Yeah, me neither.

But as an old diehard Plame-blogger, I couldn’t resist giving it the sneak-into-the-bookstore-and-peek treatment to see what Big Dick had to say about the CIA leak investigation that convicted his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, on multiple counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.

The answer, unsurprisingly, is not much.  Like his former boss, ex-President Bush, did in his own book last winter, Cheney recites the familiar revisionist dogma used by other Bush administration loyalists regarding the Valerie Plame leak scandal — namely, that the only leak involved was by the first guy (i.e., Richard Armitage) to tell Robert Novak about Joseph Wilson’s wife working for the CIA.

This breezy condensation enables Cheney to go on a lengthy rant about runaway special prosecutors, comparing Patrick Fitzgerald to Lawrence Walsh, who headed the Iran-Contra probe of the late 1980s.  (I suppose I could have checked the index to see if the former Veep mentioned Kenneth Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton… but then again, irony meters are expensive to replace, and I didn’t want to risk having mine explode.)

As part of his effort to exonerate Libby, Cheney blasts Armitage — and, by a gratuitous stretch, Armitage’s boss at the State Department, Colin Powell — for having “remained silent” as Fitzgerald indicted Libby, despite acknowledging only a few sentences earlier that Armitage had admitted his conversation with Novak to the FBI nearly three months before Fitzgerald was even appointed.  (Apparently, His Dickness is upset that Armitage did not confess publicly for the benefit of White House PR efforts to deflect blame from itself.)

To better understand Cheney’s animus toward Powell, though, it might only be necessary to ask a question that both Cheney and Bush avoid:  If he couldn’t be blamed for the Novak leak, why did Libby lie to the FBI and the grand jury?

The answer lies in the fact that the Novak column outing Plame wasn’t the only leak the Department of Justice investigated.  And the main reason it wasn’t is that someone went to the Washington Post just after word broke about the impending FBI probe and said, “Hey, I know that two top White House officials called at least six Washington, D.C. journalists and leaked about Plame before Novak’s column came out.” (Plameologists call this the “1x2x6 story,” which apparently is how Fitzgerald & Co. referred to it.)

Whatever the truth behind this claim of a widespread “outing” of Plame was, it must have been awfully explosive — because a primary motive behind Libby’s lies was to take the (partial) rap for the 1x2x6 phone calls.   You see, instead of denying telling reporters about Plame, Libby took credit for more leaking than he actually did, or that anyone knew about — including one leak to the Post‘s Glenn Kessler that never even happened!  (A marked-up copy of a Washington Poststory on 1x2x6, with one of the underlined passages saying that an unnamed Post reporter was leaked to on July 12, was found in Libby’s files, printed the day he was first interviewed by the FBI.)

During Libby’s trial, hints about the true origin of the 1x2x6 story dribbled out, although they were generally ignored amid the courtroom melodrama.  The Post‘s Walter Pincus confirmed that Ari Fleischer was the Bush official who leaked to him on July 12 — and Fleischer, though he implausibly denied mentioning Plame, acknowledged that their conversation took place during a series of calls that he and Dan Bartlett were making to “every reporter that we can talk to” on Air Force One as it flew back from a presidential visit to Africa.  If Fleischer brought up Plame to Pincus, unsolicited, isn’t it likely that the well-trained spinners Fleischer and Bartlett mentioned her in the other calls as well?

Moreover, in the confined space of Air Force One, Fleischer and Bartlett could easily have been overheard by other Bush administration officials on the Africa trip… one of whom was Colin Powell.  The same Powell who admittedly spoke to the FBI as soon as the Plame investigation began, did not support the Cheney-Rove-Libby anti-Wilson agenda, and who certainly has the enormous personal self-assurance/arrogance to make the moral denunciations about the leaks contained in the 1x2x6 articles:

Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge…

… [the leaks were] wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson’s credibility.

For good measure, Powell appears to have been behind, or at least endorsed, a series of small leaks to various news outlets in July 2005 about a State Department memo naming Valerie Wilson, detailing its classified nature and its path to being circulated on Air Force One during the Africa trip – citing Powell’s testimony among other sources.  Leaks that pointed the finger at whoever on Air Force One might have made phone calls outing Valerie Plame Wilson… not to mention whoever in Washington, D.C. ordered them to make those calls.

Kind of puts some flesh on the otherwise-unspecific charge in Cheney’s memoir that Powell criticized the Bush administration “to people outside government,” doesn’t it?  And you can see why Dick might have just a little bit of a grudge against ol’ Colin.

(photo: Wikipedia)

A couple of days ago, I managed to stumble across Judith Miller’s review of Fair Game, the movie based on the Plame leak scandal (via Valerie Plame Wilson and Joseph Wilson’s books on the subject).

Given the source — and especially that she wrote the review for the Wall Street Journal editorial page — I figured the review would be a masterpiece of unintentional comedy, and I wasn’t disappointed:

There is no character based on me in the film—and that turns out to be a good thing. Although the movie is brilliantly acted, it is also a gross distortion of a complicated political saga.

I saw Fair Game last weekend, and although Miller is technically correct that there is no character with her name, her claim is a bit modest since she is a presence, nonetheless.  Much of the movie’s first half, you see focuses on Plame and her CIA colleagues unsuccessfully trying to battle the bogus White House claim that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes for use in creating weapons-grade uranium in nuclear bombs (in fact, they were for launching conventional artillery), as a parallel to Plame’s husband chasing the equally fictitious argument that Iraq had tried to purchase enriched uranium from Niger.

When after months of bureaucratic infighting, the aluminum tubes story winds up on the front page of the New York Times (in a story that Miller infamously co-wrote) — and the Bush administration promptly heralds it on the Sunday talk shows — the movie’s version of Joseph Wilson notes the laundered talking points and sneers, “It’s a coordinated leak!” Do you suppose Judy might have felt a bit angered at having her willing sock-puppetry described so bluntly?

