Day: October 1, 2005

Judy’s Lawyer Accuses Libby’s Lawyer of Misrepresenting Facts about Confidentiality Waiver

Jon Ponder
That is simply inaccurate. Not only have I never said that, but I have never said anything even resembling that to you.
— Miller’s attorney to Libby’s attorney

Smoke screens: A flurry of letters were exchanged last week just prior to Judith Miller’s release from prison. Three of these are available (in PDF) from the New York Times:

  • Lewis Libby, the Vice President’s chief of staff wrote a letter to Judith Miller at the jail assuring her that the waiver of their confidentiality agreement he’d given her in 2004 was genuine – – that he was in fact “surprised” that she was in jail waiting on him to offer an uncoerced waiver.
  • Libby’s lawyer, Joe Hart, wrote the special counsel, Peter Fitzgerald, making similar assertions. “To say I’m surprised … is an understatement,” he said, claiming that he and Libby had no idea that Miller had spent 85 days in jail waiting on Libby’s waiver. Hart told Fitzgerald that he made it clear to Miller and her lawyers that Libby’s waiver had not been coerced by the White House.
  • Floyd Abrams, Miller’s lawyer, responded to both those letters by accusing Libby and Hart of distorting the facts about Libby’s waiver and adamantly refuting the notion that Libby and Hart were unaware that Miller went to prison specifically because she doubted that Libby’s waiver had been given freely.

Taken together, the letters illuminate – but don’t fully explain – the confusion about Miller’s release from prison, and whether she knew she had an uncoerced waiver from Libby the whole time she was languishing an Alexandria jail.

[…]

GAO Says Bush Admin Broke Anti-Propaganda Law

Jon Ponder

Fascist tendencies: It isn’t surprising that the Bush Administration conducted a secret propaganda campaign out of the Education Dept. But why did they buy milk when they could have gotten the cow for free? Armstrong Williams would have gladly disinformed the public for them for nothing but the glory:

The Bush Administration violated laws prohibiting the use of covert propaganda when it secretly paid broadcaster/ columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its education policies, and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said Friday…

The New York Times said the report “provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities….In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated ‘covert propaganda’ in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.”

In the course of investigating the other matters, the GAO uncovered another infraction:

The GAO’s report also uncovered a previously undisclosed case in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the “declining science literacy of students,” was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country, according to the report in the Times. The government’s role in the writing of the article, which praised the department’s role in promoting science education, was never disclosed.