Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
It’s weird, blogging the Libby trial. I’m putting out details at such a tremendous rate all day that I have a real hard time getting the big picture–though I do get that by the time I talk it through with others here. But I do feel like I’m missing the middle ground.
Except relating to one thing.
This is going to be really quick–but there’s a lot of confusion about where there are smoking guns and where there are not. So I’m going to lay out what I think went on in May-July 2003. It’s speculative, but this is the picture we’re beginning to see.
The first response we know of came in May.
Understand this. Libby’s team is playing a big game with their witnesses, throwing a bunch of names out there–Cheney, Bartlett, Rove, Libby, Wilson, Woodward, and about 12 journalists to be named later. I really have no idea who will testify–remember that, even if Libby’s subpoenas someone, they don’t have to call that person as a witness.
The press saw the same thing we saw yesterday, that Cathie Martin revealed the dark underbelly of WH press strategy.
Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.
But it was more than her testimony that revealed the underbelly. First, here’s how I described her testimony of the notes she took from which the Russert news came.
[Martin describing the note] At top of backside her notes.
Here was my own personal favorite moment in the trial coverage on Wednesday. At one point, Cline was questioning Schmall about all the thing that Schmall’s work, as a briefer, helped Libby do with his work. He introduced 7 of the 9 very important things that Libby will use in his memory defense.
Here’s the holy shit no one has noticed from yesterday. Here’s the version of the INR memo introduced in court yesterday.
You’ll note in the last paragraph of the second page–it says, “These documents, which were sent to Washington via both CIA and [State] Department channels…”
This is really big news. The CIA got the forgeries.
I’m sure you’ve all either read my liveblog or read some reviews of yesterday’s coverage, so you know the stunners and new information from the first day of the trial:Libby is throwing Rove under the busAri leaked (according to the very unreliable Wells) to David Gregory, something which none of his colleagues knewLibby has his own annotated copy of Wilson’s op-edCheney wrote some orders on Libby’s sonnet looking for Scottie to
Just a few quick thoughts before I hit the sack.
I just saw the Bush’s approval rating is at 28%. I can’t help but think that his approval rating was still around 50% when this whole process started, when Libby made the decision to risk a jury rather than settling rather than flipping on Cheney.