When the Plame-gate indictments come down, what will be the diversion story from the White House?
I wonder what story the White House will "break" to the media on the day Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald issues indictments--indictments that may include Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and others such as possibly John Bolton?
And will it matter if Fitzgerald identifies the Terrible President and Mr. Other Priorities as unindicted co-conspirators?
Some ideas kicking around in my noggin:
Some Al-Queda "senior official" is captured. Or maybe some Iraqi insurgent "leader".
Harriet Miers withdraws her nomination and Edith Jones or Edith Clement is nominmated in her stead. Prissy Owens? Too Texan? Janice Brown? Only if the Terrible President is an unindicted co-conspirator and needs the screaming banshees from Rush to Michael Savage to Sean Hannity back on his side.
A new treaty with North Korea.
Announcement of significant troop reductions from Iraq, perhaps.
Feel free to think of more.
Maybe...nothing. But this administration has shown itself very adept at planning and knowing when to leak and not leak important announcements, good and bad.
posted by Mitchell J. Freedman @ 8:05 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Mitchell -
The US Code, Section 421 reads -
Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Plame was not a covert agent at the time of the Rove/Libby conversations with reporters about Wilson and yellowcake. She was working a desk job. Some like to cite a "5 year rule" but that isn't in the code, so far as I can see.
If she does qualify as covert, does not her Vanity Fair interview (where she says "I was a covert CIA Operations Officer") break the same rule? How about her husband's interview on CNN where he accused the White House of "blowing her cover" shortly after the Novak article? I don't see anything in the code about "It's OK to not have to keep the secret after someone else blows it."
Um, Adam, better read more than the right wing blogs on this. Plame was a covert agent. "Desk job" is a propaganda phrase that popped up after this issue arose. She worked for a CIA front and was undercover. Once she was outed, one does not need "classified information" any longer as it is now in the open media. This means your last sentence may actually be the black-letter law.
Let's just see what Fitzgerald does do. Perhaps he won't indict anyone, but something tells me he is going to indict someone.
And aren't you just a bit bothered by the lies of this administration about Rove's and Libby's involvement and letting this investigation drag on while they knew the truth?
Finally, are we ready as a nation to let Phillip Agee back in our country, especially when the evidence is fairly clear that his exposure of the fellow in Athens, Greece had nothing to do with the murder of that CIA agent? If you google the names "Agee" and "Barbara Bush", you'll get an interesting stroy about how Barbara had to remove a negative reference to Agee in her autobiography on this issue.
Mitchell -
If they knowingly outed a covert agent then they should get the full force of the law. I have no love for these people - I just don't have hate for them either.
As for lies about involvement and letting things drag out, the same could be said about Clinton/Lewinsky or Iran Contra or Carter negotiating with Iran while denying it or Nixon or Johnson or ... We'll see what are asserted as facts by Fitz in the coming days.
Wait a minute here. I agree somewhat with the Clinton analogy, but remember he was impeached and his crime was...what...lying about private adulterous habits and oral sex.
Carter was not negotiating with Iran and lying about it. He was openly negotiating, as president, for the release of the hostages. The Robert Parry investigation (a well-respected AP reporter) shows there is some reason to believe Reagan, during the 1980 campaign and a mere candidate, was negotiating with Iran.
Iran-Contra scandals under Reagan? Yes, but that doesn't help your case as Reagan should have been impeached for violating federal laws and having his aides cover up for him. Ed Meese certainly thought so and that's why he winked and nodded at Ollie North's destruction of documents (though Weinberger's notes which surfaced years later showed Ronnie's involvement up to his kiester).
Whether I love or hate Karl Rove is less relevant than Rove's conduct here. But, stll, why don't you have revulsion against Karl Rove and his scorched-earth politics that would go so low as to attack a guy, Joe Wilson, by going after Wilson' wife? Why couldn't they just say, "So, Joe Wilson found nothing. What he found was nothing one way or the other." But no, Rove et al. had to go for the personal in a way that typifies again what should be revolting to decent Americans, including decent conservatives and Republicans.
Remember Rove's previous campaign history including the personal smears and lies against John McCain and Rove's campaigns for Jesse Helms--or Rove's previous dishonesty in a Texas campaign that caused him to be banished from that particular campaign.
Well, impeachment is a political act, not an act of law enforcement. I think the whole Clinton impeachment (and the Johnson one as well) demonstrate that without much more comment. "Should have been impeached" does not says more about the speaker than it does the object of discussion, IMO.
Regarding my Carter assertion, I know negotiations were made public later in the process, but Hamilton Jordan was involved in secret negotiations well before with some pretty loathsome characters (this was well beore Jordan became White House cheif of staff.)
I know Pierre Salinger had looked into it and was critical of it, and just found a link to a video on the subject. The brief description of the video puts the negotiation period at 14 months. While Carter was citing "no negotiations" and trying sanctions he had already shown a weak hand to the Mullahs. Not that anyone noticed.
http://www.sfsu.edu/~avitv/avcatalog/88323.htm
Point is that the presidency is an office where stated conduct vs actual conduct will be at odd with each other.
Adam,
my take on the Iran hostage thing remains that the Reagan people made a deal with the Iranians not to release the hostages until after the election, which is literally what happened. I guess I buy the "October Surprise" story. If Carter negotiated with terrorists, then the Reagan administration not only negotiated, they literally armed them, per Iran Contra. I'm personally much more troubled by the latter.
