He’s got one, alright … all the testimony points to it — and it may not be a naturally occurring phenomenon, but a calculated one.
Ahhhhh — truth is so refreshing … I’d almost forgotten.
MSM on Fleischer and Addington’s testimony — and two good op/ed’s, one by Jason Leopold.
Oh, and here’s an FYI for Air America lovers … it’s been saved from bankruptcy — and will continue without Al Franken, who is going off to investigate candidacy.
Jude
Fleischer Testifies Libby Told Him About CIA’s Plame
Laurie Asseo, Bloomberg
Jan. 29
Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told a jury that ex-vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby disclosed a CIA operative’s identity to him three days before Libby has testified he learned it.
Fleischer, testifying in the second week of Libby’s perjury trial in Washington, said Libby told him during lunch on July 7, 2003, that Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson was sent to Africa by the Central Intelligence Agency the previous year at the instigation of his wife. Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA in its counter-proliferation division, Fleischer said Libby told him.
“I think that he told me her name,” which is Valerie Plame, Fleischer told the jury today. Libby also said “something on the lines of `This is hush-hush. This is on the QT. Not very many people know about this,”’ he told the jury. Fleischer testified for prosecutors under a grant of immunity from prosecution.
Libby, 56, is accused of lying to investigators probing whether U.S. officials deliberately leaked Plame’s identity to retaliate against Wilson for attacking the administration’s Iraq war claims. Libby told investigators he learned about Plame for the first time from NBC journalist Tim Russert on July 10, 2003, three days after his lunch with Fleischer.
Libby’s lawyers say he was so focused on national security in 2003 that he confused the facts surrounding the Wilson episode. It is a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert CIA agent. No one has been charged with the leak.
`New to Me’
Fleischer said Libby’s disclosure about Wilson’s wife was “new to me.” Fleischer said he thought the point of bringing up Wilson’s wife was “nepotism at the CIA.”
Fleischer said he left later that day with President George W. Bush on a trip to Africa. Several days later on Air Force One he overheard White House communications director Dan Bartlett say he couldn’t believe someone was saying Vice President Dick Cheney “sent Ambassador Wilson to Niger; his wife sent him, she works at the CIA.”
While in Uganda, Fleischer said, he told NBC reporter David Gregory and Time magazine reporter John Dickerson that Wilson had been sent to Africa by his wife at the CIA, not by Cheney’s office.
“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought this information was classified,” he said under questioning from prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg. Fleischer said he wanted to show that Cheney had no reason to know about Wilson’s report on his trip to Niger because he hadn’t requested the trip.
State of the Union
Wilson has said that during his trip he found no evidence that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger, as Bush said during his State of the Union message in January 2003. Wilson wrote in a New York Times column on July 6, 2003, that the administration distorted intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion. Eight days later, syndicated columnist Robert Novak revealed that Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative.
Fleischer said he was “horrified” when he learned in September 2003 that the CIA was seeking a criminal investigation into the leak of Plame’s identity. He said that although he didn’t think he had done anything wrong, he got an attorney and refused to testify before a grand jury until after he was granted immunity, he said.
Libby is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of obstruction, the most serious charge. Libby resigned after he was indicted in October 2005.
David Addington
Later today, David Addington, who succeeded Libby as Cheney’s chief of staff, testified that Libby asked him after Wilson’s July 6 New York Times article whether the president had the authority to declassify information.
Addington was Cheney’s counsel at the time. He said Libby also asked whether the CIA would have records to show if it sent a CIA official’s spouse on an assignment. The two were alone in Addington’s office in the White House, he said, and Libby motioned with his hands for Addington to keep his voice down.
Addington said he wondered if the questions were related to Wilson, though he didn’t know about Plame at the time.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter, will be the next witness called after Addington completes his testimony tomorrow.
The trial is expected to last four to six weeks. Walton said today that one juror had been removed “so everybody else has to stay healthy.” He didn’t explain why the juror was removed. That leaves a panel of 12 jurors and three alternates.
The case is U.S. vs. Libby, 05-394, U.S. District Court, the District of Columbia. ++
Fleischer Tells Jury That Libby Told Him About Plame
Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein, Washington Post
Monday, January 29, 2007
Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told a jury today that Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff disclosed to him the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame a week before her name surfaced publicly in the press.
Taking the stand as the most critical witness so far in the perjury trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Fleischer said that in an unusual lunch in the White House mess, Libby told him that the wife of prominent war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV worked in the CIA’s counterproliferation division.
Fleischer, who was called by the prosecution, said Libby told him at the July 7 lunch that former ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate reports Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material there by Wilson’s wife, not by the vice president, as some news accounts were saying.
Wilson later accused the administration of twisting information he gathered, in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. Some have charged that Plame’s name was leaked to columnist Robert D. Novak, who published it in a July 14 column, to discredit Wilson.
Fleischer said he believed that Libby told him Plame’s name, but could not be sure.
“He added that this was something hush-hush or on the QT, that not many people knew this information,” Fleisher said. “My impression was Mr. Libby was telling me this was kind of newsy.”
Added Fleischer: “My thought was that what I was hearing was about nepotism.”
Libby is charged with lying to FBI agents and a grand jury and obstructing justice in the investigation of who leaked Plame’s name to Novak. He told investigators that he learned about Plame’s identity from NBC reporter Tim Russert in a July 10 telephone call. He has pleaded not guilty, contending that when he testified, he did not remember some conversations he had with reporters about Plame. He is not charged with the leak itself.
Fleischer said he never viewed the information he received about Plame as classified or secret, because the protocol in the White House was that press aides would be warned explicitly when information was classified and could not be used in discussions with reporters.
Fleischer also made clear how uncomfortable he was when questioned earlier that day at a press briefing about Wilson’s claims that the administration was twisting intelligence. Earlier in the spring, he had insisted that President Bush stood behind 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union address about Iraq’s efforts to buy uranium in Niger.
But higher level officials he didn’t name began suggesting it might be a problem to defend that statement.
“I had been told to be careful not to stand by the 16 words, that the ground might be shifting on that,” Fleischer said. “You can’t say yes. You can’t say no. At that briefing, I basically punted. I said yes and no.”
During afternoon testimony, Fleischer told jurors that, a few days after his lunch with Libby, Fleischer had relayed the fact that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA to two reporters while they were covering a trip Bush made to Africa.
According to Fleischer, he passed on the information to the reporters, NBC’s David Gregory and Time magazine’s John Dickerson, as they were walking alongside a road in Uganda.
The former press secretary said that, in addition to learning about Plame from Libby, he also had just heard another White House aide, then-communications director Dan Bartlett, “vent” about news accounts that Cheney had asked for Wilson’s trip. Fleischer said he was in the senior staff cabin of Air Force 1 during the Africa trip when he overheard Bartlett say out loud that Wilson’s wife had sent him on the mission to Niger.
He testified that neither Libby nor Bartlett gave him any reason to believe that Plame’s employment was classified.
“I never in my wildest dreams thought this information would be classified,” he said.
Fleischer, who left the White House in mid-July 2003, said that in September, about 2 1/2 months after his conversation with the reporters, he saw a news account that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate a possibly illegal leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity.
