“Three Reporters,” Is Right

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I consider myself a bit of an expert on live-blogging. So I had to cover this.

Remember how we live-blogged the Libby trial? We always had at least two people covering the trial: someone in the media room, live-blogging the minute-to-minute events, and someone in the court room, watching interactions between the people (those weren’t visible in the media room) and getting a feel for the overall trial. At times, though, we had three people covering the trial; that third person might be doing lunch and recap posts or covering the trial from their particular expertise (Pach viewing the trial from the standpoint of a shrink, for example). Having the third person was a welcome relief for what was a long, grueling process (remember–Jane was just out of surgery and it was over a month and a half from jury selection to verdict).

Plus, the trial was something of real consequence and detail. It really helped understand what happened, having at least a second person there to double check the details.

Two, maybe three people to do original reporting from the site, as well as detailed commentary on a trial of real consequence.

Which is why I share Athenae’s shock.

Three Reporters

The Internet continues its slaughter of serious journalism about serious things:

New York Times reporters Helene Cooper, Peter Baker and Jeff Zeleny live-blogged the so-called beer summit of President Obama, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and the officer who arrested him in Cambridge nearly two weeks ago, Sgt. James Crowley.

It took three of them to "live-blog" the "beer summit." I mean, I’m sorry, but Puck and Willie B could have handled that assignment admirably and Puck just right now ran headfirst into a table leg, so.

It gets even better! NYT says "Helene Cooper reported live from the White House." But down below in the post, Cooper admits she wasn’t in the pool covering the "event."

Here at the White House, the handful of reporters who are in the press pool will be taken to the beer summit site. Unfortunately, I do not have pool duty. So I and the majority of the press corps will wait impatiently to get the pool report from our pool colleagues.

Three people, relying on pool reports and the same televised coverage you and I got (and FWIW, I was getting that pool coverage as well). 

For an eff-ing 40 minute "beer summit."

The CIA Doesn’t Want You to Know about Tom Cruise’s Lobbying for Scientologists

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picture-120.thumbnail.pngI’m mostly amused by Steven Aftergood’s report that the CIA refuses to release the PDB-related materials introduced at Scooter Libby’s trial.

Even though certain information concerning the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) was redacted and declassified for use in the prosecution of former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby in 2006, that same information is nonetheless “currently and properly classified,” the Central Intelligence Agency said (pdf) last week.  The Agency denied release of the material under the Freedom of Information Act.

The existence of the declassified PDB material was disclosed in a January 9, 2006 letter (pdf) from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald to Mr. Libby’s attorney.  He wrote:  “In response to our requests, we have received [from CIA] a very discrete amount of material relating to PDBs and discussions involving Mr. Libby and/or Vice President Cheney concerning or relating to the PDBs.  We have provided to Mr. Libby and his counsel (or are in the process of providing such documents consistent with the process of a declassification review) copies of any pages in our possession… in the redacted form in which we received them.”

Since declassified PDBs are comparatively rare, we submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in February 2006 for a copy of the PDB-related material that was declassified by CIA for the Libby prosecution.  Last week, the CIA responded that it had located the requested material but that “we determined [it] is currently and properly classified and must be denied in its entirety.”

As Aftergood notes, two of the PDB-related tables of contents were introduced at the trial–Libby’s briefing for June 14, 2003, and Cheney’s briefing for July 14, 2003. Those tables of contents are prominently stamped "unclassified," but they’re entirely redacted except for a few logistical notes and Libby briefer Craig Schmall’s notes from those briefings, which are:

  • Why was the Amb told this was a VP office question? Joe Wilson Valerie Wilson (June 14)
  • Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz at his office. (June 14)
  • Sensitive memo from DDCI] RETURN (June 14)
  • Senior intel official: someone in the sessions spoke directly to the press > press is calling Scooter directly — he asked who he spoke to directly (June 14)
  • Did you read the Novak article? Not your problem. (July 14)

For some reason, the CIA refused to release these two highly-redacted PDB-related documents. Read more →

The Libby Non-Pardon: From the Department of Pre-Spin

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I thought I was done with the myth on the Scooter Libby non-pardon. But dday’s emphasis on the second most eye-popping detail from Time’s story–Libby’s unsuccessful attempt to appeal to Bush personally for a pardon (the most eye-popping being Bush’s consultation with his own defense attorney)–made me want to tell this story again to emphasize the known facts rather than Bush’s self-serving spin of those facts.

