Dick Still Complaining that His Beloved Firewall Didn't Get Pardoned

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Apparently, Dick Cheney doesn’t believe the little scold he sent Bush through Michael Isikoff the other day was sufficiently shrill. He’s out again today, explicitly criticizing Bush for not pardoning his little Scooter.

h/t mikepellegrini

h/t mikepellegrini

George Bush should have pardoned I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney said after stepping down as vice president this week.

"He was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon. Obviously, I disagree with President Bush’s decision," Cheney told Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard, a leading conservative Washington magazine.

[snip]

Hayes said that Cheney had publicly disagreed with Bush only four times in the eight years of the Bush administration.

They were only out of office for a day before the fifth disagreement surfaced.

I wonder whether Cheney is worried that his firewall might not hold tight as Libby faces the rest of his life as a felon? Or perhaps Dick is just aghast that Bush–who after all asked Libby to stick his neck in a meat grinder–didn’t return the favor by sacrificing a little of his scarce posterity to thank Libby for his work protecting Bush?

In any case, I do hope Cheney’s mood about Bush remains contentious and sour. There is little I’d like more than to see Bush and Cheney take each other out during their retirement.

Bush Opts for Continued Protection Over Payback

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When Cheney’s people wanted to shore up the cover story for Dick Cheney’s involvement in leaking Valerie Plame’s identity, they went to Michael Isikoff. So I guess it’s not surprising that Isikoff would be the outlet for conservative fury over the news that Bush did not pardon Scooter Libby.

In a move that has keenly disappointed some of his strongest conservative allies, President Bush has decided not to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for his 2007 conviction in the CIA leak case, two White House officials said Monday.

[snip]

But the decision not to pardon Libby stunned some longtime Bush backers who had been quietly making the case for the former vice presidential aide in recent weeks. A number of Libby’s allies had raised the issue with White House officials, arguing that as a loyal aide who played a key role in shaping Bush’s foreign policy during the president’s first term, including the decision to invade Iraq, Libby deserved to have the stain of his felony conviction erased from the record. In the only public sign of the lobbying campaign, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial strongly urging Libby’s pardon.

"I’m flabbergasted," said one influential Republican activist, who had raised the issue with White House aides, but who asked not to be identified criticizing the president. Ambassador Richard Carlson, the vice chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neo-conservative think tank, added that he too was "shocked" at Bush’s denial of a pardon for Libby.

"George Bush has always prided himself on doing the right thing regardless of the polls or the pundits," Carlson said. "Now he is leaving office with a shameful cloud over his head." Carlson, who was among those who recently weighed in on behalf of Libby with the White House and previously raised money for his legal defense fund, said that Libby had taken a "knife in the heart" from critics of the president and deserved to have his conviction erased.

Apparently, none of these conservative wailers understand that pardoning Libby would negate Libby’s ability to invoke the Fifth Amendment if, say, John Conyers ever held a hearing on George Bush’s role in leaking Valerie Plame’s identity. And so Scooter Libby will remain a felon–at least until the time when another Republican lands in the White House and pardons him.

Read more →

BushCo: You Can't Have Scooter's and Turdblossom's Emails…

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…and the Court can’t make us give them to you, either (h/t mc).

The Bush administration is aggressively pushing back against a federal court order instructing the most important offices in the White House to preserve all of their e-mail.

In court papers late Friday, the administration argued that a federal court has no authority to impose such a requirement on the offices of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the National Security Council. The administration argued that none of the court’s orders can apply to parts of the White House subject to the Presidential Records Act.

The issue arose Wednesday after U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. directed the White House to issue a notice to all employees to surrender any e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005. Justice Department lawyers argued that the order applied only to White House offices subject to the Federal Records Act, prompting a quick response from U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola. Facciola said that all White House offices must be searched for e-mail. [my emphasis]

We’re seriously in run-out-the-clock time here. BushCo is effectively sticking its fingers in its ears and singing "lalalala-you-can’t-make-me" and assuming Justice Kennedy will either back them up–or not get around to making them–before Tuesday. 

Update: Here’s the appeal. There’s a lot worth reading in it. But for now, you will be amused to know that they’re relying on what might politely be called the "Poppy precedent."

