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Pardon Watch: The Betting Pool

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I can’t tell you how many times I started this post–an open thread for predictions of who, how many, how explicit the crimes that Bush would pardon. But every time I started the post, I deleted it–thinking it was unseemly to start Pardon Watch this early (though, admittedly, a full year after Libby’s commutation kicked off the self-protective pardon-fest).

But now Charlie Savage has broached the subject. And Dan Froomkin piled on, too, noting the vile Victoria Toensing calling for pre-emptive pardons of any and all long-term investigations:

‘The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations,’ said Victoria Toensing, who was a Justice Department counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. ‘If we don’t protect these people who are proceeding in good faith, no one will ever take chances.’

(I guess Victoria doesn’t have much faith in McCain’s ability to win this election….)

So I hereby kick off a once-monthly post calling for predictions on how many Get Out of Jail So You Can Keep Me Out of Jail Free cards Bush issues. Plus one for Roger Clemons, because Bush is a baseball guy…

We’ll give out five hub-caps, one for the most accurate guess each month. bmaz–I’m adding five hubcaps onto your normal football requisition.

Here are my current predictions and Bush’s likely logic behind each: Read more →

Fitzgerald’s Successful Argument to Keep the Bush and Cheney Reports Out of Discovery

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Back in the discovery period leading up to Scooter Libby’s trial, Ted Wells made a valiant attempt–based on Fitzgerald’s notice that he was going to include reference to the insta-declassification of the NIE–to get Bush and Cheney’s interview reports in discovery. But, as far as I can tell from the available record, Wells failed. Fitzgerald argued that, so long as he was willing to stipulate that the leak of the NIE on July 8 was not illegal, then any discovery of the Bush and Cheney reports would count as Jencks, and therefore he would only be obligated to turn them over if the government called Bush or Cheney to testify.

Given the fact that Mukasey appears to have claimed he can’t reveal the reports for some crazy reason, I thought I’d lay out this argument. Nowhere does Fitzgerald explain that he couldn’t turn over the reports–only that he doesn’t think he has to, unless Judge Walton orders him to do so.

MR. WELLS: Your Honor, with respect to the issue of the NIE, as Your Honor knows, Mr. Libby testified that he had discussions with Ms. Miller concerning the NIE based on expressed instructions from the vice president and with the understanding that President Bush had declassified the document. This is a case that concerns unauthorized disclosure of classified material. To the extent that Mr. Fitzgerald is in possession of documents or grand jury material or interviews that establish that, in fact, the vice president and the president were aware that those documents had been declassified, he should turn them over because I do not want to be in a position during this trial that there is some question that Mr. Libby, in disclosing that material to Ms. Miller, did anything wrong.

THE COURT: But the government is not alleging any violation of the law regarding that.

[snip]

THE COURT: You are not challenging whether there was a declassification of that information at the time it was produced?

MR. FITZGERALD: We’re not challenging the declassification authority as of July 8. What he is asking now is Jencks. And that’s what we kept writing in our briefs, we don’t turn over Jencks material before trial. Now we’re asking for grand jury testimony. It is not an issue. The NIE is not mentioned in the indictment. Read more →

Scottie and Condi and the Niger Intelligence

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My posts on Scottie McC’s book have, thus far, treated issues closely connected to the CIA Leak investigation (well, except for the post in which he calls cracking down on deadbeat dads "trivial").

In this post, I want to look at how he deals with the underlying issue–the Niger intelligence and the White House’s response to it. I find his treatment particularly curious. As many of you have pointed out, Scottie McC is fairly critical of Condi Rice.

Over time, I was struck by how deft she is at protecting her reputation. No matter what went wrong, she was somehow able to keep her hands clean, even when the problems related to matters under her direct purview, including the WMD rationale for war in Iraq, the decision to invade Iraq, the sixteen words in the State of the Union address, and postwar planning and implementation of the strategy of Iraq.

But his book, in some key ways, helps her protect her reputation. Now, most of this is–I think–ignorance on the part of Scottie McC, not any attempt to put Condi in a good light. Nevertheless, it is rather telling that he seems to be unaware of some of the key roles that Condi played in precisely these intelligence issues. Which is another way of saying he really misses some of the tensions between NSC and CIA the week of the leak–and therefore some of the underlying skirmishes that contributed to Plame’s outing.

For this post, I’m going to do a timeline–both of the events he covers, and the events he misses.