The short version, though, is that the White House prevented Libby from speaking to Bush directly about this case, all the while telling a narrative that the question of pardon pertained narrowly to whether Libby lied about his conversation with Russert and not the larger questions implicating both Cheney and Bush. After Libby appealed his case through Fielding indirectly to Bush, Bush consulted with his defense attorney. And the two of them–Bush and his defense attorney–apparently made the final decision not to pardon Libby just two days before Bush left office.

The Three Clouds over the Commutation and Pardon Discussion

Not long before the jury returned a guilty verdict, Patrick Fitzgerald summarized the problem with Libby’s successful perjury and obstruction of justice.

There is a cloud over what the Vice President did that week. He wrote those columns. He had those meetings. He sent Libby off to Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting, … the defendant talked about the wife. We didn’t put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant has obstructed justice and lied about what happened.

As the trial revealed, Dick Cheney had ordered Scooter Libby to leak something to Judy Miller. Around the same time Cheney gave that order, Cheney made mad scribblings on Joe Wilson’s op-ed, singularly emphasizing the story of Joe Wilson’s wife. After receiving Cheney’s order, Libby leaked Valerie Wilson’s identity to Miller and went on to give Ari Fleischer some of the details–the name "Plame" and her covert status–that remain unexplained in Bob Novak’s article. 

In other words, the primary cloud over the Vice President was the question, "did the Vice President order his top aide to leak Valerie Wilson’s identity?" And since Libby was the only witness to Cheney’s order, so long as he remained willing to continue telling his lies about his role in the leak, Fitzgerald could never remove that cloud. So long as Libby was willing to take the fall for Cheney, we would never know whether Cheney and Libby had maliciously and knowingly outed Valerie.

But that cloud also blocked another cloud, one over the Vice President and the President. Libby had testified to the grand jury that–after hesitating about leaking the information to Judy (which had to be more than the NIE, since he had already leaked the NIE by this point), Cheney reassured him that President Bush had declassified it, meaning it was okay to leak. Libby didn’t entirely trust Cheney on that point–he double checked with David Addington whether Cheney’s reassurances even made sense legally. Read more →

The Bush Fairy Tale on the Libby Pardon

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You need to keep one thing in mind as you read this story about Cheney’s campaign to get Bush to pardon Scooter Libby for his conviction related to the CIA Leak case. (h/t MadDog) Judge Emmet Sullivan has strongly suggested he’s going to rule in favor of CREW in its FOIA of Dick Cheney’s interview with Patrick Fitzgerald. So chances are good that we’ll get to see that interview in the foreseeable future. But Congress withdrew its request and CREW has not made any request to get Bush’s interview.

In other words, the sources for the story know that Cheney’s interview will soon become public, but that Bush’s probably won’t be.

As a result, the Bush partisans can tell a story about Bush being really miffed at Libby’s role in the case, all while claiming that the commutation (which of course was and still is the best way to ensure Libby never talks going forward) had nothing to do with Bush’s own knowledge of the leak.

Time Ignores that Libby Was Protecting Cheney AND Bush

This misleading narrative pervades the entire story. For example, Time suggests that Libby lied to the FBI because his job was on the line, and not because he was protecting Cheney and–at least to some degree–Bush. Time claims Cheney "assured Bush" Libby "wasn’t involved," when the note Cheney wrote prior to that exoneration implicates Bush himself and may reflect Cheney’s recognition that Libby had leaked the CIA trip report.

But Libby had reason to lie: his job was at stake, and his boss’s was on the line too. Bush had declared that anyone involved in leaking Plame’s identity would be fired. Cheney had personally assured Bush early on that his aide wasn’t involved, even persuading the President to exonerate Libby publicly through a spokesman.

