(October 23, 2005 -- 08:44 PM EDT // link)

Here's a nut to crack, a small part of the ever-widening and occasionally enlightening Fitzgerald investigation guessing game.

It's been variously reported and rumored that Patrick Fitzgerald has either cooperated with, received critical information from or even taken over Paul McNulty's Franklin/AIPAC investigation in Northern Virginia.

My reporting and intuition tells me there's real reason for skepticism on each of those counts. Yet I hear versions of these claims and allegations from more and more seemingly knowledgable sources. So I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Now comes information that President Bush will nominate McNulty, currently the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to be Deputy Attorney General. That's the post that was going to go to Timothy Flanigan before he withdrew his nomination over his connections to Jack Abramoff.

Now, if McNulty had been cooperating with or become a participant or enabler of some sort of Fitzgerald's investigation, he's not the first person you'd figure President Bush would be appointing to the number two spot at DOJ -- especially when you consider that Al Gonzales will almost certainly have to recuse himself from any consideration of the entire Plame case. If something is a afoot between Fitzgerald and McNulty, what went into the appointment? Who came up with the idea?

I don't know which of these scenarios is closest to the mark. And these are very strange times -- most anything is possible. But there's something here that doesn't fit.

(October 23, 2005 -- 02:07 PM EDT // link)

If silence is a virtue, bloggers are all vice. With that in mind I don't think I have too much to add to the new round of revelations, confessions and reflections issuing forth from the NY Times other than to say that we finally seem to be getting a candid and unvarnished discussion and accounting for what happened, either in the paper's own pages (like Public Editor Calame's piece today, sub. req.) or nearly so (as in the now-widely-published Keller memo).

The central matter here is that Judy Miller appears to have been fully honest neither with her readers nor with her employers and editors. And for reasons perhaps better described by novelists and psychologists than journo-ethicists, those supervisors became both her victims and her accomplices, abetting and covering up those sins for years.

Let me just add one other question that might be added to this debate. And that is whether there is some degree to which the Times' (and other similarly situated papers, but very few) role as privileged recipient of 'official' leaks might have played a role in landing the paper in this mess.

Consider the very different records of the Times and the Washington bureau of Knight-Ridder in covering the WMD story.

Leaks come in many flavors. But we can chart two broad categories. In one falls leaks rooted in individual motivations of conscience, cattiness or revenge, dogged reporting or long-standing relationships between sources and reporters. In another are those leaks best termed 'official', in which the government itself decides to put out a story, but does so through leaks rather than officially. The latter variety is fraught with danger.

The New York Times is one of an extraordinarily small number of news outlets (probably fewer than you have fingers on one hand) that gets those calls. And with respect to my friends at the Times, you routinely find articles in the paper that began with just that sort of unique and privileged acccess -- and in far too many cases, ended there. We seem now to be moving quickly toward the consensus opinion that Judy Miller was the proverbial bad apple. But the WMD fiasco isn't the only mess the Times has found itself in in the last decade. Nor was she alone responsible for that one. And I think this broader institutional problem for elite news outlets -- being the go-to recipients for 'official' leaks -- deserves more attention.

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(October 22, 2005 -- 10:53 PM EDT // link)

Yesterday I mentioned that Larry Littwin had been released from a gag order and was now free to testify at the Miers' confirmation hearings (for some context, see this post). I asked Tracy Schmaler, spokesperson for the minority on the Senate Judiciary Committee, whether any decision had been made on whether to call Littwin to testify. She told me that "the committee is aware of the allegations [regarding Miers' and Littwin] and is conducting its own investigation."

(October 22, 2005 -- 10:48 PM EDT // link)

Knight-Ridder ...

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers collected more than 10 times the market value for a small slice of family-owned land in a large Superfund pollution cleanup site in Dallas where the state wanted to build a highway off-ramp.

The windfall came after a judge who received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Miers' law firm appointed a close professional associate of Miers and an outspoken property-rights activist to the three-person panel that determined how much the state should pay.

Kerik?

