Turdblossom Has Another Meeting Scheduled with a Special Prosecutor

/65 Comments/in /by

This time, with Nora Dennehy, who is investigating the US Attorney firing (particularly that of David Iglesias):

Former top White House official Karl Rove will be interviewed tomorrow as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys during the Bush administration, according to two sources familiar with the appointment.

[snip]

He will be questioned tomorrow by Connecticut prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy, who was named last year to examine whether any former senior Justice Department and White House officials lied or obstructed justice in connection with the dismissal of federal prosecutors in 2006.

Robert D. Luskin, a lawyer for Rove, declined comment this afternoon on the imminent interview. So did Tom Carson, a spokesman for Dannehy.

Dannehy mostly has operated in the shadows, quietly issuing subpoenas for documents through a federal grand jury in the District. But in recent weeks she has interviewed other former government aides, including White House political deputies Scott Jennings and Sarah Taylor. She also has reached out to representatives for former  Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and his chief of staff, Steve Bell, in an effort to determine whether New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias was removed for improper political reasons. 

Any bets on whether it’ll take Rove five tries before he gets his story straight this time around?

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65 replies
  2. AZ Matt says:

    Any bets on whether it’ll take Rove five tries before he gets his story straight this time around?

    I think he gets one shot at this only. He f*cks up she will trounce him.

    • bobschacht says:

      I think he gets one shot at this only. He f*cks up she will trounce him.

      He got 5 tries before because he had a pipeline from DOJ so he knew what Fitz was going to charge him for, before Fitz could file the charges. So he knew exactly how to tweak his testimony in order to avoid the hit.

      This time, he has no back channel.

      Bob in HI

    • rapt says:

      Of course you are right BUT we also know that lizards are still nesting in the White House basement. Otherwise why would the new prez have just reversed himself on release of torture pics? As Turley has made very clear, this is serious shit.

      Karl doesn’t appear to feel he’s in any danger, but then I don’t get to see him up close very often either.

    • scribe says:

      No, but you can get nailed for “unsworn false statements” too.

      Ask Martha Stewart – she came in for an interview, was less than fully forthcoming or honest (take your pick) and got nailed for it.

      And, FWIW, the so-called “Exculpatory ‘no’” does not exist in federal prosecutions. The “Exculpatory ‘no’” is when the cop says “You did this crime[?]” and you say “no”. If you actually did, your denial counts as a false statement. Because it was made to a federal officer, it constitutes a separate crime, or even a pair (unsworn false statement and, because getting through it makes more work for the cops, obstruction of justice).

      • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

        Not that the Democrats need any help from the sidelines but they ought to give up on the torture issue. It isn’t working for them.

        FWIW, I’ll say this much for Martha Stewart: she stepped up to the problem and rather than whine and drag things out, she went to jail/prison and she did her time. That amazed me, and I’ve respected her ever since for being such a public person who admitted a mistake and dealt with it. Count me a Martha fan, ’cause she showed guts and class.

  4. perris says:

    Any bets on whether it’ll take Rove five tries before he gets his story straight this time around?

    I’m betting he simply invokes the fifth and some executive priviledge on top of that

  5. phred says:

    EW, fatster just put this up on the previous thread. His comment refers to a new report that Cheney tried to get an Iraqi waterboarded after the invasion. Have you heard about this? Any idea who is reporting this? fatster’s comment quotes Josh Marshall at TPM who cites MSNBC, but no links.

      • scribe says:

        Reading that TPM story tells me a couple things.

        1. As TPM notes, the waterboarding (immediately post-invasion of Iraq) by or in support of WMD investigators was not to unravel an imminent threat to the United States, but rather to find WMD to give political support to the already-then-being-discredited rationale for the war.

        Well, that cuts the guts out of that “ticking time bomb” theory of justifying torture, as if Soufan’s testimony yesterday had not already done a good job of it.

        Nothing original to me in that insight, I suppose.

        2. Who took the biggest, first shot of discrediting? Our Friends, Mr. And Mrs. Wilson!

        So, waterboarding was part of Deadeye’s response to Joe and Valerie, it would seem.

