If Miller revealed Plame’s affiliation with the CIA to Libby, she deserves to be in jail — for conspiracy, at the very least. If Plame was a source of Miller’s, and she burned her to Libby (or anybody else in the White House snake pit) then Judy deserves to be executed, as slowly and painfully as possible.
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October 9, 2005
WB: Dramatic Tension
Comments
This is a comedy of schmuckdomness.
While I appreciate we all need some light comedy relief while waiting for the apocalypse, is there any doubt that the Libbys and Roves of today will become the G. Gordon Liddys of tomorrow — except that my bet is they’ll have fat Swiss Bank accounts. (For all I know, Liddy may have them too.)
Will there be any *meaningful* punishment inflicted upon those folks, even assuming they’re caught, tried, etc.? Of course not.
Watch for them to guest-star in an episode of the revival of MIAMI VICE in 2012.
Posted by: Lupin | Oct 9 2005 7:15 utc | 1
Another newer Reuters story: Letter shows Cheney aide was prodded in leak probe
A top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney got a push from a prosecutor before telling New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he wanted her to testify in a probe into the outing of a CIA operative whose diplomat husband was an Iraq-war critic.
The prosecutor’s encouragement, in a letter obtained by Reuters, has prompted some lawyers in the case to question whether Cheney’s aide was acting completely voluntarily when he gave Miller the confidentiality waiver she had insisted on.
..
Miller maintains she only agreed to testify — after spending 85 days in jail — because she received what she describes as a personal and voluntary waiver of confidentiality from her source. She dismissed an earlier waiver by Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, as coerced.
But Libby offered a new waiver that Miller accepted after he received a September 12 letter in which the prosecutor, investigating a possible White House role in the leak, repeatedly encouraged him to do just that.
..
Some lawyers in the case called the letter a thinly veiled threat seeking Libby’s cooperation, and said it raised questions about whether Libby’s waiver was as voluntary as Miller and her lawyers had described.
You know, jail is so boring…
Open & Shut, isn’t it?
There were a group of warmongers, who wanted the U.S. inside Iraq, to protect Israel and to gain control of Iraq’s oil reserves. They were touched by hubris, as they came to believe they were about to make history – and when you are making history, facts become cumbersome. Particularly when History needs a little speeding up, given the book contracts and yacht contracts you’re thinking of entering into.
So – having the NYTimes shill for war was a small price to pay for Miller, and spouting Chalabi’s rhetoric and Wolfowitz’ nonsense came with the territory.
A truly, truly disgraceful chapter in U.S. history, this – one for the ages, of how a small cabal of people were able to subvert one of the “greatest” democracies on earth, for their own petty, money-grabbing ends.
Posted by: SteinL | Oct 9 2005 8:39 utc | 3
Ah, Friday. Just the facts ma’am.
It always sounded to me like..
Dum da Dum dum
Dum da Dum dum DAH!
Friday was utterly honest, utterly reliable, uttterly unfazed by human depravity. Hell, they weren’t even depraved in those days, just dumb crooks.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Oct 9 2005 10:05 utc | 4
I’ve never understood how Miller could be a mouthpiece for Chalabi and Cheney, et al, and keep her job at the Times when others who used fake sources (that didn’t exist as real people) were fired and all of punditdom had to comment on it.
But at the same time, it is a joke to think that the NYTimes is anything more than a mouthpiece for the govt as the rule rather than the exception, during the entire course of their existence.
Except that now, what used to be moderate views are now labeled as extreme leftist traitors’ views, while what used to be considered the realm of John Birch nutcases is the standard by which all other ideas are measured.
Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 9 2005 16:05 utc | 5
@fauxreal
This is where I’ll go out on a limb and declare the obvious. The publishers of the NYT wanted to help secure the state of Israel, and Wolfowitz’ and Perle’s masterplan, with the assurances of “the George Washington of Iraq” seemed a shoe-in worth going for.
Posted by: SteinL | Oct 9 2005 16:11 utc | 6
Newsweeks Isikoff CIA Leak: Karl Rove and the Case of the Missing E-mail
The White House’s handling of a potentially crucial e-mail sent by senior aide Karl Rove two years ago set off a chain of events that has led special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to summon Rove for a fourth grand jury appearance this week. His return has created heightened concern among White House officials and their allies that Fitzgerald may be preparing to bring indictments when a federal grand jury that has been investigating the leak of a CIA agent’s identity expires at the end of October. Robert Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, tells NEWSWEEK that, in his last conversations with Fitzgerald, the prosecutor assured Luskin “he has not made any decisions.”
…
Rove did not disclose this conversation to the FBI when he was first interviewed by agents in the fall of 2003—nor did he mention it during his first grand jury appearance, says one of the lawyers familiar with Rove’s account. (He did not tell President George W. Bush about it either, assuring him that fall only that he was not part of any “scheme” to discredit Wilson by outing his wife, the lawyer says.) But after he testified, Luskin discovered an e-mail Rove had sent that same day—July 11—alerting deputy national-security adviser Stephen Hadley that he had just talked to Cooper, the lawyer says. In the e-mail, Rove said Cooper pushed him on whether the president was being hurt by the Niger controversy. “I didn’t take the bait,” Rove wrote Hadley, adding that he warned Cooper not to get “far out in front on this.”
Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, finds a White House email??? Who do they expect to believe this. And that anonymous lawer sure knows to deny what Rove told Bush or Bush told Rove.
also:
Fitzgerald has also summoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller back for questioning this week: a notebook was discovered in the paper’s Washington bureau, reflecting a late June 2003 conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, about Wilson and his trip to Africa, says one of the lawyers. The notebook may also be significant because Wilson’s identity was not yet public. A lawyer for the Times declined to comment.
