Deep Thought
Would CIA have spent the last eight years lying to Congress to hide Dick Cheney’s torture chambers if Bill Clinton had not "looked forward" but instead pursued Iran-Contra fully?
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Illegal Wiretapping … Still; Bill Clinton’s Email Accessed
Lichtblau and Risen are back with what feels like a quarterly update reporting that Americans are still being illegally surveilled.
Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.
Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions about the spy agency.
[snip]
He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches.
The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.
These reports feel so familiar. What is new, though, is that people like Rush Holt (who was quoted extensively in the article) are getting pissed enough that they’re giving more details about the abuses in the program. Read more →
Clinton-Gore ’08
I saw someone on TV (sorry–I have no idea who it was or even what channel it was on) who argued that the Obama-Clinton appearance yesterday was more important for Bill than for Obama. Sure, the appearance was about reassuring everyone that there are no more (stated) hard feelings about the primary. But it also gave Bill an opportunity to bask in the glow of Obama’s goodwill, perhaps to exorcise some of the bad feelings from South Carolina.
I would add to this insight that the timing is key. Obama didn’t campaign with Bill until polls show him with a big lead, particularly in Electoral College Votes. That is, Obama invited Bill to campaign with him after it became highly probable that he will win; though Bill has campaigned for the campaign already (with Biden in PA, in VA, and in AR), if Obama wins it will be his win, on his own merits. Which is, I guess, where the room for this gesture comes from.
Don’t get me wrong–Bill no doubt will help Obama build a bigger lead in FL, which is currently the closest of the big swing states (even OH shows a bigger Obama lead!). But as for the election–rather than the state–Bill has been helpful, but by no means instrumental to Obama’s success thus far. (I’m particularly reminded of all the complaints that Gore didn’t invite Clinton to campaign with him in 2000.) At that level, then, it seems as much symbolic as anything else.
And now we have news that Gore himself (with Tipper) will campaign for Obama in FL.
Gore will appear at "Vote for Change" rallies in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, according to a release just issued by the Obama campaign.
Gore returns (on Halloween, no less) to the land of butterfly ballots, hanging chads and a 36-day national recount drama that determined Gore lost and George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election.
Talk about symbolism! Gore, like Clinton, has campaigned for Obama before (for example, at Gore’s endorsement of Obama in Detroit earlier this year, which I screwed up royally by missing). But at a time when the outcome of the race–but not Florida–seems more and more favorable to Obama, Obama has invited Gore to the scene of the 2000 crime. West Palm Beach and Broward County, no less!
Bill’s Speech
Bill’s having fun.
I love that we have so many leaders we still love.
Bill: I’m going to tell you to vote for Obama, where Hillary only suggested it. Because I can do that.
Watching CSPAN. When Clinton said Obama was the right guy for the job (of President) CSPAN went from Michelle to Hillary. Both wearing turquoise. Hillary looked pained.
Oh man, Bill is having fun.
“Trivial Policy Ideas”
I’m going to launch into some much more detailed analysis of Scottie McC’s book in the next few days. But before I did that, I wanted to establish how deeply Scottie McC is in denial about George Bush–both about his good intentions as a President and his honesty. As I go through the Plame-related and Iraq intelligence stuff, I’ll show how Scottie McC is still fundamentally protecting the President, perhaps as much to prevent serious cognitive dissonance on Scottie’s own part as to protect Bush.
But for now, I just wanted to point out how Scottie McC tends to interpret anything Bush does in the best positive light, even while condemning the same behavior from others.
In Scottie McC’s discussion of the presidential transition, he compares Clinton and Bush in some detail, noting that both got sucked into the "permanent campaign" when in DC. Scottie McC even cedes that Bush embraced the permanent campaign as much as Clinton (which is, after all the point of the book).
There would be no more permanent campaign, or at least its excesses would be wiped away for good. But the reality proved to be something quite different. Instead, the Bush team imitated some of the worst qualities of the Clinton White House and even took them to new depths.
Yet Scottie McC wants to pretend that Bush’s permanent campaign was all in service of a grand agenda, unlike (he suggests) Clinton.
Bush did not emulate Clinton on the policy front. Just the opposite–the mantra of the new administration was "anything but Clinton" when it came to policies. The Bush administration prided itself on focusing on big ideas, not playing small ball with worthy but essentially trivial policy ideas for a White House, like introducing school uniforms or going after deadbeat dads.
Curious that this son of a single mother would insinuate that an overdue federal effort to make sure that families parented by single mothers don’t also have to survive on single salaries was "trivial." The effort to ensure that women could collect the child support due them was fundamentally about families and personal responsibility.
The Thaw that Started Five Months Ago
The press is agog that Hillary Clinton sat down with–and wooed–her long time personal vast right-wing conspiracy funder, Richard Mellon Scaife.
NYT:
But in a striking about-face, Mr. Scaife now says he has changed his mind — at least about one half of the duo.
Fox:
Scaife, who unnerves some conservatives with countervailing positions on abortion and the war in Iraq, said he still wants to hear from Barack Obama before his newspaper endorses a candidate in Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary.
ABC:
Richard Mellon Scaife, a major funder of the 90s-era Vast Right Wing Conspiracy — specifically, The American Spectator and its "Arkansas Project" — today reconsiders his former nemesis in an op-ed in his newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
JMM:
This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary’s having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense.
Aside from the fact that it is quite common for the poobahs of newspapers to meet with political candidates leading up to an election in their community (and Scaife suggests he’ll meet with Obama, too), I think the meeting ought to be put in context with Bill Clinton’s earlier meeting with Scaife, back in November (a meeting only ABC’s Tapper notes in his coverage), one carefully stage-managed by Scaife’s vast right wing conspirators of the 1990s, Christopher Ruddy and Michael Isikoff. Scaife’s revisionary history of his involvement in the Clintons’ woes started when, in November, Ruddy called Bubba "part Merlin and part Midas."