How the Tenet revelations explain Plamegate

So many of the scandals of this administration are downright confusing! The "Plamegate" scandal, which is the alleged outing of a covert CIA agent by the White House in order to discredit her husband, is no exception.

I've been promising a Plamegate tutorial, but the fullness of time adds revelations to the story; I'm not sure it's all played out yet. This week, former CIA Director George Tenet reveals even more about the nature of the relationship between the CIA and the White House.

Tenet recently released his new book At the Center of the Storm, and went on a lengthy press tour to promote it, hitting all the Sunday talk shows and 60 Minutes. It's self-aggrandizement at its best. Unlike some of these other "Hey, I've been maligned by this administration!" books, such as former CTU head Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, or the Ron Suskind / former Treasury Sec Paul O'Neill book The Price of Loyalty, you don't get very far listening to Tenet's drivel before you begin to throw up in your mouth just a little. I went from not caring if he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom to wanting to rip it off his puffing chest and stomp on it. But I digress...

One thing this press tour has taught us is that all was not well behind the curtain in Oz. Before this, we saw Tenet getting that Medal and all this praise from the Pres (a kiss of death, as it turns out, see Brownie- Job, Heckuva) and it seemed like they were thick as theives.

This was noteworthy at the time because there was a story being floated, or more like an impression created by many stories, that there was a rift between the WH and the CIA. I don't remember a specific piece of info, but I remember the general public perception was that the CIA had completely dropped the ball, and the WH could only "do their best with what they had". The only good 9/11 joke I ever heard was, "Now even the crazy people have taken off their tinfoil hats, since clearly the CIA isn't that competent to read their minds" (or something like that, Little Miss Comedienne I'm not). So the WH was saying, "Don't look at us, it was them," and the CIA was somewhat pissed at them for it, or at least, sometimes it seemed that way.

Yet, there was Tenet--Medal, praise, etc.-- and so I thought, "OK, I guess they don't have a rift...?" And very quickly all that rift talk died down. Later, when the Plamegate scandal broke, the WH hinged their explanation on the idea that Joe Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to make the President look bad. Why would they do that? "Because the CIA hates the WH." Come again? Medal, praise... What were they talking about?

The Plamegate story is so confusing anyway, when the WH floated that theory and no one understood it, it just got lost in the flotsam and jetsam of the case. Furthermore, the outing of Valerie Plame was so shocking that it quickly eclipsed the "the CIA hates us" story, and so that story is largely forgotten, except on those rare occassions when a pundit will muse, "Why did they even leak her name, what was the point?" and another mentions this floated story, but again, it quickly evaporates because it appears nonsensical.

Ah, but here it all comes tumbling out with Tenet's book. Here we get a tale of an immigrant kid from the wrong side of the tracks who, when a new group of popular kids takes over the school, is invited to sit with them at lunch. He's so happy, so grateful to be at this table, he does whatever they say, fetches their lunches, steals copies of the tests before test day, writes their papers for them. "Slam dunk!" he yells, giddy and a little sweaty with a mix of gratitude and terror.

9/11 happens, and I don't care what Tenet says, he FAILED. Big time. 0 out of 100 points, baby. There is a laundry list of what he could have or should have done but didn't. If you are interested in time travel, there are several key moments where if you popped in from the future right then, you could change it all. One in particular is that in August 2001--after having given dire warnings to Condi Rice about Bin Laden's upcoming spectacular attacks and her doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with this information-- Tenet goes to Crawford and ends up riding alone with the Pres in a pickup truck. Does he say anything then? A well-timed, "Mr. President, there is something on my mind... I've tried to follow the chain of command, but I want to make sure that you've been briefed properly, here are my concerns..." Nope, nothing. Feel like ripping off his Medal and stomping on it yet?

And yet for all of his toadying, Tenet was never part of the cool kids. He was never fully accepted, but rather was praised when they wanted to use him for something, and ignored when they didn't. He was alternately Bush's wunderkind and Clinton's leftovers; he was tasked with a critical job of conducting foreign intelligence, and ignored when he reported it, until it contained the magic word, "Iraq". He was given all the credit for the Iraq intelligence, sitting behind Colin Powell at the UN, and then given all the blame (as if the Pres had never believed it in the first place). He was given the Medal of Freedom, and then drummed out of the administration. Heck, you almost can't blame the guy for sounding a little wackadoodle now after being pushed and pulled so.