(October 22, 2005 -- 12:42 AM EDT // link)

There is a flood of articles appearing now on the conclusion of the Fitzgerald investigation and the accompanying guessing game about just how it will end. But with so much at stake right now and so many of the leaks with very immediate tactical significance, reading these articles can become less a matter of the taste of the dish than trying to figure the ingredients and recipe behind it.

Like this article on Scooter Libby in Friday's Los Angeles Times.

According to the article, Libby was something only slightly less than obsessed with Joe Wilson. Not only was he part of the original operation to push back against Wilson and discredit him. As the article describes it, long after the Plame matter had evolved into a full-fledged criminal probe by an outside investigator, Libby continued compiling detailed records of Wilson's public statements. He marked up a copy of Wilson's book highlighting what he regarded as false or anti-Cheney passages. And even though he was already at the center of an investigation he continued to recommend mounting new anti-Wilson press operations well into 2004.

That possibility only ended in April 2004, says the article, when Dan Bartlett ordered White House staff to stop engaging Wilson, figuring that more White House attacks on Wilson would only bring more press focus to his charges.

Now, I don't doubt that there's a good deal of truth in this story. Indeed, the point in what I'm about to say is not to cast doubt on the accuracy of anything in it. But if you read the LAT story closely you see that the authors were able to interview multiple White House staffers (seemingly all or most former ones) and were apparently provided with a sheaf of documents illustrating Libby's near-obsessive Wilson-monitoring.

If I read the article right it seems they were provided with a copy of this dossier ...

The result was a packet that included excerpts from press clips and television transcripts of Wilson's statements that were divided into categories, such as "political ties" or "WMD."

The compendium used boldfaced type to call attention to certain comments by Wilson, such as one in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student newspaper, in which Wilson was quoted as calling Cheney "a lying son of a bitch." It also highlighted Wilson's answers to questions from television journalists about his work with Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The intensity with which Libby reacted to Wilson had many senior White House staffers puzzled, and few agreed with his counterattack plan or its rationale, former aides said.

So, a lot of access to former White House staffers in on key meetings and actual documentary evidence of what Scooter was up to, what his efforts produced. That sort of access ain't easy to come by and it's seldom accidental.

This certainly seems like an attempt to pin this whole thing on Libby.

Leaks like that won't affect Fitzgerald; they're not intended to. They're aimed at shaping perceptions of indictments if they come down. If Libby and Rove are indicted, then, yes Rove got caught up in it. And it shouldn't have happened. But the whole unfortunate mess was spawned by the bitter Libby-Wilson antagonsim. It wasn't something that involved the whole White House team, not something characteristic of how it functions.

That would be the argument.

And it's one everyone should have their eyes out for, since the key players in the White House appear to have decided that Libby is already a fatality in this battle.

Before leaving you, one other point to consider. Note Bartlett's alleged instructions to back off from Wilson in April 2004. Keep that in mind when considering possible coordination between the White House and the majority staff on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence while it was finishing up the Iraq WMD report in the summer of 2004. We'll return to that subject later.

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(October 21, 2005 -- 05:13 PM EDT // link)

Earlier today, World Net Daily reported what it called a big development in the Miers story. That development involved a guy named Larry Littwin, a fellow who's been under a gag order and prevented from talking about his role in a scandal that took place on Harriet Miers' watch at the Texas State Lottery Commission.

Littwin wanted to investigate GTECH. And for that Miers allegedly fired him. For more detail on what this scandal was all about see this piece by James Ridgeway in the Village Voice.

According to WND, the Senate Judiciary Committee successfully pressured GTECH, the Rhode Island company which ran the state lottery.

The sourcing on the original story seem a little opaque to me. So I spoke to sources up on the Hill who confirmed that this is in fact true, that GTECH has agreed to allow Littwin to testify.

More on this soon.

Late Update: The original story at WND was written by Jerome Corsi, co-author of last year's notorious Swift Boat book, Unfit for Command. Like I said, I wanted to verify myself.

