It amazes me that 41 percent of Americans approve of lying and incompetence.
On CNN’s “Inside Politics yesterday, Candy Crowley interviewed Robert “Bob” Novak about the Valerie Plame case, or, as I like to think of it, the Leaking Rove case:
CROWLEY: I wanted to talk to you about the CIA leak story, because a couple of things have come out that I wanted to see if I could get you to talk about. The first one is that there is a story out there that Karl Rove testified that you were the one that told him that Valerie Plame was at the CIA.
NOVAK: Well I can’t talk about anything that I have done. But I would say that it’s, to me, very interesting that all these leaks on the grand jury are not coming from the grand jury, or — as far as I know — or from the special prosecutor. They are coming from lawyers for various people who are participating in it, or the participants themselves, which is a little bit on the unusual side.
The question is, really, political question, is Karl Rove in serious trouble because of this? And you get all kinds of views, but the consensus in the Republicans I talked to is that the word is coming out from the White House he doesn’t have any legal problems, he’s not going to be prosecuted. If that’s right — I have no idea whether that’s right — I think he’s going to be OK. He’s not going to be popular with the people who are attacking him anyway.
I noticed that this has revived the whole story which is the reason I haven’t been on television very much lately. And so all things might have a happy consequence, but it has revived the story and the Democrats are trying to make a lot of it. But I think this is a hard story to keep alive until the grand jury and special prosecutor came up with something.
CROWLEY: Well outside whether you testify — I assume you can’t tell us whether you testified at the grand jury or still won’t tell us. Outside of that, can you tell us whether you ever told Karl Rove about Valerie Plame’s status?
NOVAK: I can’t tell anything I ever talked to Karl Rove about, because I don’t think I ever talked to him about any subject even the time of day, on the record.
Personally, if either Rove or Novak told me the time of day, I’d get a second opinion.
Here is the Bush Administration’s M.O. in summary: Two of its top officials who are suspected of deliberately revealing the identity of a CIA operative are receiving pay hikes:
“The top pay for senior White House aides, including Chief of Staff [Andy] Card, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Legislative Affairs Director Candida Wolff, was boosted to $161,000 at the beginning of July, according to a list sent to Congress and obtained by National Journal.” – Congress Daily
Amongst the others receiving the bump: Stephen Hadley, Scooter Libby. The era of personal responsibility is dead! Long live the era of personal responsibility!
A raise is even better than the Medal of Freedom or whatever it was George Tenet got after he resigned as head of the CIA. But then again all Tenet had done was go to sleep at the switch prior to the 9/11 attacks, bungle the pre-war intelligence about Iraq and fail to convince President Bush not to lie about Saddam’s nuclear capability in the 2003 State of the Union speech.
Had he disrupted the spy agency’s espionage on trafficking in the equipment and ingredients required to make nuclear bombs, he could have kept his job – and gotten a raise, too.
From yesterday’s Chicago Tribune comes A Layman’s Guide to the Valerie Plame Affair by Garrison Keillor, an author and the host of the radio program, “A Prairie Home Companion”:
I feel it’s time for me to step forward and tell what I know about Karl Rove’s conversation with columnist Robert Novak in which Mr. Novak reportedly told Mr. Rove that CIA operative Valerie Plame had been responsible for her husband, Joseph Wilson, going to Niger to debunk the White House’s claim that Saddam Hussein was shopping for uranium in Africa to make nuclear weapons and that’s why we invaded Iraq, and Mr. Rove said, “Yes, I’ve heard that too.” Mr. Rove has been accused of revealing the identity of a covert intelligence officer. This simply isn’t true.
I happened to be in Mr. Rove’s office when the phone rang. I was there on behalf of my publisher, to see if Mr. Rove knows enough to make him worth a $6 million advance on his memoirs. (Answer: Not really.) He picked up the phone and the voice at the other end sounded like a rat trapped in a coffee can. “Novak,” whispered Mr. Rove and he pretended to stick a finger down his throat. He listened for several minutes. “Yes, I’ve heard that too,” he said.
As he spoke to Novak, Mr. Rove wrote on a notepad, “Rosebud knows”–“Rosebud” being Vice President Dick Cheney’s code name–and winked at me.
This raised a question in my mind: Did Rove know Ms. Plame had taken the identity of Mr. Cheney during an arrhythmia episode at Walter Reed and that a heavily sedated vice president had been flown by the CIA to Riyadh as Ms. Plame donned a latex-padded suit and took his place? She quickly discovered that the uranium was stored at the Whitewater property once owned by the Clintons and then deeded to Kofi Annan and used as a supply depot for black helicopters. She tried to warn Mr. Clinton and the next day he had that mysterious “bypass” operation after which he suddenly got chummy with ex-CIA chief George H.W. Bush and the two flew off to Southeast Asia like in an old Crosby-Hope “Road” picture.
