Man Overboard....

Josh Marshall suggests that this piece in the L.A. Times detailing "Scooter" Libby's breathless pursuit of Joseph Wilson has less to do with detailing his obsession than setting him up.

Josh's instinct is likely correct. Despite Republican talking points to the contrary, Fitzgerald is not going to merely close up shop and leave town. The lawyers must know this and they have spent the past two weeks getting ready. They might be uncoordinated and ill-prepared, but they know they have to make it about one man, not a coordinated White House operation. They have to build a story that doesn't imply the President condoned such activity, even though it is pretty clear he did.

Josh also notes that the White House Communications Director allegedly reigned in Libby in April of 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.

There has clearly been coordination between the chair of the Senate Select Intelligence, Pat Roberts, and Vice President Cheney on the Committee's investigation into the use or potential misuse of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. That second report has been long in coming and isn't likely to see the light of day soon. The role of Cheney's office in the first report, the investigation into Iraqi WMD's is unclear, but given his efforts to mold any and every aspect of this issue to support the administration's viewpoint and goals it would not be farfetched to suspect some form of prodding.

- Murphy

Separation of what? Never heard of it...

If there is one positive outcome that we can hope will follow in the wake of the Bush administration and its potential meltdown, it is that the Constitutionally-mandated separation of powers, essential for the proper functioning of our government, will regain it's primacy. This is not "one nation, under party, indivisible, with license and power for us."

Laura Rozen dug up some troubling information in researching a piece on the missing Senate intelligence report.

So who did the Vice President's office reach to for assistance in its campaign to blame all of Iraq on the CIA? Apparently, Pat Roberts, the chair of the Senate Select Intelligence committee, the committee that had promised to investigate how the US government got Iraq intelligence so wrong. Off and on the past couple months, I have been talking to staff on the committee, Republicans and Democrats, trying to figure out what's really happened with the promised Phase II SSCI report, that was supposed to examine US government officials' use of the intelligence.…

Earlier this week…I was calling someone up for a quick question, and we got to talking about the latest Fitzgerald news from over the weekend. And I was told something that really stands out: that Roberts has literally been coordinating with Senate majority leader Frist and Cheney's office very closely on many aspects of the Senate Intelligence committee's supposed investigation of the intelligence, and in particular, working closely with Cheney's office on crafting the language defining the terms for the as-yet unfinished Phase II report.

…think about it. Here's the Congressional committee constitutionally mandated to provide oversight of all intelligence activities happening by the US government. And yet, here we have the Intelligence committee head coordinating to some degree with the Vice President's office, who we now know to be deeply involved in some of the most dubious of pre-war intelligence pronouncements, tasking, unconventional intel channels, and cherry picking, and at the forefront of a post-war campaign to slime Wilson and his CIA officer wife. When Congress is in cahoots with the administration in stifling oversight, who can investigate the investigators? Unfortunately, it's not in Fitzgerald's mandate.

Here's a link to her piece on the missing report.

When and if this whole saga is played out, many people are going to have a hard time believing some of what has been going on. It is going to come out of right field. It will allow the Republicans to play some defense, but people tend to give big-time, mob-busting prosecutors like Fitzgerald the benefit of the doubt.

There hasn't been any administration so completely corrupt and willfully anti-democratic since Nixon's. While Nixon's crimes were certainly despicable, the level of mendacity and deception that has been this administration's standard operating procedure since day one has brought them to a new level. One that Machiavelli would have been proud to have authored had he been as malevolent. Sanctioning a break in and cover-up is (to quote an earlier story) bush-league compared to leading the nation to war on a road paved with demonstrably false facts. The Fitzgerald investigation has only served as a crowbar, ripping off the facade to expose the rot beneath.

The underlying story is enormously important and it will take hard work on the part of the press to keep the story on the rails, something it hasn't been doing a great job with thanks to an inexplicable propensity for bringing on Republica spokespeople as "experts" in the ares of law and government policy. The former Republican National Committee chairman is not going to provide an insight into the Fitzgerald's potential strategies. Particularly if the subpoenas come out.

