The liberal side of the blogosphere, the Democrats in Congress and the Democratic Presidential candidates have actively criticized Bush's appalling commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence. Wonky Muse and Tankwoman at The Blue Voice have weighed in with worthwhile thoughts and justified outrage. I just want to add a couple of quick things about the case.
As Josh Marshall reminds us, the real political and historical significance of the whole Plame case (including Scooter's part) has always been its relationship to the phony case Cheney and Bush made for the Iraq War. The alleged nuclear threats - you know, we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud and all that - were always the one piece of the WMD claims that was far and away the most persuasive. Joe Wilson's now-famous trip to Africa and his public criticism of the Cheney-Bush administration that grew out of it pointed not only to the political shame of their deceit. But we need to remember: in both American and international law, ginning up fake causes for a war like the 2003 invasion of Iraq is illegal. Administration officials are surely far more aware of that risk than the punditocracy has been.
The other extremely revealing aspect of the Libby case is that it exposed again the extent to which the mainstream press really has become an Establishment press that identifies itself more-or-less consciously and explicitly with the wealthy and powerful as represented by the Republican Party. As we saw with "Whitewater" and the press "War on Gore", they are more than willing to attack Democrats, even wealthy and powerful ones. But the way our "press corps" and the punditocracy have minimized the significance of the Plame case has above all to do with their own increasingly symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party. They don't care about what in colloquial if not legal terms was an act of treason in exposing Valerie Plame's CIA status for cheap political payback. They do care about protecting their friends and "inside sources" like Scooter.
Tags: establishment press, mainstream press, plame case, scooter libby
Showing posts with label scooter libby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scooter libby. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Scooter Libby and neoconservatism
Since today is Scooter's sentencing day, I thought I would celebrate by posting a link to this article about him in the current (June 2007) American Prospect, The Apprentice by Anthony David 05/20/07. (As of this writing, the article is behind subscription but the Prospect makes all its articles available two or three weeks or so after the current issue is published.)
David looks specifically at how Scooter received the neoconservatism wisdom from one of its godfathers, Albert Wohlstetter. It's important in showing how the Bush Doctrine of preventive war grew directly out of the nuclear first-strike doctrine advocated by hardliners like Wohlstetter. Along the way, he touches on how Wohlsttetter influenced Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle (the "Prince of Darkness", as his admirers nicknamed him), Ahmad Chalabi, Zalmay Khalilzad, Douglas Feith, Francis Fukuyama and David Wurmser. David writes of Wohlstetter's justification for a first-strike nuclear doctrine:
So the terms of this particular dispute remained relatively obscure in public discussion.
I need to digress at this point for a couple of definitional points. The US during the Cold War would never make a blanket promise that we would never make "first use" of nuclear weapons. That was largely because the NATO defensive strategy in Europe assumed that an initial Soviet conventional attack on western Europe would be countered by US use of "tactical" battlefield nuclear weapons. That's a very different matter than planning for a preventive strike.
Also, I wish people writing articles like David's would be more careful about the terms "preventive war" and "preemptive war"; David's use of "preemptive" in the sentence referring to the Peace of Westphalia is incorrect. The terms are separately defined in international law, the difference being that "preventive" war is equivalent to illegal aggressive war, while "preemptive" war specifically refers to an attack meant to avert an immiment threat. The Six Day War of which today is the 40th anniversary is a classic example of a "preemptive" war, in this case launched by Israel in the face of strong evidence that Arab armies were about to attack them.
David goes on to describe a further development in Wohlstetter's strategic thinking:
But the link of neocon and Cheney-Bush administration preventive-war doctrine to nuclear-first-strike thinking is a important link, and one that under-appreciated. And that's the focus of David's article on Scooter.
Tags: neoconservatives, scooter libby
David looks specifically at how Scooter received the neoconservatism wisdom from one of its godfathers, Albert Wohlstetter. It's important in showing how the Bush Doctrine of preventive war grew directly out of the nuclear first-strike doctrine advocated by hardliners like Wohlstetter. Along the way, he touches on how Wohlsttetter influenced Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle (the "Prince of Darkness", as his admirers nicknamed him), Ahmad Chalabi, Zalmay Khalilzad, Douglas Feith, Francis Fukuyama and David Wurmser. David writes of Wohlstetter's justification for a first-strike nuclear doctrine:
Wohlstetter singled out the doctrine of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD) as proof of the national-security elite's dangerous anachronism. The "realists" believed that nuclear weapons had made war obsolete. Only an "insane adventurer" would launch an attack, and professional diplomats assumed that the totalitarian beast in Moscow would probably behave rationally. But, argued Wohlstetter, the Soviet Union was not necessarily a rational actor: The Russians had lost 20 million people during World War II; there was no reason to assume they wouldn't risk losing many more to become the premier global power.Since nuclear weapons are particularly fear-inducing, that "however remote" sets a very low bar for initiating nuclear war. The US never adopted such a policy of nuclear preventive war.
Wohlstetter argued that scientific progress in the hands of such a tyrannical regime would pose an impossible threat to both American security and the cause of human liberty. In the thermonuclear age, the possibility, however remote, that a tyrant could risk a nuclear strike required that tyranny abroad be contained and eventually defeated. (my emphasis)
So the terms of this particular dispute remained relatively obscure in public discussion.
I need to digress at this point for a couple of definitional points. The US during the Cold War would never make a blanket promise that we would never make "first use" of nuclear weapons. That was largely because the NATO defensive strategy in Europe assumed that an initial Soviet conventional attack on western Europe would be countered by US use of "tactical" battlefield nuclear weapons. That's a very different matter than planning for a preventive strike.