The folks who brought you the, “we’ll act if someone committed a crime” distinction as well as the constantly morphing justification for war in Iraq now have a whole new standard in sleight of hand.
They’re calling Florida Louisiana for purposes of drilling for oil.
Anyone doubting that George Bush is just a money- and power-grubbing sham should come on down to the Sunshine State. And check with his brother, Jeb and loyal minion, Sen. Mel Martinez, while you’re at it. The “honesty” president didn’t bother to clue them in on his end run.
With final negotiations over the massive federal energy bill almost finished, the Bush administration caught some of its most loyal Florida supporters by surprise with a last-minute attempt to open more of the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling…
Martinez said Tuesday that both he and the governor were upset the White House hadn’t warned them about the proposal. Gov. Bush declined to comment about what he knew in advance.
Martinez first learned of it late last week from Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., a strong proponent of gulf drilling. Landrieu showed him a memo detailing Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s plan to redraw the state boundaries, to give more of the eastern gulf to Louisiana and open it to drilling.
The plan – which only a Republican could love – involves redrawing state boundaries to make the area just east of Tampa Bay part of the Big Easy. Still, Sen. Mel’s perplexed quote is one for the record books.
“I was surprised the administration took this position so aggressively,” Martinez said. “…The question is how you really define Florida.”
Yes, how DO you define Florida? After all, both Louisiana and Florida have alligators. They both have shrimp boats. And there’s really not much difference between Ybor City and the French Quarter, accents aside. What the hey, Louisiana, you can have Tampa!
Martinez was so moved by the deceit that he actually uttered a negative word about a Republican initiative – to “inventory” oil reserves – in public.
”Florida’s coastlines are in danger,” said U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida. “The inventory tarnishes the entire energy bill, and I think this is a precursor to drilling.”
Strong stuff for the guy who up to now was considered an administration flunky all the way.
The plans are truly a bummer. Besides the certainty of oil spills once drilling starts, the exploration process itself is a disgrace.
… powerful air guns send explosive shock waves into the seabed, emitting high-frequency and low-intensity sounds into the water.
The sound waves that bounce back…can be deafening for fish, and can destroy the air-filled bladders that help them navigate and disrupt the migration of marine mammals such as whales and dolphins.
The tests are expected to, “harm marine mammals and fisheries from the Keys to Apalachicola Bay.” And that’s pretty well the entire Florisiana coast.
According to the Washington Post Robert Novak, the rightwing propagandist, was warned by a CIA spokesman in 2003 not to publish White House spin that Bush critic Joe Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife, CIA secret agent Valerie Plame:
[Bill] Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson’s wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.
Harlow said that after Novak’s call, he checked Plame’s status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame’s name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.
In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official he spoke to “asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause ‘difficulties’ if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson’s wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name.”
So Novak’s excuse is, “I did it because I’m idiot who can’t read between the lines when a CIA spokesman is telling me an operative is covert.”
This is interesting:
Ohio is a GOP state and the Cincinnati area is extremely Republican. Not so long ago, the chances of a Democrat winning a Congressional seat in the area would seem far fetched but after years of GOP rule and scandal after scandal in the state and now the Rove-gate scandal, the Democrats actually have a chance. Next week there will be a special election to fill the seat of Congressman Rob Portman who resigned to work as a trade representative for the Bush administration.
So how does a Democrat stand a chance in an otherwise right wing patch? Paul Hackett, the Democratic candidate, is an Iraq war vet who has not shied away from criticizing the Bush team (even calling Bush a chicken hawk) for permanent tax cuts and for not providing troops in Iraq with necessary supplies and benefits. If he wins, he will be the only Iraq war vet in Congress.
The election is just next week (2 August) but perhaps for those of you in the area, there’s some way of helping out. His campaign can be contacted here or by calling (513) 735-4310.
Fox News has promoted Greg Kelly to be its new White House correspondent. Kelly, by the way, is the son of the NYPD commissioner.
And, unlike his colleague Major Garrett, Kelly is an actual major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves. This, to us, raises an interesting question: Can someone in the military objectively cover his Commander-in-Chief?
…How objectively can he do his job when the White House will be constantly making decisions that could bear on whether Kelly is called up for active duty and sent to war? Then there’s that little question of since the President is Kelly’s supreme commander, will Kelly have to salute the President in certain situations?
Will Kelly offer an on-air disclosure when he covers military matters? Should he? Has Fox discussed this potential conflict with him?
Uh – duh… No.
About the secret things the CIA does, they’re not going to tell ya,
They don’t want to jeopardize the mission or it could be a failure.
The CIA is happiest when operating covert,
But Trump just converted them to overt,
Saying he’s deploying the Central Intelligence Agency “undercover” in Venezuela.