“I was absolutely horrified to know I had played a role,” Fleischer said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God. Did I play a role in somehow outing a CIA officer. . . . Did I just do something that I could be in big trouble for.’ ”
He said that he hired lawyers and ultimately agreed to be interviewed by investigators after receiving immunity from prosecution.
Defense attorneys told U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton this morning they want to try to cast Fleischer as a man who had a motive to help prosecutors and lie about Libby — to save himself from possible prosecution for leaking information to reporters in mid-July 2003. Plame’s name and secret CIA role first appeared in a syndicated column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003 — eight days after her husband publicly accused the administration of using bad intelligence to justify the war with Iraq earlier that year.
But at the same time, defense lawyers warned Walton that they are worried about the government providing too much information or suggesting too much about Fleischer seeking the immunity deal — because of what it might imply about their own client.
“The government seeks to use this testimony that if Mr. Fleisher thought he had a criminal problem, Mr. Libby must have thought he had a criminal problem,” said defense attorney William H. Jeffress Jr.
Defense attorneys are suspicious of the immunity deal and why Fitzgerald made it without any apparent reluctance. Libby’s defense lawyers suggested last week in court that Fitzgerald got a secret summary of Fleischer’s testimony — a deal they want to discuss with jurors when Fleischer takes the stand today.
Walton said this morning he had read in his chambers an affidavit the government provided from Fleischer about his immunity deal and was “satisfied” there was nothing to suggest Fleischer promised Fitzgerald any specific testimony. Fitzgerald had said last week no such promises were made. “We got no specifics,” Fitzgerald said then. ++
Cheney’s staff, and a useful press
Tim Rutten, LA Times
1/27/07
IT wasn’t what anybody intended, but this week Vice President Dick Cheney and some of his former aides gave the rest of us a rather instructive seminar in the symbiotic contempt that links the Bush administration and self-serving members of the Washington press corps.
The lesson began in the courtroom, where Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, is on trial for perjury, charged with lying to a grand jury about whether he told reporters that Valerie Plame — the wife of a prominent administration critic, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV — was a CIA agent. Libby’s defense turns, in part, on assertions that the White House “sacrificed” him to protect Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political advisor, and that Libby and Rove had been instructed to manipulate the press in ways that discredited Wilson.
Wilson had been sent by the CIA to the African country of Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain yellow cake uranium mined there as part of his alleged nuclear weapon program. Wilson reported that nothing of the sort had occurred and went public with that fact when Bush and other members of the administration falsely alleged otherwise in making the case for war against Iraq.
Hussein, it turned out, had no program to develop weapons of mass destruction, and, depending on how you view things, the war in Iraq began with either lies or delusions.
Either could have been abetted by the sort of cynical media manipulation described this week when the vice president’s former communications director, Catherine J. Martin, testified in Libby’s trial. She described how Cheney was obsessed with Wilson’s criticism, particularly after publication of an op-ed piece in the New York Times and how the vice president ordered a counteroffensive in parts of the press deemed receptive to whatever the administration wanted to dish out concerning the former diplomat. One of the options she recommended to Cheney was an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” because the program’s host, Tim Russert, would allow the vice president to “control the message.” (Russert, along with a number of reporters whom Libby attempted to make conduits of misinformation, will be testifying later in the trial.)
She also told the court that she suggested that the vice president’s office “leak” information that seemed to undercut Wilson’s credibility to carefully selected reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post, arranged a lunch for Cheney with right-wing commentators and advised him to avoid the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof because he had “attacked the administration fairly regularly.” Other witnesses this week testified that Libby had been assigned to contact selected reporters deemed receptive to information that might discredit Wilson as a critic and to plant with them anonymously sourced stories.
Martin called the word “leak,” which appeared in her notes as a “term of art” and testified, “If you give it to one reporter, they’re likelier to write the story.”
She has that about right, though the “art” she has in mind is deception.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank had the best summation of Martin’s testimony: “The trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House’s PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president’s Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.”
It’s such an amateurish approach to news management, in fact, that you have to wonder how the Bush administration and, particularly, Cheney’s office, got away with it for as long as they did. If you recall that there always are a certain number of high-level Washington journalists willing to play ball with any form of transparently self-interested deceit for the sake of a Page 1 byline or a few minutes of prime airtime, you don’t have to wonder very long.
To get a firsthand look at this brutally cynical contempt for the public and its right to know in action, all you had to do was watch Cheney’s own appearance on CNN’s “Situation Room” this week. The vice president sat there straight-faced and told the show’s host, Wolf Blitzer, that the media have been ignoring all the “enormous successes” in Iraq and are “eager to write off this effort or declare it a failure.”
When Blitzer asked if “blunders and the failures” on the ground in Iraq had undercut the administration’s ability to make its case for its policies, the vice president flatly asserted, “I simply don’t accept the premise of your question. I just think it’s hogwash.”
When Blitzer said there is a terrible situation in Iraq, Cheney replied, “No there is not. There is not. There’s problems — ongoing problems — but we have in fact accomplished our objectives.”
As Blitzer pressed a mild series of questions about the war’s conduct, Cheney snapped, “What you’re recommending is, or at least what you seem to believe the right course is, is to bail out.”
“I’m just asking,” Blitzer interjected.
“No, you’re not asking,” the vice president replied.
This week, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center reported that “just 37% [of Americans] believe that America’s security from terrorist attacks depends on our success in Iraq — a fundamental part of President Bush’s case for the additional troops” he now wishes to send to Baghdad. Pew also found that 51% of Americans now believe that the decision to go to war in Iraq was wrong.
Cheney’s demonstrated proclivity for rhetorical bullying aside, dismissing legitimate questions growing out of such views in the fashion aired by CNN this week is an expression of contempt for public opinion itself.
There’s no particular reason why malfeasant members of the press or those who merely are incompetent shouldn’t be held in contempt. The news media, after all, are like every American institution, home to its share of idiots, poseurs, slothful time-markers and self-interested time servers. The problem is that Cheney and his former aides aren’t simply contemptuous of the individual reporters or even of the press itself. They’re contemptuous of the principle under which the free press operates — which is the American people’s right to have a reasonable account of what the government does in their name.
The lesson to take away from this week’s unintended seminar in contemporary journalism is that the vice president and his staff, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, believe that truth is a malleable adjunct to their ambitions and that they have a well-founded confidence that some members of the Washington press corps will cynically accommodate that belief for the sake of their careers.
It’s a sick little arrangement in which the parties clearly have one thing in common: a profound indifference to both the common good and to their obligation to act in its service. ++
Bush Administration Is Focus of Leak Inquiry
Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report
Monday 29 January 2007
On the evening of September 27, 2003, Ari Fleischer logged onto a computer and read a story published on the Washington Post’s web site - a story that would be printed above the fold on the front page of the paper the next morning.
“Bush Administration Is Focus of Leak Inquiry,” the headline read. “CIA Agent’s Identity Was Leaked to Media.”
The story, reported by the Washington Post’s Mike Allen and Dana Priest, said that “two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife” and that as a result the Justice Department was launching an informal inquiry to find out who leaked the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to syndicated columnist Robert Novak two months earlier.