But, as the Evangelicals learned in 2004, when you plan political machinations, when you kowtow to get power and control but not from an honest disire to create sound public policy, when you get in bed with people you might not bring home to Mother because they promise you the moon-- well, that's how you get the clap.

Then all the predictable things happened:
1. Tenet writes a book.
2. Tenet goes on a press tour and is asked tough questions and starts to sound like a lunatic.
3. The WH discredits him and generally distances themselves, but they don't have to do much because...
4. Tenet's press tour has now made him look like a complete liar, and as I said, the book is very self-flattering, and so he's discredited himself better than the WH could have done.
5. Now no one will listen to even the truths that may appear in the book, and the damage will never really touch the WH. Nice one, guys.

But there is something really interesting here: In the--

Wow, that sounded exciting, didn't it? I wonder what I was going to say. I leave a draft sitting for a couple of weeks and when I go back, it's like someone else wrote it. OK, I do know how to summarize and wrap this up, if I ever think of the really interesting thing, I'll update...

Every single person in this, with the exception of Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Plame-Wilson, comes off untrustworthy. I don't believe for a minute that Mr. Wilson's Niger trip was anything other than a true fact-finding mission, and I don't believe that anyone dictated his findings because "the CIA hates the WH" or any other reason. But as one by one each of the players gets discredited, it leaves us with no one to believe and ultimately an unsolved mystery, because there is no one left to ask.

Well, that worked out nicely for the WH, don't you think? Did they plan it this way? Well, I'll say this: that's why Scooter Libby is facing three years in prison for lying and obstruction of justice. Prosecutor Pat Fitzzgerald said that he was like an umpire trying to call a game while sand is being kicked in his eyes. Everyone but the Wilsons so far has lied, and we caught at least one, but that didn't make him tell the truth, and until the truth comes out, everyone gets off scot-free.

Come to think of it, that's a pretty interesting thing.

So while we did learn that there was something of a rift, which makes the WH rift-claim at least make more sense, we also crossed off another name from the list of people who could enlighten us.

I'll get right on that Plamegate tutorial... watch the skies...

Something I Can Relate To

Revealed in Friday's hearing regarding the Plame-Wilson scandal:

Not only did Valerie not suggest her husband for the trip to Niger, but when her section chief did suggest Joe, and told Valerie to ask him that night at home, she "wasn't thrilled."

"And I will be honest. I had -- was somewhat ambivalent at the time. We had 2-year-old twins as home, and all I could envision was me by myself at bedtime with a couple of 2-year-olds. So I wasn't overjoyed with this idea."

That's how I knew she was telling the truth. Even when the fate of the world hangs in the balance, even highly accomplished international players are afraid of bedtime with two-year-olds.

Scooter scoots off to jail

Well, not quite yet. As usual, rich defendants get to tidy up their lives before surrendering themselves to the prison system. I'm not sure when he'll actually go, but

SCOOTER CONVICTED!

One count obstruction, one count perjury, not guilty on lying to the FBI. I guess they decided that he did make a mistake (really?) when first he made a statement, and then after he realized it wasn't right, decided to stick with Story A regardless of the overwhelming contrary evidence, which is when he obstructed justice and committed perjury. Or something.

UPDATE: Scooter was convicted of four out of five counts. The only one that they couldn't agree on (one juror held out) was the charge of lying to reporter Matt Cooper. (Cooper didn't keep notes so that one became he said/he said, and while it was likely it couldn't be proved-- at least to that one juror.) (So everything I said yesterday about Story A I pulled out of my butt.)

There will be appeals, and when they are exhausted, the question will be, will he be pardoned by the President? There are a couple of options here.

First, it happens just before Scooter packs his bags for prison-- that is, at the last possible second, but before he spends a single night in jail.

Second, it happens on the President's last day in office. Although, really, what would be the point? Scooter's only getting 2 years or so, and by Jan. 20, 2009 he'd be almost done-- why risk the controversy of this pardon when Scooter has like a month left and by that time has his cell all nicely decorated and comfy? (Not making light of prison, but this won't be "prison", this is Club Med California, where you can check in but not leave.) If, however, he has more than 6 months left in January 2009, my guess is he gets pardoned at that time.