        That might also explain a bit more why Mrs. Libby’s threat to “f*ck them” if Her Scooter saw the inside of a cell, had some teeth that actually bit.

        3. Who was riding with the WMD investigators and telling them where to go, what to look for, whom to investigate?

        C’mon, you remember. Judy Miller. Remember the tinge of scandal surrounding her being embedded (in more than one way) with the WMD technical exploitation folks and, as a non-military person, getting some command powers because she was tight with the VP’s office?

        Our Girl Judy has no newsperson’s privilege to hide behind – that statute hasn’t passed (yet). I wonder whether her notebooks contained anything about torture….

        • scribe says:

          I don’t know that the article supports the contention you’re making. In short, the article says she was present during the good cop part of the torture-facilitated interrogation, but does not say (as clearly) that she was present during his torture.

          I would not be surprised if she was, but the article does not say she was.

        • perris says:

          So, waterboarding was part of Deadeye’s response to Joe and Valerie, it would seem.

          scribe, that’s some excellant reasoning there

        • scribe says:

          Kinda tells you the amount of ego involvement good ol’ Deadeye had in this little project of taking over them oil wells for his Halliburton buddies, no?

          That, or how immaturely he reacts to disappointment.

          Makes you wonder what else he would do to get his way.

          And, FWIW, the same applies to those he surrounded himself with in the various offices; noscitur a sociis, they say.

        • AZ Matt says:

          Just go hunting with him if you want to find out how he reacts when doesn’t get what he wants!

        • sojourner says:

          I am no expert by any means about psychiatric problems, and certainly not a doctor. But, connecting the Plame / Wilson dot to the torture dot says to me that Cheney was totally playing God. HE decided what was best for all of us, and proceeded to do everything in his power to make our reality for us.

          I have had some experience with family members who were diagnosed as BiPolar (manic-depressive). In the manic phase, one family member was ready to declare himself to be God, too — and he DID insist that he knew what was best for everyone!

          The longer this goes, regardless of torture or the Iraq war, the more I feel like we have had the ultimate test as a country — surviving a mental case who put himself into office and proceeded to play everyone for his own benefit and gain, and make his own rules. Dubya only THOUGHT that he was the Deciderer!

        • HotFlash says:

          Hmm, a little bell went off when I read this from PapaDick on Larry King:

          D. CHENEY: These are individuals who have been actively involved as the enemy, if you will, trying to kill Americans.

          add this observation by sojourner@39

          says to me that Cheney was totally playing God. HE decided what was best for all of us, and proceeded to do everything in his power to make our reality for us.

          Compare to this remark to Ron Susskind by a “senior advisor to the President”, often assumed to be Karl Rove:

          “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. aAnd while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.”

          I’ll betcha it was Dick.

        • perris says:

          “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. aAnd while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.”

          yup, rove doesn’t use that term, “as you will”, cheney uses it all the time

          great catch there

        • bobschacht says:

          perris,
          Good catch yerself! If you can document this idiosyncrasy, do an Oxdown on it, with Suskind’s quote as the keystone. I wonder if at this date Suskind will confirm your assessment?

          Bob in HI

        • plunger says:

          Holy crap.

          If Suskind referred to Cheney as a “senior advisor to the President,” was that ever an understatement.

          THAT is the statement that best sums up the arrogance of the entire Shadow Government. If it came directly from Cheney, it belongs “in evidence.”

        • lokijohn says:

          “I’ll betcha it was Dick.”
          I’ll take that bet. I’m almost certain (can’t remember where I first heard it – too many crimes and allegations to keep track of) Philip Zelikow, principle author of the 9/11 CR, said that.

        • Mary says:

          That creating the reality ties in with the reaction of Addington when the CIA report came out in Aug 2002 that a big chunk of the detainees at GITMO were innocent people just caught up in mistakes or sold for the bounties.

          Bellinger reads the report, gets some military backing and gets a meeting with Gonzales. When he gets there, Addington and Flanigan are there waiting and Addington says that the facts and the report don’t matter, that the President has already decided that ALL the detainees are illegal enemy combatants and that determination won’t be revisited.

