29 Comments

1. Buddy Larsen:

Ha–you have a knack for springing words that suddenly have all-new meanings: “Anchorman”! (chuckle chuckle)

Jul 6, 2005 - 6:15 pm 2. Kevin P:

Roger:

I can admire Miller a little for keeping her word. But the start of the marytr campaign is already making me gag. She is not protecting a whistleblower. She is protecting someone who was getting political revenge against another political gameplayer. This is why the Press should not have unlimited protection. Protecting a whistleblower who is exposing crimes committed by the powerfull is one thing. This was a partisan bitchslapping contest and felony was possibly committed.

A constitutional right elevating the press above the average citizen is more then they deserve. Do that and confidential tax records, FBI backround checks and all sorts of private info will start being spilled in the political nuclear wars that are going on today. The press will be turned into a willing or unwilling character assasination arm of both political parties. This happens enough with the legal information that is out there.

And my pity for Miller is very low. As I posted before she will get a million dollar book for her prison memoir from the belly of the beast.She will be crowned and lionized as the grand defender of freedom of the press. She will be on the $50,000 a pop lecture tour for at least 2 or 3 years and she will have a couple of J-schools named after her. Not bad for 4 months of prison time.

Kevin Peters

Jul 6, 2005 - 6:22 pm 3. RBMN:

Whoever the whistleblower was, they told the truth about Wilson and his wife, unlike Wilson himself.

From:

“Plame’s Input Is Cited on Niger Mission: Report Disputes Wilson’s Claims on Trip, Wife’s Role”

By Susan Schmidt, Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html

excerpts:

Wilson’s assertions — both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information — were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report. The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address. Yesterday’s report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched “yellowcake” uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said. The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.

[...]

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson’s bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional. The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame “offered up” Wilson’s name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations saying her husband “has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said. Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger. “Valerie had nothing to do with the matter,” Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. “She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.”

Jul 6, 2005 - 6:34 pm 4. Katherine:

Does this mean that Bu$hitler finally completed the transformation of our fair democracy into a fascist state? Now that we jail the journalists and all.

Jul 6, 2005 - 6:37 pm 5. Buddy Larsen:

yeh–the person she was protecting waived the protection–in effect, told her to talk. But she deduced that the waiver wasn’t honest (the person she protects misled her?) in order that she could maintain her opportunity to martyr her schedule for a few months (in return for the bona-fides). Sound about right?

Jul 6, 2005 - 6:40 pm 6. Luther McLeod:

The thing that gets me is…why doesn’t the source just identify his/her self? Wouldn’t that be the honorable thing to do? I would have a difficult time sleeping at night knowing someone was in jail for my misdeeds. Plus this individual supposedly gave Cooper permission to testify fully before the Grand Jury. Are am I completely misreading the situation? I also think Kevin P makes some very good points.

Jul 6, 2005 - 7:00 pm 7. Ben:

The most ridiculous aspect of this entire charade is that Judith Miller is most likely the only one who will spend any time in prison. It is extremely unlikely that the leaker will ever be convicted of anything. The statute in question is designed to protect agents in the field, which Plame wasn’t. It requires that a secret be divulged, and Plame’s identity as a CIA agent was widely known in DC. It also requires that the person doing the disclosing know that he is committing a crime, which I suspect that he didn’t given his willingness to let the reporters speak.

By the way, this is another reason why special prosecutors are fundamentally unfair to the accused — because they have nothing else to do. Any prosecutor with a sense of proportion — i.e., one with other cases to prosecute and a budget within which to do so — would have dropped this turkey of a case long ago. Also, I suspect the the natural desire to justify your job has something to do with the zeal with which special prosecutors often operate.

Jul 6, 2005 - 7:05 pm 8. MeTooThen:

Luther,

There may be more than one source.

Why would Cooper’s source waive his agreement with Cooper and not Miller?

As for having trouble sleeping, please.

Ms. Miller just won the lottery. She is working the system to her advantage. And no, I don’t begrudge her for doing so, but at the same time I have no pity for her either.

Jul 6, 2005 - 7:08 pm 9. Buddy Larsen:

Powerline boys are keeping AP honest (or trying to, anyway).

Jul 6, 2005 - 7:17 pm 10. MeTooThen:

Ben,

Your points are well taken but I think they are wrong when it comes to Mr. Fitzgerald.

There are ample reasons for him to see the grand jury investigation through to its end, not the least of which were the vitriol and hysteria leveled at the President and his administration at the onset of this non-scandal, and the ability of the President’s enemies to continue to level ridiculous and ever changing accusations at him and those around him.