Also, I wish people writing articles like David's would be more careful about the terms "preventive war" and "preemptive war"; David's use of "preemptive" in the sentence referring to the Peace of Westphalia is incorrect. The terms are separately defined in international law, the difference being that "preventive" war is equivalent to illegal aggressive war, while "preemptive" war specifically refers to an attack meant to avert an immiment threat. The Six Day War of which today is the 40th anniversary is a classic example of a "preemptive" war, in this case launched by Israel in the face of strong evidence that Arab armies were about to attack them.
David goes on to describe a further development in Wohlstetter's strategic thinking:
But the most compelling aspect of Wohlstetter's mixture of apocalyptic and utopian thinking, and the reason he won over a devoted band of talented followers, was his radical moral message of the need for a new band of leaders to battle tyranny using policies that would spread liberal democratic values. The logic behind MAD precluded any attempt to defeat evil. The true liberal, Wohlstetter taught, must not be resigned to the enslavement of half the planet; he must desire, and plan for, the triumph of freedom, if need be through the use of tactical nuclear bombs. And the leaders capable of such a daring expansion of American military power, he firmly believed, were not Establishment men trained in the old tradition of diplomacy and foreign policy, speaking the obsolete language of détente; they were a new breed of activist intellectuals who would give Western democracies "a new image of ourselves in a world of persistent danger." (my emphasis)This is also an interesting factual tidbit about Paul Wolfowitz and his mentor, Wohlstetter:
After the Israeli-Arab War, in 1967, just as his young protégé was casting about for a dissertation topic, Wohlstetter added a new ingredient to his theoretical mix: the danger of nuclear proliferation in dangerously unstable corners of the globe, in particular the Middle East. One key cause for the heightened tension between Egypt and Israel leading up to the Six Day War was the Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona, in the Negev Desert. After the war, the Johnson administration -- assuming that the recurrent wars in the region were rational fights over water and land -- proposed building three nuclear plants, one each for Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, to desalinate water and bring agriculture to millions of acres of desert. The scheme was called "A Proposal for Our Time."David doesn't go into some of the other major influences on the body of thought that came to be known as "neoconservatism". From Trotskyism, they took the notion of the value of wars of liberation and the supposedly redeeming power of violence. From the philospher Leo Strauss they took the notion that deceit on a grand scale is a necessary part of sound statesmanship.
Wohlstetter saw in the proposal the same old delusions: The bureaucrats were blind to the dangers of nuclear technology and the irrationality of authoritarian regimes. He argued that there would be little to stop these nations from diverting some of the materials from their civilian reactors toward the development of nuclear weapons. Then he traveled to Israel, where he got his hands on a raft of top-secret documents showing how the Egyptians were planning to use the American peace initiative to construct a nuclear device. He returned to the University of Chicago and handed the documents over to Wolfowitz, who used them as the basis for his dissertation. (my emphasis)
But the link of neocon and Cheney-Bush administration preventive-war doctrine to nuclear-first-strike thinking is a important link, and one that under-appreciated. And that's the focus of David's article on Scooter.
Tags: neoconservatives, scooter libby
Friday, June 01, 2007
A dark cloud for the Dark Lord?
John Dean on the push by Fred Thompson and other rightwing Republicans for a pardon for Scooter Libby: The Bush Administration's Dilemma Regarding a Possible Libby Pardon - And How Outsiders Such as Fred Thompson Appear to Be Working on a Solution Findlaw.com 06/01/07.
Next Tuesday, June 5, the judge is expected to make a decision on whether to send Scooter to jail immediately or let him out on bail while he appeals his conviction.
Dean points out that in the Watergate trials "the March 1, 1974 indictment of Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chuck Colson (who pled guilty, rather than risk a trial) charged each of them with a conspiracy to obstruct justice by offering to provide clemency to those involved in the Watergate break-in." Dean:
Next Tuesday, June 5, the judge is expected to make a decision on whether to send Scooter to jail immediately or let him out on bail while he appeals his conviction.
Dean points out that in the Watergate trials "the March 1, 1974 indictment of Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chuck Colson (who pled guilty, rather than risk a trial) charged each of them with a conspiracy to obstruct justice by offering to provide clemency to those involved in the Watergate break-in." Dean:
If Libby had been acting on his own behalf, a pardon would present no problem; Bush and Cheney could feel it was the humanitarian thing to do, given his long service to the government. However, no one I know believes Libby was acting simply for himself, nor does the evidence suggest it.Dean observes that if Scooter was covering for Dark Lord Cheney, it would be obstruction of justice for Cheney to request Bush to pardon his boy Scooter:
No wonder then, that Special Counsel Fitzgerald remarked during the Libby trial that there was "a cloud" over the Vice President.Tags: dick cheney, john dean, scooter libby
Come Tuesday, that cloud could get much darker for Cheney.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
A sad anniversary in the history of journalistic self-immolation
Today is the 15th anniversary of Jeff Gerth's first story on the pseudo-scandal known as Whitewater appearing in the New York Times.
This kicked off a plunge by much of the major news media in the United States into a long period of battiness that they haven't pulled out of yet.
The battiness of leading media lights like the Times and the Washington Post gave us endless stories about the Big Phony Al Gore and his "earth tones", which helped mightily in getting Dick Cheney and George Bush close enough in the popular vote in 2000 that the Supreme Court's Scalia Five could hand the Presidency to them. That would be the regular guy George W, the kind of guy that you'd like to have a beer with, according to the media scripts from the same reporters and pundits at the time.
The battiness gave us Judith Miller's and Michael Gordon's fake stories on the front page of the Times about Iraq's hoard of "weapons of mass destruction", which turned out to be non-existent.
