclear. Did the commission review that material, to what -- can you shed any light on what happened there? Slade Gorton, first.

GORTON: Well, we can't shed any light on exactly what happened there and on Sandy Berger's troubles with the Justice Department and the Archives. What we can say unequivocally is we had all of that information. We have every one of those documents. All of them have -- are infused in and are a part of our report.

DOBBS: So the commission was denied no information as a result of whatever Sandy Berger did or did not do at the National Archives?

GORTON: That's precisely correct.

GORELICK: And we have been so assured by the Justice Department.

Dobbs, Gorton & Gorelick
Lou Dobbs Tonight
July 22nd 2004

Hmmm.

Dick Cheney, the multilateral years ...

BERNAMA
THE MALAYSIAN NATIONAL NEWS AGENCY
KUALA LUMPUR, April 20, 1998

Former United States Defence Secretary Dick Cheney today hit out at his government for imposing unilateral economic sanctions like the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, saying they have been "ineffective, did not provide the desired results and a bad policy".

"I have made it clear that our (the US unilateral) sanctions policy is wrong," he said when asked to comment on the Iran-Libya Act which contains provisions for sanctions to be imposed by the US against foreign companies making investment beyond US$20 million a year in the oil and gas sector of the targeted countries.

Malaysia, which is against the extra-territorial law, has said that Petronas and other Malaysian companies will continue to invest abroad despite the US threat of sanctions under the Act.

Petronas is currently involved in a US$2 billion gas field project in Iran undertaken jointly with SA Total of France and Gazprom of Russia.

Speaking to reporters after calling on Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the Prime Minister's office here, Cheney, who is now the chairman and CEO of Halliburton, said: "The US needs to be much more restraint then we have been in terms of pursuing unilateral economic sanctions."

Cheney, who served under the Bush administration between 1989 and 1993, however said the multilateral economic sanctions imposed by the international community on Iraq were "appropriate".

"I disagree with the current law (Iran-Libya Sanctions Act) but my company will comply with the rule (Act)," he said.

He said he also disagreed with the unilateral economic sanctions imposed on Myanmar and Arzerbaijan.

See this article for more on the grand jury investigation into whether Halliburton broke the Iranian sanctions law.

For what it's worth, I think the promiscuous use of unilateral economic sanctions probably is a bad idea -- an example of the capricious and shortsighted use of American power that limits our ability to deal forcefully with real problems by antagonizing allies and frittering away diplomatic capital with silliness like the continuing sanctions against Cuba, among other examples.

Do permissive social policies make you taller? Does eating herring do it?

According to Reuters: "The Dutch are nearly four inches taller on average than the British and Americans, and almost six inches taller than they were four decades ago."

Who leaked on Sandy?

Yesterday I was discussing with a friend whether the leak seemed more likely to be a Republican leak or a Democratic one (his view). The latter possibility is not as far-fetched as it might sound: the idea would be that some

I've thought from the beginning that this looked like a political leak from the Republican side. And, as I told my friend yesterday, I think subsequent events tend to strengthen that assumption.

Here's my take ...

Clearly, no one in-the-know breathed a word of this until a couple days ago -- as the Kerry campaign found out to its own moritification. Yet from the moment the story broke every paper seems to be finding multiple sources who are willing to talk freely about minute details of the case. Look over at Google News and you'll see that even the Akron Gazette and the Curryville Crier seem to be getting hourly exclusive scoops.

In my experience criminal investigations aren't nearly that porous -- with multiple sources talking to multiple publications, and all on cue -- unless someone on the inside has greenlighted the leaks. What's more, if the law enforcement officials and political appointees hadn't been talking up until this point, why would they be chattering so loud now just because some obscure Dem happened to go to John Solomon with a preemptive strike?

Here's a question -- not a rhetorical one, but an actual one. Is there any sort of definitive reporting on whether the documents Berger is alleged to have taken from the National Archives were originals or copies?

The one thing I'm certain about in this Berger matter is that I really wish the folks investigating his case were investigating the Plame case because if that investigation leaked as much as this one does my life over the last year would have been quite a bit easier.

Possible Bush slogans ...

1. Not as terrible as it could have been!

2. Four more years and we'll be safe!

3. Peace!

4. Incompetence and exaggeration, not bad-faith or lying, as shown in two recent reports!

5. Are you better off today than you would have been today assuming that that idiot Al Gore had won four years ago and he was president instead of me?