Fleischer cringed when he read the news. Worse, the story said that whoever was responsible for the leak might have violated an obscure 1982 federal law that carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison and tens of thousand of dollars in fines “for unauthorized disclosure by government employees with access to classified information.” (The law actually states that officials who “knowingly” disclose information about an undercover agent could be prosecuted under this statute. The Washington Post incorrectly characterized the law.)
By the time he finished reading the story, Fleischer’s heart “went into his throat.”
The next morning, according to Peter Zeidenberg, an assistant US attorney working with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on the CIA leak case, Fleischer immediately contacted his lawyer.
Zeidenberg disclosed Fleischer’s nervous reaction to the Post story at the end of the third day of testimony in the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, who is accused of lying about when and how he learned Valerie Plame Wilson was employed by the CIA and whether he disclosed the information to journalists. The jury, which will decide Libby’s fate, was dismissed while Zeidenberg discussed Fleischer with US District Court Judge Reggie Walton and Libby’s defense team.
Motive Behind the Leak?
Two months before the Washington Post story was published, a critic of the Iraq war and the White House’s foreign policies wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times accusing the administration of “twisting” intelligence to win support for the war. Wilson also disclosed that one of the main points of President Bush’s State of the Union address in January of that year, that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger to use in building an atomic bomb - which paved the way toward war - was bogus. Wilson wrote that he had personally traveled to Niger to check out the claims and had reported back to the CIA that it was baseless.
Wilson’s column triggered a firestorm inside the White House. Five days after it was published, CIA Director George Tenet accepted responsibility for allowing the reference to Iraq, Niger and uranium, otherwise known as the “sixteen words,” to be included in Bush’s January 28, 2003, State of the Union address. Many people interpreted this as Tenet falling on his sword to protect the president. Evidence surfaced in late July 2003 that senior administration officials had been warned by the CIA and the State Department on numerous occasions to avoid citing the “sixteen words,” because they were based on unreliable intelligence sources.
A little more than a week after Wilson’s New York Times op-ed article was published, syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote a story attacking Wilson’s credibility and suggested that his trip to Niger was a boondoggle, a hastily arranged trip set up by his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, an operative who worked at the CIA. Novak, citing two senior administration sources, said he was told that Plame was Wilson’s wife. Whoever was responsible for leaking Plame’s identity and CIA status to Novak may have broken the law, wrote David Corn, a columnist for The Nation, a couple of weeks later.
Last week, the public learned for the first time that there were many people inside the White House responsible for leaking Plame’s identity to reporters. Flesicher, who resigned as White House press secretary in July 2003, it turns out, was one of the leakers. In September of 2003, the month the Justice Department started to investigate whether any laws were broken as a result of the Plame leak, the White House was in full defense mode. President Bush and White House press secretary Scott McClellan publicly denied that any member of the administration was involved in the leak or took part in a campaign to discredit Wilson - despite the fact that one of the individuals responsible for the leak was White House political adviser Karl Rove.
Fleischer’s Role Remained a Mystery
Up until a week ago, Fleischer’s role in the CIA leak case has been a mystery. Since leaving his post, he has kept a low profile and has refused to entertain questions about whether he was involved in the case. In March of 2005, he published a book, Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House,about his experience dealing with the media during the two and a half years he worked as White House press secretary. The book contains nary a mention of Joseph Wilson or Valerie Plame.
Perhaps the reason for the silence is that by the time Fleischer’s book was published, he had been granted an immunity deal with Fitzgerald a year earlier, and wasn’t permitted to discuss the case.
Fleischer is scheduled to testify against Libby on Monday. Fleischer’s grand jury testimony states that during a lunchtime meeting in July of 2003, Libby had told him Plame worked for the CIA, was married to Wilson, and had arranged for the former ambassador to travel to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium to build an atomic bomb. After he received immunity, Fleischer told a grand jury that Libby had said the information he disclosed about Plame was “hush hush” and “on the QT.”
During Thursday’s court proceedings, Zeidenberg provided a detailed backstory related to Fleischer’s role in the leak and how his immunity deal with the government came together.
Zeidenberg said the September 28, 2003, Washington Post article by Mike Allen and Dana Priest was the catalyst behind Fleischer’s demand for immunity prior to his testimony before a grand jury in February 2004, less than two months after Fitzgerald was appointed special prosecutor. The reason, according to Zeidenberg, was that Fleischer, who had resigned his White House position in July 2003, had disclosed Plame’s identity and CIA status to more than one journalist. He had told NBC News reporter David Gregory, and other unnamed reporters, that Plame was married to Wilson.
Believing he may have broken the law by discussing Plame with reporters, Fleischer asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and would answer questions before a grand jury only if Fitzgerald promised he would not prosecute him.
“Mr. Fleischer is going to testify that he did seek immunity, and he would not talk to the government before he obtained immunity,” Zeidenberg told Walton. “And the reason he wanted immunity is because, on the morning - actually the evening - of September 27 [2003], he found the story … he read a newspaper article, which indicated that there was a criminal investigation into the possible unauthorized disclosure of a covert agent. And he read that, and he knew that he had conveyed information about that woman, Valerie Wilson, to reporters. And he realized … it was one of those moments where your heart goes into your throat, and you think, I could be in very big trouble here.”
Elizabeth de la Vega, author of the New York Times bestseller, United States vs. George W. Bush, et al., and a former federal prosecutor, said the process for granting a witness immunity does not happen by simply waving a magic wand.
“When someone says he is going to take the Fifth, the assistant US attorney gets permission from the Department of Justice to grant immunity, and then the application and proposed order are submitted to the court, which then orders the person to testify with the provision that nothing he says can be used against him, either directly or derivatively,” de la Vega said.
Libby’s attorney, William Jeffress, argued that the immunity deal Fleischer received might have been improper because it could lead the jury to believe that if Fleischer believed he committed a crime then Libby should also have been under the same belief.
“Mr. Flesicher got court-ordered immunity in February of ‘04 and he testified to the grand jury and talked to the FBI after that immunity was granted,” Jeffress told Judge Walton, according to a copy of a transcript of Thursday’s court proceedings. “I was alerted by Mr. Zeidenberg this morning that he intends, when Mr. Fleischer testifies, to ask Mr. Fleischer, well why did you want immunity? And, you know, have him say, well, gee I read in the paper that, you know, outing a covert agent could be a crime, and, you know, I was worried about getting prosecuted.”
“That’s a completely improper way to use an immunity agreement to have a witness testify about, you know, that they thought they might have committed a crime,” Jeffress added. “It’s obviously hugely prejudicial to Mr. Libby in that the government would use that to say, well see, Mr. Fleischer thought it so Mr. Libby must have thought it too and he had a motive to lie.”
Jeffress argued that the prosecution should be compelled to turn over evidence of written or oral conversations the government had with Fleischer’s attorney so the defense can determine whether Fleischer had a motive to protect his own interests and lie during his grand jury testimony.
Fitzgerald told Walton that any suggestion by Libby’s attorneys that Fleischer was given immunity in exchange for specific information Fleischer would provide against Libby is baseless, and he objected to having to provide Libby’s attorneys with detailed information related to his conversations with Fleischer and his attorneys, because the discussions did not center on what Fleischer would discuss before the grand jury. Fitzgerald he knew Fleischer had “relevant information” about the leak but he did not know the substance of it prior to Fleischer’s grand jury testimony.
