Thirteen

{1} Thirteen
"If you have been watching television lately, I think this is unendurably clear in the faces of those screaming people in the South, who are quite incapable of telling you what they are afraid of. They do not really know what it is they are afraid of, but they know they are afraid of something, and they are so frightened that they are nearly out of their minds. And this same fear obtains on one level or another, to varying degrees, throughout the entire country ..... There is no way around this. I am suggesting that these walls -- these artificial walls -- which have been up so long to protect us from something we fear, must come down. .... I want to suggest this: that the majority for which everyone is seeking which must reassess and release us from our past and deal with the present and create standards of what a man may be -- this majority is you. No one else can do it. The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."
-- James Baldwin; Nobody Knows My Name; 1954; pages 112-114.
Today is a "big day" in American history. Despite the Bush-Cheney administration's best efforts to bury the Plame scandal, it has come to the front and center of the public's attention. The news media has been reporting the tension that grips Washington, DC, and comparing the level of administration corruption to Watergate and Iran-Contra.
Recently, Will Pitt shared a message from Ambassador Joseph Wilson with the members of the Democratic Underground. Wilson noted that this scandal will soon come to a head, and that it will result in a struggle to determine the direction our nation will move in.
Let's take a look from the grass roots level. Perhaps, as Baldwin suggests, we can assess the present, and determine what the standards will be for this country in the future. No one else can do it for us. "The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."
{2} "The Lion in Winter"
" 'He's a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things,' one White House ally said, referring to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald."
-- Thomas DeFrank & Michael McAuliff; Bush Pals rip Plame prosecutor; Daily News; 10-24-05; page 7.
Odd: many people would think "he's a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things" is an apt description of George W. Bush. Suffice to say that we can expect the republican machine to resort to outright lies, vicious personal attacks, and irrational emotional outbursts in order to hide the truth. Let's look at a few specific sub-groups of the republican machine, and consider how they might react in the upcoming days.
(a) The White House/ administration: There appears to be a fracture within the administration, between the office of the president, and the office of the vice president. Clearly, the foreign policy "experts" that brought us the invasion of Iraq are centered in Cheney's camp. It seems unlikely that the president can protect both camps. Indeed, he needs to take actions to protect himself on his errors on Iraq.
(b) Congress: the republicans in the House and Senate will attempt to put a good face on this scandal, by saying the public isn't paying attention, and that "everyone" believed Saddam had WMD, and posed a threat to the USA.
(c) The pundits: have begun to turn on Judith Miller, and are reporting the tension in Washington and the anxiety in the White House, as this unfolds. More, we know that another five journalists have inside information on how the administration violated the law. Yet they are employed by business interests that are not prone to serving the public the truth. We can expect sophisticated manipulation of reporting, including trained liars like Bob Woodward. More, we can count on irrational fools like Sean Hannity to continue to harp on Bill Clinton's affair; this, we will find, is a good thing.
(d) Fools: the grass roots republicans who are too invested in the "big lie" to admit what frightens them will seek safety by ingesting what Ouspensky called the "ancient rancid bacon (and) .... rotten green ham; and from them comes all the moral scurvy which is eating itself into the life of the people around us." They will spew their contaminated thought processes in a number of ways, from in disguise on progressive sites on the internet ("but how do we answer the charges that Wilson lied?"), to irrational letters-to-the-editor of very newspaper, to emtionally-charged calls to C-SPAN.
(e) The Machine: Behind it is the machine, which owns the corporate media just as surely as it owns the oil companies that are reaping profits from the Iraqi resources. In the message to DU from Wilson, through friend Will Pitt, the question was raised: will we be a democracy, or a fascist state, as we head into the future.
{3} "The Bush administration's purpose is clear -- to limit debate, to limit discussion, to limit having to explain to the American people how much this war will cost and how many lives will be lost before it is over."
--Senator Robert Byrd; Losing America; 2004; page 268.
The job of the progressive democratic grass roots is to counter the administration's attempts to limit debate and to frame the discussions about the Plame scandal. We must be engaged in a campaign to explain to the American people how this scandal is the foundation of the administration's case for the war in Iraq. We must focus on what the cost in resources and lives has been, and will be, because of the corruption of the Bush administration at its highest levels.
In any campaign, there are three groups: 1- those who always support you; 2- those who always oppose you; and 3- the undecided. In a campaign for political office, one can be assured that group one will vote for them; group two will vote against them; and hence invest the vast majority of resources on reaching group three.
However, in a social/political/cultural campaign such as this one, we enjoy the opportunity to be more flexible in our approach. For example, because the corporate media has ignored this scandal for almost two years, it is likely that many of the "mainstream" democrats are not as informed on the issues involved as are readers of the Democratic Underground. Their knowledge of the case is more likely to be similar to that of the "undecided" people -- a group that includes democrats, republicans, and others. Hence, a grass-roots activist can, with a letter-to-the-editor or a call to C-SPAN, help to educate two of the three groups.
More, with e-mails to the talk shows on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, we can fuel the emtional, irrational rantings of fools like Sean Hannity. We want to encourage them to attack Patrick Fitzgerald and Bill Clinton. Wilson knows he is going to continue to be a target; that's okay, we can neutralize those by bringing the facts to the table.
Our goal is not to limit the debate -- it is to encourage it. Even to provoke it. That includes aggravating, annoying, and antagonizing the opposition. One example should do: Sean Hannity will continue to shriek about Clinton; we need to respond with the simple message that Clinton betrayed his wife, and the administration betrayed the country. When Hannity rants that Clinton's scandal was more of an embarrassment than Bush's, we must make clear than Hannity is more willing to humiliate himself than was Monica.
{4} Worse Than Watergate
" 'He's like a lion in winter,' observed a political friend of Bush. 'He's frustrated. He remains confident in the decisions he has made. But this is a guy who wanted to do big things in a second term. Given his nature, there's no way he'd be happy about the way things have gone'."
-- Thomas DeFrank; Prez is 'The Lion in Winter'; Daily News; 10-24-05; page 2.
George W. Bush is the president. He is responsible for his administration. He made the decision to invade Iraq, after telling the country that we faced a grave danger, and that we risked having the "smoking gun" be a "mushroom cloud." In his state of the union speech leading up to the war, Bush uttered the infamous "16 words" about Iraq trying to buy yellow cake from Niger.
Either Bush was lied to and played for a fool by the vice president's office, or he was involved in the conspiracy to lie to and play the country for fools. Simply put, there is no third choice.
Ambassador Joseph Wilson was exercising his constitutional rights when he wrote the op-ed piece for the New York Times. Valerie Plame was working at the highest levels of the national intelligence community to protect our country from the threats posed by foreign enemies. Both were viciously attacked by an administration that sought to destroy both of them to protect their lies. In doing so, the administration threatens all of our constitutional rights, and our entire nation's safety.