Surely they've learned by now! Surely they're cleaning up their act, right? From Some Explaining to Do by Dan Froomkin Washington Post 03/07/07, commenting on the press reaction to the Scooter Libby verdict:
This kicked off a plunge by much of the major news media in the United States into a long period of battiness that they haven't pulled out of yet.
The battiness of leading media lights like the Times and the Washington Post gave us endless stories about the Big Phony Al Gore and his "earth tones", which helped mightily in getting Dick Cheney and George Bush close enough in the popular vote in 2000 that the Supreme Court's Scalia Five could hand the Presidency to them. That would be the regular guy George W, the kind of guy that you'd like to have a beer with, according to the media scripts from the same reporters and pundits at the time.
The battiness gave us Judith Miller's and Michael Gordon's fake stories on the front page of the Times about Iraq's hoard of "weapons of mass destruction", which turned out to be non-existent.
Surely they've learned by now! Surely they're cleaning up their act, right? From Some Explaining to Do by Dan Froomkin Washington Post 03/07/07, commenting on the press reaction to the Scooter Libby verdict:
Washington's media elites have been against this case from the beginning, seeing [prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald and [Joseph] Wilson as unwelcome interlopers threatening the cozy relationship between the city's top political journalists and their sources.Tags: libby trial, plame case, scooter libby
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Monica and the Plame case (you think I'm kidding!)
Not surprisingly, the Establishment press coverage of the Libby verdict has been sub-standard. Here's a one account, In public's mind, White House is guilty by Marc Sandalow San Francisco Chronicle 03/07/07. Here are the second and third paragraphs of the story:
But think of what that first sentence says. One of the highest officials in the US government was just convicted of four felonies committed in attempting to hide the guilt of those who outed an undercover CIA officer working on gathering intelligence Iran's "weapons of mass destruction" programs, the same Iran against which the administration has been threatening war for months. And Sandalow tells us that most citizens just don't give a [Cheney].
Why is he making such an unlikely claim? Is there some polling data on which he's relying? It seems more like he's telling us that we should know that is as savvy as a Washington reporter like him wouldn't bother caring about such high-level felonies.
Not a very good start. Keep in mind that the general press corps script on this one was that the case was never terribly important, in part for self-serving reasons.
But then the story picks up a bit. Paragraphs four and five say:
The article concludes as follows:
This article is even sadder, Libby Verdict Brings Moment Of Accountability by Peter Baker Washington Post 03/07/07. Ah, you say, surely an article with this headline will touch on the issue of press accountability? Well, if you believe in the Easter Bunny and the WMD's in Iraq, I can see how you might think that.
Compared to Peter Baker's Post story, Marc Sandalow and the Chronicle provided us with a sterling specimen of crusading journalism.
But let's give Baker's story credit. It's not until the fifth paragraph that he brings up Monica Lewinsky! Let me channel the Daily Howler for a moment and say, just try to believe he typed this!
How did the Iraq War happen? How did the Supreme Court hand the Presidency to Dick Cheney and George Bush after they lost the 2000 election? A huge part of the reason is that this foolish nonsense is what passes for "journalism" in the leading lights of the American press.
Libby lied as part of the effort to out an undercover CIA agent gathering intelligence on Iranian WMD. All in an effort to cover up the manufacture of phony intelligence. Intelligence used to justify invading another country. An invasion which besides being an illegal "preventive war" is also pretty much the worst foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States.
But that's not nearly as important as Bill and Monica to the Washington Post. I'm beginning to think some of the more science-fiction type explanations for our "press corps" are more plausible than more conventional ones. Maybe "reporters" like Peter Baker are actually malfunctioning software programs. Or maybe exotic being from outer space have done a "body snatcher" number on replaced all the homo sapien reporters in Washington. Those explanations have a lot to recommend them!
Since I'm counting paragraphs, Baker's story first quotes Bush on accountability. The next direct quote is in paragraph five, and that's from "Republican lobbyist" Ed Rogers, who is the one who brings up Monica. In paragraph six, we learn:
Having assured us that the case is far less important than blowjobs and having explained that the critics of Libby are slavering partisans, in paragraph seven we get a vague quote from John Kerry, who is identified as "Bush' Democratic challenger in 2004".
That pretty much gives you the drift of the whole story. There's more bits of similar fun. Ex-Cheney staffer Mary Matalin is outraged that Scooter was prosecuted for committing felonies to refute "a demonstrable partisan liar", presumably meaning Joe Wilson. You know, the guy who didn't think a phony claim about yellowcake in Niger should be used to jusify invading another country. Baker cautions those wildly partisan Democrats against demanding too much "accountability" from the Cheney-Bush adminstration. In case you blipped over it the first time, we get another mention of Monica.
I wish that Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby would bite into the press fiasco over the Plame case. Ironically, he's in a bit of a dilemma in that regard himself. He got out there fairly early on arguing that the Plame case wasn't going to be that big of a deal and that Joe Wilson was one figure on which the dominant press spin for once tilted in favor of the Democrats, and used it as an example of how we needed to be critical-minded about sloppy reporting even when it seems to help the Dems for the moment.
Good point, bad example to try to make the case. In fact, the Plame case has turned out to be a very significant story. It has been one of our most important windows into the manufacture of phony intelligence in the run-up to war, to the ruthless and lawless tactics of the administration against domestic critics and to the continuing dysfunction of the press. Somerby just called that one poorly, I'm afraid.
Tags: libby trial, plame case, scooter libby
Whether the vice president's former chief of staff gets 25 years in prison or even a presidential pardon after his conviction Tuesday for lying and obstructing justice is of little consequence to most Americans.Let's give Sandalow dredit for getting to the central issue of the deceptions leading to the Iraq War in above the fold.