And, of course, now even Erskine Bowles has his own campaign weblog.

Hmmm. Imagine that. Senior officials at the White House Counsel's Office (perhaps understandable) and "several top aides to" the president (not so understandable) were given a heads-up about the Berger investigation months ago.

So says

Meanwhile, the Post has a tangled article about how Archives staffers allegedly became suspicious of Berger while he was reviewing the documents and even started monitoring him. Calling the piece 'tangled' isn't necessarily a criticism. The reporters clearly have two very conflicting versions of events and are trying to explain both -- and point out the ways they contradict. The piece reads as if the authors' themselves are uncertain which version to credit. What's also clear from the Post article is that not only law enforcement officials but also one 'government source' are leaking like crazy about this story.

The story the leakers tell in the Post story certainly seems hard to reconcile with inadvertence.

Finally, USA Today says that FBI agents involved in the case didn't think the whole thing was particularly serious.

Finally a case President Bush is eager to see investigated. Bush on Berger: "This is a very serious matter that will be fully investigated by the Justice Department."

As we said earlier, desperate.

Winning campaigns don't put the candidate in the mud.

Apropos of my earlier post about Republican desperation, here's Charlie Cook of the Cook Report on the state of the presidential race ...

Last week in this space, I discounted the widely held view that the knotted polling numbers between Bush and Kerry meant that the race itself was even. I argued that given the fact that well-known incumbents with a defined record rarely get many undecided voters -- a quarter to a third at an absolute maximum -- an incumbent in a very stable race essentially tied at 45 percent was actually anything but in an even-money situation. "What you see is what you get" is an old expression for an incumbent's trial heat figures, meaning very few undecided voters fall that way.

......This is certainly not to predict that Bush is going to lose, that this race is over or that other events and developments will not have an enormous impact on this race. The point is that this race has settled into a place that is not at all good for an incumbent, is remarkably stable, and one that is terrifying many Republican lawmakers, operatives and activists. But in a typically Republican fashion, they are too polite and disciplined to talk about it much publicly.

For more on this point see Ruy Teixeira's Donkey Rising blog.

From a Press Release just out from Speaker Hastert ...

Speaker Hastert on Congressional Investigation Regarding

National Security and Sandy Berger

(Washington D.C.) Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) today made the following statement:

"Like many Americans concerned about our national security, I look forward to learning more from the House Government Reform Committee's investigation into the wayward actions by Sandy Berger. The American people deserve to know why Mr. Berger apparently skirted the law and removed highly classified terrorism documents, purportedly in his pants, from a secure reading room at the National Archives and then proceeded to lose or destroy some of them.

"How could President Clinton's former National Security Advisor be so cavalier?

"Was Mr. Berger trying to cover-up key facts regarding intelligence failures during his watch?

"What happened to those missing documents?

"Whose hands did they fall into?

"What kind of security risk does that pose to Americans today?

"I know Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) will work to get the full truth of what really happened and help all of us better understand why Sandy Berger, a person who should fully understand the gravity and importance of sensitive national security materials, would operate with such overt negligence and apparent disregard for the law."

Any Democrat has to see red when

But I post them because critics of the administration, whatever their anger or indignation over those comments, should actually greet all this with a smile.

There's no doubt this Berger imbroglio has thrown the Dems seriously off message for a couple days. And it's embarrassing. There's no denying it. But Hastert's words are those of folks who are desperate -- real desperate. Folks looking at November 2nd, not liking at all what they see, and casting about for anything that will change the political lay of the land.

It's cornered, wounded animal time.

Oops. Is the new Committee for the Present Danger hedging its bets in the grand struggle against totalitarianisms large and small? Peter D. Hannaford, CPD managing director, was a lobbyist a few years back for Austria's crypto-Nazi wunderkind Jorg Haider.

Perhaps Jorg was, alas, just misunderstood like so many others.

But I can't imagine he's long for this Committee.

Laura Rozen has the details.

Another point on the matter of forgeries.

Since the end of the Iraq war proper, a number of documents have surfaced in Iraq which on their face appear to connect the former Iraqi regime to al Qaida or similar Islamist terrorist groups.

I'm told

The documents came into the hands of the United States through the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). And they were provided to the DIA by the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

In itself, that doesn't mean that the INC is responsible for these apparent forgeries. They may simply have been the unwitting conduit for them.