June 8, 2003: Condi gets beat up by George Stephanopoulos

Scottie McC does not mention this appearance at all, gliding directly from Kristof’s column to Pincus’, and ignoring Condi’s appearance as the decisive factor in leading Joe Wilson to publish his op-ed and, apparently, in getting Bush to tell Libby he was interested in the Kristof allegations:

In early June, while making inquiries about what Kristof wrote, Pincus had contacted Cathie Martin, who oversaw the vice president’s communications office. Martin went to Scooter Libby to discuss what Pincus was sniffing around about. The vice president and Libby were quietly stepping up their efforts to counter the allegations of the anonymous envoy to Niger, and Pincus’s story was one opportunity for them to do just that.

[snip]

In this atmosphere of growing controversy–and with no WMD in sight anywhere in Iraq–Kristof’s anonymous source, Joe Wilson, decided to go public.

Read more →

The Missing Emails and the OVP Coverup

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The only email introduced at the Scooter Libby trial that was among those that had been lost in the White House email purge loss was an email from Jenny Mayfield (Libby’s Assistant) to Cathie Martin highlighting the part of the October 1 gaggle where Scottie McC refused to exonerate Libby. (You can tell it was reconstructed because it was printed out on February 2, 2006, just days before Fitzgerald received the batch of reconstructed emails; also note it was printed out from David Addington’s account, not Mayfield or Martin’s–both were gone at that point.)

Fitzgerald introduced the email at the trial to prove that Libby had reason to lie in his FBI interviews and, later, his grand jury appearances. Fitzgerald argued that the gaggle transcript, along with other pieces of evidence introduced, showed that Libby was panicking about being a suspect in the Plame leak. Fitzgerald also introduced the October 12, 2003 version of the 1X2X6 article on which someone (presumably Libby) had underlined key passages, including a denial similar to one that had appeared in the Isikoff and Thomas article published on October 6 (though dated October 13). Fitzgerald also entered an October 4, 2003 Pincus and Allen article into evidence, one that had no underlines and–unlike three other Allen articles from that period, no mention of Libby. But it did note that, "FBI agents yesterday began attempts to interview journalists who may have had conversations with government sources about Plame and Wilson."

The defense introduced some of the articles from this period too: An October 27 NRO column, with notations (it’s not clear how this was printed out, but shows as pages 35 and 36 of a packet); an October 1 WSJ editorial, with markings (note, it’s not clear when this was printed out or where); and an October 1 email from Laura Mylroie to Jenny Mayfield sharing Clifford May’s October 1 column, with no markings (printed out October 1, which is presumably why it wasn’t lost). Read more →

Four News Outlets and the Libby Exoneration

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Scottie McC describes his reluctant efforts on October 4, 2003 to exonerate Libby this way:

"Were you involved in the leak in any way?" I asked him.

"No, absolutely not," Scooter replied.

"All right," I said. "I plan to tell reporters that you did not leak the classified information, nor would you condone doing so. Is that correct?"

"Yes," he replied. Then we talked about which reporters I planned to call. Scooter hung up and I set about my disagreeable task.

I called reporters for Newsweek, which I’d heard was working on a story focusing on Scooter, the AP, and the New York Times. That same day, I happened to run into Washington Post correspondant Mike Allen outside on the White House grounds, and I told him as well.

[snip]

Sure enough, pretty soon it was on the Associated Press newswire as part of a larger story on the leak investigation. [my emphasis]

The passage originally sparked my interest since the NYT was a central player in this drama. Newsweek journalist Evan Thomas was subpoenaed to testify at the trial–for a conversation he had with Libby during leak week. And Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff was also among the names of people whom Fitzgerald asked Libby about during his grand jury testimony.

Given Scottie McC’s indication that Libby had some influence over which journalists Scottie McC called to exonerate Libby, is it possible that he included some who were involved in the actual leak?

So I’ve been playing with Lexis-Nexis to see if I can pinpoint which journalist got Scottie McC’s exoneration, and whether they actually used it.

AP

The AP reporter appears to be Scott Lindlaw, who published a story dated October 5 describing the efforts of the White House to comply with DOJ’s document requests.

McClellan firmly ruled out any involvement in the leak by Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Libby did not provide the information, know who did and does not condone it, said McClellan said. He condemned "false, unsubstantiated accusations" that have been published in the news media about Libby’s role.

