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October 25, 2005
FYI
I, normally well-informed, have no idea what's going on with Karl Rove and/or Judith Miller. Are they dating or something?
Posted by Amy Welborn | Permalink
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Tracked on Oct 25, 2005 4:13:09 PM
Comments
All I know is that the NY Times editor has accused Miller of being "excessicely entangled" with either Rove or Scooter Libbey or someone else. Sounds romantic to me.
Posted by: John P Sheridan at Oct 25, 2005 10:12:19 AM
Amy, good stuff here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
Posted by: brasco at Oct 25, 2005 10:30:47 AM
Judith Miller was the MSM mouthpiece for White House agit-prop justifying the Iraq War. She also works for the New York Times.
(Yes, Virginia, contrary to persistent neocon mythology, the Evil MSM was a happy and virtually exclusive of pre- and post-Iraq War pro-war propaganda.)
Posted by: Celine at Oct 25, 2005 10:31:35 AM
Um, I don't want to give the impression that I'm really that dumb. I know the general outlines, and know very well who Judith Miller is...the intricacies of the past few weeks, though, escape me!
Posted by: amy at Oct 25, 2005 10:42:06 AM
amy,
No.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/30026.htm
Money quote:
"In a memo he sent out last week — a memo that he surely knew would be leaked — Keller twice pointedly used the word "entanglement" to describe Miller's relationship with Libby.
That's an extraordinarily charged word to use about a female reporter and a male government official, as Keller — a fine and careful writer — surely knew. It was even more charged because both Miller and Libby are married. And it was especially sleazy because Miller has been the subject of gossipy articles over the years about her love life. (Pre-Keller, the gossip at least all dealt with Miller's life before her marriage, 12 years ago.) Libby, meanwhile, has young children with his wife.
If Keller knows that there was something illicit about the contact between Miller and Libby, then he should fire Miller immediately and make the matter public, since that might help explain some of the baffling inconsistencies in Miller's own explanation of what happened here.
If Keller doesn't know that the relationship between Miller and Libby was an "entanglement," then what he did in that memo to two separate families is inexcusable — professionally, collegially and morally.
OF course, none of this Miller charac ter assassination has anything to do with the Valerie Plame story. Rather, it has to do with the war in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction — and the peculiar solipsism of both the staff of The New York Times and the paper's liberal readership."
Posted by: Sydney Carton at Oct 25, 2005 10:42:44 AM
I believe that Karl Rove is the White House Communications Director who leaked classified information to Judith Miller related to a classified space shuttle project that could have saved the lives of some astronauts. The president then fired him for cause and held a press conference to report the leak and the firing so as to avoid even the appearance of a coverup.
Next week, Santos debates Vinnick...
Posted by: Chris-2-4 at Oct 25, 2005 11:16:08 AM
I believe that Karl Rove is the White House Communications Director who leaked classified information to Judith Miller related to a classified space shuttle project that could have saved the lives of some astronauts. The president then fired him for cause and held a press conference to report the leak and the firing so as to avoid even the appearance of a coverup.
Next week, Santos debates Vinnick...
Posted by: Chris-2-4 at Oct 25, 2005 11:16:39 AM
I believe that Karl Rove is the White House Communications Director who leaked classified information to Judith Miller related to a classified space shuttle project that could have saved the lives of some astronauts. The president then fired him for cause and held a press conference to report the leak and the firing so as to avoid even the appearance of a coverup.
Next week, Santos debates Vinnick...
Posted by: Chris-2-4 at Oct 25, 2005 11:17:24 AM
1. Here's where I found out about Wilson's wife's name - the website for the
consulting firm where he works.
http://www.cpsag.com/our_team/wilson.html
2. "Entanglement" can means lots of things short of having an affair. Probably meant working as a "mouthpiece" for Cheney's office or being too indebted to Libby for information received.
3. Miller's response to this charge was that her relationship to Libby is as a source and nothing more. I never even considered that an affair was being suggested, dumb me.
4. By the by, Miller has had WMD contacts in the CIA for over a decade. In her article she doesn't say that she learned about Valerie Plame from Libby, just that they discussed Wilson and his wife.
5. I'm wondering if blabbing about a secret mission you undertake for the CIA is also an actionable offense.
6. Note that Wilson's report says that inquiries had been made by an Iraqui official to a former prime minister which the PM assumed was about yellowcake. Bush never said that a purchase had been made. The Senate report notes this as well.