“We didn’t get a factual statement of what Mr. Fleischer would say about the defendant,” Fitzgerald told Judge Walton. “It wasn’t as if someone said, here is what I can give you about Mr. Libby. Is that good enough? You know, will you give us immunity? That wasn’t it. We understood that Mr. Fleischer had some relevant knowledge, and he had information. He spoke to people. He did something with information. What we weren’t given is it came from Mr. Libby and here’s what he did with it. It wasn’t something we had laid out for us. We knew he had relevant information about the case. We knew we had to conserve it.”
He objected to the prosecution’s intent on introducing the September 28, 2003, Washington Post article because, Jeffress said, it contained incorrect information about the Identities Intelligence Protection Act - the law Fleischer thought had he violated.
But Zeidenberg told Walton that the article is not being “offered for the truth,” but will simply be introduced into evidence by the prosecution to establish Fleischer’s “state of mind” and that Fleischer “felt he had to seek immunity” because he was “concerned” he might have committed a crime.
If the article “incorrectly cites what the elements are of the Identities Protection Act, then that is relevant to [Fleischer's] state of mind, just as it’s going to be relevant to Mr. Libby’s state of mind,” Zeidenberg argued, adding that it may establish that Libby had a motive to lie to the grand jury investigating the leak.
Libby Questioned About Washington Post Story
Zeidenberg went a step further, and disclosed some new facts during Thursday’s court session that may poke a few holes in the defense’s assertion that Libby “misremembered” how and when he found out about Plame.
The prosecutor said some elements of the September 28, 2003, Washington Post story - specifically, the allegation that “two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife,” and that a federal crime may have been committed - were reprinted in an October 12, 2003, story in the Washington Post under the headline “Probe Focuses on Month Before Leak to Reporters.”
The article, written by Walter Pincus and Mike Allen, was published two days before Libby was first questioned by the FBI about how he found out about Plame, and whether he played a role leaking her name to reporters. Libby told the FBI that he was told in July of 2003 by Tim Russert, host of “Meet the Press,” that Plame was married to Wilson, worked for the CIA, and sent Wilson on a fact-finding trip to Niger. But the October 12, 2003, article was discovered in Libby’s files by federal investigators. Libby underlined the passages cited above, Zeidenberg said.
Libby “was specifically questioned about the … allegation that two White House officials were contacting six reporters with this information,” Zeidenberg told Walton. “And he was asked his impressions of that. He acknowledged that he had that article. That he read that article. It was an October 12 [2003] article, which was two days before the FBI interviewed him. So clearly, it’s going to be relevant and it’s admissible independently of Mr. Fleischer’s testimony.”
Walton agreed with Zeidenberg, saying that the September 28, 2003, Post story can be admitted into evidence by the prosecution regardless of the inaccuracy because it establishes the reasons Fleischer sought immunity. Furthermore, the October 12, 2003, article is relevant for the jury to hear about as well.
“If Mr. Libby has an article of this nature in his possession and he’s underlined information that would tend to suggest that he had concerns about whether he committed a crime by having revealed this information, obviously, it seems to me that does become relevant because it may relate to what his state of mind was when he talked to the FBI and when he ultimately appeared before the grand jury,” Walton said. “So, even if the article is wrong in that respect as it relates to Mr. Libby, if he’s got it in his possession, and he’s got it underlined, that would suggest that, well, maybe he had a motive to lie, from the government’s perspective, because he felt that he had committed a crime by revealing the information and therefore had to seek to cover it up.” ++
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
January 29th, 2007
… is give impeachment a chance.
That was the huge Elephant lumbering along beside the protesters in the pro-peace demonstration this weekend — I think it will get bigger and louder in the coming weeks as Bush continues to stonewall the power of the people. In a march that was intent on stopping the US occupation of Iraq, the specter of impeachment loomed large in those hearts and minds … that’s because they realize that our OWN country is occupied, as is Iraq — and that the administration is a rogue regime that stole two elections to systematically gut this countries ethics and promise. The Bushies are not just pro-THIS-war, they’re pro-war [profit,] period … and there seems to be no way to stop the lunatics but to remove them. They are … not the Dub, who is incapable of nuance … pretending to be flexible but there is very little give in them.
Take, for instance, the new Rummy, Robert Gates — a man who indicated doubts about the war and whom Congress quickly accepted as a reasonable man; he’s gone Kool Aid, within a matter of weeks — and even more disturbing, Rummy himself is not gone … he’s just morphed into a backroom player, with full powers to influence [article below.]
This administration has only two modes — corporate and military [i.e. fascist.] The Pentagon is a kind of merciless think-tank that comes up with surreal options that are devoid of heart or humanity — the new microwave stun gun is an example … useful in wars, no doubt, and with dissenters as well. When anticipating, for instance, a nation disruptive about its leadership, they don’t expand on diplomacy’s or democratic process, they plan ways to control brain waves [like HAARP] or water supplies. Here’s an example of their lunacy, sent by Christine yesterday — the answer to global warming is … ta da! Giant space mirrors to control sunlight … we can still rape and plunder the planet and increase our carbon footprint, we’ll just have to do it in darkness. And always ALWAYS this stuff is done in secret, to slowly leak out to a stunned public.
Control, control, control. The system itself is broken, and we’ll have to wake up to that, the unyielding PR, Psy/Op corporatist smoke and mirrors that has eroded our hold on reality — but the immanent danger from these Hucksters [there's an excellent read with that title, below] continues to shake us awake. We are smarter than they think we are, and they’re clumsier than they know.
Impeachment … the final solution for the Bush boyz … is suffering a media blitz of bad publicity and Republican-style mythology — it’s funny how such an event would “rip our nation apart” today but seemed worthwhile enough to shake our national security when Big Bill got a blow job. If anything proves MSM is NOT a liberal institution, the mealy-mouthed response to the Rovian spin machine on this issue shows how far to the Right it has slipped … and how mind-crimed FOX Newz watchers choose to be, as they bluster and pout abut “liberal media.”
Here’s an excellent collection on the marches and impeachment — Kucinich has used that word recently as he focuses on the Bush march into Iran, much in the news now along with an expanded PR push to brand them evil [they're not helping the case much, either ... but that's another post.]
Bob Herbert, along with articles by Whitney, Nichols and Lindorff — important reads of the day, encouraging … and disturbing. These days of potent astrology, and the changes that are assisting the birth of a New Paradigm, are always disturbing.
Jude
Bush defiant in face of anti-war demonstrations
White House increasingly isolated as even the Republicans join condemnation of ’surge’
Rupert Cornwell in Washington, Independent UK
28 January 2007
More Than Antiwar
Bob Herbert, NYT
Sunday, January 28, 2007
It was a few minutes after 11 a.m. when the scattered crowd began moving slowly toward the stage at the end of the Mall. The sky was a beautiful sunlit blue and the Capitol building, huge and white and majestic, offered the protesters an emotional backdrop that seemed almost close enough to touch.
“It’s so big,” said a woman from Milwaukee, who was there with her husband and two children. “It’s lovely. Makes you want to cry.”
You can say what you want about the people opposed to this wretched war in Iraq, try to stereotype them any way you can. But you couldn’t walk among them for more than a few minutes on Saturday without realizing that they love their country as much as anyone ever has. They love it enough to try to save it.