Note the little addition: Scottie McC apparently also told Lindlaw that Libby did not know who leaked Plame’s identity.

Newsweek

The Newsweek reporter appears to be either Evan Thomas or Michael Isikoff. A PR Newswire released on October 5 announced they would report the exoneration in an article dated October 13 but published on October 6. Read more →

Scottie McC’s Chronology: October 4

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I told you I was going to get into the guts of Scottie McC’s book. So far, I’ve shown that:

  • Scottie McC hides the date when the White House learned of an investigation and ignores details that seemed to implicate Rove, thereby making Karl’s interventions look less suspicious
  • Scottie McC falsely suggests Bush’s comments on Rove weren’t a reaction to the 1X2X6 story
  • Someone appears to have told Condi to exonerate Rove–and Scottie McC doesn’t think he was the one who did so
  • While Scottie McC’s representation of what he briefed on September 29 is mostly accurate, there are a few details that he still appears to be hiding, notably his refusal to say that Rove didn’t know of Plame’s identity, even though Rove had just said as much to him

All of this suggests that there were big reasons to doubt Rove’s claims that he wasn’t involved. And, given Scottie McC’s refusal to state that Rove didn’t know about Valerie Wilson’s identity when he spoke with Novak, it seems likely Scottie McC may have doubted those claims more than he lets on in his book.

So let’s turn to his treatment of Libby.

For some understandable narrative reasons, Scottie McC interrupts his treatment of the events of fall 2003 right in the middle. He ends chapter 10 with his September 29 mid-day briefing and then takes a full chapter to discuss events relating to Iraq leading all the way up to fall 2004. Then, in chapter 12, he returns to the CIA leak investigation, starting with DOJ’s notification on the evening of September 29 that it would conduct an investigation.

I understand the narrative logic behind such a split, with chapter 10 treating the pre-investigation events and chapter 12 treating the investigation events. But the effect is to heighten the false impression that the White House did not know of the investigation during the earlier events. It also creates an equally false impression that Scottie McC operated by different rules during the events that appear in chapter 10 and those that appear in chapter 12.

This has a dramatic effect in his treatment of his refusal to exonerate Scooter Libby.

Scottie pretends that he was first asked about Libby’s involvement on October 1–the morning after the White House’s employees (as distinct from Alberto Gonzales) received official notice of the investigation.

The next morning’s gaggle back at the White House signaled that the press was now turning toward a new rumored suspect in the leak, the vice president’s chief of staff–Scooter Libby.

Read more →

Did Condi Speak with Bush about Rove’s So-Called Innocence? Or about the NIE?

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I wanted to add one detail to my earlier post about Waxman asking for more materials from Mukasey. They imply that Condi had a conversation with Bush or Cheney about Rove and/or Libby’s so-called innocence.

Waxman’s letter asks for the following:

I am writing now to renew the Committee’s request for the interview reports with President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to request unredacted versions of the interviews with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, and Cathie Martin. I also request that the Department provide all other responsive documents that were approved for release to the Committee by Mr. Fitzgerald.

[snip]

I therefore urge you to follow Justice Department precedents and provide the records of the FBI interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney to the Committee by June 10. I also ask that you provide to the Committee, at the same time, the unredacted interviews with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, and Cathie Martin, as well as the other responsive records requested by the Committee.

In other words, his letter written specifically in response to Scottie McC’s revelations asks for unredacted copies of Scottie’s interview, but also Rove’s, Libby’s, Condi’s, and Cathie Martin’s interviews. Mind you, Waxman has seen redacted copies of these, but Scottie’s revelations lead him to demand unredacted interview reports.

Waxman tells us what is redacted in Scottie’s interview report.

In his FBI interview, Mr. McClellan told the FBI about discussions he had with the President and the Vice President. These passages, however, were redacted from the copies made available to the Committee.

And he implies that that’s what was redacted from the other interviews, as well.

Similar passages were also redacted from other interviews.

There are no sound reasons for you to withhold the interviews with the President and the Vice President from the Committee or to redact passages like Mr. McClellan’s discussions with the President and the Vice President.

From which we might conclude that those redacted passages in the Rove, Libby, Cathie Martin, and Condi interview reports are, at the very least, about conversations with Bush or Cheney, and possibly, discussions specifically about the exoneration of Rove and Libby.