- Murphy

Keep fingers clear of spinning blades

Howard Fineman: Live by the spin, die by the spin.

- Murphy

Bush Knew....

No...not the old conspiracy theory. This is much more immediate, much more rooted in fact and much more frustrating.

The New York Daily News is reporting today that the President knew about Rove's involvement in the Plame scandal in 2003.

WASHINGTON - An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."
…
"Karl is fighting for his life," the official added, "but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that."

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

I haven't had the chance yet, but it would be interested to go through the President's public remarks and find out if he has said anything other than the now standard, "Can't comment on an investigation," line. Though the White House was initially quite talkative about the situation, once it looked like real trouble, they clammed up.

The question is, if the President really knew that Rove was involved in 2003, what happened to his pledge to fire anyone involved? Most observers took believed that as much as you believe a mechanic on the only road through the desert when he tells you it'll be cheap to fix your car. There will always be something that comes up.

Cynicism out of the way, what does it mean if the President's chief political advisor admitted, to the President, being involved in a potential felony and nothing came of it? Is Rove so completely and utterly essential that the President set aside ethical and potentially legal ramifications in order to win re-election?

Update: Josh Marshall adds some important details for gauging the accuracy of this breaking story.

Now, one other detail about this piece. It runs a few hundred words. But the most important two are probably these: Thomas DeFrank.

DeFrank's the byline ... DeFrank has a unique relationship to the Bush world, particularly to the older generation. He cowrote James Baker's diplomatic autobiography The Politics of Diplomacy, for instance. And back in the summer of 2001, The Weekly Standard suggested he'd actually been in the running to be chief Pentagon spokesman, before the job went to Tori Clarke.

… this article carries more weight than it would with another byline

- Murphy

Who was at the meeting?

There was a big catch at the end of the Washington Post piece linked to earlier. Laura Rozen credits Erik Umansky for picking up on the significance passage:

Senior administration officials said there was a document circulated at the State Department -- before Libby talked to Miller -- that mentioned Plame. It was drafted in June as an administrative letter and addressed to then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who was acting secretary at the time since Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Deputy Secretary Richard L. Armitage were out of the country.

As a former State Department official involved in the process recalled it, Grossman wanted the letter as background for a meeting at the White House, where the discussion was focused on then growing criticism of Bush's inclusion in his January State of the Union speech of the allegation that Hussein had been seeking uranium from Niger.

The letter to Grossman discussed the reasons the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) did not believe the intelligence, which originated from foreign sources, was accurate. It had a paragraph near the beginning, marked "(S)," meaning it was classified secret, describing a meeting at the CIA in February 2002, attended by another INR analyst, where Plame introduced her husband as the person who was to go to Niger.

This is the same letter that ended up on Air Force One that so energized early speculation on who was responsible for the leak. It is likely that a number of people knew early on who Wilson's wife was before the leak. Perhaps even those who claimed only to have "heard" about it.

- Murphy

Department of Great quotes

This one's really gonna burn him. From Today's New York Times

Several administration officials said Mr. Card would be furious with any White House official who leaked information to the press. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak by the White House.

- Murphy

Shooting the messenger

Josh Marshall sees this piece from the New York Times as an indication that the, "Knives are out for Andy Card." Though the President's Chief of Staff does come in for some criticism, it doesn't seem that Card's work is the real focus. The followers were plenty happy with him back before Katrina, but now that the tide has turned for the President, his administration and the Republican Party at large...

His office oversaw the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, coordinating federal assistance that was broadly condemned as too slow. Mr. Card personally managed the selection of Harriet E. Miers for the Supreme Court, a choice that has splintered the Republican Party and left the administration scrambling to rescue her nomination.