      • cbl2 says:

        ties in nicely with this EW post

        We chose waterboarding–not simply torture, but waterboarding itself–knowing it’d be unreliable. Or rather, Dick Cheney chose it.

      • phred says:

        Just for the record this is the same article EW referenced this morning in her post on the 9/11 Commission and Torture. I didn’t click through this morning, so I guess I just missed it. But I thought the article was only about the use of torture to get info for the commission, I didn’t realize that it also contains another claim that PapaDick wanted to use torture to establish an Iraq-al Qaeda link.

        • perris says:

          not only that but he wanted to use torture after his agencies already told him there was no link.

        • phred says:

          Worse than that, this occasion was after the invasion in 2003. Long after they knew waterboarding was handy for false confessions, but more importantly, they wanted to use it on a legit POW taken after the invasion in Iraq. No ticking time bomb. Not a terrorist. A POW. I can’t wait until Jesse Ventura hears about this…

        • plunger says:

          CHENEY ADMITS TO WAR CRIMES ON LARRY KING LIVE:

          In May of 2006, Cheney appeared on Larry King. He stepped in it big time, but few people caught it. I alerted Rude Pundit and he wrote about it.

          an excerpt:

          Then Cheney made this statement: “In a sense, when you’re at war, you keep prisoners of war until the war is over with.” So, like, if, in a sense, the Gitmo campers are “prisoners of war,” then, in a sense, don’t they get Geneva Conventions protections?

          Cheney and Gonzales have been playing a semantics game to justify torture, since “war” was never formally declared. It’s pretty obvious why they chose to embark upon the path of war without ever formally declaring it – so they could not be held accountable for the War Crimes they knew they’d be committing.

          Bush tells us every day that we’re at war. Cheney and Gonzales tell us that we’re not REALLY at war.

          Problem is, Cheney is on tape stating not only that we are at war, but that we are holding “prisoners of war.”

          The Geneva Conventions DO APPLY, and Cheney is guilty of war Crimes.

          http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA…..kl.01.html

          KING: They specifically said, though, it was Guantanamo. They compared it to a gulag.

          D. CHENEY: Not true. Guantanamo’s been operated, I think, in a very sane and sound fashion by the U.S. military. Remember who’s down there. These are people that were picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan and other places in the global war on terror. These are individuals who have been actively involved as the enemy, if you will, trying to kill Americans. That we need to have a place where we can keep them. In a sense, when you’re at war, you keep prisoners of war until the war is over with.”

        • bobschacht says:

          CHENEY ADMITS TO WAR CRIMES …

          Al Gore had it right back in January 2006, in one of his greatest speeches. He essentially said that Bush and Cheney were daring us to stop them. To paraphrase, they would keep piling outrage upon outrage until they were stopped. They were encouraged by Nancy “Impeachment is off the table” Pelosi, and a squadron of spineless Democrats in Congress, and by a very disciplined cadre of lemming-like Republicans who would vote for (or against) any thing, upon instruction from their leadership.

          Cheney will continue to operate in open defiance until he is stopped. And until he is stopped, the record remains open for the Dick Cheneys of the future to emulate. Only next time, the next Dick Cheney might choose not to leave office when his term of office expires.

          Will we stop him? Or will we stoop over, and allow the platform for the Fascist Ascendancy to be built on our backs? The judgment of history waits.

          Bob in HI

        • fatster says:

          Nice juxtaposition there:

          Obama (borrowing from FDR): Make me do it

          Cheney (borrowing from _________ [insert name of your favorite dictator]): Make me stop

    • emptywheel says:

      It’s at Daily Beast.

      THere are two reports of Cheney trying to use waterboarding to get Iraq-Al Qaeda info.

      1) al-Libi (successful attempt successfully got disinformation that succesfully got us into the war)
      2) the Iraqi (unsuccessful attempt stopped by Charles Duelfer)

      Then there’s the 83rd waterboarding ordered up for Abu Zubaydah, traced to the CIA, but which might well have come from Cheney. We don’t know whether AZ gave any AQ-Iraq intell over.

      • phred says:

        Thanks EW. Have we heard about Duelfer’s claim before? It wouldn’t surprise me if my faulty memory has kicked in again, but I don’t remember hearing about #2 on the list.