Third, it happens right now, but since they haven't even done any appeals yet, and the blood is still fresh in the water as far as the news cycle goes, and there are another couple of years that Pres. Shrub* will have to face the cameras, that seems like an insane risk.

Fourth, it never happens. This could be because a) the WH just leaves him twisting in the wind, or b) because Scooter feels they've already done that, he turns state's evidence against Darth Cheney and possibly even Shrub. In which case, they can't pardon him because they'd be too busy trying to get the knife out of their collective back.

UPDATE: Those who follow these things (look for an article in this week's Newsweek) are talking about how Bush has been a stickler for the Justice Department guidelines on pardons. A Pres doesn't have to follow these guidelines, but apparently he really does. (And one of the guidelines is that the person has to have exhausted all appeals five years ago; that and other guidelines like "remorse" aren't met by Scooter.) He's given far fewer pardons at this point in his 2nd term than any president in 100 years. Those that have been answering the Lou Dobbs call-to-arms over the two border patrol agents recently convicted for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler will know that getting these guys pardoned is next to impossible with this President. So, how does a President who just a month ago touted the Justice guidelines as an excuse to avoid pardoning the border patrol agents then turn around and break them all to spring his buddy? That's going to look very, very bad. (Which, BTW, is why I believe he's been so stingy with pardons, he didn't want to draw political fire for his decisions.)

I'm really afraid that the public will forget about Plamegate, and the despicable actions taken by this administration. I'm afraid that they'll say, "Well, he resigned, he's not there anymore, who cares?" I hope that you will help me keep that from happening.

To which end, I will make a nice Plamegate tutorial for you to use when preaching from the streetcorners. Be watching for it!


*Shrub was one of Molly Ivins' classic monikers for Bush. I've noticed that since she died, lots of lefty pundits and radio folk are using that term. It could be that they didn't want to infringe on her while she was living and making a living, but now that she has passed her phrases become "public domain". I have no idea, but I'm jumping on the bandwagon. From now on, though, when I use one of her turns of phrase I'll toss in a link to my Molly post. For example, I'm so glad that Rumsfeld is gone and we can stop listening to him tell us "everything is tickety-boo."

Clarification on "leaking", to a point

We are still waiting for many details surrounding "Leakgate" or "Plamegate", but an answer to my question in the previous post has been provided by Sidney Blumenthal in his article "The Slow-Motion Trap" on Salon.com.

Blumenthal writes,

In the setup for the leak, Fitzgerald writes, Cheney "advised defendant that the President specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE" and that that approval was a secret. Libby was a team player, but he was also anxious about a declassification that was "unique in his experience."

The formal rules for declassification were amended by Bush's Executive Order 13292 of March 25, 2003, on "Classified National Security Information." Under any circumstances the president has the authority, as he always has, to unilaterally declassify official secrets and intelligence "in the public interest." But a decision to declassify a document normally passes through the originating agency and then through the Office of the National Security Advisor. Then the document is stamped declassified and the declassified order is appended to the document.

None of these procedures was followed in this case, which is why Libby's antenna was gyrating. He sought the advice of Cheney's counsel, David Addington, Libby's close ally. In approaching Addington, Libby must have known what he would hear. Addington is the foremost legal advocate in the White House of the idea that the president should be unbound, unchecked, unfettered in his authority, whether in the torture of detainees, domestic surveillance or any other matter. Unsurprisingly, Addington "opined that presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document."

Only four people -- Bush, Cheney, Libby and Addington -- were privy to the declassification. It was kept secret from the director of central intelligence, the secretary of state and the national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, among others. Indeed, Hadley was arguing at the time for declassification of the NIE but was deliberately kept in the dark that it was no longer classified.

So, based on my criteria in the post below, I call that leaking. It's tantamount to spoiling the surprise of the b-day party but not telling any of the guests so that they still hide and yell surprise and the guest of honor has to pretend to be shocked. (Except, of course, it's illegal and unethical, not just poor party hosting.) It's not what they're claiming now, which is that they were responding to calls from the public for clarification on the need to invade Iraq so they declassified some intel (which, BTW, was totally bogus) and gave it to reporters. This is sneaky and smarmy and only a man who thinks that he can get away with anything ("If the President does it, it's not illegal" as someone famously said about Nixon)-- oh, wait, but that's the guy who's our President.