Recall, the Bush Lied meme was started by the Wilson op-ed piece, which was later found to be a total lie, and yet the MSM never repudiated Wilson nor retracted their previous stories.

Bush Lied lives today and will likely live for the foreseeable future.

L’affaire Plame is very important to be resolved completely and irrefutably.

Jul 6, 2005 - 7:19 pm 11. jedrury:

Saint Judith of the Grand Jury played the martyr to the Nth degree. Bill Keller on the NewsHour tonight was interviewed by former Times correspondent Terry Smith and it was like a death march as she was led to the gallows. The court paintings showing Saint Judith going behind the beige door, head down, thin shoulders bowed left was so weepy, my old conservative red state heart just broke. What cynic would dare to mention a Saint Judith book out of this? Wash your mouth out with soap! Her husband, a famous publisher, would never think of that.

Jul 6, 2005 - 7:36 pm 12. flenser:

The two interesting possibilities here are that the leaker was either a journalist, or Wilson himself.

It’s hard to believe that Miller would take jail tme in order to protect a senior member of the Bush administration.

Sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials — not the other way around — that Wilson was married to Plame, a CIA employee.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/07/05/AR2005070500788.html

Jul 6, 2005 - 7:50 pm 13. Katherine:

I apologize for being completely OT, but I just spotted an amazing interview with a Kenyan economist who, for all practical purposes, begs the West to stop sending aid to Africa, and argues convincingly that one of the main reasons for African poverty is ñ the aid itself.

Choice quote:

ìUnfortunately, the Europeans’ devastating urge to do good can no longer be countered with reason.î

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-363663,00.html

Jul 6, 2005 - 8:26 pm 14. timmah!:

This plays big on Kos, TPM, etc., and it was good for laughs on LGF, but I doubt anyone outside the Beltway or the blogosphere cares once they hear it was a desk analyst whose career (much less life) was never in jeopardy. I agree that the best thing that could come of this would be an end to anonymous sources, but I’d settle for a clear precedent that reporters cannot withhold evidence of law-breaking.

An interesting related case is the Wen Ho Lee story, where officials leaked to the press that Lee was a suspect in the theft of nuclear weapons info. Again, it doesn’t seem to be going dino-media’s way. I always wondered if it was mere coincidence that, just when a certain president was taking flak for undue Chinese influence, the incomplete invesigation of a potential Chinese spy showed up, anonymously sourced, on the front page. Maybe now we’ll find out.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050628/pl_nm/media_contempt_dc_1

Jul 6, 2005 - 8:29 pm 15. richard mcenroe:

Luther ó Honorable? Washington? Let me be the first to welcome you to our country, newcomer…

Jul 6, 2005 - 8:35 pm 16. Kevin P:

Roger:

The press only has it’s self to blame for this whole fiasco. This was never a big deal. It was common knowlege around D.C. what Plame did. And the press took this Novak item and tried to blow it up into a scandal. So President Bush gave the lead to the Justice Department and told them to investigate and leave no stone unturned. I think it is a waste of time myself but since Wilson and the Press inflated this into a major scandal Fitzgerald is treating it as one. There were charges from the Press that there would be an attempt to bury the issue and Fitzgerald is proving them wrong by his aggressive prosecution.

Of course when it looked like some of their own might get dragged into this mess the supposed great crime became a crime that should not be prosecuted so harshly. Tough. All those weepy op-ed’s that wailed about Plame’s life being in danger have come back to bite the Press in the butt. If Plames life was put in danger as they claimed then you can’t blame the JD for trying to protect her and future C.I.A. operatives. The press yelled fire and the Justice Dept. firetruck arrived and they are doing the job that the Press demanded them to do.

kevin Peters

Jul 6, 2005 - 8:46 pm 17. antimedia:

Luther writes, “I would have a difficult time sleeping at night knowing someone was in jail for my misdeeds.”

You obviously don’t live in Washington, D.C. No one there has difficulty sleeping at night. That’s what’s wrong with this country.

Jul 6, 2005 - 8:46 pm 18. Luther McLeod:

I know, I know, please forgive my naivete. But boy, couldn’t we use a bit of it in DC? The whole world actually. Call me simple, but it still means something to me.

Jul 6, 2005 - 8:52 pm 19. Rick Ballard:

I don’t consider it naive, Luther. It is an honest hope and one that all people should hold. I believe that there are many honest people on both sides of the aisle working in Washington. Possibly, some of them are politicians. But I know without doubt that the capital of the most powerful nation in the history of the world will attract hordes of the dishonest, too. And I know that Lord Acton’s dictum is as true today as it was the day that he uttered it. We do men and women no favors by leaving them to confront temptation for too long a time. It is a pity that we, as a people, have lacked the will, to date, to limit our politicians to no more than twelve years of service. Not one of them is irreplaceable and fixed term limits would be an appropriate reminder of that fact.