        Also, don’t we need to include that interrogator that Landay wrote about a few weeks ago? I know you’ve posted on this before, but if I read this article correctly, the implications are that AZ and KSM were waterboarded to get an Iraq-al Qaeda link, plus according to Maj. Charles Burney:

        A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

        “While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”

        So shouldn’t there be 5 items on your list?
        1) al-Libi (by Feb. 2002)
        2) AZ (Aug. 2002)
        3) KSM (March 2003)
        4) Guantanamo, others?, (2002/3 timeframe?)
        5) Iraqi (2003, post-invasion)

        It’s turning into quite a list.

    • fatster says:

      Oh, phred, I apologized on the previous thread. I posted the TPM article, then signed off, so didn’t know you’d had probs trying to find the link until I signed back on a few minutes ago. I’m embarrassed because I should have been scrambling around to get the correct link for you rather than others having to do it for me.

      • phred says:

        Really fatster, no need to feel bad, I really appreciate the link! And it gave me an excuse to root around a bit and find it. I’m still bowled over by the implications. For months now we’ve been fed a steady diet of ticking time bomb scenarios (ttbs), and it’s been a load of hogwash from the get go. Once you seek to waterboard a POW, whether you are successful or not, the whole ttbs goes right out the window. For all their terrorists picked up on the battlefield and extraordinarily rendered civilians around the world, they have always clung to their fiction that these people were all terrorists on the verge of blowing us up any minute. Here we have a clear example of an Iraqi POW, not a terrorist, that PapaDick wanted to waterboard to gin up his false AQ-Iraq link. And poof, the fictional ttbs disappears into the land of fiction from whence it came.

        The cracks are opening fast and I just don’t see how anyone is going to be able to close the lid on PapaDick’s personal Pandora’s Box.

        • fatster says:

          Thanks, phred. Yep, that vortex that Dick “Dick” is caught in seems to be gathering power and speed at an unprecedented pace. So be it.

  6. scribe says:

    EW, I wanted to say this before I got diverted by putting up mine at 6 here:

    If Rove was part of the yakuza, as opposed to being a Republican, he might well need to have only mittens in his glove drawer by now.

    There. Got that out….

  8. BoxTurtle says:

    Rove will use executive privilege to avoid answering questions this time. Yeah, it’ll get struck down in court but it’ll have to go through court. Thus taking more time.

    He won’t take the 5th until his last gasp. But his claim of the 5th will hold in any court in the land and the prosecutor will then have to decide if she’s going to indict.

    Jeebus, I’m gone for 30 minutes and the old thread is dead and the new one has 10 comments already. Half dozen threads already today and it’s not even dinner time.

    Boxturtle (They must still sell Jolt in Michigan)

  9. Leen says:

    Ew
    News Alert Washington Post
    3:31 PM EDT Thursday, May 14, 2009
    CIA Denies Cheney’s Request to Release Intelligence Documents
    The CIA has rejected a request from former vice president Richard B. Cheney to release documents that he says show that the agency’s harsh interrogation methods helped thwart terrorist plots.

  10. plunger says:

    George Little, a CIA spokesman, told The Associated Press:

    “It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the United States Congress.”

    George W. Bush told the world:

    “The United States Does Not Torture.”

    Karl Rove said:

    “As people do better, they start voting like Republicans – unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.”

    Clearly, these lying, cynical bastards count on the stupidity (brainwashing) of the masses to enable their evil deeds.

    FAKE NEWS

    “See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

    GEORGE W. BUSH

    “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, THE TRUTH IS THE GREATEST ENEMY OF THE STATE.”

    – Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

  11. Synoia says:

    “Any bets on whether it’ll take Rove five tries before he gets his story straight this time around?”

    No. Karl’s had practice.

  12. plunger says:

    http://dailydocket.blogspot.co…..ganda.html

    But whereas Hitler was a true master of propaganda, and his minister a far less talented functionary, today the situation is reversed: our propaganda minister is the master, and our leader his functionary. Karl Rove is so confident of his strategy that he now announces it to the public!