With the same deft-but-unacknowledged irony, Miller’s review goes on to attack Fair Game‘s accuracy as an account of the Plame leak… by criticizing a separate subplot, about the prewar recruiting of former Iraqi nuclear scientists.  Since the filmmakers have openly admitted having to partially invent a plotline in this regard, as the CIA forbade Plame from revealing in her memoir what her actual duties were, Miller’s straw-man assault is an unspoken prank on her readers.

The film’s director, Douglas Liman, gets in some sharp ripostes of his own in a response to the WSJ column at the Columbia Journalism Review, but misses my favorite part — the conclusion where Miller sneers, “Having bought an expensive home in Sante Fe, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame now make a living giving speeches about WMD and the Bush administration’s venality.”

I’m not catty enough to speculate on the price of the house Judith Miller lives in, but I know for sure that it’s not made of glass.  Having once supposedly cared about WMD herself, you see, Miller’s bio at the bottom of the review informs us that she is now an “adjunct fellow at the [right-wing] Manhattan Institute and a commentator for Fox News.” Which is why she’s trotted out by the Journal‘s editorial page to perform partisan tasks like taking an ax to Fair Game.

Quite a fall from the perch you once occupied, eh, Judith?  But then again, having been Scooter Libby’s accomplice in selling the invasion of Iraq to the U.S. public, and then again (as Liman notes) in trying to shield Libby from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation, it’s no surprise to see her doing rear-guard duty against one more attempt to hold Libby to account.  Some things never change.

Today’s New York Times updates an unlikely story of personal survival and perseverance:

Valerie Plame Wilson, America’s best-known ex-spy, was looking chic in black bustier and flowing white pants, posing for paparazzi on the red carpet earlier this month at a film festival in Deauville, France.

A few days later, she was standing in her Santa Fe dining room, sans makeup, in sneakers and sweatshirt, fighting off jet lag as she presided over some run-of-the-mill domestic chaos. She had children — 10-year-old twins Samantha and Trevor — to hustle to school and a frisky dog to walk. Her husband, Joe, a former ambassador, had just returned from a business trip to Baghdad and was on the phone, squabbling with the airline over lost luggage. . . .

Even for a former undercover CIA officer used to leading a double life, Plame must be surprised to find herself in this situation.  But she knows what she’s doing:

The woman who spent decades guarding her privacy has found a new voice through a very public enterprise, the movie business, which is why she was in Deauville. “Fair Game,” a film based largely on her 2007 autobiography of the same name (starring Naomi Watts as Valerie and Sean Penn as Joe), is set to open this fall.

. . . Ms. Wilson is smart enough to know that Hollywood has a bigger megaphone than Washington does, and she is making adroit use of it to reclaim her own narrative and burnish her credentials. . . .

That’s what it comes down to.  Even though the Wilsons no longer live in Washington and have started rebuilding their respective careers, they’re not in a rush to surrender in the battle that was forced on them by Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and company.

And so Plame willingly travels to promote the new movie, as she did with the anti-nuclear documentary released earlier this year that she appeared in — and as she and Joseph Wilson continue to make smaller personal appearances to tell their story.  (The Times story describes one before a group of senior citizens at a church, where the first question asked after their presentation was, “Why aren’t Dick Cheney and George Bush in jail?”)

There’s something to be said for that kind of persistence.

photo: codepinkhq via Flickr

Okay, this is one for the ages.

Karl Rove is out today with what is presumably an excerpt from his book, revealing his biggest mistake. He doesn’t verbalize what that mistake is, really. Rather, he bitches about a list of Democrats.

But the initial complaint appears to be that on July 15, 2003, Ted Kennedy accused George Bush of lying to get us into the Iraq war.

Seven years ago today, in a speech on the Iraq war, Sen. Ted Kennedy fired the first shot in an all-out assault on President George W. Bush’s integrity. “All the evidence points to the conclusion,” Kennedy said, that the Bush administration “put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth.” Later that day Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle told reporters Mr. Bush needed “to be forthcoming” about the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Thus began a shameful episode in our political life whose poisonous fruits are still with us.

[snip]

At the time, we in the Bush White House discussed responding but decided not to relitigate the past. That was wrong and my mistake: I should have insisted to the president that this was a dagger aimed at his administration’s heart. What Democrats started seven years ago left us less united as a nation to confront foreign challenges and overcome America’s enemies.

July 15, 2003 was, of course, the day after Bob Novak–acting on a leak involving Richard Armitage, Scooter Libby, and Karl Rove himself–outed Valerie Plame. Before Ted Kennedy said the first mean thing about Bush, Rove had already leaked to at least Novak and Matt Cooper, and OVP was leaking even more wildly (and it should be said, leaking classified information to the WSJ, where Rove’s piece appears, to make their case).

But now Karl Rove says “the Bush White House discussed responding but decided not to relitigate the past”?!?!?

Aside from the fact that Rove’s op-ed operates on the erroneous foundation that the Administration shared all the intelligence they juiced up with Congress (they didn’t), the entire op-ed is based on an absolutely delusional sense of timing.

And a convenient silence about what the White House had already done, in concert, before Ted Kennedy correctly accused the President of lying us into war.

photo: Mzelle Biscotte via Flickr

Turns out they’re still lost.

When we last heard from Libby’s lost emails, CREW and National Security Archive had reached a settlement with the White House to restore 33 days worth of email and examine 21 days of low volume email to see whether prior restorations had really worked (among other things).