(October 21, 2005 -- 11:58 AM EDT // link)

Yesterday I told you how the jackals at Sinclair Broadcasting (they of last year's attempted hour-long Swift Boat informercial) have now resorted to suing Jon Lieberman, Sinclair's former DC Bureau Chief whom they fired after he accused them of pushing "biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election."

The suit is a part of a year-long campaign of dingbat harassment of Lieberman by Sinclair, including attempts to deny him unemployment benefits and a failed attempt to block him from receiving a journalism award.

Yesterday's post sparked a flood of emails asking how readers can support Lieberman, whether he has a legal defense fund taking contributions and other related questions.

The simple answer is, I have no idea. I should also note that I'm not in touch with Lieberman. And I neither want to nor am I in a position to raise money on his behalf.

The last I've heard on this comes from an article in the Baltimore Sun. Reports the Sun: "The lawsuit says Leiberman, now a producer at America's Most Wanted, owes Sinclair almost $17,000 in so-called liquidated damages, equal to a percentage of his salary had he served out his contract." When they contacted Lieberman he hadn't yet been served with the suit and said he'd only heard about in news reports.

"I just want to get on with my life," Lieberman told the Sun.

Should we hear of any organized effort to assist Lieberman, we will of course pass on the information.

(October 21, 2005 -- 11:14 AM EDT // link)

I never know what to make of these things. But this morning I got yet another press release from intrade, a company that runs a futures markets on hot political questions, and others, I'm sure, too ...

Miers confirmation contract drops in heavy morning trading

At approximately 8:30 EST this morning traders monitoring the Harriet Miers confirmation process becan selling aggressively contracts betting against her confirmation - probability drops from 62 to 20 in heavy trading.

"The Miers confirmation contract was trading at 92, meaning a 92% probability of confirmation last week. Early this week the contract slid to 64 then this morning with no warning droped to 20 in heavy trading", says Mike Knesevitch Communication Director at Intrade.

Here's the latest quote.

(October 21, 2005 -- 12:23 AM EDT // link)

Target letters, from the NYT: "Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been advised that they may be in serious legal jeopardy, the lawyers said, but only this week has Mr. Fitzgerald begun to narrow the possible charges. The prosecutor has said he will not make up his mind about any charges until next week, government officials say."

(October 20, 2005 -- 07:15 PM EDT // link)

Murray Waas in National Journal: "New York Times reporter Judith Miller told the federal grand jury in the CIA leak case that she might have met with I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby on June 23, 2003 only after prosecutors showed her Secret Service logs that indicated she and Libby had indeed met that day in the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, according to attorneys familiar with her testimony."

(October 20, 2005 -- 06:40 PM EDT // link)

Rep. George Miller (D-CA) seems to have found a way to force a floor vote in the House of Representatives on whether or not to overturn the President Bush's Gulf Coast Wage Cut. They've got fifteen days to bring it to a vote. And if it comes to a vote, a clear majority of the House is for overturning what the president did. Rep. Miller explains more details here.

(October 20, 2005 -- 04:47 PM EDT // link)

For shame.

Remember way back when (okay, only a year ago), Sinclair Broadcasting decided to run an anti-Kerry Swift Boat infomercial on its stations across the country. A popular outcry and a lot of truly spontaneous grassroots activism made them pull back, at least part of the way. But a big rock rolled into the road for them when their DC Bureau Chief, one Jonathan Lieberman took a stand, gave an interview to the Balitmore Sun, and called the effort "biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election ... For me, it's not about right or left -- it's about what's right or wrong in news coverage this close to an election."

The headline of our post, a year ago almost to the day, ran "Soon to join the jobless?" I make no claim for prescience when I tell you he was immediately fired.

Sinclair has continued to harass Lieberman ever since. And now comes word the sharks at Sinclair are suing Lieberman for giving the unauthorized interview. "Sinclair," this article reports, "is also asking the court to order an accounting of the wages Leiberman earned working for another news outlet after Sinclair fired him."