A notebook (who`s notebook?) discovered (???) in the NYT’s Washington Bureau (Miller’s cubicle is in NY!).
Now this seems all a bit more vague than the Reuters piece Billmon cited. So who is right?
SteinL- as far as the NYTimes goes, they covered for the govt in the aftermath of Hirsohima and Nagasaki, too. I have a bound copy of the original newspaper that contains their reportage, compared to the “unimbedded” guy who got censored…I should remember his name…
here’s a report on the cover-up.
I have some of the NYTimes during the sacco and vanzetti trial, too. Again, the anarchists were never going to get a fair hearing.
And, not too oddly, immediately after WW2, the NYTimes had a Sunday Magazine article about how Americans had totally lost interest in the war crimes trials…sound familiar?
As far as labeling everything in the interest of the Likudniks–I think it’s more of a coalition of interests…big oil is as much of a part of this as any Netanyahu statement. Halliburton’s profit statement matters more to them than the fate of anyone in the U.S. or anywhere else, for that matter.
And the unconditional support of Israel gets much more traction with the Talibornagains in the U.S. than it does with most American Jews I know, who see the issue in as a much more nuanced and sad and difficult horror for all concerned.
Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 9 2005 18:10 utc | 8
One Patito, Two Patito
The man who triggered the greatest selloff
in US history since Reagan took office, (with
his trespass of a Jerusalem mosque in 9/2000),
Ariel Sharon will be dead before next August.
With his death will come the unraveling of
his Gaza and West Bank pull-out initiatives.
That collapse will initiate ascension of a
Zioni-Fascist state, presaging apocalypse.
This will occur when American Neo-Cultists are
backed against the wall with their disastrous
invasion of Iraq quagmire, and disastrous US
general account and trade deficits. Just the
flash-point they need .. exactly like 9/11 WTC.
Let’s roll – global winter – Patriot lockdown.
National emergency declaration, suspension of
prevailing wages at a cap of $11 – $12/hour.
“Just until we can turn the US economy around.”
Oh … and don’t … stop … shopping!
Posted by: Paris Amicor | Oct 9 2005 18:12 utc | 9
Does anyone else wonder if Novak’s leaking of Plame’s name was a dig at Judy Miller and the New York Times?
ie. one part of this story may be journalists burning each other?
Posted by: kid oakland | Oct 9 2005 21:12 utc | 10
SteinL, Fauxreal :
I date the present dive taken by the NYTimes as having begun with the ascent of Arthur Ochs Sulzbergter Jr, in 1997 I think. Then came the inexplicable frame-up job on Wen Ho Lee, transparent and clumsy by anyone’s standards. And Judy Miller was beating her WMD drum, trying to stir up trouble in the Middle East long before 9/11. I remember her doing her song and dance on the PBS news hour before then, coming out of left field with it. Right field I guess.
The Likunikons are not interested in “what’s good for Israel”. If they were they’d have made peace there years ago. They are interested in the war business. They have accepted “death as a way of life”, as David Grossman calls it, and are actively pursuing the state of permanent warfare that their livelihood entails. They terrorize Israelis and American Jews alike with tales of the “murderous Arabs”, as they now terrorize Americans of all stripes with tales of the “murderous Islamo-fascists”.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr, Pinch to his father’s Punch, is just “doing his part” for “Israel” as defined by the Likudnikons. Even as his part includes rekindling a cold war, with China as the heavy. Even as his part includes blameless Iraqis as the victims.
It was supposed to be over in a New York minute. Iraq destroyed and rebuilt in our image. The “Arabs” who formerly squatted upon “Greater Israel” finally vanquished and resettled “somewhere else”.
The Likudnikons’ goal all along was simple destruction and chaos. The elimination of any Arab or Islamic seat of power. They thrive in the permanent chaos that ensues. As do the arms manufacturers and merchants. As do the oil companies.
Whether Pinch could see all this from the beginning or whether, like George W Bush, he was and is just an incompetent shadow of the old man, and as much a dupe of the Likudnikons, is something I cannot tell. Those circumstances are irrelevant. The effect of their actions is the same regardless their motivation.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Oct 10 2005 2:12 utc | 11
Jack Webb, the producer of “Dragnet” and the actor who portrayed Joe Friday, had a fairly right-wing reputation. Joe Friday today would be working for Homeland Security and locking people up on suspicion without benefit of habeus corpus.
On top of everything else, Time Inc. has an image problem.
Earlier this year, Pearlstine, 63, distressed a number of colleagues and counterparts alike. In a widely scrutinized move, he announced that Time Inc. would cooperate with the U.S. government in a case involving the disclosure of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
At first, Time Inc. held its ground. But after two court appeals were rejected, the company elected to yield. The decision seemed to run contrary to the independent, antagonistic spirit of journalism, which the press admires so much.
Pearlstine defended his position by saying that journalists shouldn’t consider themselves to be above the law. It didn’t help Time Inc.’s reputation when some critics alleged that Pearlstine’s act seemed to make perfect business sense for his employer, whose multiple interests tend to benefit from the government’s approval.
Posted by: annie | Oct 10 2005 5:55 utc | 13
E&P has some good questions:
The Case of the Missing Notebook
–Did Libby lie to the grand jury about not talking to Miller about Wilson earlier than July 8? Did Miller lie about that? If so, why?
–How did Fitzgerald find out about these notes? Did he know about the June conversation for quite some time but just recently found out about the notes? Or did Miller come forward herself? If she did, was it after someone tipped off Fitzgerald about the June interview?
–Does the existence of a Miller chat with Libby two weeks before the Wilson op-ed, and well before Robert Novak outed Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent, indicate that Libby, indeed, was the original source of the Plame leak? And/or does it suggest that Miller herself was a “carrier” of that leak to others in the media and the administration, well before Novak’s bombshell?
…