Two other interesting points in Blumenthal's article:

1) He points out eloquently (if not for the first time) the circular logic used in the run-up to the war. I wish I knew how to make a flowchart for this blog. Our intel says ABC, we give ABC to the Europeans, they print it in their papers, we tell it to our people and say, "Look, the Europeans think the same thing!" And in this case, Libby leaks to Miller (in separate conversations) that Saddam "has" WMD, she reports it in the New York Times, and then the Administration says, "Look, even the Times says the same thing! And if that lefty rag the Times is actually agreeing with us, then it must be true!" And frankly, I think there were a lot of us on the Left who trust the Times-- and when we saw them saying the same thing, we bought into it too. I think that might account for a few Senators that voted for the war that now wish they hadn't.

2) He quotes Colin Powell finally, finally speaking out saying, "Indeed, last week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told journalist Robert Scheer that the notorious 16 words in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address concerning Iraq's supposed efforts to buy uranium -- the claim that former ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate -- were bogus. 'That was a big mistake,' Powell said. 'It should never have been in the speech. I didn't need Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. I never believed it.' ...Powell finally admitted publicly that the president spoke falsely about the reason for war, that there were interested parties inside the administration determined to put false words in his mouth, and that the secretary of state, knowing this, lacked the power to stop it." Now, there is something I thought would never happen. I knew in my heart that he was being railroaded, I just thought his loyalty to these people would make him take his criticism to his grave. Not a coward, just being reserved and dignified.

Powell seems to be on a roll, however, as Salon.com is also reporting that he is yet another retired general who is calling for Rumsfeld's resignation.

A Point of Contention on "Leaking"

[This is another letter I wrote to Salon. The topic was Libby's revelation that "Cheney told me that POTUS told him" to leak informaton from the NIE. The previous poster couldn't understand why everyone wasn't up in arms about this.]

I think maybe one of the reasons this isn't drawing the attention the last LW wanted is that it has a little bit for everyone to grab onto and back up their side. The Left obviously thinks this is evidence of lying and leaking, while the Right claims it proves nothing was leaked (because the NIE was at some point declassified).

But I need some help answering a question, and I think others do too. It's a question that people keep almost asking, some of the WH press corps came close with McClellan, but they can't seem to find the right words:

Is it technically possible for the POTUS (or anyone in a similar position of being able to classify/declassify intel) to leak? Is a leak defacto declassification? Or is there some official protocol for declassifying something-- a paper has to be signed, a memo sent out, the folders changed from top-secret red to help-yourself blue-- that until it's completed, anyone who talks is leaking?

If I throw a suprise party for my roommate and his mother clues him in, she's spilling my secret. But if I mention it, as the partygiver, am I leaking it and ruining the surprise, or changing the party to a non-surprise party?

It seems to come down to this mysterious protocol. What happens when the POTUS wants something declassified? Does he have to sign something? Tell other people? Buy new folders? If the answer is yes, then he CAN leak and probably did. If the answer is no, and the act of saying he wants it declassified makes it so and the rest is just tidying up the paperwork for posterity, then he didn't actually leak anything, he was just walking the line in a smarmy way. Like, god love him, our former leader questioning the definition of "is." Oh, Bill...

Settling that would help us have a better discussion, instead of each side saying it's their proof, which tends to shut conversation down, or at least bog it down into arguing over that very point.

But a better question might be-- is it even true? Cheney, who we know had a real bee in his bonnet about Wilson, apparently told Libby to go out and discredit Wilson (using either very selective quotes from a classified NIE, or outing his CIA wife, it's unclear at this time). Libby thought this was hinky and tried to make sure he covered his butt by asking Cheney for Presidential orders. Cheney went away and came back saying, "It's fine, he said it was OK."

Does anyone else find this strange? It's like an older sibling trying to get a younger sibling to do something stupid, who balks, and the older goes off and comes back and says, "Mom says it's OK, just do it." Or when you go to a car dealership and your salesman keeps disappearing into the back and returning with proclamations from a mysterious "manager" that we all know isn't even back there.

I think the more dangerous part of all this is Cheney appearing to run amok and possibly lying about what the POTUS did or did not approve. And because we're arguing over the rituals of declassification, he's getting away with it.