Day: July 16, 2006

Novak’s Ever-Changing Version of How He Learned the CIA Agent’s Secret Identity

Jon Ponder

Alert the media! On Meet the Press today, Tim Russert came thisclose to grilling Bob Novak about inconsistencies in Novak’s recounting of events leading up to his revelation of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity:

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Newsday interviewed you a few weeks after your column ran, back in 2003, and quotes you as saying this, “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.”

MR. NOVAK: That was a misstatement on my part. I … I’m … I’ve found I’m much better … I hope I’m not screwing up on this interview because I’m much better interviewing than I am giving interviews. They didn’t give me the name. And of course it was not a “they,” it was one person, which I later checked out with Mr. Rove. They, they … the Newsday article also paraphrased me as saying they came to me, I never said they came to me, because obviously I initiated the interview.

MR. RUSSERT: Newsday stands by that story. And you know if a politician said that, which you said, and contrasted it with what you’re saying now, people would say, “Wait a minute. Something’s wrong here.”

MR. NOVAK: Well, I was wrong when I said they came to me.

MR. RUSSERT: You…

MR. NOVAK: I mean, when I said that they gave me the name, because I got the name from, from “Who’s Who in America.’

MR. RUSSERT: You did say that the column — the story — the disclosure was inadvertent on the part of your primary source. A third party told you that.

MR. NOVAK: A third party close to the primary source called me after the investigation was launched and said, and said that he believed that it was … he believed he had given me inadvertent … inadvertently given me information … this information.

MR. RUSSERT: Have you spoken to your primary source?

MR. NOVAK: No.

MR. RUSSERT: Not since that interview?

MR. NOVAK: No.

MR. RUSSERT: When you were on MEET THE PRESS October of ’03, I asked you about the Newsday piece, and you did repeat, you said, quote, “What I meant was that the senior official had given me her name.”

MR. NOVAK: Well, that, that was just … that’s just a misstatement on my part. He, he … what he said exactly was his wife, his wife had done it. I got the name … because I, I, I realized I didn’t have the name, and I figured out, how am I going to get this name to put in, in the column? So I said, “Maybe it’s in “Who’s Who.” And I looked it up and there it was.

MR. RUSSERT: In fact, you wrote, “I learned Valerie Plame’s name from Joe Wilson’s entry in “Who’s Who” in America. And here is the “Who’s Who” from 2003, Wilson, Joseph Charles IV, ambassador, married to Valerie Elise Plame August 3, 1998. Was that the very first time you had seen or head the name Valerie Plame?

MR. NOVAK: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: No one told you?

MR. NOVAK: No.

MR. RUSSERT: But they did tell you “his wife.”

MR. NOVAK: He told me his wife worked in the counterproliferation division of the … they did not say she was a covert operative, didn’t say she was a covered operative. A lot of people say, “Well, why’d you call her an operative in the column?” I call all kinds of politicians operatives. It’s maybe a bad habit, I … but I still do it. I see somebody’s running a congressional campaign in Wyoming, I’d call them an operative.

MR. RUSSERT: But having said twice before that you got the name of a senior official…

MR. NOVAK: Oh, a mistake.

MR. RUSSERT: …you can understand why people are…

MR. NOVAK: I understand, I understand, but it was … it’s just not a … it’s just not factually correct and I have, I have testified under oath about this.

MR. RUSSERT: You have?

MR. NOVAK: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: That they did not give you the name?

MR. NOVAK: Yes.

New Doubts About Florida Win in 2000: Jeb’s Own Poll Showed Gore Ahead

Trish

A new book will likely show Florida was no redder in 2000 than Ohio was in 2004.

The new poll showed that Gore had pulled ahead by at least one percentage point. Even among white males the Texas governor was struggling.

Some dramatic new details about Jeb Bush and the final weeks of the 2000 presidential election in Florida are coming out in the new book One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century, by Tom Hamburger and (former St. Petersburg Times reporter) Peter Wallsten.

It seems Gov. Bush was a lot more worried about Al Gore’s Florida prospects than the Bush-Cheney campaign team in Austin, Texas, and became mighty frustrated that Karl Rove wasn’t listening to him seriously enough and taking his advice on Florida strategy.

“Something’s got to give,” Jeb Bush said at one tense meeting in the governor’s mansion with Bush-Cheney strategists, including Ken Mehlman and Chris Henick. “You guys are not listening.”

From the book: “In the final week, Jeb took matters into his own hands, ordering the state Republican Party to commission its own poll using his campaign’s Washington firm, Public Opinion Strategies. The new poll showed that Gore had pulled ahead by at least one percentage point. Even among white males the Texas governor was struggling. Sally Bradshaw, Jeb’s chief of staff, took the results to her boss.

“What do we do with these numbers?” she asked.

Jeb directed Bradshaw to call Austin immediately. But instead of moving swiftly to deal with the apparent erosion of support, Rove and his brain trust were furious that Jeb and his team had done a poll on their own. Campaign officials believed their numbers were better. The conversation grew so tense that at one point Bradshaw called Rove a jerk.

On Election Day, when the Florida problem finally became clear to Rove, Bradshaw advised him to pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into phone calls, especially in the conservative Panhandle, to mobilize voters.

Katherine Harris is Off the Chain: Helps Herself to Campaign Funds for Home Renovations

Trish

We have to find something else for Katherine Harris to do after she loses her Florida senate race because she’s just too entertaining. Right when you think she can’t top herself, the woman pulls out another shocker.

This time…well here, see for yourself.

“I have never heard of a candidate taking money out of a campaign coffer like it’s an ATM”

Katherine Harris gave her campaign more than $3 million to run for Senate, but then took back $100,000 to finish renovating her “historic home in Washington, D.C.” her campaign revealed…

One of Harris’ many former campaign managers summed the situation up best.