"This world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."

Random Thoughts of A Watergate Theosophy Shuffling Through an Uncertain Mind

[1] "What we learned firsthand is what CIA psychiatrists have said for years: Saddam is an egomaniacal sociopath whose penchant for high-risk gambles is exceeded only by a propensity for miscalculation. Those psychiatrists, who study the characters of world leaders, believe he suffers from what is popularly known as 'malignant narcissism,' a sense of self-worth that drives him to act in ways that others would deem irrational, such as invading neighboring countries."
-- How Saddam Thinks; Joseph Wilson; San Jose Mercury News; 10-13-02
Three years after this article was published, a growing number of Americans would likely conclude that there is another world leader who defines "malignant narcissism," and who has a delusional sense of self-worth that has convinced him that he can re-make the world in his own image. This gives new meaning to the infamous Watergate-era phrase, "There's a cancer on the presidency."
It also reminds us that studying the personality of a "leader," and that of his closest advisors, will often provide insight on the tactics they will use. The next sentence in Wilson's 10-13-02 op-ed, for example, notes: "But the trait also makes him highly sensitive to direct confrontation and embarrassment, even as he is contemptuous of compromise." (Sound familiar?) The CIA analysts know that "he who knows 'why' always masters he who knows 'how'."
Let's take a brief look at some of the "how & why's" of the White House/republican machine's rabid reaction to the Fitzgerald grand jury investigation into the attack on Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame.