Now this is a while back, a time a lot of folks would like to forget. And most everybody's moved on. But clearly Lieberman is still stuck with the consequences of doing the right thing when it counted. By the letter of the law and the contract, Sinclair may have a case. But this guy's deserves everyone's support.

(October 20, 2005 -- 03:01 PM EDT // link)

The smiliest mugshot you've ever seen: The Hammer.

(October 20, 2005 -- 12:51 PM EDT // link)

Regional FEMA chief turns on Brownie, spills emails. It's even worse than you thought.

(October 20, 2005 -- 12:19 PM EDT // link)

So many leaks are coming fast and furious now in the Plame/Fitzgerald case that it's hard to know sometimes where they're coming from or what the leakers were trying to achieve. Perhaps the best example of this was yesterday's Daily News story by Tom DeFrank, which provided the first clear evidence that President Bush has known who the culprits were from the beginning and possibly failed to disclose that to Patrick Fitzgerald in their interview last year.

Why would White House officials sell the president out like that? The question becomes more pointed when you note that DeFrank, as we discussed yesterday, has long been close to people in the Bush world.

So what's the story?

According to knowledgeable sources, those White House officials behind that story were trying to help the president, not hurt him. The story, in their view, was about his unhappiness with what Rove had done but his loyalty to those who work for him.

Now, the first thing you have to say on this is that there are some folks in the White House who are pretty stupid. Even a cursory knowledge of where the live wires lay in this story would tell you that those bits of information would lead to someone getting a very big shock.

Ordinarily, such an elementary mistake just wouldn't happen.

This part is just inference, not reporting. But I suspect that what we're seeing here is an example of various players in the White House trying to manage damage control without central direction, perhaps without the requisite experience in some cases and even more likely without all the key facts at hand.

The limbs keep moving even after the head is severed, but not with the same coordination.

(October 20, 2005 -- 11:00 AM EDT // link)

Hillary Clinton's senate opponent next year, Republican DA Jeanine Pirro, told a Chemung County Republicans on Tuesday night: "That's a difference between Democrats and Republicans _ we don't want them next door molesting children and murdering women." Now on the defensive, Pirro's campaign manageer Brian Donahue says: "This quote is out of context."

(October 20, 2005 -- 10:20 AM EDT // link)

"I don’t think the voters care about this," Ralph Reed on his role on the Jack Abramoff gambling gravy train. "The reason why we didn't know every detail was because we were a subcontractor. And, by definition, a subcontractor is told only what they need to do to do their job."

(October 20, 2005 -- 01:38 AM EDT // link)

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.” -- Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff until January 2005, quote from Wednesday, October, 19th.

(October 19, 2005 -- 10:22 PM EDT // link)

Ugh, such lamentable piling on. If you must join in, the Daily DeLay has just posted the DeLay arrest warrant.

(October 19, 2005 -- 04:57 PM EDT // link)

As Kevin says, it's all about The Nukes. And he's right on target in pointing to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as one of the key players in the vast political cover-up that hovers over the criminal one now creaking at every hinge. Laura Rozen has more on coordination between Roberts and Cheney's office.

Roberts was the key player in arranging the authorship of last year's thoroughly mendacious Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraqi WMD intelligence failures. He also played a key part at several points (possibly passively, but probably actively) in ensuring that no real investigation into the origins of the forgeries ever took place.

(October 19, 2005 -- 04:09 PM EDT // link)

Ahhh -- good point.

All day we've been discussing Tom DeFrank's article in today's Daily News which reports that President Bush has known about Karl Rove's role in the Plame leak for two years.

But this site points out that this sure seems to contradict what Murray Waas reported not long ago over at National Journal ...

In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson, according to sources familiar with the president's interview. Bush said that Rove never mentioned the conversation with Cooper.

Now, don't lose sight of the fact that we're stacking a lot of 'ifs' on top of each other here. But we do have two articles from well-credentialed journalists pointing to two alleged facts -- one, that President Bush knew in late 2003 that Rove was involved and that Rove had told him he was involved; two, that a year later President Bush denied Rove had told him he was involved in an interview with the special prosecutor.

