Yes, I think that’s right, on the GS levels. But I get the feeling both these folks were in the field, and it seems like Plame wasn’t assigned to a station, so it’s unlikely he supervised her. I also wonder whether she reported through the European or the NESA side; he almost certainly reported through the NESA side. But while both have officers’ ranks, they really only seem to have gotten desk jobs in 2001 and 2003 respectively. That is, they were both out managing assets, not managing each other.

EW: What do we know about Pavitt’s relationship with the VP’s office?

For lack of a better place to put something Plame related but OT, you’ll all be pleased to know that the Law and Order writing staff has been reading Emptywheel.

Though I don’t usually watch the show (no, seriously) it was on, and they did a complete remix of the Plame story set in the Law and Order universe. All the same plot twists, except one detail where the corruption and malignant leak was from a Democratic Senator.

His chief of staff leaks the fact that a woman undercover detective is a cop (which info is published in a newspaper), to take the sting out of a harsh new book written by his Republican challenger, she gets killed by an Albanian mobster drug dealer who she’s been covering. The episode seemed to be cribbed almost as exactly as they could from L’Affair Plame, right down to the vague ’exculpatory email’ that turns up after charges are brought, etc.

Anyway, the reason why I wrote they’ve been reading Emptywheel is because, it turned out, the timestamp on the email had been altered and added to the evidence sort of covertly after the fact by someone on ’the inside’.

Not making this up, and for a second last night, all the fine details you guys have been hashing out for so long almost made sense to me. Almost. Apologies if the time stamp altered email theory is someone else’s, the Law and Order writers forgot to put that in the credits.

The thing about it being Democratic law breaking kinda pissed me off, fwiw.

LOL, no one else wants my damned timestamp theory. That’s okay. No one wanted my Ari as cooperating witness theory either. So I bought stock and now I’m rich rich rich! In Plamoney.

Jeff, I’ve been trying to puzzle that through, myself. Here’s what I answered looseheadprop over at Jane’s. But the short version is, we know they were playing games with intell back in 1998 (per Ritter’s most recent book). And we know INC and PNAC were actively working on this project by 1997. Heck, we also know that the Franklin leak program was started in 2000 (if not before).

So I think you raise a really good point–doesn’t this 2000 date say that the gamed intell is not unique to Bush? Yes, it does. So what does that mean? Does it mean the larger project has been in place for longer than we know (yes, but not necessarily in this case). Or does it mean the CIA is just really really corrupt?

Oh, and Lisa:

No, I don’t know. Pavitt resigned in June 2004, a day before or after Tenet did. So the assumptions made about Tenet (that he might be testifying in the Plame case, that Bush may have finally fired the lot, that they wanted to resign before the SSCI report came out) hold. But I suspect his relations with Cheney are similar to Tenet’s. Strained, but working.

Quick check of a few indexes produces the following â€Intelligence†on James Pavitt.

Steve Simon and Daniel Benjamin identify Pavit as the strongest opponent in the CIA of the plan to develop the Predator armed with a hellfire missel prior to 9/11. He opposed the CIA’s use of the unarmed Prediator, opposed funding the test of an armed preditator, and the week before 9/11 argued the CIA should not be identified with the effort because to do so, would risk the lives of CIA presonnel and officers around the world.

Simon and Benjamin also suggest that post 9/11 Pavitt mischaracterized the role of the CIA in Afghanistan prior to the attack. Because they don’t have access to classified documents — or can’t say what they really know — it is all phrased as just a suggestion — but they believe the pre-9/11 covert activities in Afghanistan were very thin on the ground and that Pavitt’s characterization was a bit of puffery.

Gary Brendtsen in Jawbreaker gives Pavitt more direct diss. Brendtsen, if you haven’t read it — was the leader to the paramilitary CIA group that moved in with the Northern Alliance just days after 9/11, but he had also led an earlier team in that met with Massoud pre-9/11. Apparently the CIA in Langley got intelligence that bin Laden was trying to find a way to kill the CIA team — so Pavitt ordered them out of country. His reason was he did not want to plan and attend any more CIA funerals.