“I have never heard of a candidate taking money out of a campaign coffer like it’s an ATM. It absolutely boggles my mind,” said former Harris campaign manager Jim Dornan. “This is a woman who has completely lost touch with reality. You don’t take your campaign contributors’ money, whether it’s yours or not, and spend it to renovate your house. This is absolutely insane.”

Sen. Bill Nelson’s folks were equally astounded by Harris’ bold and unerring ability to do the wrong thing.

Nelson’s campaign manager Chad Clanton was almost speechless when he heard about the report.

“I don’t know what to say. It’s just another bizarre chapter in the Katherine Harris campaign,” he said.

And remember the hooey a few months ago about putting all her worldly wealth — um, $10 million, not $3 million — into the campaign?

Harris told John Donvan, of “Nightline,” that she intends to sell all her personal assets to fund the race. “My husband has real estate, but I will not own anything.”

Since making a pledge last week to put $10 million of her money into the race, Harris has made the phrase “putting everything on the line” a new campaign theme.

“I am willing to take this widow’s mite, this pearl of great price, and put everything on the line,” she told Donvan. “No matter how much you have, are you willing to take what you have and sell it all for a great price?”

On second thought, maybe not…

Harris announced on national television that she would spend $10 million of her own money on the race, but Friday’s press release referred to the money as a loan.

Wake Up Rove, Coulter: War Protests No Longer Considered Unpatriotic

Trish

Sometimes you really don’t need a weatherman — or a pollster — to see which way the wind’s blowing. Support for the United States’ war in Iraq has come full circle in St. Augustine, Fla., the “Nation�s Oldest City.”

Instead of being flipped off, war protestors are being high-fived

Protests have taken place weekly or monthly since before the invasion and occupation, from the time Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice began beating the drums of war. In the beginning the protestors got flipped off. Now they’re being high-fived.

Now, in the fourth year of protests, the reaction demonstrators are getting is overwhelming positive, they say…

In the two hours the protesters spent under the hot sun Saturday, the number of people who screamed pro-Bush phrases and hateful words could be counted on one hand. The number of approving honks, thumbs up, thank yous, smiles and words of encouragement were in the hundreds.

“There’s another whole sector that’s changed their minds in the last six months,” [71-year-old protestor Pattie] Hunt said.

Still, protesting is oldster territory in my adopted hometown, and I suspect, in the larger environs. Younger people seem content, for whatever reason, to leave the heavy lifting to others.

“Most people are not supporting the war and not supporting Bush, but they’re not coming out,” [56-year-old Barbara] Mitchell said.

The protesters, who are mostly ages 50 to 80, said they keep showing up at the peace rallies to make their message seen, make someone stop and think, or even encourage someone to start a conversation with those near them about Bush and the war in Iraq.

[St. Augustine People for Peace and Justice] member Anne Galloway, 60, who also protested during the Vietnam war, said, “No one expects immediate gratification out here. I know there’s not a whole lot I can actually do, but I can do this.”

Nearby, Sue Davis, 54, held a sign reading “Honorable soldiers. Dishonorable ‘leader.'” Her son is in the military and is expected to be leaving for Iraq soon.

Mayor Newsom on Political Courage and Gay Marriage

Jon Ponder

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on the Democratic Party’s faint heart on same-sex marriage:

Rolling Stone: Listening to the Democratic opposition to the federal anti-gay marriage amendment, the party’s senators sounded more like Dixiecrats — talking about marriage as a states’s rights issue — rather than Democrats, pursuing this from a civil-rights perspective.

Gavin Newsom: Where’s the moral courage? It’s lost. I have the luxury of saying this from San Francisco, I certainly respect what it’s like saying this in parts of Kentucky or North Carolina, but also believe this issue won’t go away for the Democratic party we stand up on historic principles.

We’ve never run the 90-yard dash on equality — ever. The history of this party is civil rights, women’s rights, human rights, labor rights, gay and lesbian rights. And for us to hold up civil unions and say that separate is somehow now equal — when just a-year-and-a-half we ago celebrated the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board — is transparent to the people. They see through the Democrats.

Leader Boehner Follows Former Leader DeLay’s Path to K Street

Jon Ponder

House Majority Leader John Boehner never acknowledged the corruption in his party under the leadership of his predecessor, former Rep. Tom DeLay — so we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s not a reformer. But now it’s clear he’s out to make the DeLay era look, well, conservative:

Representative John A. Boehner won the job of House majority leader amid a post-Abramoff clamor for an overhaul of lobbying and ethics rules. But nearly six months later, the changes are still tied up in Congress.

And far from trying to put the brakes on lobbyists and the money they channel into Republican coffers, Mr. Boehner, who has portrayed his ties to Washington lobbyists as something to be proud of, has stepped on the gas.

He has been holding fund-raisers at lobbyists’ offices, flying to political events on corporate planes and staying at a golf resort with a business group that has a direct stake in issues before Congress.

Tapping a rich vein of longstanding relationships with lobbyists and their corporate clients, Mr. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has raised campaign contributions at a rate of about $10,000 a day since February, surpassing the pace set by former Representative Tom DeLay after he became majority leader in 2002, a review of federal filings shows.

His fund-raising pace is roughly twice what it was before he became majority leader in February; in April his two federal committees took in $334,500 from political action committees, a monthly take that Mr. DeLay did not match for more than two years after the elections in 2002.

Mr. Boehner’s biggest donors include the political action committees of lobbying firms, drug and cigarette makers, banks, health insurers, oil companies and military contractors. Seven American Indian tribes with casinos have contributed $32,000.