7. My 2 cents: There was curiosity in the WH about who was giving background info to a liberal magazine writer about a trip to Niger concerning yellowcake for the CIA. Then when it became apparant that it was Wilson as he kept talking about it around Washington - why was Wilson giving the impression that he had been sent by Cheney, when he hadn't been? And why was a non-CIA guy chosen to go and why was he talking publicly about a CIA assignment?
All this was going on before he even wrote his Op-Ed piece.
We'll soon know if there will be indictments, but the prosecutor has no authority to issue a report - so we may never know all of what went down and why.
Posted by: Julia at Oct 25, 2005 12:31:48 PM
Here's an opinion piece in the Washington Post today that discusses the NYT attempts to pin the blame for the Iraq War on Miller's WMD articles pre-invasion that were supposedly based on baloney fed to her by Libby et al at the White House.
I don't think there's any intent to suggest an affair was going on. The Times just thinks she was a dupe of the White House via Libby.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102401405.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
Posted by: Julia at Oct 25, 2005 12:55:42 PM
As Julia, implies, I don't understand why Plame and her *husband* aren't the ones under investigation here. They were leaking CIA information first, and they were using CIA information to try and undermine the president. And how can it be a "leak" if the CIA director gave the information to the WH, which in turn used the information? That doesn't make any sense.
I don't know what "persistent neocon mythology" Celine is talking about, but only the MSM itself is perpetuating the myth that it was not. The media reported on Iraq's alleged WMD program well in the middle of the Clinton Administration. As far as I'm concerned, it's all 20/20 hindsight. I don't think it's conclusively proven, either way. The key point is that the intelligence indicated a WMD program-and not just from US intelligence, either, but from UN, Interpol, and other agencies.
And Amy, don't feel dumb. I've never even *followed* this story because it seemed too confusing to even bother with. Now that it's getting important, I've looked it over, and it looks like a tempest in a teapot.
Posted by: JC at Oct 25, 2005 1:04:54 PM
Boy, do people get things wrong! Judith Miller (who's real name was Edna Mode and whose mother was Coco Chanel, incidentally) had an affair with George Bush the Elder decades ago and gave birth to Valerie Plame (Plame is the name of the family that adopted her, of course). Scooter Libby was once Drusilla Libby (nee Vincent) the sister Lynne Vincent Cheney never talks about who underwent a sex change operation while a "graduate student" in Denmark.
That explains the "I." if front of "his" name. They are not involved romantically, but are mutually blackmailing each other, even though the above information can be easily obtained from the Internet, which is where I got it. Now, Dick Cheney's mother was JFK's real first wife, though this was after Dick was born and his real father was probably Mayor Daley. That is not germane to the current scandal, however. Nixon, while in the White House, put a "tail" on Joseph Wilson and discovered that he was running drugs with Willie Nelson and Larry O'Brien. Now, the O'Brien connection is interesting, though murky. Remember, he later became NBA Commissioner. You will remember that the very year Carter became President and made Stansfield Turner director of the CIA the Portland Trailblazers won the NBA title? And who was the center for the Trailblazers? Bill Walton! And who did Bill Walton tour with? The Grateful Dead! And where were the Dead from? San Francisco? And who is San Francisco named for? Saint Francis! And who publicized her pilgrimages to Assisi? Clare Booth Luce! And who was her husband? Henry Luce! And what magazine did he start? TIME. And what magazine does Matthew Cooper work for? The Matthew Cooper who did't do jail time!! Therefore, I think it's pretty obvious where this all leads. But to sum up for you, in case you still haven't got it: Valerie Plame was a groupie for the Grateful Dead when they went on tour to Africa and "yellow cake" is a eupemism for some drugs that rock stars do, and Joseph Wilson was actually supposed to corner the market on this stuff for Paul Wolfowitz and the World Bank, but the drug labs had been destroyed, so Wilson and the Bush administration had a falling out and started this dis-information about the CIA and everything. Do you notice that none of the leaks from Fitzgerald have anything to do with the real story? Coincidence? I DON'T THINK SO!!
Believe me, Amy, any time you need a quick fill-in on current events, just say so.
Posted by: perfectly sane (really) at Oct 25, 2005 2:59:15 PM
Being retired gives me time to read all I can find on this and to survey TV and the Internet. The republican effort to trash the findings before they are given to us (no proof of conspiracy...perjury is only a technical crime and so on) says to me that they are really feeling the heat. What puzzles me is how the loathsome Novak has not been singled out for publicizing the role of Wilson's wife. His column did much to point fingers and start the ball rolling. It will give me great joy to see Rove and Libby sweat a little. Never in the history of our nation have so few misled so many knowingly and with culpable intent. Many have died and been wounded on both sides and there may be repercussions internationally if there is enough evidence of lying about the WMD. Very deep doo-doo indeed. But boys will be boys.