By 11:15 I thought there was a chance that the march against the war would be a bust. There just weren’t that many people moving toward the stage to join the rally that preceded the march. But the crowd kept building, slowly, steadily. It was a good-natured crowd. Everyone was bad-mouthing the Bush administration and the war, but everybody seemed to be smiling.
There were gray-haired women with digital cameras and young girls with braces. There were guys trying to look cool in knit caps and shades and balding baby boomers trading stories about Vietnam. And many ordinary families.
“Where’s Hillary?” someone asked.
That evoked laughter in the crowd. “She’s in Iowa running for president,” someone said.
When a woman asked, “What’s her position on the war?” a man standing next to her cracked, “She was for it before she was against it.”
More laughter.
The crowd kept building. There were people being pushed in wheelchairs and babies in strollers. There were elderly men and women, walking very slowly in some cases and holding hands.
The goal of the crowd was to get the attention of Congress and persuade it to move vigorously to reverse the Bush war policies. But the thought that kept returning as I watched the earnestly smiling faces, so many of them no longer young, was the way these protesters had somehow managed to keep the faith. They still believed, after all the years and all the lies, that they could make a difference. They still believed their government would listen to them and respond.
“I have to believe in this,” said Donna Norton of Petaluma, Calif. “I have a daughter in the reserves and a son-in-law on active duty. I feel very, very strongly about this.”
Betty and Peter Vinten-Johansen of East Lansing, Mich., said they felt obliged to march, believing that they could bolster the resolve of opponents of the war in Congress. Glancing toward the Capitol, Mr. Vinten-Johansen said, “Maybe we can strengthen their backbone a little bit.”
Even the celebrities who have been at this sort of thing for decades have managed to escape the debilitating embrace of cynicism. “How can you be cynical?” asked Tim Robbins, just before he mounted the stage to address the crowd, which by that time had grown to more than 100,000.
“This is inspiring,” he said. “It’s the real voice of the American people, and when you hear that collective voice protesting freely it reminds you of the greatness of our country. It gives you hope.”
When Jane Fonda said, “Silence is no longer an option,” she was doing more than expressing the outrage of the crowd over the carnage in Iraq and the president’s decision to escalate American involvement. She was implicitly re-asserting her belief in the effectiveness of citizen action.
Ms. Fonda is approaching 70 now and was at the march with her two grandchildren. It was very touching to watch her explain how she had declined to participate in antiwar marches for 34 years because she was afraid her notoriety would harm rather than help the effort.
The public is way out in front of the politicians on this issue. But the importance of Saturday’s march does not lie primarily in whether it hastens a turnaround of U.S. policy on the war. The fact that so many Americans were willing to travel from every region of the country to march against the war was a reaffirmation of the public’s commitment to our peaceful democratic processes.
It is in that unique and unflagging commitment, not in our terrifying military power, that the continued promise and greatness of America are to be found.
DC Marchers Challenge Congress to End War
John Nichols
Sunday, January 28, 2007 by The Nation
Actor Sean Penn summed up the new energy — and the new focus — of the anti-war movement Saturday, when he turned George Bush’s own words against the president.
Just hours after the president had again reasserted his false claim to authority to pursue a war that is not wanted by the American people or the Congress, Penn told anti-war demonstrators gathered in Washington that Bush would be wise to review the Constitution.
“In a democracy,” the actor told the cheering crowd, which organizers said numbered in the hundreds of thousands, “we are the deciders.”
Saturday’s anti-war demostrations, which filled the streets of cities from San Francisco to Washington, marked a return to form for an anti-war movement that had trouble building momentum during the three years that followed Bush’s decision to launch a preemptive war against a country that posed no serious threat to the United States or its allies. During the period from 2OO3 to 2OO6, Bush’s Republican Party had complete control of the machinery of government, and his allies were successful in assuring that Congress would not serve as any kind of check or balance on the presidency.
Though polls showed that most Americans thought Bush had been wrong to take the country to war, and that they disapproved of his handling of the conflict, demonstrations seemed fruitless because the president held all the cards. Many opponents of the war poured their energies into electoral politics, hoping to restore at least a measure of balance to the federal government by putting opposition Democrats in charge of at least one house of Congress. On November 7, the work paid off, with the election of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
So it was that one of the most popular signs at Saturday’s rally in Washington read: “I Voted for Peace.”
An equally popular sign, distributed by United for Peace and Justice, the group that played a central role in organizing the demonstrations, read: “Congress: Stand Up to Bush!”
Both signs were necessary messages on Saturday because, while there is no question that Americans voted November 7 for peace, there is still a great deal of uncertainty about whether the Congress that was elected will, in fact, tell the president that it is time to bring the troops home.
Some members of Congress do get it. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Lynn Woolsey, D-California, addressed the Washington rally, urging activists to lobby the House on behalf of comprehensive legislation she has sponsored to withdraw Congressional approval for the war and implement a rapid yet orderly withdrawal of U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors from Iraq. The second most senior member of the House, Michigan Democrat John Conyers, was there as well, telling the crowd that: “George Bush has a habit of firing military leaders who tell him the Iraq war is failing,” said Conyers, who then looked out at the crowd and shouted: “He can’t fire you.”
“He can’t fire us,” added the House Judiciary Committee chair, referencing the Congress that he said should block funding for Bush’s plans to maintain his war. “The founders of our country gave our Congress the power of the purse because they envisioned a scenario exactly like we find ourselves in today. Not only is it in our power, it is our obligation to stop Bush.”
While Bush and Vice President Cheney continue to peddle the fantasy they have the power to wage war as they choose, Congressman Dennis Kucinich corrected the latest lie from the White House. “It is time for George Bush to understand that Congress is a coequal branch of government,” the Ohio Democrat said. “Congress has the power to end this war.”
Kucinich is right on both counts. But he might have added a footnote: There are still a lot of representatives and senators who do not fully accept the responsibility that goes with being members of a coequal branch of government. Until they are reminded of that fact by their constituents, a cautious approach to Constitutionally-mandated duties will prevent Congress from ending the war — or even seriously curtailing it.
Sean Penn’s message was, indeed, the appropriate one: Those who marched on Saturday can and should be the deciders in a democracy.
But in order to claim that title from a dubiously-selected president, the people will have to do more than march.
Only by delivering the message that was on their signs — “Congress: Stand Up to Bush!” — directly to their elected representatives will the people convince House and Senate majorities to act to end a war that should never have begun.
The lobbying starts Monday. It should not stop until the troops are home — and until those who sent them into the quagmire are held fully to account.
While ending the war was the first priority for those who marched in Washington, San Francisco and dozens of other cities across the country Saturday, the demand for accountability was high on the agenda.
“This past November the American people sent a resounding signal to Washington, D.C., and the world. We want change. We want this war to end. And how did Bush respond?
Twenty-one thousand, five hundred more will risk their lives for his misguided war,” declared actor Tim Robbins, as he addressed the tens of thousands who had gathered on the National Mall. “Is impeachment still off the table? Let’s get him out of office.”
The crowd roared, “Impeach Bush! Impeach Bush. Impeach Bush!”