What will endure is damning testimony that confirms the public's worst fears about the Bush administration's behavior during the lead-up to the war in Iraq and its truthfulness since then.
But think of what that first sentence says. One of the highest officials in the US government was just convicted of four felonies committed in attempting to hide the guilt of those who outed an undercover CIA officer working on gathering intelligence Iran's "weapons of mass destruction" programs, the same Iran against which the administration has been threatening war for months. And Sandalow tells us that most citizens just don't give a [Cheney].
Why is he making such an unlikely claim? Is there some polling data on which he's relying? It seems more like he's telling us that we should know that is as savvy as a Washington reporter like him wouldn't bother caring about such high-level felonies.
Not a very good start. Keep in mind that the general press corps script on this one was that the case was never terribly important, in part for self-serving reasons.
But then the story picks up a bit. Paragraphs four and five say:
The monthlong trial established beyond a reasonable doubt that White House officials at the highest level conducted a campaign to discredit those who questioned their declarations about Iraq's weapon capabilities - declarations that turned out to be wrong.
And the testimony showed that President Bush either was lying about the White House's role in outing a CIA officer at the center of the scandal or was kept in the dark by top aides who defied his orders to come forward.
Fair enough. And those paragraphs all appeared on page 1 above the fold. And the following paragraphs are pretty decent descriptions of the actual news about the verdicts.
When we get to the background, things get a bit fuzzier:
The circumstances involved former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger in 2002 to gather evidence regarding allegations that Saddam Hussein was purchasing enriched uranium and other materials there needed to build a nuclear bomb in Iraq. Wilson, dispatched by the CIA, quickly determined that the charges were not credible and informed the administration. He was surprised to hear Bush repeat the allegations during his 2003 State of the Union Address and wrote an op-ed piece in New York Times in the summer of 2003 titled "What I didn't find in Africa."It may sound like nit-picking to say that the statement Wilson "informed the administration" about the results is misleading because he actually reported back to the CIA. "Administration" is sometimes used in a broader sense, but usually it is applied to the political appointees of the Presidential administration. It's more than a nit in this case because Joe Wilson's critics in attempting to discredit him by making a big deal over the fact that he "lied" when he said that his report went to Dick Cheney. Cheney's office had requested information on the Niger reports, and Wilson said he assumed that the information was forwarded back to Cheney. Although I believe he was once quoted as saying he knew Cheney got the report, he made it clear in other accounts that he assumed that without knowing for sure if that was the case.
The article concludes as follows:
The trial showed the extent to which senior Bush aides, including Cheney, were alarmed at Wilson's public rebuke of their assertions about Iraq's nuclear weapons. Among the evidence submitted was a copy of Wilson's op-ed piece with Cheney's notes scribbled in the margin demanding to know if Wilson's wife had sent him there on a "junket."At the very end, we get a brief mention of revelations of press dysfuntion that the trial produced. And that followed immediately by a vague quote that says, well, gee, it's one of those Washington things that you hicks out there in the public wouldn't understand - And please don't ask us about that "cozy relationsip" because that's one of those things of which we normally do not speak.
"Clearly Cheney understood immediately that this article could produce a cascading political crisis for the White House," [Jonathan] Turley said of the evidence. "The trial revealed a surprising level of both hysteria and hypocrisy in the White House."
The White House was not the only institution tarnished in the trial. The witnesses included at least nine prominent Washington journalists, whose testimony made plain the cozy relationship between some top administration officials and the reporters who cover them.
"This is a quintessential Washington morality play where there are no redeeming characters," Turley said.
This article is even sadder, Libby Verdict Brings Moment Of Accountability by Peter Baker Washington Post 03/07/07. Ah, you say, surely an article with this headline will touch on the issue of press accountability? Well, if you believe in the Easter Bunny and the WMD's in Iraq, I can see how you might think that.
Compared to Peter Baker's Post story, Marc Sandalow and the Chronicle provided us with a sterling specimen of crusading journalism.
But let's give Baker's story credit. It's not until the fifth paragraph that he brings up Monica Lewinsky! Let me channel the Daily Howler for a moment and say, just try to believe he typed this!
"This has been a huge cloud over the White House," said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist close to the Bush team. "It caused a lot of intellectual, emotional and political energy to be expended when it should have been expended on the agenda. They're never going to fully recover from this. If you're looking at legacy, this episode gets prominently mentioned in every recap of the Bush administration, much like Iran-contra and Monica Lewinsky."Still channeling the Howler: gave into the empty soul of your press corps. The Libby case never reached the level of Bill and Monica's sad little affair with those blow jobs! At this point in the story, neither of the words "Iraq" or "war" have been mentioned. But we've got Monica and those blow jobs! He does work "Iraq war" into the sentence where he tells us the Plame case isn't anywhere near as serious as Bill Clinton's pecker.
The Libby case never reached the level of those scandals, of course, but it became a proxy for many in Washington eager to re-litigate the origins of the Iraq war. If Libby lied about his role in the CIA leak case, critics eagerly used that to reinforce their argument that Bush led the nation to war on false pretenses, in effect attacking the centerpiece of his presidency. (my emphasis)
How did the Iraq War happen? How did the Supreme Court hand the Presidency to Dick Cheney and George Bush after they lost the 2000 election? A huge part of the reason is that this foolish nonsense is what passes for "journalism" in the leading lights of the American press.
Libby lied as part of the effort to out an undercover CIA agent gathering intelligence on Iranian WMD. All in an effort to cover up the manufacture of phony intelligence. Intelligence used to justify invading another country. An invasion which besides being an illegal "preventive war" is also pretty much the worst foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States.