And Time reports Bush officials acknowledging that Libby may well have taken the fall–but in spite of evidence of Bush’s personal involvement, portrays that acknowledgment as pertaining only to Cheney, not Bush himself.

As a former Bush senior aide explains, "I’m sure the President and [chief of staff] Josh [Bolten] and Fred had a concern that somewhere, deep in there, there was a cover-up."

Read more →

“Protecting” President Cheney, Too

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In today’s second installment on ways American taxpayers are wasting money to protect Dick Cheney from embarrassment, Josh Gerstein has a report on today’s hearing on CREW’s FOIA of Cheney’s interview in the CIA Leak Case. And DOJ is unabashedly making the argument that it should not release Dick Cheney’s interview because it might embarrrass him. (h/t MadDog)

Smith said the Justice Department’s view was that a delay of five to ten years was appropriate, marked from the time the official or his or her administration left office. “It’s a judgment call,” Smith acknowledged.

Smith suggested that such a delay would make it more likely that the information was used for historical purposes and not for political embarrassment. “The distinction is between releasing it for historical view and releasing it into the political fray,” Smith said.

Funny, DOJ claimed it was arguing for the longer-than-statutes-of-limitation delay because of concerns that future Vice Presidents wouldn’t cooperate willingly with investigations. As time goes on an their arguments look shittier and shittier, I guess, they become more and more truthful. Thus their invention of a new FOIA embarrassment exemption.

It sounds like Emmet Sullivan is not buying that argument–though he is also unwilling to just order the release of the interview without giving Obama’s DOJ an opportunity to waste more money protecting Cheney from embarrassment.

As the hearing concluded, Sullivan said he thought Congress had drawn a “bright line” with language in the Freedom of Information Act that generally exempts information about pending investigations from disclosure, but not closed probes, like the CIA leak case. He also said he would stay any ruling so the government could appeal before he released any documents.

President Obama? Attorney General Holder? This nonsense has gone on long enough. As I noted, Cheney’s participation in this probe is proof enough that the investigative concerns are bunk. It really is high time to stop wasting money preventing taxpayers from learning what Cheney did in our name.

Im-me-di-ate: adjective (DOJ) 1. More Than 2 Years

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Goddamn did DOJ bring the stupid in their response to CREW’s brief in its Cheney interview FOIA.

745 days ago, George Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence, thereby ensuring that Scooter Libby would not testify about whether–as all the evidence indicated–Dick Cheney had ordered him to leak Valerie Wilson’s identity to Judy Miller. 745 days ago, for all intents and purposes, the investigation of Dick Cheney’s involvement in outing a CIA officer ended in the dead end of Scooter Libby’s successful criminal obstruction of justice.

Yet DOJ describes CREW’s efforts to get Cheney’s interview report via FOIA to be an attempt to get "a ruling that would make public interview reports of high ranking White House officials immediately upon the conclusion of the relevant investigation." For the whizzes in DOJ, I guess, 745 days equates to "immediate."

But that’s not the only heap of stupid they bring in this filing.

Next, these whizzes argue that if DOJ turns over Cheney’s interview, then senior White House officials will no longer provide criminal investigators a "full account of relevant events."

This argument, however, is ultimately immaterial because, while in some circumstances public pressure could possibly force a White House official to sit down for an interview, it cannot ensure that that official will be willing “to provide law enforcement officials with a full account of relevant events,”

Dudes! Let me tell you a secret about this case!! It ended in a successful perjury and obstruction of justice prosecution that revealed–among other things–that convicted felon Scooter Libby had worked out a cover story with Dick Cheney before Libby first testified to the FBI! Had Cheney given a "full account of relevant events," then Scooter Libby probably wouldn’t have been prosecuted successfully (or, at the least, Judy Miller wouldn’t have had to testify or Cheney would have been charged with obstruction himself).

Next, DOJ claims that a precedent in which the release of a summary of deliberations was found not to constitute a waiver over the source documents of that deliberation applies here, in which key source documents have already been released, but which wouldn’t–DOJ argues–constitute a waiver for the interview report which is fundamentally a summary. For DOJ, a precedent finding that a summary doesn’t equal source is the same as a source not equaling a summary. 