I’m still reading through the documents to figure out what has happened since (aside from Libby’s emails still being lost–but then, that’s not news). The eye-popping takeaway is that, for the 21 days of emails supposedly restored, 83% of the emails weren’t restored:

As documented [in a report from Microsoft included in CREW's available documents] the comparison of the two data sets–one containing emails previously identified as the archival email records of the Bush administration for the 21 days in question and one containing emails extracted from backup tapes for those 21 days–revealed a huge discrepancy between the two. Specifically, 190,819 email messages on the backup tapes were not found in the archival set of email messages. Conversely, 31,819 emails contained in the archival set were not found on the backup tapes for those same days. In other words, 83% of the universe of known emails for those days were not archived and would not be available today but for actions of CREW and the Archive and the resulting restoration project.

Now, the discrepancy, to me, is even more interesting than the sheer numbers involved. It suggests that two totally different sets of emails were captured in the multiple archiving processes. Which suggests a great deal of emails may have been tampered with between the time they were written and archived. (Though I await the tech wonks to explain this in more depth).

And then there’s this bit.

[On May 10, 2006], the estimated cost for one of [the options for restoring White House email]–restoring all dates of low volume email for EOP components–was $2,414.221 [sic]. The Bush White House did not pursue this option, and instead hired multiple contractors to perform various costly analyses aimed at winnowing down the number of days that arguable could be considered as statistically low volume.

In other words, rather than spend what now looks like a pittance (less than $2.5 million) to restore everything, the Bush White House instead spent even more money paying consultants to argue that not all these days needed to be restored. And that decision was taken, of course, at a time when Libby’s case was in discovery and any indictment of Rove had just been declined. And, presumably, Patrick Fitzgerald still may have had lingering suspicions that Libby and Judy (if not Novak) were emailing back and forth about outing Plame.

But really, none of this is suspicious at all.

Meanwhile, CREW just recently started this whole process over again to get John Yoo’s missing torture emails.

Does no one else see the pattern here?

“Fair Game,” the film about former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson and the Bush administration’s leaks about her identity, is set to premiere May 20 at the Cannes Film Festival.

Naomi Watts and Sean Penn play Plame Wilson and her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson. Doug Liman, the producer behind the Bourne franchise, directed “Fair Game.”

Based on Plame’s 2007 memoirs “Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House,” “Fair Game” is the only U.S. film in the running for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize.

The film’s trailer hasn’t made it online, but the clip below was posted to the festival’s web site.

The clip (posted above), though, raises questions about just how faithful the adaptation was.  As summarized by Greg Mitchell for the Nation:

It finds the couple–Naomi Watts and Sean Penn–in a playground with their kids running about, as Penn angrily confronts his wife over what he has just learned: that she may have written something that got him “sent” to Africa on that famous uranium fact-seeking mission related to Iraq WMD.

In the scene, she denies that she did that as he claims that if this gets out his career is ruined, and asks her to speak out. She suggests that maybe he did not think of his family first when he wrote that New York Times op-ed that drew so much attention…

Curiously, I don’t remember any of those moments being recounted in either Valerie or Joseph Wilson’s memoirs (on page 139 of her book, Valerie writes, “at no time did Joe or I ever consider that my cover and work at the CIA  would be compromised by the submission of the op-ed“) — but they do happen to be exactly in line with common, if false, Republican talking points during the controversy:

1. Valerie Plame Wilson sent her husband on the trip to Niger.
2. His wife’s role is an embarrassing fact that undermines Joseph Wilson’s credibility.
3. Joseph Wilson more or less invited the outing of his wife by publicly criticizing the Bush administration.

As many people, including Joseph Wilson, noted repeatedly during the past few years, these assumptions are absolute nonsense.  Why on earth would Valerie Plame Wilson think it would help her husband’s business to send him on an unpaid trip (except for reimbursing his expenses) to beautiful, scenic the bleak desert of Niger?  And how was Joe Wilson’s consulting business somehow dependent on a trip that he didn’t talk about until it was revealed in news reports a year and a half later?

Similiarly, as Plame herself notes in passing in her book (see the quote above), the idea that a career CIA officer working on vital nuclear-security issues would be exposed by her own government for the meager purpose of political retaliation was utterly unthinkable to most people… except, unfortunately, the cutthroat, politics-is-everything sociopaths who populated the highest levels of the Bush-Cheney White House (and their unquestioning acolytes).

Or, I guess, the amoral denizens of Hollywood studios, who are more interested in emotionally-driven conflict than accuracy.  As Fair Game‘s director, Doug Liman (known previously for The Bourne Identity), said in an interview, the focus of the Plame movie was “story and character, and not… politics.” And I can see why people in “the industry”  might prefer a story about a CIA spy who secretly tries to help her husband’s career, but is inadvertently exposed by his media self-promotion, to the less combative, politically correct truth.

Besides, Valerie Plame Wilson herself is going to Cannes to promote the film, so I guess she and her husband have made their peace with whatever factual detours Liman & Co. may have taken in adapting their autobiographical accounts.  But maybe the need to accept personally insulting, false narratives just for the sake of getting their story told in some form is the depressing moral here… the Republicans make up a bogus version of events out of thin air, and it winds up being perpetuated because it serves the interests of certain moneyed factions (like Hollywood film backers) more than the actual truth does.

And everyone else has no choice but to accept it, and make the best of things.  And so it goes.

The story of how I became a national figure in the media is widely known, but few people know what I actually did for the CIA.

I was a covert operations officer specializing in nuclear counter proliferation — essentially, making sure the bad guys didn’t get the bomb. . . .

I resigned from the CIA in 2006 because it was no longer possible to do the covert work for which I was highly trained and which I loved. . . . But I did not lose my belief that the danger of nuclear terrorism was the most urgent threat we face. Nor did I lose my passion for working, albeit in a new way, to address that threat. I am working on this issue now as part of the international Global Zero movement, in which political, military and faith leaders, experts and activists strive for the worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.