    Rove noted that we face “a ruthless enemy” and “need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in.”

    Here’s more:

    “[T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

    — Karl Rove (oops!) Hermann Goering

  13. behindthefall says:

    It’s been running through my head that someone should say to President Obama: “Sir, Mr. President, Justice must be seen to be done.” (I wonder if Obama has spent his life being quiet and conciliatory — I don’t know his bio in any detail; he must be told that he must be seen to lead and to be allowing Justice to act. It comes with the territory.)

  14. plunger says:

    Another Larry King Exclusive from 2006:

    The area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

    Donald Rumsfeld

    http://thinkprogress.org/2006/…..t-history/

    Any chance Larry will ever invite these blatant liars back on his show and confront them with their own video taped lies, as measured against the mounting facts?

    NOT!

  15. plunger says:

    Look George…here’s the deal. The trick is to imply a certain reality, which just happens not to be true, without actually lying. For example, when reporters ask for proof of a connection between 9/11 and the War in Iraq, remember this phrase:

    “From that part of the world”

    Use it whenever you need to obfuscate your way out of a tight spot…like this:

    “We know that people from that part of the world attacked us on 9/11, and we also know that Al Qaeda is operating in Iraq killing US Troops, and if we back down from this threat now, they’ll come hit us here again!”

    See how that works, George?

    The American people are just as geographically challenged and stupid as you are W, so all you have to do is mention that 3,000 people died on 9/11 as a result of a strike that originated from THAT PART OF THE WORLD.

    Works every time.

    Love, Turdblossom

  16. TheraP says:

    O/T But something very interesting has surfaced, related to the HUGE ad in today’s paper edition of the NY Times. The group that sponsored the ad (Accuracy in Media) is connected to another group (with interconnected websites via a “store”) and the second group (Accuracy in Academia) is under Right Wing Watch, which is part of People for the American Way. The first and second group share an address in DC. They share a funding source.

    Maybe someone, if you have time, might take a look at what I’ve located, because we’re trying to understand where the ad came from. The comment that started me off on this quest begins here. You can read down. (Also you can see the ad in the blog above.)

    EW, or anyone, if you find that this fits in with info you know, please take the ball and run with it.

  17. Citizen92 says:

    I hope Nora got the GWB43.com records out of the RNC’s attic, ’cause Waxman sure failed to do so.

  18. fatster says:

    from The Guardian

    Obama can’t keep torture under wraps
    Withholding photos of prisoner abuse won’t end the torture debate. We need a formal investigation of Bush’s policies
    • Ken Gude
    • , Thursday 14 May 2009 16.00 BST
    •
    “No matter how badly the Obama administration wants it to, torture is not going to go away. News just continues to roll out, from a front line interrogator dismissing torture as the tool of the ignorant to the return of one of the architects of the Bush administration torture regime. “

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm…..-yoo/print

  19. Rayne says:

    Rather late to the party here. There’s a LOT of material not yet reported on the U.S. attorneys scandal, including details about the state of New Mexico.

    I’m hoping there will be more emerging within the next week.

    Yet more aspens, connected at the roots.

  20. freepatriot says:

    Any bets on whether it’ll take Rove five tries before he gets his story straight this time around?

    put me down for ten bucks on THREE APPEARANCES

    I bettin kkkarl knows how far he can push his luck

    after all, he’s a political genius, that’s what his card says …

  21. timbo says:

    Great. When will this thug appear before the Congress of the United States under oath? When will there be a body of the peoples representatives who will make him? Never?

    • Leen says:

      And Rove had the fucking balls to say that Pelosi should testify. Rove has no shame. None
      How many subpoenas has Rove ignored? Is that what you lawyer folk call being in contempt?

      No one is above the law. right

      • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

        Leen, how many times have we seen Rove try to take the person who poses the greatest threat TO HIM and his paymasters, ‘hostage’?

        It’s his modus operandi.

        Pelosi is Speaker of the one institution that can do Bush and Cheney a whole lot of harm simply be trying to investigate. So of course Rove is smearing Pelosi; it just means he’s scared.

        mawhahahahahahahhhhaaaaaaaa

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