Impeachment: The Missing Word at Saturday’s Anti-War Rally
Dave Lindorff
Jan 29 2007
The largely unstated word at the massive anti-war demonstration and march in Washington on Saturday was “impeachment.” Not that it wasn’t on demonstrators’ lips and signs, but it wasn’t coming from the podium.
The march, organized by United for Peace and Justice, was instead deliberately focused narrowly on the issue of ending the war in Iraq and preventing an invasion of Iran. But clearly, behind that was the sense that the US government is in the hands of a cabal of warmongers and anti-democratic usurpers who are intent on broadening the war in the Middle East, not ending it , and that the Democrats in the 110th Congress haven’t got the spine to stop them (a group from Seattle actually addressed this with a giant white spine float emblazoned with the words “investigate, impeach, indict”).
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the new head of the House Judiciary Committee, was a late addition to the roster of speakers at the rally on the National Mall. He told the cheering throng that while Bush may have been “firing the generals who tell him that we’re losing the war in Iraq,” he “can’t fire you.” Then he added, in a none-too-veiled hint that impeachment may be coming, “But we can fire him!”
The crowd went wild, with chants of “Impeach him!”
The stage has been set.
Bush and Cheney have stated publicly that they will not be swayed by the November election, or by polls or demonstrations, all making it clear that the vast majority of Americans want the Iraq War ended quickly. They have thrown down the gauntlet saying that they will ignore any Congressional resolution condemning the escalation of American involvement in Iraq. They have made it clear by sending a Naval armada to the Persian Gulf and by their threatening statements, that they are getting ready to attack Iran despite universal international opposition and warnings from military experts that it would be a disaster.
There is really only one way to stop the madness: impeachment.
Investigations into administration wrongdoing won’t do it. Demonstrations won’t do it.
Even cutting funding for the war–while it would be a more powerful statement of opposition from Congress–would not end the conflict or bring the troops home. Bush would simply move money around in the giant Pentagon budget and call it something else.
Critics of impeachment, especially among the Democratic leadership, say it is too soon. They say the first step should be investigations. This is a misunderstanding, or a deliberate distortion, of what the impeachment process is.
The impeachment process itself begins with investigations. To argue that first a case for impeachment has to be proved before a bill of impeachment should be submitted in the House is akin to saying that a case of murder must be proved before an indictment can be brought.
In fact, the proper procedure, laid out by the Founding Fathers, is for a member of Congress to submit a bill of impeachment claiming that the president has violated his oath of office, or has engaged in actions that threaten the Constitution or the rule of law. That bill goes to the House Judiciary Committee which must decide whether the bill makes a serious enough charge to warrant going to the full House to request the establishment of an Impeachment Committee, armed with subpoena power, to investigate. (Alternatively, of course, a state’s legislature can submit a joint resolution calling for impeachment, which may happen soon.)
Should a majority of the House vote to impanel the Judiciary Committeee as an Impeachment Committee, that is when the investigation would begin in ernest–a process we saw in action twice in recent memory, first in the case of Richard Nixon, and second with Bill Clinton.
In Bush’s case, there is ample evidence already in the public record to justify multiple bills of impeachment. Just to name a few, we know:
A federal judge has ruled, after hearing evidence from both sides, that President Bush violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a felony, and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution by authorizing warrantless monitoring of the communications of American citizens.
The president violated the US Criminal Code and the Geneva Conventions by both authorizing torture of prisoners in captivity, and by failing to act to prevent and to punish torture when it was brought to his attention.
The president has abused his power by assuming legislative powers to invalidate duly passed acts of Congress through his issuance of so-called “signing statements”–a process not even mentioned by the Constitution, which assigns “all legislative authority” to the Congress.
On these and a number of other issues, there is really no need for investigations at all. The crimes against the Constitution are obvious, blatant and self-evident. (And in the case of NSA spying, are actually laid out in a federal judge’s opinion.)
All that is lacking at this point, is a principled, courageous and patriotic House leadership to initiate the process.
To hear a presentation of the full case for impeachment against the president, and against some of the key members of the administration, including Cheney, Gonzales and Rice, check out the new release of a video, “The Case for Impeachment,” by Squeaky Wheel Productions,available at: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=apfnorg
(Be sure and pass this link on to everyone you know, and to your congressional representative!)
Impeachment: The Case in Favor
Elizabeth Holtzman, CommonDreams
Friday, January 26, 2007 by The Nation
Approximately a year ago, I wrote in this magazine that President George W. Bush had committed high crimes and misdemeanors and should be impeached and removed from office. His impeachable offenses include using lies and deceptions to drive the country into war in Iraq, deliberately and repeatedly violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on wiretapping in the United States, and facilitating the mistreatment of US detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act of 1996.
Since then, the case against President Bush has, if anything, been strengthened by reports that he personally authorized CIA abuse of detainees. In addition, courts have rejected some of his extreme assertions of executive power. The Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees, and a federal judge ruled that the President could not legally ignore FISA. Even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s recent announcement that the wiretapping program would from now on operate under FISA court supervision strongly suggests that Bush’s prior claims that it could not were untrue.
Despite scant attention from the mainstream media, since last year impeachment has won a wide audience. Amid a flurry of blogs, books and articles, a national grassroots movement has sprung up. In early December seventy-five pro-impeachment rallies were held around the country and pro-impeachment efforts are planned for Congressional districts across America. A Newsweek poll, conducted just before election day, showed 51 percent of Americans believed that impeachment of President Bush should be either a high or lower priority; 44 percent opposed it entirely. (Compare these results with the 63 percent of the public who in the fall of 1998 opposed President Clinton’s impeachment.) Most Americans understand the gravity of President Bush’s constitutional misconduct.
Public anger at Bush has been mounting. On November 7 voters swept away Republican control of the House and Senate. The President’s poll numbers continue to drop.
These facts should signal a propitious moment for impeachment proceedings to start. Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment “off the table.” (Impeachment proceedings must commence in the House of Representatives.) Her position doesn’t mean impeachment is dead; it simply means a different route to it has to be pursued.
Congressional investigations must start, and public pressure must build to make the House act.
This is no different from what took place during Watergate. In 1973 impeachment was not “on the table” for many months while President Nixon’s cover-up unraveled, even though Democrats controlled the House and Senate. But when Nixon fired the special prosecutor to avoid making his White House tapes public, the American people were outraged and put impeachment on the table, demanding that Congress act. That can happen again.
Congressional and other investigations that previously found serious misconduct in the Nixon White House made the public’s angry reaction to the firing of the special prosecutor–and the House response with impeachment proceedings–virtually inevitable. Early in 1973, once it appeared that the cover-up might involve the White House, the Senate created a select committee to investigate. The committee held hearings and uncovered critical evidence, including the existence of a White House taping system that could resolve the issue of presidential complicity. The Senate also forced the Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Watergate.
Other committees looked into related matters. None of the investigations were prompted by the idea of impeachment. Still, they laid the groundwork for it–and the evidence they turned up was used by the House impeachment panel to prepare articles of impeachment against Nixon.
The same approach can govern now. Senate and House committees must commence serious investigations that could uncover more evidence to support impeachment. The investigations should ascertain the full extent of the President’s deceptions, exaggerations and lies that drove us into the Iraq War. (They can simply in effect resurrect Republican Senator Howard Baker’s famous questions about Richard Nixon: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”) Congress should also explore the wiretapping that has violated the FISA law, the President’s role in mistreatment of detainees and his gross indifference to the catastrophe facing the residents of New Orleans from Katrina.