[2] "Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause." -- Gandhi
In their effort to discredit the Fitzgerald investigation into the systematic and wide-spread corruption in the Bush administration, the republican machine is pulling out all stops. This includes pulling out some of the people from past corrupt administrations, who spew a mixture of lies and personal attacks aimed at those that they believe pose the greatest threat to them. There could be no better example than last night on MSNBC's Hardball; Chris Matthews interviewed former deputy assistant attorney general Victoria Toesing.
If one checks on "media matters," they will find that Ms. Toesing has been discredited as a source on the Plame case. However, the corporate media will continue to have a platform. Last night, she said that in the past few months, she has become convinced that Fitzgerald is totally out of control. She did not attempt to debate the merits of the grand jury investigation -- just to resort to name-calling.
However, as President Bush said, "The special prosecutor is conducting a very serious investigation -- he's doing it in a very dignified way, by the way -- and we'll see what he says." (Times Reporter to Testify On Recently Found Notes; New York Times; 10-12-05; page A16) Toesing's attack clearly contradicts Bush's position on Fitzgerald; however, it was mild compared to her attacks on Wilson.

[3] "Several days after the call from General Scowcroft, I received a letter from former President Bush. ... In the note, he said he 'agreed with almost everything' I had written." -- The Politics of Truth; Joseph Wilson; 2004; page 297.
Victoria Toesing and others are also attempting to deflect attention from the coming indictments of at least two senior White House officials, by attacking Joseph Wilson. On Hardball, Matthews allowed Toesing to say that others, including journalists and people in the VP's office, questioned why the CIA would select someone as disrespected as Wilson to go to Niger to investigate the yellow cake controversy.
Matthews, of course, knows better. Immediately after Karl Rove called him to say that, "Wilson's wife is fair game," Chris called Wilson to warn him. If he thought Wilson were the disgusting character that Toesing contends, he would not have warned Wilson and risked the wrath of Rove.
Matthews knows that Wilson was the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from 1988 to 1991. Wilson was called a "true American hero" by President Bush1 after he protected US citizens that Saddam threatened to take hostage at the beginning of the first Gulf War. Wilson had an ugly confrontation with Saddam on August 6, 1990. Wilson later commented that, "Saddam Hussein is a murderous sociopath whose departure from this Earth would be welcome everywhere."
Before the Bush2 invasion of Iraq, Wilson wrote several op-eds that put forth a position that the US could take to insure that Saddam did not have WMDs. He send copies to ex-president Bush, to Brent Scowcroft, and to James Baker III. It is known that Scowcroft took Wilson's plan to the White House and advocated the administration follow it. Baker wrote to Wilson, saying he thought "the administration seems to have taken your advice." (Wilson; page 297)
Clearly even those from the Bush1 administration did not share Toesing's opinion of Wilson. However, within the Bush2 administration, there were forces set upon invading Iraq, even if it meant purposely misrepresenting what evidence there was regarding Saddam's WMD capacity.

[4]"I think that there is no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got. We have a cancer within, close to the Presidency, that is growing. It is growing daily. It's compounded, growing geometrically now, because it compounds itself. That will become clear if I, you know, explain some of the details why it is. Basically, it is because .... People are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves to protect other people in the line. ... First of all on the Watergate: how did it all start, where did it start? O.K.! It started with an instruction ... to see if we couldn't set up a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence operation ..." -- John Dean to President Richard Nixon; White House Tapes; March 21, 1973
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Plame scandal is the recent rash of rumors about what may be the final week of the Fitzgerald grand jury investigation. It is important to remember that there have been virtually no leaks from Fitzgerald's office. There have been a number of leaks, however, from Karl Rove's attorneys. Hence, when we read that sources "close to Fitzgerald" hnt that Cheney has become a person of interest, be aware that this is almost certainly something that originated from Rove's attorneys. Likewise, the related rumor that Fitzgerald may have requested an extension from the judge, allowing for further grand jury hearings, there is reason to believe that Rove's attorneys are hoping the information Karl provides tomorrow will result in Fitzgerald's making a deal that benefits Karl at Cheney's expense.
This is the price we pay for having "an egomaniacal sociopath whose penchant for high-risk gambles (which are) exceeded only by a propensity for miscalculation" in power. Indeed, this "malignant narcissism" has become a cancer on the presidency!