The confluence of crises, all running through Mr. Card's suite just steps from the Oval Office, has some critics asking whether he needs to clean house or assert himself more forcefully - or at least consider a course correction before Mr. Bush is downgraded permanently to lame duck status.
…
"He's always been - weaker is not quite fair, but he's always been a less powerful chief of staff than we're used to," Mr. Kristol said. "It worked well for a while. It seemed he was good at coordinating Karl and the vice president and Josh Bolten and Condi. And, again, to give him credit, in the first term things went pretty well, you have to say. So I don't really put the blame on Andy; he's doing what he's always done."

In fact, it would seem that the critics are taking out there anger at the President on Card. While the chief of staff has a duty to reign in the President if he is about to make bad decisions, he is, in the end, only the advisor. The President ultimately makes the decision.

"The lesson of both Katrina and Miers is that the system of decision making in the White House no longer meets the needs of the president," said David Frum, a former speechwriter for Mr. Bush who has been critical of the Miers choice.

Critics "could perhaps hold Andy accountable for not saying, 'Mr. President, this is going to be a mistake,' " said William Kristol, the conservative commentator and another vocal critic of the Miers nomination.

The anger that shook the Republican party following Katrina and the Miers nomination seems to have found a vent. Not at the President, but at his COS. Yet both the Katrina breakdown and the Miers debacle seem in keeping with the President's management style. Unsure steps in a time of crisis and the appointment of friends to positions of influence they are not qualified to handle.

I get the impression that the concept of, "Let Bush be Bush," doesn't go over well with the base. It would seem they only saw him as a figurehead after all

- Murphy

What did the Vice President know, and When?

On Hardball yesterday, Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio said that the real significance of the Plame investigation revolves around the information used to sell the Iraq war to the American people. A bill of good mostly created by Cheney and his people. The other reporter in the segment, whose name I forget at the moment (the transcript isn't up yet), seemed exasperated saying it wasn't about the war, it was about the leak.

Well, they are both right, but I think Goodman deserves recognition for pointing out the greater, overarching subject. WIlson was attacked because he threatened to disrupt Cheney's work-up for the war. The leak was tactical, the overall campaign was about willful deception fed to the American people. Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald might be thinking the same thing.

The special prosecutor has personally interviewed numerous officials from the CIA, White House and State Department. In the process, he and his investigative team have talked to a number of Cheney aides, including Mary Matalin, his former strategist; Catherine Martin, his former communications adviser; and Jennifer Millerwise, his former spokeswoman. In the case of Millerwise, she talked with the prosecutor more than two years ago but never appeared before the grand jury, according to a person familiar with her situation.

Starting in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the vice president was at the forefront of a White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that invading Iraq was central to defeating terrorists worldwide. Cheney, a longtime proponent of toppling Saddam Hussein, led the White House effort to build the case that Iraq was an imminent threat because it possessed a dangerous arsenal of weapons.

Before the war, he traveled to CIA headquarters for briefings, an unusual move that some critics interpreted as an effort to pressure intelligence officials into supporting his view of the evidence. After the war, when critics started questioning whether the White House relied on faulty information to justify war, Cheney and Libby were central to the effort to defend the intelligence and discredit the naysayers in Congress and elsewhere.

The Millerwise connection might prove interesting. Josh Marshall notes the attention given to Millerwise and seems to suggest that she might be the White House source everyone is speculating about.

- Murphy

How much?

How much will it cost to pursue all these criminal investigations? Republican assertions that the increasing number of investigations are a result of political retribution become more and more farcical as the investigations pile up. Sen. Lautenberg certainly helped keep up the attention, but the G.A.O. long ago exposed and condemned the illegal activity.

Josh Marshall notes an Associated Press story on the Armstrong Williams propaganda investigation:

Sheesh! It never rains but it pours.
A criminal referral in the Armstrong Williams goofball propaganda case?

The AP reports that the this may be about more than just propaganda

The action was disclosed by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who has pressed for a criminal fraud investigation focused on questions about whether Williams actually performed the work cited in his monthly reports to the Education Department.