As Wilson explains, the recent arms reduction initiative between the U.S. and Russia (which David Dayen has been covering here in recent days) is an important step toward preventing nuclear terror: “The only way to eliminate the danger that nuclear weapons will be used by countries in conflict, by accident or by terrorists is to lock down all nuclear materials and eliminate all nuclear weapons in all countries.”

In addition to her work with the Global Zero movement and for a nonprofit think tank in New Mexico, Wilson appears in “Countdown to Zero,” a film that will be released in theaters in July after premiering (to positive reviews) in January at the Sundance Film Festival.

Somewhere, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Karl Rove are probably gnashing their teeth that Valerie Wilson is continuing to work against their dream of a more militarized and antagonistic world.

There are three general categories of information about which Cheney hangs Libby out to dry.

These are:

Oppo research conducted during week of June 9, 2003

While not asked directly, Cheney pretended to know nothing about Libby being tasked to collect information on the Wilsons starting the week June 9, 2003. Cheney claimed not to remember the document dump he received on June 9, 2003, compiled by John Hannah. (7) He went on to claim that he might not have seen Wilson’s trip report until after Wilson’s op-ed. (9) But not only did he receive a briefing on this material, but he was trying to get that information released even before the op-ed came out.

Cheney further claimed “he is unaware of anyone in the administration conducting any research or completing a research project on either Joe Wilson or his wife. He advised that he never directed anyone on his staff to conduct such a project and no one advised him they were working on one.” (13) Of course, Libby kept a Wilson folder during the leak period and into the investigative period. Cheney, I guess, claims he knew nothing about that.

This allows Cheney to disconnect his own research at CIA (and elsewhere, probably) into Wilson’s trip from Libby’s activities. While Cheney admitted to having learned of Plame from Tenet (note, I have reasons to doubt this was his only source), he denied discussing Plame with Libby. (13) Yet, Libby reminded Cheney–in October 2003–that there was a note reflecting Cheney informing Libby of Plame’s identity, so not only should Cheney have remembered the event itself, but he should have remembered the reminder.

And Cheney downplayed his involvement in responding to Walter Pincus’ questions about Wilson the week of June 9. “[A]ny press inquiries about the trip that may have been made by Walter Pincus in preparation for his June 2003 article … would have gone to either Libby or Cathie Martin.” (4) However, Cheney and Libby and Martin met on June 11, 2003 at 1:05PM about Pincus’ requests, and from that meeting called Robert Grenier, ostensibly for a first explanation about how the trip had been generated (though at that point both Libby and Cheney almost surely knew of Plame’s identity). Cheney went on to claim he could not remember discussing Plame with Cathie Martin, nor remember Martin telling him that she had learned of Plame’s identity. (11)

Now, frankly, Libby himself never admitted how goal-oriented his actions were during this week. He downplayed the importance of a note, from first thing that Monday morning and just hours after Condi got beat up on ABC News, reflecting learning of Bush’s concern about Wilson’s allegations. Libby himself claimed to have forgotten being told three times that week of Plame’s identity. And Libby also didn’t explain that he and Cheney–at a time when they almost certainly knew of Plame’s identity–called CIA to re-learn it for Cathie Martin’s benefit. So to some extent, Cheney’s denials may help Libby here. And Cheney may be feigning ignorance to protect his sources of Plame’s identity–who are likely not limited (as Cheney claims) to George Tenet. And, if Bush did order Libby to take the lead on this, then Cheney’s forgetfulness may protect Bush here.

Libby’s interactions with journalists, especially during Leak Week

Then there are Cheney’s denials of any knowledge of events from Leak Week–including events that he ordered himself.

Cheney denied making inquiries about Wilson’s contractual relationship with the CIA (a subject that may pertain to a 1999 AQ Khan trip Wilson took), though he did say “someone else might have made such an inquiry.” (13-14). Of course, Libby did make such an inquiry–at a minimum, of David Addington. But he did so on the instructions of Dick Cheney.

Cheney claimed he wasn’t closely involved in Libby’s response to journalists during leak week and before. “He stated that Libby was not required to clear every public statement and press contact because the Vice President had confidence in Libby’s abilities and experience in handling such inquiries. …. He had no specific recollection of any reporters being talked to by Scooter Libby prior to July 14.” (14) Of course, Libby’s notes show Cheney was directing much of this coverage directly, most notably with the Judy Miller meeting and on July 12.

Cheney then claimed he “was not aware of any attempts by Libby to complain to Tim Russert about Chris Matthews’ coverage” (14; the redactions hide references to Matthews and Russert). But Libby had told Cheney of this conversation in October 2003, if not contemporaneously, and Matalin had advised Libby to go to Russert.

Cheney claims to have no memory of directing Libby’s contacts with journalists on July 12, though in this context and in contradiction with earlier statements, he suddenly admitted to sometimes consulting with Libby on such subjects. “Though he cannot recall any specific conversation, he would not be surprised to learn that he had such a discussion with his Chief of Staff. The Vice President advised that he sees Libby several times each day and the two have previously discussed communication strategies for responding to questions from particular journalists.” (18) Just after Cheney claimed not to have directed Libby’s actions, Fitzgerald asked him to read from Libby’s very detailed notes of Cheney’s dictated talking points. Oops.

Even after receiving that document, Cheney blamed Libby for the on the record and deep background instructions in the notes he dictated Libby to use with journalists. “Mr. Libby alone would be the judge of whether or not information was to be presented to any reporters with that caveat [deep background]. … Any decisions about whether Libby, when talking to the media, provides information ‘on the record’ or ‘on background’ are made by Libby himself.” (19-20) Yet, at least according to Libby, Cheney was the one directing what should be on the record and what should be deep background.