Posted by: Tom Kelty at Oct 25, 2005 3:15:23 PM
"perjury is only a technical crime" right...which respected Republicans are saying that?
Posted by: Samuel J. Howard at Oct 25, 2005 3:55:08 PM
Check out the link below to The Howler - a liberal's take on the value of Wilson's disclosures. It seems that the press is chagrined at having been taken in by more than Judy Miller and is trying to spin and regain MSM's reputation.
Scroll down past the story on Gore to the story on Wilson and yellowcake. All this brouhaha was started over nothing. Wilson was shooting his mouth off all over the place and reporters fell for things that he later had to admit were not true. Some folks now think that Valerie urged her group at the CIA to send her husband to beef up his cred for his international consulting business - Tenet said he didn't know anything about it and it was finally acknowledged that Chaney had never asked the CIA to check out the yellowcake story. AND Chaney never even received a report about the trip when he returned.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh102105.shtml
Posted by: Julia at Oct 25, 2005 4:29:46 PM
Again, since Watergate, politics has been a give-and-take of conspiracy theories and "corruption investigations." The irony of all this is that it's what almost might have happened with the Watergate scandal: Woodward and Bernstein built a tendentious case on "anonymous tips" and *illegal leaks*, and it nearly bit them back.
In this case, you have a reporter (Novak), using Woodward and Bernstein's methods, and the *sources* being attacked for their "illegal leaks".
Posted by: JC at Oct 25, 2005 4:38:16 PM
Samuel J.
In answer to your question, Kay Bailey Hutchinson is a Republican spouting this stuff, in direct contradiction to her own statements years ago during the Clinton trial. At that time she pointed out" that the oaths sworn daily in our courtrooms were the very cement of the rule of law that binds our nation together." What a difference a few years make.
Posted by: Tom Kelty at Oct 25, 2005 7:01:29 PM
Integrity of process is vital
IN the Oct. 25 editorial "Double standard," the Chronicle incorrectly compared U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's recent remarks on "gotcha" investigator tactics in general to her comments during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, even though they are as different as night and day.
In 1999, the senator said President Clinton committed a serious crime when he purposely perjured himself and obstructed justice, and she was absolutely right. He intentionally lied to a grand jury and the nation and then obstructed justice to protect himself politically. That is very different from a case where an investigator fails to find evidence of a crime and instead looks for any shred of inconsistency, no matter how inadvertent, in testimony that may have stretched over a period of years.
As Sen. Hutchison said in 1999, the standards for perjury and obstruction of justice are not gray. Deliberately lying to a grand jury is not the same as forgetting a name or not remembering a date. She believes that prosecutors play a critically important role in our system of justice and, to keep the integrity of the process, must avoid playing "gotcha."
CHRIS PAULITZ press secretary, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Washington, D.C.
So she seems to be standing by her opinion that perjury is a serious crime...
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/3416198
MR. RUSSERT: But the fact is perjury or obstruction of justice is a very serious crime and Republicans certainly thought so when charges were placed against Bill Clinton before the United States Senate. Senator Hutchison.
And even more to the point, Hutchison on Meet the Press
"SEN. HUTCHISON:...And I'm not saying that those are not crimes. They are. But I also think that we are seeing in the judicial process--and look at Martha Stewart, for instance, where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime. I think that it is important, of course, that we have a perjury and an obstruction of justice crime, but I also think we are seeing grand juries and U.S. attorneys and district attorneys that go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country. And I think we have to weigh both sides of this issue very carefully and not just jump to conclusions, because someone is in the public arena, that they are guilty without being able to put their case forward. I really object to that."
Posted by: Samuel J. Howard at Oct 26, 2005 3:06:45 AM
Samuel J.
When Bill lied about his moral dereliction with a consenting adult, no one died. This group of liars has been responsible for the greatest diplomatic and strategic blunders in the history of our nation. In the process they have lowered our national prestige and are far along to ruining our economy...Now we hear that there is no way out except endless deaths in greater numbers. No enemy could have done this much harm in so short a period.
Posted by: Tom Kelty at Oct 26, 2005 11:40:16 AM