But that's not nearly as important as Bill and Monica to the Washington Post. I'm beginning to think some of the more science-fiction type explanations for our "press corps" are more plausible than more conventional ones. Maybe "reporters" like Peter Baker are actually malfunctioning software programs. Or maybe exotic being from outer space have done a "body snatcher" number on replaced all the homo sapien reporters in Washington. Those explanations have a lot to recommend them!
Since I'm counting paragraphs, Baker's story first quotes Bush on accountability. The next direct quote is in paragraph five, and that's from "Republican lobbyist" Ed Rogers, who is the one who brings up Monica. In paragraph six, we learn:
If Libby lied about his role in the CIA leak case, critics eagerly used that to reinforce their argument that Bush led the nation to war on false pretenses, in effect attacking the centerpiece of his presidency. (my emphasis)I'm thinking the space-alien body-snatcher scenario is the more likely explanation.
Having assured us that the case is far less important than blowjobs and having explained that the critics of Libby are slavering partisans, in paragraph seven we get a vague quote from John Kerry, who is identified as "Bush' Democratic challenger in 2004".
That pretty much gives you the drift of the whole story. There's more bits of similar fun. Ex-Cheney staffer Mary Matalin is outraged that Scooter was prosecuted for committing felonies to refute "a demonstrable partisan liar", presumably meaning Joe Wilson. You know, the guy who didn't think a phony claim about yellowcake in Niger should be used to jusify invading another country. Baker cautions those wildly partisan Democrats against demanding too much "accountability" from the Cheney-Bush adminstration. In case you blipped over it the first time, we get another mention of Monica.
I wish that Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby would bite into the press fiasco over the Plame case. Ironically, he's in a bit of a dilemma in that regard himself. He got out there fairly early on arguing that the Plame case wasn't going to be that big of a deal and that Joe Wilson was one figure on which the dominant press spin for once tilted in favor of the Democrats, and used it as an example of how we needed to be critical-minded about sloppy reporting even when it seems to help the Dems for the moment.
Good point, bad example to try to make the case. In fact, the Plame case has turned out to be a very significant story. It has been one of our most important windows into the manufacture of phony intelligence in the run-up to war, to the ruthless and lawless tactics of the administration against domestic critics and to the continuing dysfunction of the press. Somerby just called that one poorly, I'm afraid.
Tags: libby trial, plame case, scooter libby
The Plame case and our "press corps"
I try to be an optimist. I try to recognize points in time when things are improving. But then I also think about one of my favorite sayings from the late Molly Ivins, "Remember, it's always possible that someday we'll look back on now as being the good old days."
The Plame case and the Scooter Libby trial and conviction should be a turning point for the corporate press. And not just because blogs like FireDogLake, Emptywheel, Needlenose and The Left Coaster had the best reporting on the case itself, to the point that the full-time journalists were regularly consulting FireDogLake's coverage to keep up with what was factually going on during the trial.
In our "market system" that our economists tell us is so remarkably efficient, the press barons should look at this and say, "This is the proverbial handwriting on the wall. Anyone with an Internet link or access to a public library can log on to two or three blogs and get better coverage of these events than they'll get in our newspaper. So we'd better clean up our act and make sure that we keep a competitive advantage so advertisers will keep placing copy with us. After all, we have full-time paid journalists with years of training and experience. We have to be able to deliver better reporting on a major trial with national and international implications than a few lawyers and news junkies doing blog work part-time."
You would think. But Adam Smith never met Judith Miller. So this may just be another landmark in the story of how the American press became sadly, badly, pitifully dysfunctional and then snoozed while Dick Cheney and George Bush ground up the Constitution.
In this case, the press not only failed to pursue the story aggressively. Instead, with major journalists like Tim Russert and the legend-in-his-own-time Bob Woodward kissing up to powerful officials for the precious "access" they needed to write their worshipful tributes to Dear Leader Bush and his mighty works, they actually became part of the cover-up. They developed an institutional stake in playing the story down.
The worries about the implications for journalism that our press magnates and kept reporters hide behind aren't entirely phony.
The federal prosecutor in this case had to go after journalists about their interviews with confidential sources. Christy Hardin Smith's indirect quote from prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in Fitzgerald Post-Trial Press Conference FireDogLake 03/06/07 gives his statement of the legal implications of that aspect of his investigation:
And for the administration official to commit the crime of exposing Plame in the way they intended to, they not only wanted the press to report it. They also wanted, as Christy wrote in her parenthetical comment, to hide behind the reporters' ethical obligation to protect confidential sources. After all, they could have leaked her name directly in a news conference. Or they could have given the name to a member of Congress or a political supporter to pass along. But those figures wouldn't have the ethical obligation or the potential legal immunity from testifying that a reporter would.
The real problem for reporters in a case like this is that there is no federal shield law defining reporters' legal protections to protect sources. And prosecutors will surely use the Plame investigation precedent to push the envelope on the information they can get.
I happen to think that Fitzgerald made the right call in the Plame case on forcing reporters to testify, for the reasons I just explained. They weren't facilitating a "whistle-blower", they were, as Fitzgerald somewhat delicately put it, witnesses to a potential crime. In a practical if not a legal sense, they could even be described as facilitators for a crime and a coverup in this case.
It's easy to think of hypotheticals where the precedent could be complicated. Suppose a government official has knowledge of illegal assassinations being committed by a undercover CIA officer and leaks that information along with the officer's undercover status to a reporter. If the CIA intended to cover up for the assassin, they could make the same kind of referral that the Agency did in the Plame case, to investigate who leaked the information on the undercover officer. How would a prosecutor or a court distinguish between the reporter's role in this case aiding a genuine "whistleblower" and the reporters' role in the Plame case where they were collaborating with a coverup for a crime? A prosecutor might be able to argue the situations were equivalent.