Investigations should also be conducted into Vice President Cheney’s meetings with oil company executives at the outset of the Administration. If divvying up oil contracts in Iraq were discussed, as some suggest, this would help prove that the Iraq War had been contemplated well before 9/11, and that a key motivation was oil. Inquiries into Halliburton’s multibillion-dollar no-bid contracts should also be conducted, particularly given Cheney’s ties to the company.
White House documents about Katrina that have not already been turned over to Congress should be sought to document further the President’s failure to discharge his constitutional duty to help the people of New Orleans.
Our country’s Founders provided the power of impeachment to prevent the subversion of the Constitution. President Bush has subverted and defied the Constitution in many ways. His defiance and his subversion continue.
Failure to impeach Bush would condone his actions. It would allow him to assume he can simply continue to violate the laws on wiretapping and torture and violate other laws as well without fear of punishment. He could keep the Iraq War going or expand it even further than he just has on the basis of more lies, deceptions and exaggerations.
Remember, as recently as October 26, Bush said, “Absolutely, we are winning” the war in Iraq–a blatant falsehood. Worse still, if Congress fails to act, Bush might be emboldened to believe he may start another war, perhaps against Iran, again on the basis of lies, deceptions and exaggerations.
There is no remedy short of impeachment to protect us from this President, whose ability to cause damage in the next two years is enormous. If we do not act against Bush, we send a terrible message of impunity to him and to future Presidents and mark a clear path to despotism and tyranny. Succeeding generations of Americans will never forgive us for lacking the nerve to protect our democracy.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman is the author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush.
Putting It on the Table: Kucinich Says Bush Risking Impeachment
David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet
Fri, 2007-01-26
“The degree to which this President continues to take steps to go to war against Iran without consulting with the full Congress is the degree to which he is increasingly putting himself in jeopardy of an impeachment proceeding.”
~ Dennis Kucinich
[...]
Kucinich: The White House Is Up To Its Old Tricks; Is Preparing the United States for an Attack on Iran : President’s Actions Could Lead to Impeachment
Washington, Jan 26 - WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jan. 26) — Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) accused the White House of mounting a media blitz to prepare the U.S. public for an eventual attack on Iran. Today The Washington Post reported the Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East.
“The White House is up to its old tricks again: Providing information by anonymous sources and portraying Iran as an aggressor in Iraq,” Kucinich said.
“The President is mischaracterizing U.S. action vis à vis Iran. In fact, the U.S. is already engaged in offensive and provocative acts against Iran. The President’s strategy, by portraying our involvement as only being on the defensive, is laying out the groundwork for him to attack Iran and bypass authorization by Congress,” Kucinich said.
The Washington Post article stated:
“A senior intelligence officer was more wary of the ambitions of the strategy. ‘This has little to do with Iraq. It’s all about pushing Iran’s buttons. It is purely political.’ The official expressed similar views about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United States is escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away from Iraq and to blame Iran for the United States’ increasing inability to stanch the violence there.”
Kucinich said, “The White House spin machine is at it again: this time providing justification for a new war — a war against Iran.” Kucinich pointed out that while the term ‘officials’ is mentioned 21 times in the Post article — not once are the officials identified by name.
In his January 10 address to the nation, President Bush asserted that succeeding in Iraq begins with addressing Iran and Syria. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq,” Bush said.
“The Washington Post is quoting strategically placed Administration sources who are providing justification for an attack against Iran,” Kucinich said. “This new twist on Iran, a country this Administration refuses to have free and open diplomatic talks with, is stating the Administration’s case for war.”
“The degree to which this President continues to take steps to go to war against Iran without consulting with the full Congress is the degree to which he is increasingly putting himself in jeopardy of an impeachment proceeding,” Kucinich said.
Edging Impeachment Back Onto the Table
John Nichols
Friday, January 26, 2007 by The Nation
The news from former vice presidential chief of staff “Scooter” Libby’s trial on charges of obstructing a federal investigation — particularly the revelation that Vice President Dick Cheney wrote a memo that effectively confirms his intimate involvement in strategizing about how to counter the inquiry into the Bush administration’s politically-motivated outing of CIA operative Valarie Plame — should slowly but surely edge the prospect of impeachment back onto the table from which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi removed it.
Cheney is expected to testify in the Libby trial and, if a federal jury rejects his testimony as less than credible, that would seem to create an appropriate opening for members of the House who take seriously their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution to entertain a discussion of impeaching the vice president.
Intriguingly, Cheney almost found himself in the middle of the discussion this week.
Prior to CNN personality Wolf Blitzer’s testy-if-not-particularly substantive interview with the vice president on Wednesday, the network’s resident rabble rouser, commentator Jack Cafferty, presented a reasonably favorable feature on a move by New Mexico state Senators Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, and John Grubesic, D-Santa Fe, to get that state’s legislature to petition Congress to impeach both Cheney and Bush.
The New Mexico impeachment initiative, one of several currently moving forward in state legislatures around the country, is designed to force members of Congress to take seriously the increasingly-popular demand that the president and vice president be held to account for misleading Congress over the Iraq war, supporting torture, engaging in illegal spying on U.S. citizens and using their offices to punish critics. “I am an American citizen that believes that the Constitution is a sacred document and that the Bush administration clearly does not share this sentiment,” explains Grubesic, while Ortiz y Pino says, “We’re simply doing what all elected officials should be doing. That is, listening to the voice of the people and trying to carry it out as best we can.”
The New Mexico legislators have taken their cue from Thomas Jefferson, who in a manual of congressional procedures written more than two centuries ago affirmed that state legislatures could petition the House to impeach federal officials. The third president explained in Section 603 of his Manual on Parliamentary Practice and Rules of the House of Representatives, a volume that is still referred to by House leaders for precedents and guidance, that: “there are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion”: 1) By charges made on the floor by a member of the House; 2) By charges preferred by a memorial filed by a House member; 3) By charges contained in a Resolution introduced by a House member; 4) By a message from the President; 5) By charges transmitted by a State legislature, or a grand jury; 5) By facts developed and reported by an investigating committee of the House.”
Most of the media and the political class has been inclined to neglect — or in some cases ridicule — efforts by state legislators to move the impeachment process along.
But U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, a Democrat who represents much of New Mexico, expressed respect for the initiative. “These legislators speak for many of my constituents,” explains Udall, who says he plans to talk with supporters of the impeachment resolution and closely monitor its progress.
Cafferty was similarly respectful. “[Although] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is quote, ‘off the table’ not everybody is so sure about that,” explained Cafferty. “Two New Mexico state senators have introduced a resolution calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The measure accuses Mr. Bush and Cheney of misleading Congress about the war in Iraq, torturing prisoners and violating Americans’ civil liberties through the domestic spy program. One of the sponsors told a crowd of supporters ‘We created a ripple. Your voice is going to turn it into a tidal wave hopefully.’ Well the way it works is that a state of course, cannot mandate impeachment of a president but the impeachment charges can be forwarded to the House of Representatives. The newspaper in Santa Fe, ‘The New Mexican’ reports the measure already is running into trouble even though Democrats control both chambers of the state legislature, and that’s because no Republicans support it. Senate leaders have assigned it to three different committee hearings, meaning that there are more chances to kill the measure before it ever makes it to a vote. But the fact that the issue of impeaching a sitting president is being discussed seriously in a state legislature like New Mexico’s speaks volumes.”