A Man Called "Scooter"

{1} "This ardent neoconservative is a leading participant in the network of hidden cells that funneled so much disinformation to our political decision makers outside normal channels. He is one of a handful of senior officials in the administration with both the means and the motive to conduct the covert inquiry that allowed some in the White House to learn my wife's name and status, and then disclose that information to the press."
-- The Politics of Truth; Joseph Wilson; 2004; page 443.

Who is Lewis "Scooter" Libby? Most of the media reports on the Plame scandal report that he is Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, but focus more attention on Karl Rove, the president's top advisor. But, in fact, Libby is more than Cheney's top aide. Indeed, a closer examination indicates that Libby may be more powerful than Rove. His ability to remain largely unknown has been a key to his efficacy. Let's take a closer look.

In "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward notes on page 48 that, "Libby had three formal titles. He was chief of staff to Vice President Cheney; he was also national security advisor to the vice president;and he was finally an assistant to President Bush. It was a trifecta of positions probably never held by a single person. Scooter was a power center unto himself, and, accordingly, a force multiplier for Cheney's agenda and views."

In "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean describes on pages 101-102 how Cheney's agenda and views included creating a "shadow government" which he describes as "a secret government -- beyond the reach of Congress, and everyone else as well." This secret government is described in a number of books and articles that I strongly recommend to readers. Among them are Senator Robert Byrd's "Losing America"; Seymour Hersch's articles in the 3-3-03 and 10-27-03 New Yorker; and "The Lie Factory," by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest in the Jan/Feb 2004 Mother Jones. (Dean uses the later two as sources in his book.)

Cheney has put Libby in the position, in effect, of being the head of his shadow government's National Security Council. As such, Lewis Libby has exercised a degree of influence and control in the United States government, particularly in foreign policy, that is in absolute contradiction to what the Constitution intends. His position and policies represent a neoconservative coup that show a disregard for the separation of powers at the federal level, and which have attempted to re-make the Middle East in a way most beneficial to American oil interests.


{2} "Indeed, Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, had already participated in drafting a 2000 report for the Project for a New American Century that called for taking over Iraq -- this well before 9/11 -- as part of a larger, oil-minded pax Americana. Thus emerged the early inkling of the military strategy needed to implement the later task-force findings."
--American Dynasty; Kevin Phillips; 2004; page 255

Lewis Libby graduated from Yale in 1972. As a young lawyer, he would become one of the most powerful members of a movement known as the "neoconservatives." In the 1980s, he was most closely associated with Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. He worked for Wolfowitz from 1989 to 1992 at the Pentagon.

It is interesting to note that Libby had learned to keep a low profile as a tactic that allowed him to exercise behind the scenes power. Compare this to, for example, President Bush, who loves to be seen as "The Man." By the time of the Bush1 administration, Libby had become one of the most influential people in the American government

In "Where the Right Went Wrong," Patrick Buchanan -- the Strange Man of the republican right -- notes on page 42 that, "In 1992, when Wolfowitz was an assistant secretary of defense, a startling document leaked from his shop. Defense Planning Guidance had been prepared by Wolfowitz and his deputy, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for Secretary Richard Cheney. Barton Gellman of the Washington Post called it a 'classified blueprint intended to help "set the nation's direction for the next century ..." '

"The Wolfowitz memorandum called for a permanent U.S. military presence on six continents to deter any 'potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.' Containment and deterrence to defend the West were to yield to a new offensive strategy to 'establish and protect a new order.' "

Bill Clinton's election may have appeared to upset that plan for a New World Order, but that may have been primarily on the surface, where public figures distract the public with their illusion of power. Yet that reality of power which takes place behind the scenes remained the realm of "Scooter."

