Double Super Secret Background: Karl Rove Scandal

Should The New York Times Fire Judith Miller and Apologize to Readers?

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/17/1422250

This weekend, The New York Times published its long awaited account of Judith Miller's involvement in the Valarie Plame affair. Miller, a New York Times reporter, was released from jail late last month after agreeing to testify before a grand jury investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The Times account revealed several new details about Miller's conversations with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney"s Chief of Staff. Libby and President Bush"s Senior advisor, Karl Rove, face possible indictiments for their roles in the affair.

Miller is claiming that she doesn't know who gave her Plame's name but admitted discussing her with Libby. Miller's notes reveal that she wrote the name "Valerie Flame" in the same notebook she used to interview Libby.

The Times report also makes clear that Miller initially believed that Libby"s Lawyer, Joseph Tate was sending her a message that Libby did not want her to testify and was seeking assurances that she would exonerate Libby.

The New York Times coverage also reveals that there has been wide discontent at the paper about its handling of the story and about Miller's reporting in general.

When asked what she regretted about the newspaper's handling of the Miller matter, managing editor Jill Abramson said "The entire thing."

In 2003 the paper's executive editor Bill Keller told Miller she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Miller had written several of the key articles that claimed Iraq had an extensive weapons of mass destruction program ahead of the Iraq invasion.

Miller even wrote in her own notes "W.M.D. -- I got it totally wrong. The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them -- we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong."

In today's Washington Post, a former colleague of Miller's revealed that he refused to work with her.

Craig Pyres - who now works with the Los Angeles Times - wrote a memo to his editors five years ago and asked that his byline not appear on one piece. Pyres wrote "I do not trust her work, her judgment, or her conduct. She is an advocate, and her actions threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her.... She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies."

Questions are also being raised about Miller's relationship not just with Libby but with the Pentagon.

Miller revealed in her article that she had a Pentagon security clearance while embedded with US military teams hunting for banned weapons in Iraq.

Retired CBS News correspondent Bill Lynch said, "This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists."

Lynch went on to write "Miller violated her duty to report the truth by accepting a binding obligation to withhold key facts the government deems secret, even when that information might contradict the reportable "facts.""

On the phone to talk with us about these latest developments is Michael Isikoff and Greg Mitchell.

• Michael Isikoff, investigative reporter with Newsweek. His latest article is about Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin. It is titled "Karl Rove's Consigliore."

• Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher. His most recent column is titled "After 'NY Times' Probe: Keller Should Fire Miller--and Apologize to Readers."

Oh, mate, is this insane or what? Today on Democracy Now, Ole' Joe Wilson was talking with his - and my - favorite journalist, Amy Goodman:

AMY GOODMAN: The conversation that Robert Novak had with a friend of yours, it has been talked about before, but I think it's important to bring out again. You had also raised it on our show, as well as others, Joe Wilson. Can you talk about that meeting on the street?

JOSEPH WILSON: Sure. Well, several days before he wrote his article, Novak was walking down the streets of Washington, D.C., and somebody came up and said hello to him and engaged him in a conversation. Now, that happens to people who are sort of familiar figures who you see on television a lot. I'm sure, Amy, it happens to you. People come up and say, 'Hey, you're Bob Novak. Can we have' -- I suppose people don't call you Bob Novak, but people come up and say, hi, you're so and so, and let's – and strike up a conversation. That's what happened. And during the course of the conversation, this stranger raised, or the subject of Niger and the op-ed came up, and Novak said bluntly to him, 'Wilson is an asshole,' although I had never met Novak before, ‘and his wife works for the C.I.A.’ Well, it turns out the stranger to Novak was somebody that I knew. And he walked right over to my office. He said, I don't know what you wife does, I have never met your wife, but here is what Novak is saying on the streets. This was several days before his article appeared.

Oh SNAP! That's a small world!

Here's the whole interview.

This is a great post on the Daily Kos, detailing some of the more intricate nuances of the whole Rove / Plame / Public Distortion affair. Can you imagine if, say, NASA employed the same tactics as these assholes? Just saying something over and over until people think its true, then when its proven not to be, saying it is anyway and moving on to the next project. No, instead they put more cameras on the damn thing and are now fixing stuff that's probably not even broken -- because people are asking questions. And this is only, what, 7 people up there? And the commander-in-chief of those hundreds of thousands of military folk can't even acknowledge he's got a lying asshole in his whitehouse.

Just watching the 7/29/2005 press briefing from White House press secretary Scott McClellan. His incoherent ramblings combined with his seeming 'at-ease' demeanor indicate a decades-old alcohol dependence. The signs are clear. Reporter asks a question, and instead of answering it, he berates the reporter for asking the wrong question before stumbling into a disjointed tirade repeating the words "president" "American People" "dreams" "growth" "explore" "decision" and "difficult" frequently throughout the 32 minutes of Razzle Dazzle.

At one point, he responded to a reporters question, "Of course you don't want to talk about it," To which the reporter responded, "No, I do, that why I asked the question, here I'll clarify it...", to which McClellan said, "See , I told you so, its so obvious you're not going to talk about the president's dream to explore growth of difficult decisions.. for the American People. You're going to report on it anyway, but you don't want to talk about it... are you going to let me respond? See, nobody wants to talk about this... Its time to move on..." When a foreign reporter asked a question, he chuckled at her accent before telling her she asked the wrong question and repeating the drill. He ended the briefing, "We are getting things done for the American people. Have nice weekend everybody," and stumbled off the stage.

See the Karl Rove / Scott McClellan Drinking Game: http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/archives/2005/07/rb_05_jul_15.html

If we had only one detail to focus on in this whole thing -- and there are lots of them -- I'd have a very hard time choosing. For now, I'm thinking about how perfect an example this is of GOP obedience to their collective 'greater good' as prescribed by their leadership and distrubuted in talking point form. Even as evidence mounts, we see the well-trained talking heads blah blah blahing over and over again the heroism of Rove and poo-pooing the people uncovering the details, indeed the details themselves as 'partisan' attack(ers). As quite different type of partisan myself - way out in left field would acurately describe me, I'm not so bugged at Their ability to move a message as I am kind of intrigued by the political calculatoin they must be making in moving the Rove points

If I were a republican elected, here's what I'd probably think:

Rove delivers votes.

Rove is either going to jail or not. If he gets fired but doesn't go to jail, he still delivers votes.

If I'm critical of Rove, he won't deliver votes.
If I praise Rove and he gets off, he might deliver votes for me.
If I praise Rove and he goes to jail, no loss -- just say "Who knew?" or "He lied!" and then later, after jail, when he gets his a.m. talk show, I can be guest and everything will still work out.
If I'm anyone else - elected or not - this is probably why I'm cynical about politics in general.

David Corn has some interesting things to say about GOP messaging today:

Rove Scandal: Looking for One Outraged GOPer (It Ain't McCain); The Political-Security Gap in Iraq

You know, I enjoy a good dirty trick as much as the next guy. But even I know better than to f with the intelligence. Thats just like shooting yourself in the foot.

ZMag: Rove-Bush Conspiracy Noose Tightens, by Robert Parry

TO be COMPLETELY fair, Democracy Now has been covering this story since it happened. The part about the no WMD, the part about Wilson helping confirm that fact, the part about the high probability of Whitehouse trying to cover that fact up, and the part about the rest of the media seeming to fall asleep while the U.S. government parroted their talking points ad nauseum. Yesterday's program, again, shows all you other broadcasters oughtta be bowing at Amy Goodman's feet because she RULES!

The NOC Program: A Look at Valerie Plame's "Nonofficial Cover" as a CIA Operative