If both those 'facts' bear out, someone's in a lot of trouble, no?

(October 19, 2005 -- 02:51 PM EDT // link)

Larry Johnson knocks down some of the more recent lies about Joe Wilson.

(October 19, 2005 -- 02:28 PM EDT // link)

Sen. Schumer (D-NY) writes to President Bush asking for an explanation of the DeFrank article. More to come shortly.

Late Update: We've now added the letter to the TPM Document Collection.

(October 19, 2005 -- 01:40 PM EDT // link)

Tom DeFrank's piece in a Daily News is a touch vague about just when President Bush found out about Karl Rove's role in the Plame leak. The only explicit reference to timing comes in the lede where DeFrank writes that [emphasis added] "[a]n angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair."

Now, 'two years ago'.

In the Plame case a lot of things happened around two years ago. What happened almost exactly two years was the first intensive coverage of the story in the mainstream press. For the first couple months the scandal was largely the province of various disreputable blogs and other untouchables.

So, DeFrank really doesn't provide us with enough detail to say with any confidence precisely when the president knew. But it seems he's saying the president unloaded on Karl right about the time the story blew up into a serious scandal and spawned a Justice Department investigation.

So what was the president saying around that time?

One of his most detailed statements came on October 7th, in a brief exchange with the press just before a cabinet meeting ...

[T]he investigators will ask our staff about what people did or did not do. This is a town of -- where a lot of people leak. And I've constantly expressed my displeasure with leaks, particularly leaks of classified information. And I want to know, I want to know the truth. I want to see to it that the truth prevail. And I hope we can get this investigation done in a thorough way, as quickly as possible.

But the Justice Department will conduct this investigation. The professionals in the Justice Department will be involved in ferreting out the truth. These are citizens who will -- were here before this administration arrived and will be here after this administration leaves. And they'll come to the bottom of this, and we'll find out the truth. And that will be -- that's a good thing for this administration.

Then, a few moment later, the president expressed an odd lack of confidence that the case would ever be solved ...

Randy, you tell me, how many sources have you had that's leaked information that you've exposed or have been exposed? Probably none. I mean this town is a -- is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's a lot of senior officials. I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth. That's why I've instructed this staff of mine to cooperate fully with the investigators -- full disclosure, everything we know the investigators will find out. I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is -- partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers. But we'll find out.

Given the question of dating noted above, one might speculate that the president learned of Rove's action the next day. But if the DeFrank piece is accurate, it certainly seems likely that the president knew of Rove's complicity while he was saying these words.

Late Update: A lot of news has been bubbling this morning. And in the mix I neglected to note that there is another reference to the time frame of these events in the DeFrank article. TPM Reader MO notes this passage down at the end ...

None of these sources offered additional specifics of what Bush and Rove discussed in conversations beginning shortly after the Justice Department informed the White House in September 2003 that a criminal investigation had been launched into the leak of CIA agent Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak.

We're still hanging on the "shortly after" here. But this would seem to nail this down a bit more conclusively: President Bush knew Karl Rove was one of the culprits when he made those statements above.

(October 19, 2005 -- 01:22 PM EDT // link)

Ahhh, yesteryear, when we were young and unindicted.

Scott McClellan, June 24th, 2004, almost a year after the president learned of Karl Rove's part in the Plame leak, according to the Daily News.

The President met with Pat Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in charge of the leak investigation, as well as members of his team. The meeting took place in the Oval Office. It lasted for a little more than an hour, probably about an hour and 10 minutes ... He also recently retained a lawyer, Jim Sharp, who you all have reported about before. I would just say that -- what I've said previously, and what the President has said: The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with those in charge of the investigation. He was pleased to do his part to help the investigation move forward. No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the United States, and he has said on more than one occasion that if anyone -- inside or outside the government -- has information that can help the investigators get to the bottom of this, they should provide that information to the officials in charge.

What did the president tell Patrick Fitzgerald? As a number of lawyers and former prosecutors have informed me this morning, not being under oath does not get President Bush out of legal jeopardy if he didn't tell the truth.