Cafferty deserves a lot of credit for breaking the silence on impeachment.
Unfortunately, Blitzer failed to take the next step. How fascinating it would have been if, finally, a broadcast interviewer had asked Cheney: “Why do you think so many Americans believe you should be impeached?”
It’s likely that Cheney would have dismissed that particular question. But would it not have been illuminating to watch his reaction if Blitzer had followed up with another query: “Do you think it might have something to do with the mounting evidence that you were involved in a conspiracy to thwart a federal investigation into efforts by your office to punish a critic of the administration — the sort of action that, if I’m not mistaken, formed the basis for one of the articles of impeachment against your old boss Richard Nixon?”
Rumsfeld is still running the War Department
Mike Whitney
Jan 28 2007
Where’s Rummy?
That’s what I’d been wondering ever since the Princeton Warlord resigned his post at the Pentagon last month. In fact, I never really believed that Rumsfeld retired, but that he simply vanished from public view so he could carry out his nefarious plans undercover.
Now, it appears that I was right. A recent article in the Washington Times by Rowan Scarborough, (”Rumsfeld’s transition raises questions” 1-25-07) confirms that Rumsfeld has resurfaced in Arlington, VA and opened a “government-provided transition office with 7 Pentagon-paid staffers working for him”. He is listed as a “nonpaid consultant” so he can continue to “review secret and top-secret documents”.
As Scarborough aptly notes, “Rumsfeld has left the Pentagon but not the Defense Department”. He is accompanied by his top aide, Stephen Cambone.
The question this raises, of course, is whether Rumsfeld is still calling the shots at the Pentagon?
My guess would be; Yes. The Rummy-resignation was just more-of-the-same War Department hocus-pocus (psy-ops) There was never the slightest possibility that Dick Cheney would take congress’ disapproval of Rumsfeld’s performance seriously and throw him overboard. Rummy and Cheney are joined at the hip; you can’t dump one without the other.
Consider Cheney’s comments just last week to fully appreciate his disdain for congress. When he was asked about the senate resolution which rebukes the president for surging more troops into Baghdad, Cheney sneered, “It won’t stop us.”
Of course it “won’t stop him” because he has nothing but contempt for democratic government. So, if that’s his attitude, why do people believe he let Rumsfeld go?
He didn’t. Rummy is still moving the pieces around the global chessboard while using his sock-puppet Gates to conceal his activities. This explains why the policy in Iraq has only intensified since Rumsfeld left, even though the “dovish” Gates claimed that he never supported the invasion and that he wanted to see the Baker group’s (ISG) recommendations carried out. (a phased withdrawal of troops) Now, Gates has thrown his weigh behind a military escalation in Iraq and Afghanistan while eschewing negotiations with the Iraqi resistance. In other words, he is just as unwilling to pursue a political solution as Rumsfeld.
Last week, Gates admonished the senate for their resolution opposing Bush’s Iraq policy. He said that their actions were, “emboldening the enemy.”
“Emboldening the enemy”? Weeks earlier, Gates supported the very same policy the senate is now advocating.
What changed? Or is someone else pulling the strings?
The real proof that Gates is just a powerless shadow-secretary executing the orders of his superiors is the steady naval buildup in the Gulf where 2 carrier groups and, perhaps, 3 nuclear subs are deployed in preparation for a preemptive attack on Iran.
Who in their right mind would argue that this is Gates policy?!?
This obvious provocation has Rumsfeld and Cheney written all over it.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Rumsfeld is still playing a vital role in the US global resource war (aka: the war on terror); a war that now extends from the southern coast of Somalia to the northern tip of Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld and Cheney are playing for keeps and they won’t be deterred by lofty-sounding resolutions or democratic wrangling. Their madcap plan will continue apace until it is derailed by tragedy or the country goes bust. Either way; we lose.
Hucksterism
Bill C. Davis
Jan 29 2007
Communism, fascism, socialism, capitalism, barbarism - hucksterism.
Hucksters know more and something different from what they’re telling their potential buyers. Hucksters do great infomercials. Don King is a huckster. Managers for professional wrestlers, certain evangelical preachers, (Swaggart, Hagee, Haggard) - are all hucksters. They sell hollow products by agitating false needs and cruelly exploiting genuine ones.
Government is an attractive haven for hucksters. Rumsfeld was a government huckster. He had an impatient, incredulous look when someone challenged his product. His exasperated sighs would say, you have no idea how good for you what I’m selling you is, and that’s just too bad - for you.
Condoleezza Rice furrows her brow and is amused by a questioner’s lack of edification as they cast doubt on her product. You can almost hear the sympathetic, “tsk, tsk, tsk” beneath her patronizing quizzical look.
Rush Limbaugh yells and pops blood vessels as he makes a case for whatever the administration is making a case for. He’s hyper huckster empowered by his lack of respect for the people to whom he’s pitching. His contempt for them creates a special intimacy - a bond between consumer/victim and huckster.
Cheney has the soft, sonorous sell. He’s stealth huckster. He knows - he really knows - he knows so clearly and deeply that he only needs to speak in a pitch that has you leaning forward to pay attention. “You come to me for this thing that you and I both know you need,” his tone of voice seems to be saying. “I’ll tell you only what I think you need to know about this thing I’m selling you and not one syllable more.”
Bush is the boy huckster. Like the ne’er do well son trying to legitimize his errant pitch by smiling with satisfaction at the logic that might be escaping you but not him.
If hucksters get into government, it might be the fault of the electorate. How could one not know? If an election is rigged, then it’s a covert coup and the question becomes how did the hucksters even become serious candidates.
Candidate Bush was asked by a BBC reporter in 2000 who the presidents or leaders of nine countries were. He knew not one. He sniped at the reporter - “Well - do you know?” To which the reporter replied, “No - but I’m not running for president.”
This is the question for history and for us right now. Why did he run for president? Why was he asked and empowered and sponsored to run for president?
The years have revealed an answer - because he was and is a huckster. At the moment he’s a tired huckster but there’s a product he was put there to sell and he’s been doing his job. But who hired him? Who said, this is the man who should be president?
A president should be capable of making visionary decisions - can balance mass psychology and anthropology with strategic confrontation and diplomacy and with keen social awareness and a comprehension of all the resulting implications. Who said, “Our money is on Bush to be that man?” Was it some interested collective that needed a huckster - the way GE needed Reagan and the Church needed Bishop Sheen, and bad architecture needs Trump?
Hucksters are not leaders. They’re borderline criminal. Bush has crossed the border. Emboldened by impunity he has decided that he is the one who decides. He goes to default position, which is - I am the president.
Cornered hucksters usually get run out of town. This cornered huckster says, well - what do you have to sell? And then - from his corner he rises up to say, I make the decisions - I no longer need to sell or buy anything.
Ironically, now that he seems to be retiring his huckster status - he is at his most dangerous and he himself now needs to be retired.
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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January 29th, 2007