The bounds of the Court’s jurisdiction are restricted, too, by the limitations on review of the recordkeeping practices of components governed by the PRA. The PRA accords the components governed by the PRA “virtually complete control” over their records, and “neither the Archivist, nor the Congress has the authority to veto” the EOP PRA component’s disposal decisions, nor may the courts. Armstrong v. Bush, 924 F.2d 282, 290 (D.C. Cir. 1991).

I’m sure they weren’t planning on making this Poppy precedent their last defense when they deleted all of Scooter’s and Turdblossom’s emails in 2005. Honest.

Two more documents. This statement, which explains where they’re complying. And this declaration from Stephen Everett, the CIO of EOP, explaining that statement.

Update: What BushCo appears to be doing is to retreating to an approch they tried earlier in this case: to argue exclusively with the CREW arguments, which are more limited, and not the NSA arguments. Read more →

Dick’s Talking Points, Two

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When Libby was first asked about any discussions he had with Cheney in response to Joe Wilson’s op-ed, he first claimed he had not discussed the op-ed until after the Novak column (though with his aborted discussion of a "conver–"sation, he may have been thinking of the July 9 conversation he had with Novak and subsequently hid).

I don’t recall that conversation until after the, until after the Novak piece. I don’t recall it during this week of July 6. I recall it after the Novak conver — after the Novak article appeared I recall it , and I recall being asked by the Vice President early on, you know, about this envoy, you know, who is it and — but I don’t recall that, early on he asked about it in connection with the wife, although he may well have given the note that I took.

Q. And so your recollection is that he wrote on July — that you discussed with the Vice President, did his wife send him on a junket? As a response to the July 14th Novak column that said, he was sent because his wife sent him and she works at the CIA?

A. I don’t recall discussing it –yes, I don’t recall discussing it in connection with when this article first appeared. I recall it later.

Then, when Fitz points out the utter absurdity of discussing with Cheney, speculatively, that Plame was purportedly involved in sending her husband, after Novak had already reported that fact directly, Libby shifts, and tries to claim they talked about it after July 10 when–he claimed–Tim Russert had told him of Plame’s identity.

Q. And are you telling us under oath that from July 6th to July 14th you never discussed with Vice President Cheney whether Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA?

A. No, no, I’m not saying that. On July 10 or 11 I learned, I thought anew, that the wife — that, that reporters I lwere telling us that the wife worked at the CIA. And I may have had a conversation then with the Vice President either late on the 11th or on the 12th in which I relayed that reporters were saying that.

Basically, Libby was trying to date the notations Cheney had made on Wilson’s op-ed ("Or did his wife send him on a junket?") Read more →

Cheney’s FBI Report

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Murray’s got an important Christmas Eve scoop, reporting key details from Cheney’s FBI interview. I’ll return to the main point of it later, but IMO the really interesting detail is this one:

Both Cheney and Libby have acknowledged that Cheney directed him to meet with Miller, but claimed that the purpose of that meeting was to leak other sensitive intelligence to discredit allegations made by Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information to go to war with Iraq, rather than to leak Plame’s identity.

This answers the really substantive question I had about Cheney’s FBI interview: whether he attempted to leave open the possibility that he had ordered Libby to leak Plame’s identity–and that, because either Cheney or Bush insta-declassified Plame’s identity, the leak was legal. 

Apparently, Cheney did not. 

I’m off for dinner with mr. ew, so I’ll have to return to the implications of this fact and others later. But in the meantime, go read Murray’s scoop. 

“And while you’re indicting Alberto Gonzales for lying to Congress…”

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"…why not add another charge too?"

That seems to be the immediate message of Henry Waxman’s 11-page memo exposing Administration lies about the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger. As he describes, when Congress approached her with questions about the Administration’s use of the uranium in Niger claim, Condi Rice had Alberto Gonzales answer on her behalf.

On January 6,2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales sent a letter on behalf of Condoleezza Rice, who was then the National Security Advisor, to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, writing that "Dr. Rice has asked me to respond" to questions raised by the Committee about the uranium claim.

But the testimony the Oversight Committee has collected seriously challenges the veracity of Gonzales’ memo.

The information the Oversight Committee has received casts serious doubt on the veracity of the representations that Mr. Gonzales made on behalf of Dr. Rice.