Dean notes on page 101 that, "Ironically, Scooter Libby represented fugitive financier Marc Rich and told Congress, after he became Cheney's chief of staff, that he believed the prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office had 'misconstrued the facts and the law' when they went after Rich on tax-evasioncharges. This, of course, was one of the principal reasons Clinton pardoned Rich." And, as Wilson notes on page 442 of his book, "Rich is the commodities trader who was convicted of having traded petroleum with Iran in violation of sanctions imposed on that country by the United States ..... Libby is a consummate Republican insider who has bounced back and forth between government posts and his international law practice."

In the late 1990s, Libby was one of the authors of PNAC's "Rebuilding American Defenses." More, in September of 2000, along with Cheney and Wolfowitz, Libby completed a highly detailed yet officially unreleased report which identified "unresolved conflicts with Iraq" as needing immediate attention from the United States. (Phillips; page 294.)

President Clinton resisted PNAC's pressures to initiate a war in Iraq to remove Saddam. The neoconservative/oil interests recognized that Al Gore, though responsive to big business, would be unlikely to invade Iraq in order to set up US military bases and control Iraqi oil resources. Hence, it was important to install an administration that would front for the Cheney-Libby shadow government. Hence, one of the most disgrace episodes in American political history took the stage in Florida in 2000.


{3} "After the election of 2000, son George II followed the Iraq warpath of GeorgeI, even attacking similarly near the midpoint of his term. Arguably more parentally motivated in his foreign wars than England's restored Charles II, George W. Bush was demonstrably more Bourbon in vengeful recollection than France's Louis XVIII. This is based on his reappointment of officials charged, indicted, or tarred in his father's best-known scandal (Iran-Contra): Elliot Abrams, John Poindexter, John Negroponte, et al. The younger Bush also promoted the 1989-92 Bush warhawks most eager for a follow-up with Iraq -- Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith -- and likewise selected his father's Gulf War defense secretary, Richard Cheney, as vice president.
-- American Dynasty; Kevin Phillips; 2004; page 294.

While President George W. Bush and his top advisor Karl Rove were busy at a high-profile level that appealed primarily to the Christian right-wing of the republican party, Dick Cheney and Lewis Libby were focused on promoting the economic and military agenda of the corporate far-right republican machine. In fact, Cheney and Libby were attempting to institute the New World Order that the president's father advocated. This included their support for plans to replace Saddam Hussein with Ahmad Chalabi, and doing business with select interests in Iran. Their power base included neocons in other parts of the administration, including men like Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton.

Though foreign policy issues had played a relatively minor issue in the 2000 campaign, the neocons were prepared to make bold moves. John Dean, on page 106 of "Worse Than Watergate," quotes New Yorker correspondent Nicolas Lemann as telling a Massachusetts Institue of Technology audience in the second moth of the Bush 2 administration that Cheney's role as co-president insured "swashbuckling adventures, hawkish foreign policy and a more active, interventionist military." Dean notes that Condoleezza Rice was put in charge of the "vulcanization" of President Bush; this included pointing him towards an invasion of Iraq as early as January 2001, long before the events of 9-11.

After 9-11, Libby would be one of the most forceful advocates of responding by attacking Iraq. In "Bush at War," Bob Woodward notes that Libby also took the stance that the anthrax attacks in the U.S. were "state sponsored," and discouraged any attemp to blame them on al Qaeda. As the intelligence community at large discredited each and every theory put forth by the Cheney-Libby shadow government, strange dynamics came into play.

Seymour Hersch notes on pages 227-8 of "Chain of Command" (2004) that, "As the campaign to build a case against Iraq intensified, a former aide to Cheny told me, the Vice President's office, run by his chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, became increasingly secretive about Iraq's WMDs. As with Wolfowitz and Bolton, there was a reluctance to let the military and civilian analysts on the staff vet intelligence. 'It was an unbelievably closed and small group,' the former aide told me. Intelligence proceedures were far more open during the Clinton Administration, he said, and professional staff members had been far more involved in assessing and evaluating the most sensitive data. ..... Senior CIA analysts dealing with Iraq were constantly being urged by the Vice President's office to provide worst-case assessments on Iraqi weapons issues."