Most egregious of these “lapses” in memory, though, is Cheney’s claim to know nothing about Judy Miller. “The Vice President does not recall any member of his staff, including Scooter Libby, meeting with New York Times reporter Judith Miller during the week of 7/7/03, just after publication of Joe Wilson’s editorial in the New York Times.” Libby has the note reflecting Cheney’s order that Libby leak information to Judy at this meeting. And Libby explained that note away (only somewhat plausibly) by saying Cheney instructed him to leak the NIE. Cheney says, though, he “cannot specifically recall having a conversation with Scooter Libby during which Libby advised the Vice President that he wanted to share the key judgments of the NIE with Judith Miller. Although the Vice President cannot recall having such a conversation, if one did occur, he would have advised Libby only to use something if it was declassified.” Cheney went on, “When asked if ever had a conversation with Scooter Libby wherein Libby informed the Vice President that certain material within the NIE needed to be declassified before it could be shared externally, Vice President Cheney advised that he does not recall.” That’s when Cheney started refusing to answer based on presidential privilege. In any case, Libby’s notes show that not only did Cheney know of the meeting with Judy Miller, but Cheney gave Libby a detailed order of what to do at that meeting. But Cheney simply can’t recall those details less than a year later.

Now, if I were Libby, this is where I’d begin to be really furious. Cheney’s pinning all the secret back-channel discussions with journalists (including Libby’s meeting with Judy at the St. Regis, which wasn’t put on Libby’s official schedule) on Libby. But Libby has notes showing that Cheney gave him meticulous instructions on many of those exchanges. And Cathie Martin also testified that Cheney directed Libby to work with journalists that week.

Of course, given how central the Judy meeting is (and, potentially, the July 9 Novak conversation that was hidden by the parties even more assiduously), I can understand why Cheney would want to pretend he had nothing to do with the events. What I don’t understand is how Libby would let Cheney sustain that claim.

The cover-up conversation he and Libby had in October 2003

And then there’s Cheney’s denials of any knowledge of or participation in a cover-up in October 2003. As a general matter, Cheney claims to have “no specific memory” of conversations with Libby about the leak in October 2003–even though they were in Jackson Hole together during one of their later discussions on the subject. I guess that’s why he disclaims all knowledge of the things Libby told him at that time.

Cheney claims “no one told him [after the investigation was announced] of talking to any reporters about Joe Wilson or Wilsons wife.” (23) But Libby claims he told Cheney–at the least–about his fictional conversation in which Tim Russert told Libby about Plame. And Cheney claims he “has no specific memory of … a conversation [when] Libby told him he was not Novak’s source.” (24) But the “meat-grinder note” shows Libby making that claim in writing, with Cheney writing instructions to Andy Card and/or Scott McClellan in response!

Cheney denies knowing “if Scooter Libby independently attempted to get the White House press office to make a statement clearing him prior to discussing it with the Vice President.” (24) Admittedly Libby’s “recall” on this matter was as spotty as Cheney’s, but in his grand jury appearance, he made it clear he talked to Cheney about his inability to get an exonerating statement on his own before Cheney called himself.

All this is the more ridiculous given Cheney’s claims that he has no memory of writing the “meat-grinder note” and especially has no memory of why he wrote “Tenet / Wilson memo” next to Libby’s note where he claimed he hadn’t leaked classified information. When Addington reviewed this note as it was collected for discovery in fall 2003, he called Cheney’s lawyer Terry O’Donnell to warn him about it! So not only must Cheney be aware of this note, his lawyer must be too. Though perhaps that explains Cheney’s lack of all recall about it.

Most of all, though, Cheney claims to have no knowledge of what can only be described as their cover-up conversations, in which Libby told Cheney his fictional story about Russert, but then later reminded Cheney that he–Cheney–had really been the source of his knowledge of Plame’s identity.

He cannot recall Scooter Libby telling him how he first learned about Valerie Wilson. It is possible Libby may have learned about Valerie Wilson’s employment from the Vice President after the Vice President’s phone call with George Tenet, but the Vice President has no specific recollection of such a conversation. The Vice President also cannot recall ever waving Libby off, at a certain point in time, when Libby offered to tell him everything he knew about the Wilson matter. The Vice President has no recollection of Libby saying that he’d learned about Valerie Wilson from a reporter, nor does he have any recollection of Libby indicating that anyone else in the administration knew about Valerie Wilson’s employment at the CIA. Moreover, Vice President Cheney does not have recollection of Libby indicating that reporters with whom Libby was speaking about the Wilson matter, ever informed him of Valerie Wilson’s employment with the CIA.

Now, I don’t blame Cheney for denying any memory of these discussions about a cover-up. The conversations were utterly damning, and perhaps both Libby and Cheney are better off that Cheney didn’t confirm Libby’s version of that story. At the same time, though, as someone who sat in Jackson Hole with Cheney devising a story (and also a strategy about hiding behind journalists), I’d feel betrayed if I were Scooter Libby, seeing Cheney disavowing that close cooperation. This cover-up was always about faithfulness to the cause, but even while Libby spent four years holding up his side of the bargain, Cheney was selling him out with Fitzgerald.

Ironically, in his Fitzgerald interview Dick Cheney treated his trusted former aide in much the same way Cheney treated Joe Wilson after he revealed his trip: Cheney denied having made orders and inquiries that set in motion the whole process, and then later claimed that, since he didn’t get a specific report back, he had nothing to do with the whole thing.

How’s it feel to get the Joe Wilson treatment, Scooter? I know when Wilson got treated that way, he got mighty chatty. Are you getting that urge to hit the talk shows?

Tonight, when we turn the clocks back, we get 60 more minutes to do with as we please.

Being Halloween, that might mean an extra hour of reveling for many. For kids, it might mean staying up an extra hour. For others, it might mean an extra hour of sleeping. But for a couple of folks, it definitely means an extra hour of work.

Take, for instance, the people whose job it is to plan Afghanistan policy at the State Department, the DOD, and the White House.