Of course, as retired CIA officer Bob Baer told the New Yorker last month, the INC was running its own "forgery shop" in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1994.

I'd thought of writing a post on the newly-re-formed Committee on the Present Danger, which took out a full-page ad today in the Washington Post to announce its new mission. But I held back because a mocking effort seemed almost too obvious.

You know, like, "Why did they refound the Committee on the Present Danger?" "Because no one had come up with a list yet of the people most responsible for the Iraq mess, so why not?"

In any case, you get the idea.

Now, I got the URL from the Post ad and went to the website and was looking around the membership list. And on the list of the founding members there's a blurb from each one of them describing the war on terror -- usually with a rhetorical mix of Winston Churchill and Conan the Barbarian.

So for instance you have Ken Adelman saying ...

Just as America defeated totalitarian threats from, first, Nazism and then Communism last century, so must we defeat totalitarian threats from radical Islam this century. It is our duty, and destiny.

Fair enough, encapsulates the basic viewpoint. Or this from Jim Woolsey ...

We are fighting the Long War of the 21st Century, having been targeted by several totalitarian movements rooted in the Middle East. We cannot opt out, and we must not fail.

But what jumped out at me was this one from Ben Wattenberg.

The rules of the game are strange: we win if we win, they win if they win, and we win in case of a tie. There will plenty of other opportunities after Iraq to chase them down in a world which will remain uncertain, but with America as the leader.

Now, is that a blurb or a war on terror haiku? I'm not sure what to make of it. Or has Wattenberg joined forces with that younger generation of weed-smoking neocons? If someone can explain it to me I can then proceed to make fun of it.

A bit more on Berger.

To expand on the post below, all the supposed nefarious motives I've heard for this seem ridiculous on their face. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

That makes no sense. As someone who runs in those circles, I can tell you that there are at least half a dozen Democratic think-tank homeland security mavens who will happily go on about port security with you until you're ready to strangle them, or even until you do strangle them.

The thought that Kerry needed Sandy Berger to pilfer one of Richard Clarke's after-reports about the millenium terror alerts to get whatever boilerplate he discussed at this particular press conference is truly ridiculous. And Santorum must know it.

Here's the transcript of Berger's lawyer Lanny Breuer on Wolf Blitzer tonight. He makes Berger's case.

(Scroll down to the phrase "Brian Todd, thanks very much for that report" for the beginning of the interview portion.)

I'd be curious to hear what people think after reading that interchange.

In the days ahead I have to imagine that a lot of Democrats -- and not happily -- are going to be asking this question: Why didn't Sandy Berger step aside from his advisory position for John Kerry some time ago?

Set aside all the outstanding questions

1) At a minimum Berger did something that was quite embarrassing for a man of his standing.

2) No one disputes that there is an FBI investigation and that there has been one for months.

3) Republicans, not to mention Democrats, aren't above a well-timed leak to maximize political damage against their opponents. All the more so since this is virtually the signature of the Ashcroft Justice Department.

Given the timing and other context I don't have much doubt this was a politically motivated and malicious leak. It's as dirty as it comes, but also highly predictable.

I think a lot of Democrats are going to be asking why Berger didn't see this coming down the pike, step aside from his prominent advisory role with the Kerry campaign, and avoid at least the immediate partisan political dimensions of the current predicament almost entirely.

I say it with much less than no pleasure. But I'm wondering. And I don't have a good answer.

From this evening's Nelson Report, here's Chris Nelson on the Berger matter ...

Summary: apparent removal of classified documents from the National Archives by Kerry Campaign advisor Sandy Berger is classic "Washington scandal"...friends rush to the defense; enemies issue pious quasi-indictments; everyone tries to measure whether the victim/subject is mortally wounded, or will survive to play in the future. (If so, you'd better watch what you say now...) Quick verdict of the professionals...Berger's lost any chance at Senate-confirmed job in a Kerry Administration (Secretary of State was the presumed desire); timing of the leak was not coincidental (Dem National Convention opens Monday, 9/11 Report due this week). As to whether he's really "guilty", no one knows, perhaps including Berger. One thing is for sure...a political life can change in seconds.

...

1. First, on the scandal de jour, former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, lately a high-profile player in Democrat John Kerry's campaign for the presidency, today found himself publicly accused of illegally removing highly classified anti-terrorism documents from the National Archives, while reviewing the materials to prepare for his testimony to the 9/11 Commission.