On the one hand, I worry about the precedent and I think a reasonable federal shield law is needed. On the other hand, I find it hard to have a lot of sympathy for the mournful grumping from the press about that aspect of the Plame case. Listen for the sound of sad violins as you read this example: Analysts say information now could be harder to get by Joe Garofoli San Francisco Chronicle 03/07/07.
Because the press got themselves into this situation by allowing their professional role to be corrupted to the extent that they have. (To say what should be obvious, "the press" in this case is a general term to refer to those who were actors in this particular drama.) For instance, if a source lies to a reporter, it's perfectly ethical for the reporter to "burn" (expose) the lying source. Judith Miller and Michael Gordon of the New York Times reported a string of false stories based on anonymous sources about Iraq's nonexistent WMD in the lead-up to the war. But when they were exposed as blatantly false, they didn't have the sense of responsibility to their readers and to the public to burn the sources who gave them false information that facilitated started an unnecessary war.
Bob Woodward of Watergate fame knew at least one other administration official who had leaked Plame's name; we got to see and hear a snippet of his conversation with Richard Armitage on tape in the course of the Libby trial. Yet Woodward never bothered to even tell the public that he had also received such a leak, even while he went on TV and tried to minimize the importance of the Plame case. He was more interested in protecting his precious "access" so he could crank out his court histories of the bold deeds of the Noble Warlord George Bush than in doing his job as a reporter.
In fact, one of the most serious problems that the Plame case has laid open for the public to see is that major press institutions and leading individuals like Woodward saw their interest as being in minimizing the amount of information about the Plame leak that came out. Part of it was a partially-legitimate concern about protecting anonymity of sources. But they also had a stake in not advertising the extreme clubiness of their relationships with people like Libby and Karl Rove and how that was affecting their ability to act as professional journalists. And once they started trying to minimize the signficance of the case as Woodward did, then that also became a reason to keep doing so.
Otherwise they would be faced with having to report on and criticize the conduct of the press itself in this series of events. And, as Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby regularly reminds us, good boys and girls among reporters know that they must never criticize the conduct of their own "cohort", as Somerby calls them.
Tags: libby trial, plame case, scooter libby
The Plame case and the Scooter Libby trial and conviction should be a turning point for the corporate press. And not just because blogs like FireDogLake, Emptywheel, Needlenose and The Left Coaster had the best reporting on the case itself, to the point that the full-time journalists were regularly consulting FireDogLake's coverage to keep up with what was factually going on during the trial.
In our "market system" that our economists tell us is so remarkably efficient, the press barons should look at this and say, "This is the proverbial handwriting on the wall. Anyone with an Internet link or access to a public library can log on to two or three blogs and get better coverage of these events than they'll get in our newspaper. So we'd better clean up our act and make sure that we keep a competitive advantage so advertisers will keep placing copy with us. After all, we have full-time paid journalists with years of training and experience. We have to be able to deliver better reporting on a major trial with national and international implications than a few lawyers and news junkies doing blog work part-time."
You would think. But Adam Smith never met Judith Miller. So this may just be another landmark in the story of how the American press became sadly, badly, pitifully dysfunctional and then snoozed while Dick Cheney and George Bush ground up the Constitution.
In this case, the press not only failed to pursue the story aggressively. Instead, with major journalists like Tim Russert and the legend-in-his-own-time Bob Woodward kissing up to powerful officials for the precious "access" they needed to write their worshipful tributes to Dear Leader Bush and his mighty works, they actually became part of the cover-up. They developed an institutional stake in playing the story down.
The worries about the implications for journalism that our press magnates and kept reporters hide behind aren't entirely phony.
The federal prosecutor in this case had to go after journalists about their interviews with confidential sources. Christy Hardin Smith's indirect quote from prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in Fitzgerald Post-Trial Press Conference FireDogLake 03/06/07 gives his statement of the legal implications of that aspect of his investigation:
Do you believe this investigation changes the relationship with reporters? What Libby was doing was not whistleblowing — the reporters were a witness to a potential crime. There is a difference. By placing the information in this case behind reporters, there was no other way to proceed in this case but to talk with the reporters in question. (CHS notes: They cannot be used as shields for guilt or innocence of conduct, in other words.)On a moral or theoretical basis, Fitzgerald's distinction is pretty clear. There's a qualitative difference between a leak meant to expose misconduct or criminal activity on the part of a public official, and a leak that is meant to use the reporters as the conduit for committing the crime. In this case, neither Valerie Plame or Joe Wilson had committed any legal or ethical offense. But Scooter and the others involved wanted to commit a crime to retaliate against Wilson for the political sin of showing disloyalty to Dear Leader Bush by pointing out a misleading claim on Bush's part. (Bush's deception could have been a crime in itself though that wasn't the point of Wilson's dissent.)
And for the administration official to commit the crime of exposing Plame in the way they intended to, they not only wanted the press to report it. They also wanted, as Christy wrote in her parenthetical comment, to hide behind the reporters' ethical obligation to protect confidential sources. After all, they could have leaked her name directly in a news conference. Or they could have given the name to a member of Congress or a political supporter to pass along. But those figures wouldn't have the ethical obligation or the potential legal immunity from testifying that a reporter would.
The real problem for reporters in a case like this is that there is no federal shield law defining reporters' legal protections to protect sources. And prosecutors will surely use the Plame investigation precedent to push the envelope on the information they can get.
I happen to think that Fitzgerald made the right call in the Plame case on forcing reporters to testify, for the reasons I just explained. They weren't facilitating a "whistle-blower", they were, as Fitzgerald somewhat delicately put it, witnesses to a potential crime. In a practical if not a legal sense, they could even be described as facilitators for a crime and a coverup in this case.
