JPol has doggedly investigated Judith Miller’s regurgitation of Neocon lies on the pages of The New York Times, and spotted this post at DailyKos:
by Swopa
Sat Jul 2nd, 2005 at 19:51:24 PDT
See this post at Needlenose for the full breakdown, links, etc., but here’s a synopsis:
1. Rove et al. have seemed confident from the start that there was a loophole that got them off the hook from having revealed classified information.
2. Matt Cooper’s already testified about his conversation with Lewis Libby on July 12. Reportedly, he told Libby he’d “heard that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA” and Libby “said he had heard the same thing from the media.”
3. One of the appellate court rulings stated that Fitzgerald wants to ask Miller about her contact with a government official on July 6 — the same day Wilson went public. Did the smear campaign start that quickly … or was she volunteering helpful information?
It would explain why Miller refuses to talk. And, for that matter, why the Washington Monthly’s plea not to imprison Matthew Cooper so glaringly left out Miller. Also, FWIW, Josh Marshall seems to be sniffing down the same general path.
So. The New York Times wails over Judith Miller’s plight while the turncoat Time Inc. turns over Cooper’s notes. But perhaps the NYT doth protest too much? And not for the reasons it’s shared to date about Ms. Miller’s supposed non-participation in the story — that Ms. Miller was a passive recipient of the leak, and chose not to write a story? Which leads one to ask, dare I suggest, about the ethics of the NYT.
Below, snippets from Josh Marshall’s post:
Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo:
What’s implicit in Isikoff’s report, however, and in the Tribune too, is that the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald is after Rove for some felony arising out of the case (perjury after the fact? conspiracy?) but not the immediate and original act of leaking the name.
There’s one other point worth noting here. As we’ve seen, federal law recognizes no reporters’ privilege or confidentiality. But if recollection serves, there are DOJ guidelines which say that prosecutors should exercise a great deal of discretion when trying to compel testimony from journalists. They’re not supposed to do it just to tie up a few loose ends, but only if there’s real and significant crime they’re trying to prosecute. And before they do so, they’re supposed to have exhausted all other possible ways to get at the information.
Now, I’m away from my office. And it’s the holiday weekend, so I can’t get an expert on the phone to confirm that recollection. So leave that as a contingent assertion. If it turns out I’ve misrecollected this I’ll let you know in a subsequent post. But I think I remember it correctly.
[Y]ou’ll also remember that a couple months back the usual ducks on the right were clucking about the whole investigation coming to an end — and apparently the whole thing had come to nothing.
That particular cluck never quite computed to me because Fitzgerald shouldn’t be pressing matter of jailing journalists unless he thinks he’s on his way to prosecuting a serious crime.
So just a question: Would Fitzgerald have pushed to get Cooper and Miller in the slammer if some other party in the White House weren’t in a lot of trouble?
And one last question: Cooper and Miller are very different kinds of journalists, swim in very different waters. Are they really in this jam for the same reasons?
Emphases mine.
I think you are on to something here. The more that is coming out, there is more to be seen and to digest. I personally would not put it past miller to have been complicit in the wrong doing by the way she delivers herself to the ways she reports her findings. She is a hack for the administration and the neocons, specifically. This is a known fact. I would not put it past her to be involved more so than Copper in all of this. I suppose time will tell. You know Fitzie would not have gone this far in all of this if there was not something there. He is after a political appointee. He does want to make a name for himself for possible higher office, I think. I am from Illinois and I have some in that state telling me that this is what he is all about. I really want to know why Novack is still on the loose. He is the bad guy here. Many others were told of thsi about Plame, but they had ethics and they did not go as far as he did. So I want to see him jailed in the first place for being a traitor. Second, I want others to go to jail as well for their activity in this whole thing. We will see, wont we……
This from John Dean on FindLaw, May ’05. (He’s been writing legal analyses on the investigation):
For months, it has been rumored that Fitzgerald has found only a low-level leaker in the White House – one who seems not to have violated the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime to disclose an undercover CIA operative. But it is only criminal if the leaker knew the name was classified, and that the CIA sought to keep it classified. (A low-level person might not have had this knowledge.)
If so, that’s odd. Remember, Novak credited two “senior” Administration sources. But let’s suppose it’s true. In that event, it is quite likely – and many lawyers following the case believe – that the investigation has shifted to possible charges of perjury and/or obstruction of justice, more than likely by big fish.
And this:
RBA, can you give me a scenario of which you speak? I think it is true what you say. I have been reading some int he new Dean book Worse than Watergate and I want to trust John Dean in his reviews of things.
I read that TPM comment but didn’t interpret it that way.
But, if Miller was a source of the leak, where did she get the information? That still puts us back to the White House, I think, and the neocons. Wasn’t she formerly very good friends with (ugh) Wolfowitz? Or am I misremembering?
I keep thinking there must be something in the NSA intercepts that the WH refuses to release re Bolton.