Jul 6, 2005 - 9:30 pm 20. Katherine:

Rick,

I was two minds about term limits for the longest time, but came to the conclusion that this is the only practical solution if we want to start addressing the problem of political corruption. Though undoubtedly politicians would be engaged in furious ìpost-hoppingî to remain in power, eventually we could get rid them. Just look at the (former) star of Democratic Party, Gray Davis.

Jul 6, 2005 - 9:54 pm 21. Luther McLeod:

Well Rick, I have mixed feelings about term limits, while fully agreeing with you on Lord Acton’s dictum. But regardless of how long they serve I don’t have mixed feelings about our politicians working for the common good. About setting an example of how a good citizen should behave, with integrity, honor and a willingness to forgo their personal aggrandizement for the sake of the Country. About honoring their oath of office. About being honest with themselves and with us. It is not an impossible task, I have, many of us have, fought demons in our lives, and in the end we do it not for ourselves but for those around us and those who will follow. For we have a great love of humanity, of our fellow man, and a wish to see all live a life of peace and freedom. Once again, forgive my naivete

Jul 6, 2005 - 9:57 pm 22. Sandy P:

Don’t knock Fitzgerald, he’s cleaning up IL.

Non-partisan, formerly from NYC.

—

Oh, Roger!

Guess who’s left town?

Via Rantburg:

http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=123333&D=2005-07-06&HC=1

U.N. Oil-for-Food Figure Benon Sevan Flees U.S.

Stewart Stogel, NewsMax.com

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Benon V. Sevan, former director of the scandal-plagued Oil-for-Food Program, has left his home in New York and is now in his native Cyprus, say U.N. officials.

Sevan returned to his family home in the city of Nicosia in early June, and though he insists he will return to New York, he has refused to give any date….

Jul 6, 2005 - 10:38 pm 23. Sandy P:

Ohhh, I should have read further:

Kelo, anyone?

…Shortly after the Malloch Brown decision, sources claim that Sevan had decided to take a “vacation” back in Cyprus. Though the U.N. veteran claimed his legal bills created a “great financial strain,” NewsMax has confirmed that Sevan does own several valuable real estate properties in Manhattan and Long Island worth substantially more than $500,000. It is not clear whether the U.S. government or his lawyers might move against those holdings if Sevan does not return to the U.S. Cyprus has no formal extradition agreement with the United States….

Jul 6, 2005 - 10:42 pm 24. PBRMan:

I think there is a distinct possibility that no one has stepped forward to say “I am the source” because no one believes himself to be “the source.” I get the impression that there was a lot of published information, e.g. the fact that Wilson’s wife was Plame, and a lot of common knowledge, e.g. the fact that Plame worked at Langley. Lots of reporters wanted to know why on earth Wilson had been sent to Niger, and lots of people in the White House and elsewhere in the administration responded to questons from a number of these reporters. The reporters, being enterprising folks and having at their disposal such tools as Google, connected a series of dots. I doubt that there is anyone, anywhere, who said to a reporter, “Wilson was sent by his wife, Valerie Plame, who is an undercover CIA operative.”

Jul 7, 2005 - 8:20 am 25. Bostonian:

PRBMan,

Then to whom did Miller make this personal promise?

***

The whole thing is just silly, and I agree, she’s gonna milk it for all it’s worth.

I loathe the Exempt Media.

Jul 7, 2005 - 1:56 pm 26. PBRMan:

Bostonian–Miller undoubtedly made promises of confidentiality to any number of people to whom he spoke, and received this “dramatic” last-minute personal waiver from some one of them. It does not follow at all that this person believes himself to be the “source” of anything unlawful–he is simply a person who spoke with Miller, and who did so in a conversation about which the prosecutor now wants to question Miller. Miller has not said, “I refuse to disclose who it was who committed a crime in his conversation with me”; he has said, “I refuse to disclose who I talked to.”

Jul 7, 2005 - 4:55 pm 27. pandaba:

Maybe I’m alone here in this sentiment, but I can’t understand the hostility here to anonymous sources.

Do you really want the next Watergate to go unnoticed because the whistleblowers can’t protect their identity? The next My Lai? The next Abu Ghraib? The next Iran-Contra?

Gov’t officials have a deeply ingrained sense of self-preservation which trumps doing the right thing almost every time. They’ll have little motivation to talk without the protection of anonymity.