Noises are coming from Afghanistan that President Karzai’s opponent in the recent disputed election, Abdullah Abdullah, is getting close to announcing he will not participate in the scheduled runoff. Abdullah will give a speech tomorrow at 1AM ET, where he is expected to announce his plans; and people at Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon, and the White House will no doubt be using that extra hour tonight to listen and then figure out what it means. One thing is clear, however, if Abdullah refuses to participate in the election:

Diplomats and analysts have said that, according to the constitution, it was possible the run-off might go ahead with Karzai as the only candidate if Abdullah pulls out. They fear that would have a serious impact on the government’s legitimacy.

“If Abdullah boycotts, voter turnout will be very low and Karzai will be declared winner but with a very low legitimacy,” said Haroun Mir, a Kabul-based analyst and director of Afghanistan’s Center for Research and Policy Studies.

As Reuters notes, “the decision to send more [troops] hinges on whether the Afghan government is seen by U.S. lawmakers and the public as a legitimate and viable partner.” It also hinges on whether the Afghan people see the Afghan government as legitimate. McChrystal’s vaunted counterinsurgent strategy depends on winning the support of legitimate local political leaders — and if Karzai is not seen as legitimate by many in Afghanistan, one big part of McChrystal’s strategy is out the window, whether he gets more troops or not.

But someone else who will probably work through that extra hour tonight is Marcy Wheeler. Yesterday’s release of notes on Cheney’s interview with Patrick Fitzgerald and the DOJ has spurred Marcy into full-scale digging through the weeds, and as I said last Spring, “when people know Marcy is digging, her regular readers start to salivate and those with something to hide start to perspire.”

You can start at that link and work your way forward, through one post after another after another, and watch the dots being connected, the timelines checked and filled in, the conflicting stories spotted, and the legal questions raised.

Here’s the line that jumped out at me, from the end of the last of Marcy’s posts yesterday: “I will have far more to say about this in the coming days.”

If you’re Dick Cheney or one of his minions, that sentence is scarier than any Halloween lightning and Vincent Price organ music.

Bwahahahahaha . . .

photo h/t _tomanthony

1. Law enforcement privilege: If DOJ turns over Cheney’s interview, it will make future Vice Presidents unwilling to cooperate in investigations. This argument fails given the evidence that it has long been routine to release interview materials from high ranking White House figures, going back to the era of Cheney’s first White House job under Nixon, continuing through the investigation conducted parallel to the one Cheney participated in on Iran-Contra, and up through Bush’s predecessor, Clinton. Thus, Cheney’s cooperation itself proves the lie of DOJ’s argument.
2. Deliberative and presidential privilege: Much of the contents of Cheney’s interview comprise his description of deliberations within the White House regarding how to respond to Joe Wilson. This argument fails, in significant part, because much of this was already released during the trial. Furthermore, with the knowledge of at least two other White House officials, Dick Cheney’s lawyer leaked key portions of this to Michael Isikoff in April 2006.
3. National security classification: Finally, DOJ argues that it can’t turn over material already made public, such as the names of Cheney’s and Libby’s briefers, David Terry and Craig Schmall. DOJ and CIA may actually even be protecting the name of that secret CIA officer, Valerie Plame Wilson!

For the most part, this argument doesn’t make sense at all. Most importantly, the core argument–that releasing this interview will inhibit future cooperation–is belied by the last half century of history. Nevertheless, for some reason DOJ has decided to fight release of this document. That’s partly because, I think, this fight started last year, while Cheney still had sway to make it happen. It’s partly because of Obama’s fear of doing anything that would look political. Still, something must explain why Obama’s DOJ is making this crappy argument with such intensity. Something–aside from the defense of secrecy in general–must explain DOJ’s almost comical efforts to keep this interview hidden in spite of the long history of releasing similar interviews.

As I suggested in this post, their concern appears to be much more narrow. I suspect they’re not trying to protect the content of Cheney’s interview, in the abstract. Rather, they’re trying to protect the content because of what Cheney said.

In the hearing before Judge Sullivan on June 18, DOJ argued that if Sullivan reviewed Cheney’s FBI interview report, he’d see the degree to which Cheney was frank with Fitzgerald and that might persuade him why, if this particular interview were released, it would inhibit future cooperation.

But for the record, this particular 302 I think would demonstrate the kind of frankness that the Vice-President gave in this interview as he was trying to assist I assume, trying to assist law enforcement. And the kind of frankness that it can be virtually certain to disappear if documents like this routinely become public.

Then, in yesterday’s brief, DOJ noted that some of what Cheney said was dissimilar from any released before, and–more importantly–some of what Cheney said was not exactly like the information introduced into the record already on the same topics. 

Moreover, as a factual matter, the portions of the FBI 302 protected by the deliberative process privilege are not identical to the public domain information submitted by plaintiff, and in several instances, the FBI 302 contains information that is not at all similar to any information found in plaintiff’s submission. DOJ is unable to expand further on these differences in a public filing without disclosing the privileged information. DOJ can submit further analysis in camera if the Court so directs.

 In both cases, DOJ offered to share the information with Sullivan to convince him that this information merited withholding.

One more thing. As I noted, DOJ is making a completely laughable argument that CREW is demanding "immediate" release of Cheney’s interview materials, even though this investigation concluded over two years ago. While there should be no legal distinction between immediate release or later release, that is a distinction they’re making. Significantly, they argue that releasing this interview in six years may be okay, but releasing it now would be problematic.

The Bush 302 was released six and a half years after his Presidency. It is quite possible, even likely, that, in 2015 or 2019 (six to ten years after Mr. Cheney left office), the release of the documents at issue here can be accomplished without impairment to law enforcement interests. DOJ has concluded, however, that this cannot be accomplished now. 