Ultimately Pavitt recruited Bendtsen for the post 9/11 CIA paramilitary insertion into the Northern Alliance. Bendtsen indicates his preference for the Lawrence of Arabia school of management, and observes that Pavitt was from an altogether different school.

Finally, Bendtsen quotes the 9/11 Commission Report identifying Pavitt as one who opposed responding to the Cole bombing, and who had consistently believed CIA could not really deal with al-Qaeda.

I believe Pavitt was one of the first fired with Porter Goss took over the agency. Several months ago C-Span had one of their late night seminars on — tape of some sort of Honor the Retired Officer thing from the Miller Center at the U of Virginia honoring Pavitt. All the â€good ole Boys†were on the panel.

Apoparently Richard Clarke did not think particularly highly either.

Now I have a huge shelf of books on CIA and Intelligence History, and I’ve just checked a few things not yet given a bookshelf home. But my read this far is that Pavitt is viewed in some circles as the King of Risk-Adversness. But I believe his career was about 30 years long.

Thank you for excellent reads. God bless Ray McGovern.

EW

Do you think that this is part of what Fitzgerald is going after, ultimately? I’ve had the feeling that he was after more than just perjury and obstruction of justice with the Libby, Cheney, Rove crowd. My feeling is based on something I remember his saying at his press conference when he announced the indictment of Libby. He stressed the need for people who worked in the government to obey the laws and the Constitution and not betray the people employed by the government whose (and of course, I am very vague with the exact wording)duty was to protect the country. You may know how to link to his exact phrase. It came toward the end of his presentation or, maybe the questioning, but I was struck that he seemed to be outraged (in his inimitable understated way) by Plame having been betrayed by people at the highest levels of government.

EW – You write:

Whereas the White House ruined Plame’s career, I’ve always thought in retaliation against the CIA for requesting the DOJ conduct an investigation.

I don’t understand. CIA requested the DOJ after WH outed Plame, not before. That’s the whole point of the CIA referral.
Are you referring to something else?

Tenet was against Predator, testified so at a hearing shortly before he quit; I think that concept was an age-long rivalry, though, among several branches of government; his, the classical view of separation of functionality.
Fitzgerald may have been encouraging Clinton people to pursue more than they did after WTC-1; I recall a few embers of that followup investigation deemphasis in the news.
At the time Fitzgerald was mulling the option to transition from GJ-1 to GJ-2, there were articles reporting his interest in allowing greater emphasis for the international teleology of the coverup during GJ-2.

What warmonger was suppressing Doe’s intelligence in 2000?
=====================================

OT but related: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04…..38;ei=5070

Corrections to Kornblut’s article of 4/27…

â€â€™Once the Predator goes up, who cares where the Hellfire comes down, it’s not my Department’ says Mr. James Pavitt.†(paraphrasing Tom Lehrer)

Just as a followup, here’s the passage I was thinking of that basically rules out Fitzgerald expanding his investigation. It’s from Fitzgerald’s 3-17-06 affidavit in support of his response to Libby’s motion to dismiss (and the fact that Walton, as he ruled in Fitzgerald’s favor, said that this and Comey’s accompanying affidavit stating ex post their earlier understanding of Fitzgerald’s appointment were basically worthless does not undermine the point of the facts Fitzgerald is stating here):

I always understood that any expansion of the subject matter – which I have never sought – would have to come from the Acting Attorney General. I have never had any understanding to the contrary. In fact, when I received letters asking me to expand my jurisdiction to cover other allegations, I have referred those letters to other Department of Justice officials because i did not think it was my mandate to decide whether the subject matter of the investigation should be expanded.

I’ve always been curious who sent those letters and what the substance of the other allegations were. Was it just a cranky TNHer telling Fitzgerald he should look into who forged the Niger documents? Or was it CIA folks who would know something? Or someone else who would know things, like the disclosure of other classified information by White House folks?

Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that Fitzgerald is not going to expand his investigation, unless the Acting Attorney General tells him to, and I’d bet against that any day of the week.