Joseph Wilson notes on page 6 of "The Politics of Truth" that, "There had been a number of anonymous leaks to reporters from the intelligence community during the late spring and early summer of 2003, claiming that Vice President Cheney, his chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, and even former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich had pressured analysts to skew intelligence analyses to back up the administration's preconceived political intentions."

And Nancy Gibbs, in "The Rove Problem" (Time; 7-25-05; page 29), writes, "The tensions between the White House and the CIA had been rising steadily in the months before the Iraq invasion, as CIA analysts complained about evidence being distorted or ignored and the White House pushed back with complaints about the quality of the intel they were getting. 'I know the analyst who was subjected to withering questions on the Iraq -- al-Qaeda links by Libby with the Vice President sitting there,' says a CIA analyst."

One of the central points of interests for Cheney and Libby was a report from Italian intelligence that claimed there were documents proving Iraq had attempted to buy yellow cake uranium, a WMD component, from Niger. Two previous investigations had indicated the reports were false: one was by four star Marine Corps General Carleton Fulford, and the other by American ambassador Barboro Owens-Kirkpatrick. The CIA often uses those associated with US embassies to conduct covert operations. Hence, when the vice president continued to pressure the agency for yet another investigation, they sent a former ambassador with previous experience in CIA work in Africa, Joseph Wilson.


{4} "From everything I have heard, the truth may be found at the nexus between policy and politics in the White House. Whoever made the decision to disclose Valerie's undercover status occupies a position where he ... has access to the most sensitive secrets in our government, and a political agenda to advance or defend. ... Only a few administration officials meet both of these criteria, and they are clustered in the upper reaches of the National Security Council, the Office of the Vice President, and the Office of the President."
--The Politics of Truth; Joseph Wilson; 2004; page 441.

On March 7, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced the Niger documents were crude forgeries. On March 8, State Department spokesperson told reporters, "We fell for it." CNN interviewed Wilson, who said the administration had more information than they were letting on to. Shortly after this, a meeting was held in Cheney's office, where it was decided that there should be a "work-up" on Wilson in order to compromise him if he continued to publicly challenge the administration. It remains unclear if Cheney attended the meeting. However, it is known that Lewis "Scooter"Libby chaired the meeting, which was attended by Newt Gingrich and other members of the administration.

Between March and June, Libby ran the investigation that uncovered the status of Valerie Plame. Wilson notes, "Libby evidently seized opportunities to rail openly against me as an 'asshole playboy' who went on a boondoggle 'arranged by his CIA wife.." (page 442) Also, Wilson notes, "According to my sources, between March 2003 and the appearance of my article in July, the workup on me that turned up the information on Valerie was shared with Karl Rove, who then circulated it in administrative and neoconservative circles. That would explain the assertion later advanced by Clifford May, the neocon fellow traveler, who wrote that Valerie's employment was supposedly widely known. Oh, really? I am not reassured by his statement. Indeed, if what May wrote is accurate, it is a damning admission, because it could have been widely known only by virtue of leaks among his own crowd," (pages 443-4).


{5} "According to sources close to the investigation, Fitzgerald seemed most interested in whether officials who stayed at the White House while the President was in Africa had the memo that week, when the first known calls to reporters took place. Details of the memo, if not the memo itself, may have been shared with one or more White House officials well before Wilson's article appeared. Rove and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have told prosecutors they had never seen the document, according to sources familiar with their statements."
-- The Rove Problem; Nancy Gibbs; Time, 7-25-05; pages 27-8.