-- Berger's friends and former colleagues rushed to his defense, but the Kerry Campaign appeared taken by surprise, and merely offered "no comment about an on-going investigation". Republicans could hardly contain their glee, issuing pious remarks about the seriousness of the matter, without wishing to rush to judgment against Berger. In short, a typical Washington scandal, with everyone looking over their shoulder to see how it might affect them.

2. As in any leak, one must always ask who did it, and why. In leaks, the motives can be played either way...sometimes opponents of something think a leak will stop it; other times, proponents leak to discredit opponents, etc., etc. Since the circumstances of Berger's potential discomfiture have apparently been known to a variety of players for several months, we may never know why this story just surfaced now.

-- for what it's worth, the Justice Department denied any involvement in, or political motivation for leaking word of the probe, implying a pure coincidence that it comes days before the Democratic National Convention opens in Boston, and the further coincidence that the 9/11 Commission report is coming this week. (Democrats, of course, darkly hinted that Berger was being thrown out as a diversionary tactic from what is presumed to be an embarrassing report for the Republicans.)

3. If Republicans and Democrats disagreed as to the motive for the Berger leak, one difference between this scandal and the "usual" is that both sides agree on one thing: to the extent that anyone is willing to discuss events "off the record", both friends and enemies agree that any chance Berger had of continuing a public role as a Kerry foreign policy advisor has been eliminated.

-- and for the future? To quote one old Washington hand who happens to be a Dem, "what do you think Republicans would do if Berger's name was submitted to the Senate for Sec State?" For the immediate future, what remains to be determined is whether Berger's embarrassment also becomes Kerry's embarrassment...and the mere fact of the question helps convince many Democrats of the political motivation of the timing of the leak, since Berger has apparently been under investigation by Justice since last October.

4. To show just why Democrats are upset/worried: Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of House Armed Services, lost no time in raising a serious charge, while pretending not to. Speaking to Fox News last night, Hunter suggested that Berger may have removed the classified documents to help the Kerry Campaign (since they apparently cover an "after action" report of things Clinton did, successfully, in the war on terrorism).

-- Hunter then went on to say he "accepted" Berger's "protestations and [his] proclaimed innocence and his good faith and [that] it was just a mistake - he was just sloppy. I think we accept that." Plunging home the knife, Hunter concluded, however, that there is a "certain discipline" required to separate politics from public duty, and that "he's obviously violated that discipline."

(Translation: if Kerry's people are "sloppy" with highly classified materials in the war on terrorism, how can Kerry be trusted with the responsibility of protecting the American people in the future? Especially, Hunter implies, if Dems are so reckless as to use classified information for political advantage. Shocking...shocking. Democrats choke in fury on that one, given Atty. Gen. Ashcroft's record since 9/11. Anyhow, that, in a nutshell, gives you the immediate bottom line.)

I think Chris has the dimensions of this about right.

Our Tolstoyan president ...

I'm a war president.

George W. Bush
Meet the Press
February 13th, 2004

Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president.

George W. Bush
Campaign Speech
July 20th 2004

And for good measure, this from today: "For a while we were marching to war. Now we're marching to peace. ... America is a safer place. Four more years and America will be safe and the world will be more peaceful."

More on the "Kerry is bin Laden's man/President Bush is mine" bumpersticker.

As you know from our post last week, the Louisville Kentucky Republican party was handing out copies of this bumper sticker to all that would have them. Actually, Jack Richardon IV, the head of the local GOP, told me he was a little unclear about whether his organization was distributing them or not. But I can't see why he was so uncertain since, according to today's Courier-Journal, the local paper, it was plastered on the front window of their headquarters and available at the front desk.

In any case, local Congresswoman Anne Northup has now asked the local party organization to take the decal down from the window and stop handing them out. So credit where credit is due.

Barzini reveals himself?

In the Wall Street Journal today, the editors return to the Wilson matter and then let the other shoe drop. "Special Prosecutor Patrick

As it happens, the claim that Wilson's wife recommended him or selected him for the job -- the peg on which the Journal hangs its hat -- is among the weakest leveled against him. Though the authors of the Senate report chose not to include this point, Plame's bosses at the CIA have always said they came up with the idea to send him, not her. Indeed, only yesterday a senior intelligence official confirmed to me that, according to her bosses, Plame "did not initiate" the idea of sending Wilson on the Niger mission. Her bosses came up with the idea, the official explained, and then she agreed to ask him if he'd be willing to undertake it.