It's easy to think of hypotheticals where the precedent could be complicated. Suppose a government official has knowledge of illegal assassinations being committed by a undercover CIA officer and leaks that information along with the officer's undercover status to a reporter. If the CIA intended to cover up for the assassin, they could make the same kind of referral that the Agency did in the Plame case, to investigate who leaked the information on the undercover officer. How would a prosecutor or a court distinguish between the reporter's role in this case aiding a genuine "whistleblower" and the reporters' role in the Plame case where they were collaborating with a coverup for a crime? A prosecutor might be able to argue the situations were equivalent.
On the one hand, I worry about the precedent and I think a reasonable federal shield law is needed. On the other hand, I find it hard to have a lot of sympathy for the mournful grumping from the press about that aspect of the Plame case. Listen for the sound of sad violins as you read this example: Analysts say information now could be harder to get by Joe Garofoli San Francisco Chronicle 03/07/07.
Because the press got themselves into this situation by allowing their professional role to be corrupted to the extent that they have. (To say what should be obvious, "the press" in this case is a general term to refer to those who were actors in this particular drama.) For instance, if a source lies to a reporter, it's perfectly ethical for the reporter to "burn" (expose) the lying source. Judith Miller and Michael Gordon of the New York Times reported a string of false stories based on anonymous sources about Iraq's nonexistent WMD in the lead-up to the war. But when they were exposed as blatantly false, they didn't have the sense of responsibility to their readers and to the public to burn the sources who gave them false information that facilitated started an unnecessary war.
Bob Woodward of Watergate fame knew at least one other administration official who had leaked Plame's name; we got to see and hear a snippet of his conversation with Richard Armitage on tape in the course of the Libby trial. Yet Woodward never bothered to even tell the public that he had also received such a leak, even while he went on TV and tried to minimize the importance of the Plame case. He was more interested in protecting his precious "access" so he could crank out his court histories of the bold deeds of the Noble Warlord George Bush than in doing his job as a reporter.
In fact, one of the most serious problems that the Plame case has laid open for the public to see is that major press institutions and leading individuals like Woodward saw their interest as being in minimizing the amount of information about the Plame leak that came out. Part of it was a partially-legitimate concern about protecting anonymity of sources. But they also had a stake in not advertising the extreme clubiness of their relationships with people like Libby and Karl Rove and how that was affecting their ability to act as professional journalists. And once they started trying to minimize the signficance of the case as Woodward did, then that also became a reason to keep doing so.
Otherwise they would be faced with having to report on and criticize the conduct of the press itself in this series of events. And, as Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby regularly reminds us, good boys and girls among reporters know that they must never criticize the conduct of their own "cohort", as Somerby calls them.
Tags: libby trial, plame case, scooter libby
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Figuring out what the Scooter verdict (guilty, guilty, guily!) means
This article gives a decent report on the trial and even manages to summarize its significance pretty well: Guilty verdict reached in Libby case by Richard Schmitt Los Angeles Times 03/06/07:
Today’s guilty verdicts are not solely about the acts of one individual.
This trial provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed – at the highest levels of the Bush Administration – a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq.
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said after the trial that his office would not be pursuing the investigation further. But Christy Hardin Smith's reporting in Fitzgerald Post-Trial Press Conference FireDogLake.com 03/06/07 puts it in a different light than that isolated statement would give the impression. I'm assuming since she didn't use quotation marks that these were her notes of the questions and Fitzgerald's responses:
And he gives us a summary of how serious some of those potential charges are:
Okay, my poli-sci geek side is coming out here. But I was curious about that Hobbesian reference. This sketch of Cheney does mention that he knows who Hobbes was: The Cheney Factor by Kenneth T. Walsh US News and World Report 01/15/06. And this Maureen Dowd column (consider the source!) that is behind subsription apparently refers to friends of Cheney's saying he has a Hobbesian view of the world: Their Master's Voice New York Times 11/13/03.
According to this adoring Newsweek article Cheney’s Long Path to War from the 11/17/03 issue by Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas:
Tags: libby trial, plame case, scooter libby
The trial, the first of a senior White House official in more than a decade, attracted considerable attention. Its backdrop - the decision to go to war in Iraq - is one of the defining issues of the Bush presidency. And the case highlighted the cozy interactions between high-ranking officials and big-name journalists, who paraded into court to expose the sometimes sloppy way that information is traded in the nation's capital.
Schmitt's article also discusses some of the potential implications for the press.
Media Matters has provided us a helpful set of guidelines on what to look for as Republicans try to contain the fallout from the Scooter convictions in Libby's guilty verdict: Media myths and falsehoods to watch for 03/06/07 . They list ten of them, each with accompanying explanations. I'm including only the bullet-points here of arguments we may be hearing from the Reps:
* No underlying crime was committed.The Democratic Party doesn't have the kind of broad, lockstep message discipline that the Reps have. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put out this brief statement soon after the verdict: Nancy Pelosi's statement: Libby Guilty Verdicts Not Solely About Acts of One Individual 03/06/07
* There was no concerted White House effort to smear Wilson.
* Libby was not responsible for the leak of Plame's identity.
* Libby merely "left out some facts."
* Libby's leak was an effort to set the record straight.
* There is no evidence that the Plame leak compromised national security.
* Fitzgerald is a partisan prosecutor.
* Fitzgerald exceeded his mandate in investigating violations beyond the IIPA [Intelligence Identities Protection Act].
* Plame's employment with the CIA was widely known.
Today’s guilty verdicts are not solely about the acts of one individual.