We know Rove could have testified about this–Scottie McC’s book tells us that Rove told Bush directly that he was "innocent." Similarly, we know that Libby had such conversations with Cheney–in fact, passages describing those conversations appear, totally unredacted, in the grand jury testimony.

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Scottie Doesn’t Deny Bush Authorized the Plame Leak

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Okay, I went out and bought the damn book (sadly, I even have an extra one coming from Amazon). And I take something I said yesterday back. I said, speaking of my title that "Bush authorized the leak of Valerie Wilson’s identity," that "Scottie McC doesn’t know it yet."

I was wrong. While Scottie doesn’t confirm that he knows that Bush authorized the leak of Valerie’s identity, he sure as hell doesn’t deny it either. Here’s how he addresses claims that Bush also authorized the leak of Valerie’s identity.

Questions were also raised about whether the president’s action had set in motion the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity. Although we could not comment publicly, we did our best to distance him from this suggestion by pointing to the comments of Libby’s lawyer that Bush had only authorized Cheney to "get the information out." He hadn’t told him how to do it or what kinds of tactics to use. In other words, Bush hadn’t explicitly talked about leaking. It was a narrow and ultimately tenuous thread.

Do you see where Scottie McC says anything about what content Bush authorized Scooter and Shooter to leak? Me neither.

Scottie McC’s denial–which is not one, not by a long shot–only addresses the method of the leak, the fact that Scooter and Shooter leaked via the old A1 cut-out using Judy Judy Judy. After raising the question of whether or not Bush had authorized the content that Valerie was covert … Scottie McC said nothing.

George Bush Authorized the Leak of Valerie Wilson’s Identity

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Scottie McC doesn’t know it yet. But that’s basically what he revealed this morning on the Today Show (h/t Rayne).

During the interview, Scottie revealed the two things that really pissed him off with the Bush Administration. First, being set up to lie by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. And second, learning that Bush had–himself–authorized the selective leaking of the NIE.

Scottie McC: But the other defining moment was in early April 2006, when I learned that the President had secretly declassified the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for the Vice President and Scooter Libby to anonymously disclose to reporters. And we had been out there talking about how seriously the President took the selective leaking of classified information. And here we were, learning that the President had authorized the very same thing we had criticized.

Viera: Did you talk to the President and say why are you doing this?

Scottie McC: Actually, I did. I talked about the conversation we had. I walked onto Air Force One, it was right after an event we had, it was down in the south, I believe it was North Carolina. And I walk onto Air Force One and a reporter had yelled a question to the President trying to ask him a question about this revelation that had come out during the legal proceedings. The revelation was that it was the President who had authorized, or, enable Scooter Libby to go out there and talk about this information. And I told the President that that’s what the reporter was asking. He was saying that you, yourself, was the one that authorized the leaking of this information. And he said "yeah, I did." And I was kinda taken aback.

Now, for the most part, this is not new. We have known (since I first reported it here) that Scooter Libby testified that, after Libby told Dick Cheney he couldn’t leak the information Cheney had ordered him to leak to Judy Miller because it was classified, Cheney told Libby he had gotten the President to authorize the declassification of that information.

Thus far, though, we only had Dick Cheney’s word that he had actually asked Bush to declassify this information. We didn’t have Bush’s confirmation that he had actually declassified the information. In fact, we’ve had Dick Cheney’s claims that he–Dick–had insta-declassified via his super secret pixie dust declassification powers.

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Now This IS Interesting Scottie McClellan News

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Back in November, when Scottie McClellan’s publisher first started to pitch Scottie’s book, he made a stir when he posted the following blurb about the book.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself.

That set off a minor firestorm, as people misread the plain language of the blurb to mean that Bush had knowingly asked Scottie McC to lie about Libby’s and Rove’s involvement in the leak of Valerie Wilson’s identity. As I pointed out then, the firestorm probably contributed to making little Scottie rich.

Scottie McC’s publisher has pulled off quite the coup–taken a detail that was, largely, already known, and used it to cause a stir about a book that will not yet be published for another 6 months. Already, Dodd is calling for an investigation, folks are calling for HJC or Waxman to hold a hearing. What the left has done is read one publishing blurb designed to generate this kind of buzz, and played right into the plan. Congratulations. You’re all making Scottie McC rich.

And while I still don’t advocate that you all go out and buy Scottie’s book (tell you what–I’ll buy it and tell you the interesting bits), this little revelation is interesting news.

McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case.

Read more →