I’d have to say I didn’t interpret it that way, either. I can’t even guess what he might have meant, but I didn’t necessarily see it as meaning that.
On the other hand, for all I know, it does. This morning on James Wolcott’s blog he resurfaces my favorite conspiracy theory in all this–which is that the CIA, furious at the Bush administration, is conducting a covert, inexorable coup against them, with the object of getting Bush, Cheney et al, out of office. How might that relate to Judith Miller? It might not. Or. . .since we know that she’s on the Chalabi/neo-con side of things, and if she knew, which she would, that the CIA was out to get the Bush people. . .then she might hand over any info she had that she thought could help beat back the anti-Chalabi forces in the CIA.
But no matter who originally gave the Plame info to the WH, that still leaves somebody in the WH as the person who told Novak.
It’s useful to remember that Rove was fired by Bush I for a leak, although not one that descended to the level of treason. I think this whole thing will turn out to be much more multi-layered than it looks from the surface.
It’s not just Plame and CIA, it’s Niger and fake documents, it’s phony reports of WMDs and yellowcake, it’s oil and military bases and contracts, it’s power and money and influence at very hefty levels. It’s massive egos of people who think they are truly important in the overall scheme of the universe.
Clearly, they have never stood under a starry night sky and said, “Universe, listen up! Notice how important I am.”
All politicians should try it some time, notice the universe’s response.
Thanks for the reminder re Wolcott. Must say, I like that conspiracy theory, have to go read him now.
More speculation from Digby via Bartcop (where Norma read it and passed it on):
Edited on Sat Jul-02-05 06:48 AM by secondharmonic
on the true origins of the Plame leak….
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”
As long as we’re enjoying ourselves speculating about frog marching and the like, here’s an interesting theory from super-smart commenter Sara:
Has anyone here carefully read Joe Wilson’s Book?
He provides plenty of carefully crafted information — for example see p. 443-445.
Wilson indicates that the work up on him beginning March, 2003, turned up the information on Valerie — which was then shared with Karl Rove who then circulated it through Administration and neo-Conservative circles. He cites conservative journalists who claimed to have had the information before the Novak column.
So the question is — in the work-up process beginning about March 2003, who had the information re: Plame?
I think it was John Bolton. At the time he was State Department Deputy Secretary with the portfolio in WMD and Nuclear Proliferation. Assuming that Valerie Plame’s identity was that of a NOC (No Official Cover) the information about her would have been highly classified, compartmentalized, and only those with a need to know would know. Bolton’s Job probably gave him that status. However to receive it he would have to sign off on the classification — that is he would have to agree to retain the security the CIA had established.
At the time, Bolton had two assistants who also worked in the White House in Cheney’s office, David Wurmser and John Hannah. Their names have been around as the potential leakers — Hannah if you remember is the guy who kept putting the Yellow Cake back in Bush’s speeches even though Tenet had demanded it be removed.
So — I think we have a game of catch going on here — or maybe some version of baseball, and the scoring is Bolton to Wurmser and Hannah, to Cheney (and/or Libby) to Rove. “
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2nu
I think you have hit the nail on the head. Otherwise dubya would have place bolton in the UN already this w/e…..I think he knows something and doesnt dare…
This whole piece about Miller makes a lot of sense to me. The Bolton thing is interesting too; it would certainly explain W’s persistent efforts to reward Bolton with the UN job (you know how the most corrupt and incompetent people are the ones reaping the greatest rewards in this administration).
God(dess), I’d love to see Rove go down in flames…
SusanHu
I stopped by at Swopa’s on a redirect from Atrios and linked off Swopa’s story sidebar to Billmon. Wow, am I glad I did!
Between Digby, Kos, Atrios, Swopa, and Billmon, on top of your excellent work we are uncovering something really nasty and beyond just a fit of pique by a twitchy Karl Rove!
The whole affair is starting to look like a very ugly scam on the part of the administration with the complicity, be it witting or unwitting, of the MSM.
My take is that Miller, being a “true believer” is going to be the sacrificial goat in this affair.
I would really love to see Bill Keller’s face if his right wing and administration buds roll Miller over, especially after Keller so loudly and vociferously defended Miller’s agit-prop reporting and war whooping!
It’s fun. It’s like, as someone else said, a spy novel.
From War & Piece
Swopa‘s got me thinking. Is “Wilson’s wife” the same thing as “Valerie Plame”? Rove’s attorney said Rove “never knowingly disclosed classified information” and that “he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.” But did he tell Cooper that “Wilson got the job because his wife works for the CIA?” The “knowingly” is key here too. But I seriously doubt Swopa’s theory that Rove would have directed Cooper to Miller. Reporters just don’t seek each other out as sources on a story on which they are direct competitors.
Surely he or she can’t have been “investigating Judith Miller’s regurgitation of Neocon lies on the pages of the New York Times” for as long as I have?
Hi, Swopa! So nice to see you here.
That JPol is Jerry, whose stand-alone dairy on this today is front-paged here: More About Judith Miller.