Mr. Fitzgerald asked about a notation I made on the first page of my notes about this July 8 meeting, "Former Hill staffer."
My recollection, I told him, was that Mr. Libby wanted to modify our prior understanding that I would attribute information from him to a "senior administration official." When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a "former Hill staffer." I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill.
Okay, look. You grant anonymity because a source is leaking information they aren't really supposed to. Maybe you grant anonymity in that somewhat comical fashion of "the source declined to be identified by name because of the administration's policy of not commenting" which is ridiculous but at least it's mostly transparently ridiculous. What Libby wanted was to, in essence, grant the entire senior administration "anonymity" by pretending the information was coming from somewhere. No idea if Miller ever granted such a thing, but any reporter who ever did should be fired, along with their editors.
In two interviews, Ms. Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes.
The editors are less than forthcoming:
Asked what she regretted about The Times's handling of the matter, Jill Abramson, a managing editor, said: "The entire thing."
(we did bad but I won't say what!)
The editors had no control:
Within a few weeks, in one of his first personnel moves, Mr. Keller told Ms. Miller that she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons issues. Even so, Mr. Keller said, "she kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm."
There's still information, and Miller is either lying or just not cooperating:
It is not clear why. Ms. Miller said in an interview that she "made a strong recommendation to my editor" that a story be pursued. "I was told no," she said. She would not identify the editor.
Ms. Abramson, the Washington bureau chief at the time, said Ms. Miller never made any such recommendation.
Miller was full of shit from the beginning:
In the fall of 2003, after The Washington Post reported that "two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to at least six Washington journalists," Philip Taubman, Ms. Abramson's successor as Washington bureau chief, asked Ms. Miller and other Times reporters whether they were among the six. Ms. Miller denied it.
"The answer was generally no," Mr. Taubman said. Ms. Miller said the subject of Mr. Wilson and his wife had come up in casual conversation with government officials, Mr. Taubman said, but Ms. Miller said "she had not been at the receiving end of a concerted effort, a deliberate organized effort to put out information."
Pinch has heavy influence on the editorial page and is an idiot:
The editorial page, which is run by Mr. Sulzberger and Gail Collins, the editorial page editor, championed Ms. Miller's cause. The Times published more than 15 editorials and called for Congress to pass a shield law that would make it harder for federal prosecutors to compel reporters to testify.
Mr. Sulzberger said he did not personally write the editorials, but regularly urged Ms. Collins to devote space to them. After Ms. Miller was jailed, an editorial acknowledged that "this is far from an ideal case," before saying, "If Ms. Miller testifies, it may be immeasurably harder in the future to persuade a frightened government employee to talk about malfeasance in high places."
Asked in the interview whether he had any regrets about the editorials, given the outcome of the case, Mr. Sulzberger said no.
Get over yourself much? You're in jail, what's the news?
Every day, she checked outdated copies of The Times for a news article about her case. Most days she was disappointed.
Most important things about the actual criminal case are in Judy's version. She's very good at playing the Sgt. Schultz defense. Who knew intrepid Super Reporters had holes in their brains.
Reading Reddhead's walk down the yellowcake road I'm struck by something - exactly why was it so necessary to "get" Wilson? It can't simply be the simply be about the "sixteen words" in the SOTU speech. It must be what all that pointed to - where those obviously forged documents came from...
Wilson's campaign caught the attention of Vice President Cheney's office nearly two months before Plame was unmasked, according to senior administration officials. Cheney's aides pressed the CIA for information about Wilson.
By early June -- one month before Plame was identified in Novak's column -- the State Department had prepared a memo on Wilson's trip that contained a small section about Plame marked "S" for secret. A few days before Novak's column was published, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell brought the memo with him on a trip to Africa with Bush and many of his top aides.
I have to admit I'm a bit puzzled by the reaction of many to the prospect that Sherrod Brown is in too. Sure there may be an issue with whether or not Brown gave Hackett the "all clear" signal and then changed his mind and perhaps (though I don't put too much stock in the importance of this in this race) some influence by the DC people (denied).
But, generally, I think primaries are a good thing assuming the candidates don't nuke each other (and they shouldn't). In this case we have an establishment candidate, Brown, who has one set of advantages, and we have Hackett who has another set. Let them take it to the primary voters in Ohio. It can only serve to enhance awareness of the race and increase the name reocognition of both candidates.
Let them have a healthy campaign and a healthy debate. As I said - as long as they don't nuke each other a primary is a good thing.
A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the thread and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I think the real question about the rumored Sunday Judy expose is not how much truth about her we get it's about how we get about Keller, Pinch, and Abramson.
A protestor wears a condom with the image of U.S. President George W. Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove, during his fourth appearance before a grand jury in Washington, DC, October 14, 2005. The condom reference is made towards the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. REUTERS/Jim Young
Just on CNN. Rove spent many hours with the grand jury and lawyer says no decision has been made on indictments. But, of course! Last I checked the grand jury and not Fitzgerald actually makes that decision. No matter what he's decided, they have to be on board.