The D.C. Circuit held that the release of the report did not constitute a waiver of privilege and that the White House could retain privilege over all documents that had not specifically been provided to individuals outside the government. Id. at 741. Read more →

Could Cheney’s Lawyer’s Leak Break through the Cloud over Cheney?

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This may sound self-evident. But the fact that Dick Cheney’s lawyer, Terry O’Donnell, leaked material that Dick Cheney told Fitzgerald in his interview absolutely destroys the government’s argument for keeping those interview materials secret. That’s because the government is arguing that materials collected for law enforcement should never be used for political purposes.  But O’Donnell’s leak was just that, and as such constitutes not only an explicit waiver to release the materials, but devastating proof that DOJ’s hand-wringing about letting this information out to be misplaced.

DOJ Produced a Vaughn Index in Response to a Sullivan Order

The government produced last week’s filing–complete with descriptions of all the contents of Cheney’s interview, in response to an order from Judge Sullivan, who didn’t buy that Steven Bradbury was properly qualified to claim that releasing Cheney’s interview materials would "chill" future investigations without more explanation. (This is from the transcript from the June 18 hearing, with spelling corrected.)

THE COURT: Otherwise, it’s just an assumption [Bradbury] makes based upon nothing he can point to. He didn’t say that he had spoken with the Vice-President, the Vice-President told him in retrospect had I known that, I never would have done this absent a subpoena. So that’s the problem the Court finds itself in. There’s not a lot said in the declaration other than this will happen.

Of particular note, Sullivan noted that the government has not properly invoked executive privilege here.

THE COURT: But it’s clear from the record the President and no one in the executive branch has clearly asserted executive privilege here. There are the law enforcement exemption and there’s certain other deliberative process et cetera, et cetera, exemptions that the government avails itself of but it’s not an executive privilege.

So Sullivan gave the government a second shot to appropriately explain why this stuff should be exempt from FOIA.

But it’s not going to help the government much. Granted, the government did have someone more qualified to talk about how releasing this interview would "chill" future  investigations than Steven Bradbury–Criminal Division Head Lanny Breuer. But Breuer’s examples of how releasing Cheney’s interview materials would "chill" future investigations were totally inapposite to this case. Breuer argues that releasing a late-investigation interview of a key subject of that investigation will dissuade ancillary witnesses from cooperating early in an investigation. And his examples of previous high level investigations show that the norm for such investigations is public disclosure.

Read more →

Anyone Having 2006 Flashbacks?

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Because I am.

I find myself writing long weedy posts about Cheney’s role in the CIA Leak Case. And Karl Rove spent a long day answering questions about his role in a crime. (h/t fatster)

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was deposed Tuesday by attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the panel’s chairman.

Rove’s deposition began at 10 a.m. and ended around 6:30 p.m, with several breaks, Conyers said.

Conyers would not comment on what Rove told congressional investigators, what the next step in the long-running Judiciary Committee investigation would be or whether Rove would face additional questioning.

“He was deposed today,” Conyers said in an interview. “That’s all I can tell you.”

Eight and a half hours? That’s a lot of questions.

Supposedly, there will be transcripts produced, Harriet and Karl will review them, and then we’ll all get our greedy little hands on them. Given that it’s summertime in our nation’s capital, it’ll take at least a few weeks for all that to transpire.

But we might get a Karl transcript before we get a Cheney interview.

Cheney’s Lawyer Already Leaked the Content of Cheney’s “Privileged” Interview

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You know how Obama’s DOJ claims that we can’t see Cheney’s interview with Patrick Fitzgerald because it’s privileged? Well, Dick Cheney’s own lawyer already leaked the so-called privileged content three years ago.

It appears that Dick Cheney’s lawyer, Terry O’Donnell, attended the interview. When Ted Wells asked David Addington at the Libby trial when he realized he was going to be a witness in the case, Addington explained that he was not permitted to attend Cheney’s interview, but Cheney’s lawyer was.