In invesigating any significant criminal conspiracy, one needs to look at various suspect's behaviors, including in relationship to procedures as well as other people. Let's look at Lewis Libby. We know from Woodward's "Plan of Attack" that he was one of two administration officials who, though not principals who attended the NSC meetings with President Bush, and the separate ones ran by Condi Rice. Her deputy Stephen Hadley was the other. Woodward notes that "Cheney and Libby were both artists at just going quiet, closing down completely a discussion or interview. The style could rattle their coleagues and throw them off stride. Libby also was an expert at deflecting questions about his own views with questions of his own..." (pages 48-9)

From James Bamford's "A Pretext for War" (2004), we know that Libby was the most active member in the secretive White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and its "perception management" by selective leaks of intelligence to the media. Libby enjoyed the sense of power that came from scripting other adsministration officials' public presentations: he and John Hannah wrote the original, highly controversial speech that Colin Powell gave at the UN to support administration lies about Saddam's WMD programs. (pages 318,336, & 368)

Bamford also details Cheney and Libby's coordinating the Office of Special Plans intelligence programs. Libby was in charge of the effort, with Hadley and Feith, which included a "road show" complete with slides, that defined the administrations' positions on Iraq (page 315).

When the disagreements between Powell and Libby were reported in the New York Times, Woodward noted that Libby blamed Dick Armitage. Libby was furious that his name was in the news, as he prefers to remain "behind the scenes." When confronted by a reporter about his denials of the story, Libby commented, "It's not totally untrue, but untrue." (page 50)


{6} "It's not totally untrue, but untrue." -- Lewis "Scooter" Libby

In Nancy Gibb's article in the 7-25-05 Time, she notes that Libby, who had by then testified before the grand jury three times, and had claimed he learned of Plame's identity from a reporter. Gibb reported that Tim Russert had testified in the previous August about his conversations with Libby; Russert told the grand jury that he was not Libby's source. There is speculation that Libby has claimed that Judith Miller was the source of his learning about Plame.

Fitzgerald's investigation has shown that this is not just untrue, but is totally untrue. Libby, in an effort that involved Vice President Dick Cheney, had other sources, including those from the State Department and their memo on the Wilson work-up. This is consistent to what Wilson wrote on page 444 of his book: "... when Rove learned that he might have violated the law, he turned on Cheney and Libby and made it clear he held them responsible for the problem they created for the administration."

On German Shepherds and the Berlin Wall

"' "Wilson's wife is fair game." ' Those are fighting words for any man, and I'd just had them quoted to me by MSNBC's Chris Matthews. It was July 21, 2003, barely a week since a column by Robert Novak in the Washington Post had named my wife, Valerie, as a CIA officer, and now the host of Hardball was calling to tell me that as far as the White House was concerned, they had declared open season on my family.

"In his signature staccato, Matthews was blunt: 'I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, "Wilson's wife is fair game." ' Before abruptly hanging up, Matthews added: 'I will confirm that if asked.' As the head of the White House political office and one of President George W. Bush's closest advisor's, Rove was legendary for his right-wing zeal and take-no-prisoners operating style. But what he was doing now was tantamount to declaring war on two U.S. citizens, both of them with years of government service."
-- Joseph Wilson; The Politics of Truth; 2004; page 1.

Last Friday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked a guest if Judith Miller's grand jury testimony would make Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Karl Rove the new "Haldeman and Ehrlichman"? I found that question to be revealing. Let's take a closer look, to see what the implications are.

First, it is interesting to see Matthews conduct himself as if he has no first-hand knowledge about the case. Clearly, he does. It is safe to assume that Patrick Fitzgerald is aware of Rove's phone call to Matthews. Thus, one can conclude that the grand jury has heard Chris' description of the call.

Fitzgerald has requested that witnesses not speak publicly about about their testimony to the grand jury. As a witness, that could clearly explain Matthew's silence. Yet both Matt Cooper and Judith Miller have discussed their testimony in interviews with other media sources. Could there be another reason why Chris has been silent? And could his Haldeman - Ehrlichman statement hold a key?


"Several middle-level White House aides had assured Bernstein and Woodward that in the Executive Mansion there was little doubt that the Segretti-Chapin operation had been approved by Haldeman. ....

"Haldeman was held in awe throughout the administration. At the mention of his name, Cabinet officials would become silent and fearful. The few who would talk knowledgeably about him said they might lose their jobs if he ever found out. Tough ... pragmatic ... ruthless ... devoted only to Richard Nixon ... would stop at nothing. The descriptions were often similar and many quoted Haldeman's celebrated self-description: 'I'm the President's son-of-a-bitch.' But Haldeman was much more complicated than such descriptions indicated.