Now I'm curious. What is Lawrence Kaplan's plan for Iraq? TNR sticking most things behind a subscription wall is sillier than the Times doing it.
ah, here's the money quote:
Bush, unlike Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton before him, seems genuinely committed to the cause of battlefield success. But he faces a vastly more skeptical public than either of his predecessors did. Nixon, for one, didn't have to contend with opinion polls showing majority support for withdrawal from Vietnam until 1970-1971, by which time he had enshrined withdrawal in official policy. As for Reagan's experience, in the aftermath of the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, public support for the U.S. intervention increased. Similarly, when 18 Rangers were killed in Mogadishu, NBC, ABC, and CNN polls found that 61, 56, and 55 percent, respectively, favored sending more troops to Somalia. These levels of support evaporated only as it became clear the presidents themselves no longer backed the missions. Today, the situation has reversed itself: The president supports the mission, but no one else does.
First of all, what John says about ads. I would certainly never encourage anyone to click through for the sake of doing so, but a lot of the things which get advertised here are actually things you might be interested in so if you happen to let that portion of the screen filter through to your brain every now and then just in case anything might interest you that wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Secondly, go throw some coin to Crooks and Liars. The proprietor does an incredible job posting up all the video clips you actually want to see, something which requires a lot of time and money to do.
Last Thursday (8 days ago) I attended a special screening of In Her Shoes, a benefit for the Philadelphia Public Library. Adam Bonin, who does lawyerly stuff to help defend the blogs from the intrusive hand of the FEC as well as showing up around the blogs in various guises, knows the author of the book by the same name fairly well and put me on the media list, though as it was a good cause I went ahead and made the donation anyway.
I'd never read any of Jennifer Weiner's books before. They're always talked about in the category of "chick lit" which brings to mind stories in which the plots follow this order: 1) Woman has bad relationship(s) 2) Woman finds independence 3) Woman finds man and true happiness
But all books which are a) written by women and b) about women seem to be slotted into the "chick lit" category, whether they fit the model or not. Rather strange.
In any case, not having read the book I can't comment on it, but the film is of course categorized in the "chick flick" genre. If by that we mean "movie more likely to appeal to women" that's probably fair, but it certainly doesn't follow the 3 part formula established above. It's directed by Curtis Hanson, of LA Confidential fame, and is refreshing in a lot of ways. The movie doesn't follow the formulaic plotting and timing that too many movies have - the story is allowed to move at its own pace, the plot is allowed some breathing room. It makes very good use of on location filming, letting the character of its locations (Philadelphia in and around the neighborhood of Eschaton World Headquarters and Florida) add an extra dimension to the movie. It isn't filled with shocking plot twists, but nor is it a predictable movie - there's a story to be told and it's told without telegraphing everything in advance.
The biggest problem with the movie is the tremendous miscasting of the lead actress, Toni Collete, who too many times we're expected to believe that not only is she less attractive than her sister played by Cameron Diaz, but also quite a bit overweight, which she isn't really even by Hollywood standards. Still, you can just swallow that and look forward to Shirley MacLaine's performance which was very enoyable.
Chick flick? Perhaps, but more "Terms of Endearment" than "Bridget Jones's Diary." Well worth seeing if you're so inclined.
As much as I disagreed, I could understand honoring Judith Miller when she actually did go to jail to protect her source. But now she's being honored for not protecting her source?
Lotsa good stuff in this one. I'll highlight this bit:
Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the Iraq war, and compare them with Colin Powell's pro-war presentation to the U.N. Knowing what we know now, it's clear that one man was judicious and realistic, while the other was spinning crazy conspiracy theories. But somehow their labels got switched in the way they were presented to the public by the news media.
Why does this happen? A large part of the answer is that the news business places great weight on "up close and personal" interviews with important people, largely because they're hard to get but also because they play well with the public. But such interviews are rarely revealing. The fact is that most people - myself included - are pretty bad at using personal impressions to judge character. Psychologists find, for example, that most people do little better than chance in distinguishing liars from truth-tellers.
More broadly, the big problem with political reporting based on character portraits is that there are no rules, no way for a reporter to be proved wrong. If a reporter tells you about the steely resolve of a politician who turns out to be ineffectual and unwilling to make hard choices, you've been misled, but not in a way that requires a formal correction.
At some point the press is going to have to pay a bit more attention to the degree to which the military, and not simply the civilian leadership, has become another propaganda arm of the administration.
Shocked to Discover that Political Hacks Shill for White House
It's been difficult over the last few years to differentiate the degrees of hackdom in the conservative movement. It's been sort of like differentiating the colors on the SNL parody terror alert chart - off-white, cream, putty, bone, and natural - as there's been so little variation. There have been disagreements in wingnuttia, but even when some found fault they never found fault with Bush himself.
But I probably would've put money on Brit Hume being the single biggest Bush hack in all of the land of wingnuttia. Even the National Review is peeved.
I wish I could be there to see you face to face and thank you personally. Probably a little early for me to go to Tikrit. Perhaps one of these days the situation will be such that I'll be able to get back to Iraq.
A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the thread and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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