The Government Accountability Office has concluded that the Education Department engaged in illegal "covert propaganda" by hiring Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind Act without requiring him to disclose that he was being paid. The Education Department's inspector general has also reviewed the Williams deal, which was part of a broader contract that the education agency had with Ketchum, a public relations firm.

Now the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia is investigating whether Williams accepted public money without performing his required duties, said Dan Katz, chief counsel for Lautenberg. The attorney's office has a range of potential remedies, from suing to recover the money to possible criminal charges, Katz said.

These are not the results of an active opposition party, this is the result of standard operating procedure under this administration.

- Murphy

Second Term Scandals, but First degree offenses

A story today by Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker of the Washington Post gives a good rundown of some of the various investigations involving the Bush administration and top Republican officials. They give special attention to the Abramoff investigation which is likely to lay bare the incredible amount of corruption in the Republican Congressional machine. Money is the key to winning races and Abramoff and DeLay created the perfect machine to control how that money moves.

Beyond the short-term problems, Republicans are particularly anxious about the sprawling investigations of conservative lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose business and political dealings regularly brought him into contact with dozens of lawmakers and top White House officials. Among insiders, he was one of the most familiar faces among the generation of operatives and lobbyists who came of age when Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 elections.

"The one that people are most worried about is Abramoff because it seems to have such long tentacles," said former congressman Vin Weber (R-Minn.), a lobbyist with close ties to the White House. "This seems to be something that could spread almost anywhere . . . and that has a lot of people worried."

I think VandeHei and Baker stumble, however, in letting the Republicans try to reframe this issue.

The current atmosphere is not what Bush envisioned as a candidate in 2000. Coming off the Clinton years, which were dominated by seven independent counsel investigations and the impeachment of the president, Bush vowed to run a cleaner and more ethical Washington. "In my administration," Bush told voters in Pittsburgh in October 2000, "we will ask not only what is legal but what is right, not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves."
…
But scandal historically has ripened in second terms, including Watergate for Richard M. Nixon, the Iran-contra affair for Ronald Reagan, and the Monica S. Lewinsky investigation for Bill Clinton. "It always comes back," said Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia scholar who has written on Washington scandals. "There may be a couple of dry years occasionally, but it is a style of American politics -- always has been, always will be. And now it's back with a vengeance."

Some administration allies lament the return of the scandal culture. "There was essentially none of that for the first five years," said Indiana Gov. Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. (R), Bush's first budget director. "That doesn't make the current situation any easier to watch."

Other White House advisers see politics behind the recent spurt of investigations. "Some of it is cyclical politically," said Leonard A. Leo, who has taken leave as executive vice president of the conservative Federalist Society to help promote the Miers nomination. "And some of it, I'll be honest, is when the left and the Democrats are losing the battle of ideas, they turn to manufacturing scandal."

When people, especially Republicans, talk about scandal, they are talking about the Clinton administration, not Reagan or Nixon. What they fail to acknowledge is that the Clinton investigations were led by a Republican Congress that was focused on "getting" Clinton. After years of investigation, little of anything came out. Clinton did commit perjury by lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinski. Yet given the incredible depth and breadth of the investigations into the Clinton administration and their background, very little bubbled up.

In contrast, the investigations that have reached out and touched the President and top Republican officials have come from the government itself. The request to investigate the Plame leak came from the CIA. The Abramoff investigation had been underway for years in the Justice Department. The DeLay investigation is being led by a Democrat, but it comes after numerous examples of DeLay's own party rebuking his techniques (He was rebuked by the House Ethics Committee three times. After which he proceeded to change the House rules so he could retain his leadership position even if he came under indictment, a rule change they abandoned when the public saw through the ploy).

The problems faced by the White House and the Republican Party are of their own making. The Democrats have certainly been willing to help along the process, but they are essentially only holding open the door as the feds shove them through.

- Murphy