"One of Haldeman's methods of operation, the reporters knew, was 'deniability.' This was the device of insulating himself from controversial decisions by implementing them through others so that, later, he could deny involvement. ....

"Deep Throat .... would not name Haldeman himself. He shook hands with Woodward and left. Woodward was now more certain of two things: Haldeman was the correct name, and Haldeman had accumulated frightening power. Deep Throat did not scare easily."
-- Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward; All the President's Men; 1974; pages 171-174.

H.R. Haldeman was the White House Chief of Staff, and the top assistant to Nixon. John D. Ehrlichman was the Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs. They were two of the most powerful figures in the Nixon administration, certainly of similar stature to Rove and Libby. Reporters called them "the German Shepherds," "the Prussians," and "the Berlin Wall," among other things.

Early in their investigation into Watergate, Bernstein and Woodward recognized that these two men were almost certainly involved in significant parts of the illegal activities that would come to define the corrupt administration. These illegal activities, and the conspiracy to cover-up the White House involvement, could only have been done with the okay of high-ranking officials. Getting a witness to discuss the involvement of the high-ranking officials was, of course, difficult.

Hugh Sloan, Jr., a former Haldeman aide and treasurer for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), did speak to them. However, either the reporters made an honest mistake, or they were purposely misled about Sloan's testimony to the grand jury investigating the Watergate break-in and CREEP/White House "slush fund." In a Washington Post article, they mistakenly wrote that Sloan had testified about Haldeman's role. In fact, Sloan had not, though he had identified Haldeman's role to the reporters. Giddy about the paper's mistake, President Nixon spoke to Charles Colsen : "We're going to screw them another way. They don't realize how rough I can play. ... But when I start, I will kill them. There's no question about it." Luckily for us, Nixon recorded these conversations!


" 'Well,' Felt said, 'Haldeman slipped away from you.' Felt stomped his heel into the garage wall. The truth would never come out now, the error about Haldeman had sealed it, he said. He said that moving on the top man meant you had to be on the most solid ground. Felt cursed. He moved closer and whispered. 'From top to bottom, this whole business is a Haldeman operation. He ran the money. Insulated himself through those functionaries around him.' ....

"He gave me a little lecture about breaking a conspiracy like Watergate. 'You build convincingly from the outer edges in, you get ten times the evidence you need against the Hunts and Liddys. They feel hopelessly finished -- they may not talk right away, but the grip is on them. Then you move up and do it at the next level. If you shoot too high and miss, then everyone feels more secure. Lawyers work this way. I'm sure smart reporters must too.' I recall he gave me a look as if to say I did not belong in that category of smart reporters. 'You put the investigation back months. It puts everyone on the defensive -- editors, FBI agents, everyone has to go into a crouch after this.' "
-- Bob Woodward; The Secret Man; 2005; pages 90-91.

Chris Matthews is certainly aware of the history of Watergate, including the infamous error made by Bernstein and Woodward. He has not shared all that he knows about either the White House leaking Plame's identity, the conspiracy to cover their involvement up, or the grand jury hearings, with his Hardball audience. Hopefully, this article helps us to understand why he has reported on the case in the manner that he has.

More, it may help to shed light on exactly what Chris meant when he asked if Miller's testimony would make Rove and Libby into the new Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Felt's words may make it clearer how Fitzgerald has workered to expose the role played by the mid-level White House officials, in order to reach those at the top levels. For, as Joseph Wilson tells us on page 445 of his book:

"In fact, senior advisors close to the president may well have been clever enough to have used others to do the actual leaking, in order to keep their fingerprints off the crime. John Hannah and David Wurmser, mid-level political appointees in the vice president's office, have both been suggested as the source of the leaks. I don't know either, though at the time of the leak, Wurmser, a prominent neoconservative, was working as a special assistant to John Bolton at the State Department. Mid-level officials, however, do not leak information without authority from a higher level. They would have been instruments, not the makers, of decision."