As for ew’s unique claim to the altered email theory, I’m well aware of your history of vindication of far-out claims. But this one still strikes me as a bridge too far. But we’ll see.

Jeff: I believe Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Conyers (D MI) have sent letters to Fitz asking him to extend his investigation.

Jeff

I’d warrant that Bolton is not. Not at all. Tenet and Dick still dispute how Cheney learned of Plame’s ID. And so long as the INR memo is important for the pre-July phase of this, Bolton (and Fleitz) remain well within the scope of Fitz’ investigation. And don’t forget Shuster’s claim (retracted after State balked) that Bolton testified.

I’m not sure, Jeff, it’s just a thought I’ve been percolating on now that I’ve seen the INR memo. What I’ve seen of the memo, IMO, makes it much more likely that Bolton (note the spelling–the â€e†is Josh the COS)/Fleitz is involved in this. Which is something I’ve suspected for a while, but really, that memo is just too suspicious.

Add in the fact that Cheney apparently testified Tenet was his source, but Tenet denies it.

Add in the fact that that detail got turned over by Libby at all (that’s the details that I’ve been amazed about, that makes me wonder why Libby didn’t alter his notes).

But if you had gotten the information via some other means–via Fleitz/Bolton, for example (who would probably have seen the memo by the time Dick is reported to have told Libby), then how might you hide it. You hide it at Dick. No one is going to question the Veep about something like this, right? And besides, he’s allowed to know these things. So you say Tenet told you (particularly if you testify just after Tenet resigns). And voila, you’ve hidden the tracks of the deliberate search for this information.

Anyway, just a speculation. (Btw, I’m not suggesting Libby altered his notes; I’m saying Dick told him to say CIA from the start.)

Maybe Goss has received a Fitzgerald request for documents to check how the mea-culpa was developed. The likely resolution would be one involving mutual respect, but, I understand there is another thread on this.

One endnote on the humility statement by Fitzgerald which Jeff reproduced, above: my recollection, of course, was the current events discussions such as here at TNH at the time, though I graze and browse much more widely. Fitzgerald made a discrete mention of his prospective scope for GJ 2 during a press conference October 28, 2005 at p5,para6: â€This Grand jury’s term has expired by statute. It could not be extended. But it’s an ordinary course to keep a Grand jury open to consider other matters and that’s what we’ll be doing.â€

Disclaimer: I should add I visit The Next Hurrah precisely to read the dispassionate view, and avoid the other kind of blog, fecund though the other sort may be, as I am very pressed for time in my work elsewise. It is a pleasure to join here.

I believe that John Hannah and David Wurmser, both co-operating with Fitz have testified that John Bolton is who told Darth Cheney about Valerie Plame. John Bolton was also actively involved in getting the infamous 16 words into the State of the Union address. This was stated in a letter from Rep. Henry Waxman to Rep. Chris Shays, on March 1, just a few days before Bolton was nominated, outlining Bolton’s role in getting those 16 words into the SOU address and the likelihood that he lied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about being questioned in a criminal investigation.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey wrote a letter to Fitz asking that he expand his investiagtion to cover the Niger forgeries. The letter was signed by 40 Congressmen.

Further, I think discrediting Joe wilson was the ’nice offical†reason for outing Valerie Plame. The real reason was to purge the CIA of any experts who could convincingly refute Busholini on WMD’s in Iraq and Iran. James Risen, in his book State of War, mentions that the entire undercover CIA WMD operation was outed by a computer glitch. Was that before or after Plame was outed? Who was responsible for that â€glitchâ€? What, if anything, happened to them, given the swift retribution Mary McCarthy suffered? I don’t believe it was a glitch.

I think we are on the brink of some real live home grown disaters. The combination of domestic warrantless wiretapping, the stacking of the Supreme Court and the recent contract awarded to Halliburton to construct â€detention camps’ means that Martial Law is just around the corner. No need to worry about electroniuc voting machines and paper trails then, we just skip the whole messy process, while the NeoNutzis laugh their way to the bank.