I do think it's worth reading Larry Johnson http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340 on Plame's covert status and what CIA insiders believe to be "covert". He's especially strong on the way in which outing Plame possibly compromised her network of contacts. I haven't seen him contradicted on these matters.
Chancelucky - I don't know how I am supposed to be defending Reagan. I am one of the few people in the population who has been labeled "right wing" that voted for both Mondale and Dukakis.
My point has been a simple one - welcome to politics. Delay has played by the rules of Texas politics, now he has been indicted under them. Rove is a cold hearted bastard as are every other successful political strategist.
This isn't the case by my choice nor do I live by such ethics - they simply are.
As for Plame indictments, here is a comment thread that is quite interesting over at JustOneMinute.
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/10/rove_to_talk_to.html#comment-10052745
BTW - consensus there (among admitted lefties) is that Rove won't be indicted under the section of the US Code I cited. Instead, the theory would be under a broader espionage act (which requires the perp to know s/he was harming the United States - hard to prove). Another theory has Cooper getting indicted for Obstruction by trying to set up Rove (not my theory) and further theorizes that Rove is a witness for the prosecution, which would explain his continued employment and willingness to testify.
As I said earlier, if Rove, Libby et. al. broke the law, they should feel the full force of it.
Adam,
I've said enough on the Rove stuff. But I want to return to your argument about Carter and Iran.
The hostages were taken by the Iranians in 1979, the third year of Carter's presidency. The negotiations were ongoing through the 1980 election. I hate to say it, but I think you are confusing when Carter's administration began.
You wrote at one point in your second comment:
"But Hamilton Jordan was involved in secret negotiations (with Iran) well before with some pretty loathsome characters (this was well beore Jordan became White House cheif of staff.)" (First parenthesis added)
But Jordan had been chief of staff already for quite some time. It was Richard Allen who was supposedly was part of the negotiations between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians (he had a smiliar role for Nixon's contacts in 1968 with the South Vietnamese). Allen then went on to work in Reagan's NSC.
The interesting thing is what Gary Sick, the NSC guy in Carter's administration, who was openly part of the official US negotiation team with the Iranians, who said the Iranians suddenly went back to a hard line in late September or early October 1980--right around the time those who say the Reagan team had locked up their agreement with the Iranians.
Just a historical point here.
As for the indictments over the outing of Valerie Plame (Joe Wilson's wife), we'll see what comes down.
Mitchell -
You said
" I hate to say it, but I think you are confusing when Carter's administration began " and then "But Jordan had been chief of staff already for quite some time" and then "Just a historical point here."
While I am apt to defer to you as a historian, David McCullough (who has a decent track record regarding presidents and history) both contradicts and supports you -
From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/peopleevents/e_hostage.html
'Deciding military action was too risky, Carter tried to build pressure on Iran through economic sanctions, and froze its assets in the U.S. While Secretary of State Cyrus Vance led the official diplomatic effort, Hamilton Jordan spent thousands of hours working secret channels. For the first few months, the American public rallied around Carter, who had clearly made freeing the hostages his number one priority. "Having a crisis, where you have to stay in Washington and deal with this crisis all the time, and be a statesman, can work to your advantage -- rally around the president in a crisis," says political scientist Betty Glad. "What Carter didn't foresee is, this enormous investment means you have to have a resolution to the issue." '
And following this link
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/peopleevents/p_georgia.html
we get this (emphasis mine)-
"Admittedly a poor administrator, and with Carter intent on running his own White House, Jordan did not officially become chief of staff until a major reorganization in the summer of 1979, after the Carter administration was already in big trouble."
That "major reorganization in the summer of 1979" occured when Carter asked his cabinet to resign on July 17, 1979 and then accepted 5 of those resignations on July 19th. The hostages were taken on November 4th, so Jordan was on the job for less than 4 months. I concede your point that Jordan was COS at the time of the hostage crisis. I assume you will concede my point that he held secret negotiations throughout.
As for Reagan, I suppose I am supposed to go down that hole and defend Reagan. Rather, I will simply use your point to strengthen my original argument - "the presidency is an office where stated conduct vs actual conduct will be at odds with each other."
Adam,
I honestly did not know Hamilton Jordan wrote a book stating he was engaged in "secret" negotiations that at least partially overlapped with Sec of State Cyrus Vance openly negotiating with the Iranians. Point conceded that Jordan claims he did that.
I also forgot that Jordan was only the "unofficial" chief of staff until July 1979. However, this was because Carter refused to have a "formal" chief of staff through that time. It was kind of silly because "everyone" knew he was the enforcer, which is what a chief of staff is known as in any event. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Chief_of_Staff
And while I won't diss McCollough, if Jordan was undertaking lengthy secret negotiations (one assumes with Carter's approval), this not only undermines Vance's public diplomatic efforts, but would possibly be inconsistent with the planning and execution of the failed military action Carter undertook in April 1980. See: http://www.lighthousepoint.us/project/wikipedia/index.php/Operation_Eagle_Claw.
Again, the PBS web site report you cite is not specific as to what it was that Ham Jordan was negotiating differently than Vance, if anything, or why it should be considered significant.
But again, your historical citation is understood and conceded. But I don't see why this helps in a defense of the far more mendacious conduct of the Terrible President.
Let's end the thread here, though, shall we? All I was saying in my original post was that IF indictments come down in "Plame-Gate", it will be interesting to see how the political apparatus at the White House will react.
This was fun nonetheless--and I learned something new about Ham Jordan and the hostage crisis. Thank you!
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