More importantly, however, the whole question is legally irrelevant. Even if Plame pulled strings to get the gig for Wilson and had the Agency arrange for him to stay at Niger's most palatial and exclusive hotels, and even if Wilson had lied about it, all of that would leave the legal case enitrely intact. There's no scoring political points exception to the law in question -- not even if you think they're valid political points, not even if they are valid points.

The folks at the Vice President's office who are under scrutiny might -- as Brown, Douglass, Garrison and Phillips once did -- be appealing to the higher law that transcends mere statutes. But we'll see.

The Times says that Fitzgerald is "expected to announce in a matter of weeks whether he will prosecute anyone." And it's not clear to me that he will choose to bring any indictments. Like everyone else, I have no idea. Yet the Vice President's office would clearly like to see the investigation scuttled or at least lay the political groundwork for a defense against possible indictments. We should thank the Journal for showing us where they're going with this.

A bit more on the Berger story.

As far as I can tell, my comments from last night

However, it seems equally clear that the surfacing of this matter is the product of a malicious leak intended to distract attention from the release of the 9/11 commission report.

Consider the timing.

According to this article in the Post, the National Archives began investigating this matter in October and then referred it to the FBI in January. That is, needless to say, at least six months ago. The article also notes that the FBI has yet to interview Berger, which suggests that the investigation has not reached a critical stage, for good or ill, that would have brought it to light now.

The most obvious, and probably the only, explanation of this leak is that it is intended to distract attention from the release of the 9/11 report due later this week. That would be yet another example of this administration's common practice of using the levers of executive power (law enforcement, declassification, etc.) for partisan purposes.

That doesn't mean Berger doesn't have any explaining to do. The two points are not exclusive of each other.

I just noticed this late story off the AP wire that Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Advisor, is the focus, in

"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved," the article quotes Berger telling the AP, "but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced."

It's worth reading the whole article to get all the details, limited as they are.

The whole thing seems almost inexplicable. If I understand the article correctly, Berger took with him out of the secure reading room several highly classified documents relating to the 1999 millenium terrorist threats, as well as handwritten notes he took while reviewing those and other documents.

But these aren't original documents, but rather copies -- at least that's what the article says (see paragraphs 3 and 7).

So even if one imagines the most nefarious intentions -- which I'm certainly not inclined to do -- it's hard to imagine what taking copies of such documents would have been meant to accomplish. At the same time, Berger has spent his career in and out of the national security bureaucracy and must know the dos and don'ts of custody of classified materials like the back of his hand. So I don't know what he could have been thinking.

As I said, the whole thing seems almost inexplicable to me.

The key paragraph in the piece seems to be this one ...

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night that he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had taken from classified anti-terrorist documents he reviewed at the National Archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said.

The key here of course is what if any distinction there is between the two things.

I've spent so much time over the last several months reporting on a project that has to do with classified materials that I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know just what the rules are for taking notes of such classified documents in secure reading rooms. (Needless to say I've never found myself in such a situation and doubt very much that I ever will.)

I would imagine they are quite strict and that you're not allowed to just take such notes with you except under the most limited of circumstances, if at all. Obviously, if you can write down the contents of classified documents and then take your notes with you then basically you're taking the document itself -- since the issue is not the physical document but its contents. Again, though, I simply don't know.

The article says that "when asked, Berger said he returned some of the classified documents, which he found in his office, and all of the handwritten notes he had taken from the secure room, but said he could not locate two or three copies of the highly classified millennium terror report."

That would seem to imply that he wasn't supposed to have the written notes either, though not definitively.

What this AP story reports is quite limited; and I'm going to reserve judgment until I know more of the facts and the rules governing this particular situation. But on the face of it, it does seem, as I said, inexplicable. And these are the sorts of incidents that, quite apart from criminal prosecution, rightly or wrongly, often end any future possibility of government service.

Late Update: As of late Monday evening, there is now an expanded version of the AP article that clarifies or at least expands on some of the issues noted above.

There's this graf on the notes issue ...

Berger was allowed to take handwritten notes but also knew that taking his own notes out of the secure reading room was a "technical violation of Archive procedures, but it is not all clear to us this represents a violation of the law," Breuer said.

In the more recent version of the article, however, the issue of copies versus originals seems more muddled, which ain't good.