This trial provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed – at the highest levels of the Bush Administration – a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq.
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said after the trial that his office would not be pursuing the investigation further. But Christy Hardin Smith's reporting in Fitzgerald Post-Trial Press Conference FireDogLake.com 03/06/07 puts it in a different light than that isolated statement would give the impression. I'm assuming since she didn't use quotation marks that these were her notes of the questions and Fitzgerald's responses:
If the Vice President were passing on a reported rumor, and not an official channel, thatwould be different in terms of decisionmaking for the prosecutor? We tried to ascertain how this was done.Glenn Greenwald has already done an article for Salon on the Scooter verdict: Lewis "Scooter" Libby is a felon 03/06/07. He emphasizes that Scooter has been a major player in the neoconservative movement even before he became Dark Lord Cheney's chief of staff in the OVP (Office of the Vice President). Although I can't quite share his enthusiasm at the very end for what this shows about the health of our Constitutional system in general, he has a good point when he says this sends what should be a scary message to Cheney and Bush and their inner circle: "If Libby can be convicted of multiple felonies, then any Bush official who has committed crimes can be as well."
If Congress does something on this, we will do what is appropriate.
Do you believe this investigation changes the relationship with reporters? What Libby was doing was not whistleblowing - the reporters were a witness to a potential crime. There is a difference. By placing the information in this case behind reporters, there was no other way to proceed in this case but to talk with the reporters in question. (CHS notes: They cannot be used as shields for guilt or innocence of conduct, in other words.)
Trial evidence? The judge made a ruling that the case would not be tried based on Valerie Plame Wilson's status. her relationship with the CIA was classified - I have 100% confidence in this information.
If reporters were eyewitnesses to a potential crime — we could not have gotten to the bottom of this without some discussion with those reporters.
And he gives us a summary of how serious some of those potential charges are:
It is worth noting, perhaps most important, that there is a whole array of other pending judicial matters that, either directly or implicitly, entail accusations against high Bush officials, including the president himself, of engaging in serious criminal behavior. Last August, a federal district judge, Anna Diggs Taylor, ruled that President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program violated not only the Constitution but also FISA, a criminal statute making it a federal felony to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial warrants and imposing punishments of five years' imprisonment for each offense and fines up to $10,000.Howard Fineman gives us his take at Newsweek Online in The Libby Verdict's Long Shadow 03/06/07:
Also last fall, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Hamdan case rejected the Bush administration's principal defense for its violations of the Geneva Conventions not only with regard to military commissions, but also generally. By holding that Common Article 3 of the Conventions applies to all detainees, and by emphasizing that a failure to treat detainees in compliance with Common Article 3 constitutes "war crimes," the Supreme Court effectively found that Bush officials have authorized and engaged in what clearly could be construed to be felony violations of the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. sec. 2241), which makes it a federal crime to violate war treaties such as the Geneva Conventions. Though the administration succeeded in inducing the Republican-led Congress to enact the Military Commissions Act as a shield against retroactive criminal liability, the constitutionality of that law, and the efficacy of the criminal shield provisions, are far from certain. (my emphasis in bold)
The stunning, vehement verdict in the Scooter Libby trial — that he lied, repeatedly, big time — isn’t really about Scooter Libby at all. It is about how and why we went to war in Iraq, and about how Vice President Dick Cheney got us there. Loyalty is everything to President George W. Bush, and I don’t expect him to march into Cheney’s office to demand a resignation. But the veep is a liabiity as never before, and even Bush has to know that.For Howard Fineman, that's pretty good. But I hear an undertone of GOP talking points in his comment that the verdict "isn’t really about Scooter Libby at all". You know, except for the four felony acts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI on which he was convicted. He concludes his piece with:
But the biggest burden will fall on Cheney himself. His own Hobbesian view of the world — that life is nasty, brutish and short — is becoming all too personal. He had to be relieved that Prosecutor Fitzgerald described his investigation as "inactive." That would seem to mean that Cheney is in no legal jeopardy.Okay, his description of the risk to Cheney is accurate as far as it goes. But does Cheney really have a "Hobbesian view of the world"? Maybe he does. But Cheney's life hasn't exactly been "nasty, brutish and short". His war in Iraq has made life that way for many, many others. But that hardly describes Mr. Halliburton's biography.
Unless Libby, facing serious jail time (and he might well be, given the breadth of the verdict), decides to change his story and tell us something about Cheney we don’t know—and that the president of the United States won’t want to hear.
Okay, my poli-sci geek side is coming out here. But I was curious about that Hobbesian reference. This sketch of Cheney does mention that he knows who Hobbes was: The Cheney Factor by Kenneth T. Walsh US News and World Report 01/15/06. And this Maureen Dowd column (consider the source!) that is behind subsription apparently refers to friends of Cheney's saying he has a Hobbesian view of the world: Their Master's Voice New York Times 11/13/03.
According to this adoring Newsweek article Cheney’s Long Path to War from the 11/17/03 issue by Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas:
Cheney, say those who know him, has always had a Hobbesian view of life. The world is a dangerous place; war is the natural state of mankind; enemies lurk. The national-security state must be strong, vigilant and wary. Cheney believes that America’s military and intelligence establishments were weakened by defeat in Vietnam and the wave of scandals that followed in Watergate in the ’70s and Iran-contra in the ’80s. He did not regard as progress the rise of congressional investigating committees, special prosecutors and an increasingly adversarial, aggressive press. Cheney is a strong believer in the necessity of government secrecy as well as more broadly the need to preserve and protect the power of the executive branch.So it's looking like his staff or some Party PR people decided "Hobbesian" had a warlord-ish ring to it and tossed it out there.
Tags: libby trial, plame case, scooter libby
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