Basically, George Tenet, former Deputy Director of Intelligence Jami Miscik, and former NSC speechwriter John Gibson testified that Condi and other NSC staffers had received multiple warnings not to use the Niger uranium claim, in addition to the insistent warnings before the Cincinnati speech that we already knew about.

As I suggested, DOJ may well already be considering charges against Alberto Gonzales for lying to Congress about the US Attorney firings (and, for that matter, about the illegal wiretap program). Waxman lays out one more instance where Bush’s Fredo appears to have lied about Administration activities.

Not that it’ll do much good: there’s a five year statute of limitation on lying to Congress, and the memo in question was written four years and eleven months ago. (The Administration didn’t turn over the memo in question until November 12 of this year.)

I’ll have more to say about the substantive details in Waxman’s memo after I do some Christmas shopping. But for now, if you needed any more proof that the SSCI report on prewar intelligence on Iraq was a whitewash based on Administration lies, now you’ve got it. 

Would George Bush Consider a PatFitzPack of Pardons?

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JMart reports that Dick Durbin wrote Bush in support of a pardon for George Ryan (really, Durbin?!?!?!).

Obama’s colleague and close friend Sen. Dick Durbin sent a letter to the president this week requesting that he release Ryan, who is doing a 6 1/2 year federal sentence on corruption-related charges

Crazy as it sounds, I think Durbin’s onto something. In fact, I think he should start pitching a "PatFitzPack of Pardons" for Bush.

After all, we know that Scooter Libby is bound to get a pardon in the next few weeks.  Conrad Black has already asked for a pardon; and what neocon President could resist that request? Throw George Ryan in there, and you’ve got a hat trick.

George Bush’s 69 for Scooter Libby

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Tweety has started to count the days left for George Bush to pardon Scooter Libby. Bush has 69 days left to–as Tweety accurately describes it–complete the cover-up of the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity.

I’m glad Tweety’s bringing this to attention, particularly since, with Waxman’s designs on John Dingell’s Chairmanship at the Energy and Commerce Committee, Waxman may well drop his quest to get Dick Cheney’s FBI interview report from DOJ. 

But it’s worth remembering this pardon will only complete the cover-up of one of Bush’s crimes. I’m just as interested in discussing the names of those–like David Addington, or Turdblossom, or Alberto Gonzales, or Cheney himself–whose silence Bush may be contemplating buying in the next 69 days. That discussion is particularly relevant since President-elect Obama seems intent on making a deal that will give Congress some of the documents they were entitled to in their oversight role, rather than have the principle of Congressional oversight of the President affirmed. 

Libby’s just the guy who got caught. He’s by no means the only one carrying out a cover-up.

Bush Prepares His Pardon Pen

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Former US Pardon Attorney Margaret Love reviews of Bush’s pardons and commutations to date (however ignoring his most famous–that of Scooter Libby) and ends with this tidbit:

Word on the street is that there will be more pardons after the election – and possibly even some before it. I would not be surprised to see a difference in the profile of those receiving pardons in the final weeks.

No, really, ya think?!? You think Bush is going to start working through the stack of requests from his thuggish pals to make sure he gives them a get out of jail free card before he leaves office?

You think maybe he’s got the letters all drawn up, with the names of Dick and Addington and Yoo and Turdblossom and Clemons and Gonzales and Libby on them (note, given Dusty Foggo’s dubious plea deal, Bush won’t have to pardon Wilkes now)?

But what I find most fascinating is the suggestion that Bush might pardon people before the election. Eight days away, and the pardon won’t wait? 

It sort of makes you wonder whether he’s taking a page out of Poppy’s book, halting the investigation that would eventually incriminate him personally, as Poppy did with Cap? It sort of makes you wonder whether Bush knows that Nora Dannehy’s investigation into the firing of David Iglesias won’t otherwise end up proving–as newspapers have reported–that Bush personally gave the order to fire Iglesias for not prosecuting Democrats in time to influence the election?

Prison Is the Bank?

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2001dualback_poster.jpgI hope these counter-intelligence folks know what they’re talking about. 

Because Dick Cheney ordered the leak of a CIA spy’s identity, and he got to remain Vice President for five more years.

Though, as an optimist, I’m not ruling out "prison is the bank" in the future.

(Photoshop love from twolf)