If someone scripted this, I’d tell them they were overdoing it on the dramatic tension.
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October 25, 2005
WB: Chain of Fools
Comments
I would think that someone headed for the stir might be better off if he were not a veteran of multiple heart surgeries. Might he also flip upward?
Posted by: BushBGone | Oct 25 2005 7:04 utc | 1
If I didn’t know better I might think the NYT is still ‘at it’.
We know Fitzgerald has been leakproof so odds are the nfo in this story didn’t come from them. Which pretty much just leaves the neo-cons and rethugs.
If they believe this stuff is gonna come out anyway why not put it out yerself accompanied by a ‘defense’
eg:
” Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.
It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration.”
This stuff is tacky but if it’s going to come out anyway why not release it yourself where you have some control over the spin. Better yet provide plausible sounding reasons for non-indictment, in the hope that you will be the highest bidder at the auction.
I want to be wrong here but Fitzgerald is putting more pressure on himself (witness the McNulty appointment) with this running it down to the wire bizzo than he is on BushCo.
I can’t really think of a good plausible reason to leave this indictment to the absolute last moment.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 25 2005 9:47 utc | 3
@Debs – the NYT line “Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.” is pure Repub spin. There are other laws that can be applied here (Espionage act) that clearly makes this a crime.
Also I think Fitzgerald just plays it cool. He even may prolong the Grand Jury. Currently every day brings up more leaks, more hints, more crimes. The dogs in the pack are fighting each other and Fitzgerald can stand by and take note. First it was Hannah and Wurmser, than Libby, now Cheney. Maybe he is waiting for someone to spill the beans on Bush.
“Maybe he is waiting for someone to spill the beans on Bush.”
I hope you’re right on that, Bernhard.
Posted by: beq | Oct 25 2005 11:35 utc | 5
From firedoglake:
A lot of people are saying that the NYT article does not indicate that Dick Cheney committed a crime, it simply says he was aware of the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson situation. I beg to differ.
Here is the key paragraph:
Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it.
Cheney was interviewed by Fitzgerald last year under oath. That would make it perjury to tell a lie. Although Republican logic tells us that perjury is only a crime if you’re getting a blow job in the bargain, a legitimate US attorney might not see it that way.
Posted by: beq | Oct 25 2005 12:13 utc | 6
@Uncle $cam
Seditious opinion? Lock ’em up!
Well, we faced the ‘Evil Empire’ of an opposing superpower in a divided world for 45 odd years … the constant latent threat of nuclear armageddon, wars by proxy, sponsored terrorism, etc …
And during it all we, the ‘good guys’, the western democracies, did’nt need the ‘Patriot Act’ or the British or Australian ‘Anti-Terrorism’ laws to win or protect ourselves, because we were fighting the good fight for the principles of freedom, democracy and liberty.
Now along come a ragtag collection of recycled mujhadeen and hangers- on with small-arms and relatively trivial conventional explosives, with an annual estimated operational budget of ~$2 miilion (Al-Qaeda only, not counting franchisees) and we have to bring in laws that overturn the rule-of-law and human and civil rights going back decades in order to win ???
I’m not that stupid or gullible, sorry.
These laws are all about creating the necessary legal precedents to incrementally expand thier application to what used to be legitimate internal domestic dissent.
We’ve replaced the aristocracy and royalty, the reviled, unjust rule of kings of the 19th century, with self appointed/annointed neoliberal capitalist elites, who consider us, the vast unwashed, as little more than serfs.
New improved, 21st century Fascism isn’t coming, it’s already here …
Posted by: Outraged | Oct 25 2005 13:30 utc | 7
Cheney can’t possibly run against Jeb now. Good dog, Fitz!
Posted by: gylangirl | Oct 25 2005 14:22 utc | 8
@Debs is dead
If I didn’t know better I might think the NYT is still ‘at it’.
SYSTEMS THEORY AGAIN! “The system sees bad signals as damage, and routes around it.” More later, as I have to get to campus, but I intend to elaborate
on this..
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 25 2005 14:26 utc | 9
Many a days, the contents of the Note, make me want to hurl my monitor through the window, but over the past week or so, no one has done a better job of speculating than they. They’re clearly relishing this frenzy. Here’s a a quote from today’s edition:
(Although we would Note that there is no mention of Cheney’s lawyer, Terrence O’Donnell of Williams and Connolly in the Times story. ABC News has been told that Mr. O’Donnell is out of the country currently. Could the Times really not have tried to reach Mr. Cheney’s lawyer or not Note that they did try? Any Note reader not familiar with Williams and Connolly’s fabled history of last-minute strategic leaking to one single news organization on behalf of political clients needs to spend the day on Nexis.)
(On the other hand, the Gang of 500 is very focused on the specificity of what Libby lawyer Tate would not comment on within the Times story. Some see it as quite different from the usual construction that “he could not be reached” or “would not comment.” But the Times story says, “…Mr. Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Mr. Libby’s legal status.” (Italics added by a over-excited Googling monkey.) For some, that makes Tate, quite simply, the Gang’s number one suspect.)
Posted by: JaneKnowles | Oct 25 2005 15:00 utc | 10
In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d’Avanzo reveal how Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy’s military intelligence service, known as SISMI, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002.
Today’s exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons.
The La Repubblica article quotes a Bush administration official saying, “I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, general Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley.”
Posted by: annie | Oct 25 2005 18:07 utc | 11
thank you shadow, notice the mention of ” The newspaper’s reports that Nucera introduced Martino to a longtime Sismi asset at the Niger embassy in Rome, a 60 year-old Italian woman described in La Repubblica only as “La Signora.” the same ‘lady’ aka bob lady connected w/the cia kidnappings in italy in june we were discussing in the 51st thread
Posted by: annie | Oct 25 2005 18:58 utc | 13
Why does the Italian story come out now? Last week, there were stories that Fitz was looking into the forged Niger documents and this week, viola, we get a blockbuster story about them from the country that gave them to the US govt. There are no coincidences in this business, so this story is a big red flag to “look over here” and would seem to be timed to give impetus to any move on Fitz’s part to investigate in that direction. Former CIA personnel (Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern and others) who are in touch with current CIA employees have written that the CIA is really after this cabal. Did they have anything to do with this story coming out through their own Italian contacts. And why would Berlusconi, who controls much of the Italian media, allow it to come out? (Maybe some of our European contributors could enlighten us on this.) And we have Wilkerson and Skowcraft blasting away at the same time. This convinces me that this is not just Fitz vs. the neocons; there are some powerful players on his side and the stakes are very high.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Oct 25 2005 20:40 utc | 14
There will be even more dramatic tension when thye find the corpse(s?).
My blood ran cold when I saw the idea raised of Jeb for ’08.
Posted by: Edward Teague | Oct 25 2005 23:22 utc | 15