Six years. Six and a half years. Six years. That’s when it’d be okay to release this, says DOJ. I’m going to suggest that the timing may have more to do with the magical six years than any connection to the end of Cheney’s tenure at VP.

What follows is speculative. It is an attempt to brainstorm out what kind of "frank" revelation Cheney would have made that would still have resulted in the subsequent actions we know Fitzgerald to have taken (notably, the subpoena to Judy Miller and the rest of the journalists), yet that DOJ still thinks should remain hidden.

The Not Identical and Not at All Similar Information

Curiously, DOJ is insisting–for an interview relating to an investigation that ended in a successful perjury and obstruction of justice charge–that Cheney gave Fitzgerald a "full account of relevant events." And they’re dismissing all the related evidence in the public record by claiming that the portions of the interview are either "not identical" or "not at all similar" to the material in the public record. Partly, this is just an attempt to claim that just because records of the actual deliberation have been released, that does not equate to a waiver for what is effectively Cheney’s summary of that deliberation. This is an attempt to say that original source documents–Libby’s direct quotes of Cheney’s statements regarding declassification of the NIE and other material, Cheney’s observation that Tenet’s statement was "unsatisfactory,"  CIA’s characterization of the qusetions that Cheney asked, and Cheney’s meat-grinder note written expressing his argument why Libby should be public exonerated in the same way Rove had been–are somehow less revelatory than Cheney’s description of them.  Provided you buy my argument that DOJ has improperly applied a precedent to try to protect a summary after source documents have been released, then the only way this can be a valid argument (aside from protecting the Condi conversation and Tenet conversation, which have not been described in detail), is if Cheney’s summary does not match Libby’s (and Cathie Martin’s) summary presented at trial.

I suspect that the only way DOJ can honestly simultaneously claim that Cheney gave a "frank," "full account" of events but that his summary description of these deliberations must still be protected is if DOJ believes that Libby’s summary is inaccurate and Cheney’s is accurate. 

I’m suggesting that the reason DOJ is fighting so hard to protect this material is that it differs in some key way from Libby’s testimony, and for some reason DOJ believes Cheney told the truth but Libby lied. And that Cheney was truthful about something more embarrassing than Clinton’s blowjob.

Some possibilities are (remember–this is speculative; also see Mary, ROTL, Garrett on this):

• Cheney admitted that he ordered Libby to out Valerie Wilson–to either Judy Miller or to just Matt Cooper
• Cheney insta-declassified the NIE (and the January 24 document and the trip report) on his own, as opposed to–as Libby claimed–with the involvement of Bush
• Cheney insta-declassified Valerie’s identity on his own
• Cheney learned of Valerie’s identity from some source besides Tenet–such as being shown the documents Valerie wrote in support of Joe’s trip
• Cheney told Hadley and Condi and Tenet and Card that he or Bush had insta-declassified some of these materials

Subsequent Events

But whatever Cheney said must be compatible with Fitzgerald’s and others’ subsequent actions. Some key points are:

May 2004: Just weeks after Cheney’s May 8, 2004 interview, Fitz subpoenas Matt Cooper and Tim Russert to test his then-operative theory that Russert had not told Libby of Plame’s ID, but that Libby had been Cooper’s source for her ID.

August 2004: Fitz submits an affidavit in support of subpoenas for Judy Miller and Walter Pincus stating:

…reporter Miller has been subpoenaed because her testimony is essential to determining whether or not Lewis Libby … has committed crimes including the improper disclosure of national defense information and perjury. Libby has admitted speaking to Miller in July 2003 and discussing the purported employment of former Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife by the [CIA].

[snip]

Libby testified that he met with reporter Miller on [July 8, 2003] at the general direction of the Vice President to share with Miller portions of the [NIE]. … Libby specifically described he was advised by Vice President Cheney that President Bush had declassified the NIE…

There are redactions on page 8 (pertaining to whether or not Cheney told others in the Administration that he had insta-declassified the NIE), page 11 (footnoting a description of Libby’s admission that Cheney told him of Plame’s identity), page 13-14 (describing whether or not Cheney told Libby to leak Plame’s ID to Cooper), page 18-19 (pertaining to how Novak learned Plame worked in CPD, with a long footnote and further information on Rove’s conversation with Novak), page 19 (describing Libby’s contact with Novak that week), and page 30 (pertaining to whether the President and others have invoked privilege). 

October 2005: Fitz indicts Libby for false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice, but not IIPA or leaking defense information. Fitz makes no mention of the NIE story. The indictment includes many oblique references to Cheney (plus some explicit ones). 

April 2006: Following up on a point that I first reported that February, Fitz releases a filing specifically implicating Bush and Cheney in the NIE leak and repeating Libby’s testimony that only he, Cheney, and Bush were aware of the NIE insta-declassification.

Defendant’s participation in a critical conversation with Judith Miller on July 8 (discussed further below) occurred only after the Vice President advised defendant that the President specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE. Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller – getting approval from the President through the Vice President to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval – were unique in his recollection.

[snip]

As to the meeting on July 8, defendant testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was “pretty definitive” against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the Vice President thought that it was “very important” for the key judgments of the NIE to come out. Defendant further testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with reporter Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE. Defendant testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE.

[snip]

According to defendant, at the time of his conversations with Miller and Cooper, he understood that only three people – the President, the Vice President and defendant – knew that the key judgments of the NIE had been declassified. Defendant testified in the grand jury that he understood that even in the days following his conversation with Ms. Miller, other key officials – including Cabinet level officials – were not made aware of the earlier declassification even as those officials were pressed to carry out a declassification of the NIE, the report about Wilson’s trip and another classified document dated January 24, 2003.

In response–and with the knowledge of at least Dan Bartlett–Cheney’s lawyer explains the NIE leak this way:

A lawyer familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, told NEWSWEEK that the "president declassified the information and authorized and directed the vice president to get it out." But Bush "didn’t get into how it would be done. He was not involved in selecting Scooter Libby or Judy Miller." Bush made the decision to put out the NIE material in late June, when the press was beginning to raise questions about the WMD but before Wilson published his op-ed piece.