And you’re being shortsighted. Sure, you hate seeing anonymity being used against the president and war you support. But, eventually, there will be a president or a party in charge which you detest.

Since corruption finds a happy home in both parties, by denying anonymous sources for now and the future, you’ll have a much smaller chance of bringing down the corruption in some future Democrat regime.

Of course, if you want your MSM to become the equivalent of Pravda, always cheering on the gov’t and only reporting the ‘good news’, then the breaking of anonymity will help bring your desire to fruition.

Jul 7, 2005 - 7:08 pm 28. PBRMan:

I am not aware of any anonymous “whistleblower” who alerted the nation to My Lai, Abu Ghraib or Iran-Contra. Every last fact that surfaced in Watergate would have surfaced, and indeed did surface, through the actions of Judge Sirica and the Ervin committee. For whatever marginal contribution Deep Throat made–and he contributed mostly to the aggrandizement of Woodeard and Bernstein–there is no question that he violated his oath by leaking confidential information about an ongoing criminal investigation to the press. That may produce a result you like when the parties being investigated are not to your liking, but the potential for extraordinary injustice stemming from such a practice should be apparent to all. I have not seen any sensible explanation for why Deep Throat could not have gone to any U.S. Attorney, or to the Ervin committee, with whatever he knew. He violated the law to protect his job and his pension, and now his family is about to reap a huge windfall for it. Sorry, but he’s no hero of mine.

Jul 7, 2005 - 7:59 pm 29. Catherine:

Hi all–

Judith Miller is the friend of a friend, and I like her tremendously, from afar. (We’ve never met.)

I like her because our friend likes her, & I trust him.

And I like her because of what I’ve seen of her on TV.

She was on Larry King once with another journalist who was fairly old, and was obviously losing his sharpness.

When asked stupid questions, she was gentle and self-deprecating.

I think she’s a good soul.

+++

Even if I didn’t like her, I’d be on her side.

To me, it’s appalling that she’s in jail for a story she didn’t write about a crime that (apparently) didn’t happen.

It’s Martha Stewart all over again. (See! I don’t like Martha Stewart, and I was on her side, too.)

It’s prosecutorial overreach.

I don’t like watching the government march people off to jail without very, very good reason.

Like, say, they robbed or murdered somebody.

And I’m not especially fond of our judiciary as a whole at the moment.

I seem to be a small-l libertarian.

++++

Seeing as how Judith Miller has been ripped apart, limb from limb, by the anti-war left, I’m hoping that those of us who support the war will consider going easy on her.

Last year I wrote a letter to Dan Okrent supporting Miller (and Bill Keller) over her reporting on Saddam’s WMD.

When it was published I received a furious call from an old friend accusing me of being a Bush voter.

We patched that up, but I never heard again from another person in my life, a reasonably important professional contact here in New York.

I don’t know that my letter was the reason.

But the timing is suspicious, and I have tried to contact this person, with no response.

So I’m risking friendships & losing colleagues defending a person on the left from the left.

Well, tant pis.

++++

I don’t want leaks and leakers to go away.

Secrecy is hideously toxic to democracy inside government and out.

I know this from direct personal experience.

There was a time in my life when the only thing allowing me to function was leaks & leakers.

Sometimes the only way to fight fire is with fire.

Secrecy to check secrecy.

++++

That said, the CIA’s 4-year war-via-leak against the White House has been infuriating.

Ed and I both think newspapers should publish a guide to leaks all readers can access any time they wish.

It should appear prominently inside newspapers and on web sites.

We came up with this after Ed had lunch with a journalism professor at NYU. She told him there’s lingo for sources that is known only to other journalists (and, I assume, to the sources themselves).

‘Close to the administration’ means one thing; ‘ties to the administration’ means another. (These are hypotheticals; I don’t remember what the categories were.)

If all readers knew the code–or just knew that there is a code–leaks and leakers would be substantially demystified.

Because the real problem in most cases isn’t leaks.

The real problem is public naivete about who leaks and why.

The other innovation I’d like to see, which we are seeing now from Fox News (right?) is full posting of raw materials and sources.

Leave the source anonymous, but let’s see the full transcipt of what he or she had to say.

Along with the CODE.

POSTSCRIPT:

The single most demystifying moment for me, vis a vis leaks, was reading in Okrent’s column that the typical anonymous source is a government official briefing a roomful of reporters ‘on background’ inside a well-lit conference room.

For a person who cut her teeth on ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, that was a shocker.

++++

Sorry to be so long-winded–

Jul 8, 2005 - 8:04 am

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