The point at which I knew I was likely to be a witness in the case was when the government went to interview the Vice President and indicated they would prefer I didn’t come and that only his private attorney come.

I’m interested in that because we know that Terry O’Donnell spread a cover story on the NIE leak–precisely the content DOJ now claims is privileged–to Michael Isikoff.

One of the details that most surprised me in Scott McClellan’s account of the CIA Leak investigation and aftermath was his description of the White House response to the confirmation–on April 5, 2006–that Libby had testified he had leaked the NIE with the authorization of the President.

Now the fact that he himself had authorized the selective leaking of national security information to reporters made him look hypocritical.

[snip]

In time, we would learn that the president’s penchant for compartmentalization had played an important role in the declassification story. The only person the president had shared the declassification with personally was Vice President Cheney. Two days after the Fitzgerald disclosure, Cheney’s lawyer told reporters that the president had "declassified the information and authorized and directed the vice president to get it out" but "didn’t get into how it would be done." Then the vice president had directed his top aide, Scooter Libby, to supply the information anonymously to reporters. [my emphasis]

[snip]

But it all made sense when someone pointed me to the one piece of journalism he could find repeating that citation–would you believe it, a Michael Isikoff piece?

A lawyer familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, told NEWSWEEK that the "president declassified the information and authorized and directed the vice president to get it out." But Bush "didn’t get into how it would be done. He was not involved in selecting Scooter Libby or Judy Miller." Bush made the decision to put out the NIE material in late June, when the press was beginning to raise questions about the WMD but before Wilson published his op-ed piece. [my emphasis]

Read more →

The Contents of the Fitzgerald-Cheney Interview, Annotated Edition

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Since there is still some confusion over the material from Dick Cheney’s interview with Patrick Fitzgerald that, DOJ says, cannot be made public, I decided to provide a more detailed description of what was in the interview with handy links for any media outlets that are too busy selling access to lobbyists to do their own work. What follows are the page-specific references in the DOJ FOIA response to material that appears in the FBI report of the interview. That document is 28 pages long, total, so this is a pretty good outline of what’s in the interview. I treat information that appears on the same page together, so a couple of these descriptions cover a number of separate issues raised in the filing.

Vice President’s discussion of the substance of a conversation he had with the Director of the CIA concerning the decision to send Ambassador Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger in 2002. (Page 3, lines 15-17, 21-28); The name of a covert CIA employee (Page 3)

As you recall, Libby first learned of Valerie Plame’s covert identity from a conversation with Dick Cheney some time during the week of June 9, 2003. He recorded his conversation with Cheney in a note which was a central focus of Libby’s grand jury testimony. When asked, Libby said Cheney may have learned of Valerie’s status from Tenet. And, when Fitzgerald was questioning Libby about Cheney’s notations on Joe Wilson’s op-ed, Libby explained that Cheney had asked Tenet earlier in June or July about the CIA sending ambassadors to gather information.

Q. When the Vice President asked you the question, "have they done this type of thing before," question to that effect, Vice — did the Vice President ever ask you has the Agency ever done this sort of thing before where an ambassador was sent out?

A. I think he may have at some point.

Q. And what did you do in response to that question, if anything?

A. I don’t know if I did anything particularly about it. I think he may have taken it up with, with Tenet rather than asking me.

[snip]

Q. What did he talk to the official that you do know he talked about?

A. About, you know, how this came about. I have a sense that he had talked to Tenet or somebody about, about that.

Q. And what time frame was that?

A. Summer, June, July, something like that.

In other words, this conversation appears to be the conversation Cheney had during the week of June 9 in which he learned of Plame’s identity. That makes the reference to "a covert CIA employee’s identity" all the more interesting. While that might be a reference to Valerie’s colleague who first suggested sending Joe, it might well be a reference to Valerie herself. While we know the CIA still wants to hide details of Plame’s career, it would be the height of absurdity if CIA tried to prevent us from seeing Fitzgerald ask Cheney about Plame.

In any case, DOJ is probably attempting to prevent us from learning of Cheney’s account of how he learned of Plame’s identity before he passed it on to Scooter Libby.

Read more →