May 2006: Fitzgerald and Ted Wells discuss details of Bush and Cheney’s testimony. Wells claims to know that either Bush or Cheney "testified" that the NIE had been declassified and asks to have those interviews turned over. Fitz ends up agreeing only to stipulate that the NIE had been declassified by July 8, but not as to when it was declassified and (as I understand it) never turned over those interview reports. 

WELLS: To the extent that Mr. Fitzgerald is in possession of documents or grand jury material or interviews that establish that, in fact, the vice president and the president were aware that those documents had been declassified, he should turn them over because I do not want to be in a position during this trial that there is some question that Mr. Libby, in disclosing that material to Ms. Miller, did anything wrong.

[snip]

MR. FITZGERALD: I will come back to that. Let me jump ahead. There’s no other discovery we have on it so it’s not like we’re sitting on documents or exhibits that

THE COURT: It is a moot issue. You don’t have anything on it.

[snip]

MR. WELLS: I started out making what I characterized as a Brady request to the extent that either the vice president or the president have testified that they did authorize disclosure.

THE COURT: Testified?

MR. WELLS: I’m making a Brady request. I believe there is testimony. I believe there is testimony or interviews.

THE COURT: I didn’t know they had testified.

MR. WELLS: I don’t know the procedure whether they talked to somebody in somebody’s office. But to the extent he has statements from either the vice president or the president, to the extent that disclosure of the NIE was authorized and I believe that maybe that the testimony does not tie it down to a particular day, only that it did take place, I believe I’m entitled to that.

[snip]

MR. FITZGERALD: Your Honor, I think they already do. Let me see if I can — in other words, if I summarize the information and disclose it as to what we know about this information, I mean there was an authority to declassify it. We don’t know when. So I don’t know what more there is to that in the sense that I’ll scrub it. But it’s not as if we’re sitting on — we have turned over relevant documents and items but that’s the way it is.

[snip]

MR. WELLS: It is, but if he’s going to say as he just suggested that if I were to say that when he talked to Mr. Woodward he did it with the understanding that he had been authorized and he is in possession of material from either the president or the vice president to the effect that it was declassified and that they know they did it but they’re not sure of the particular date but it was in that general area, I think I should have that material.

THE COURT: I do disagree with that because it seems to me that if he, as I said before, decides to go down that road and then once he does that the government brings out something during cross-examination or otherwise that would suggest that he wasn’t, in fact, being honest when he made that representation, then I think he is entitled to know that before he goes down that road.

MR. FITZGERALD: Your Honor, I will stipulate that the declassification happened. I don’t know when. The notion that we’re laying low in the tall grass and weeds I think is unfair.

December 2006: Fitz announces that he will not call Cheney as a witness. Libby’s team responds that they intend to call Cheney (they never do, though they do use his potential appearance during jury selection to weed out those opposed to the Iraq War and/or Cheney personally).

February 2007: Fitz closes the trial by describing the "cloud" that remains over Cheney.

And you know what? [The Defense] said something here that we’re trying to put a cloud on the Vice President. We’ll talk straight. There is a cloud over what the Vice President did that week. He wrote those columns. He had those meetings. He sent Libby off to Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting, … the defendant talked about the wife. We didn’t put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant has obstructed justice and lied about what happened.

[snip]

He’s put the doubt into whatever happened that week, whatever is going on between the Vice President and the defendant, that cloud was there. That’s not something we put there. That cloud is something that we just can’t pretend isn’t there.

2007 to 2008: Reports–that may or may not be accurate–describe Cheney pressuring Bush to commute the sentence of and then pardon Libby. Bush does the first but not the second.

My Thoughts

From the subsequent events, we can conclude the following:

• Nothing in Cheney’s interview made Fitz rethink his theory that Libby had leaked Plame’s identity to Cooper, all the while knowing he had learned of her identity from Cheney (indeed, the redactions on pages 13-14 of Fitz’s affadavit suggest he may have asked Cheney about this–and remember, Libby once said he did leak to Judy on July 12).
• Fitz believed it likely he had leaked Plame’s identity to Judy, but he considered either that–or some of Libby’s other leaks (such as the NIE and/or the trip report) still potentially criminal. In fact, after reading Fitz’ affidavits later that year, Judge Tatel stated that after getting Judy’s testimony, "charges under the Intelligence Identities
  Protection Act, 50 U.S.C. § 421, currently off the table for lack of evidence (see 8/27/04 Aff. at 28 & n.15), might become viable." Therefore nothing Cheney and Bush told Fitz convinced him in 2004 that the leak of Plame’s identity was legal.
• Fitz at least claimed that Libby’s lies about when he learned of Plame prevented him from understanding Cheney’s role in the leak.
• Fitz didn’t want to give Libby’s team Bush and Cheney’s interviews, and he never planned to call Cheney.

I’m stumped, for now. Perhaps they’re trying to prevent new details on the fight with CIA–particularly the effort to trick CIA into revealing Plame’s ID (though that is, frankly, somewhat evident from the publicaly available evidence from the week of June 9). Perhaps they’re trying to hide information that Bush ordered Cheney and Libby to respond to Joe Wilson–and gave them carte blanche to do so. But this, again, is at least partly revealed in Libby’s June 9, 2003 notes and in the meat-grinder note.

Which leaves me with one more observation. DOJ is willing to see this released in several years, but not now. I’m wondering if that has as much to do with a 5 year statute of limitations as it has to do with anything else? Perhaps there’s enough evidence of Bush’s involvement in the leak that they want to avoid any questions of whether Bush obstructed justice when he commuted Libby’s sentence?