Author: Dean Pajevic

“Unleash the Weasels,” quips ReddHedd at FireDogLake blog. And, it seems we have weasels in both parties. ReddHedd gives us this mouthful (!) for starters:

“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. – New York Daily News

Chase that with this apertif from the Wall Street Journal:

Even before the CIA leak investigation has ended, Democrats and Republicans are planning public-relations campaigns. […]

Republicans, meanwhile, have started complaining about prosecutorial overreach.

For their part, Republicans are trying to focus attention elsewhere — on coming elections and their legislative efforts, for example — while playing down the significance of any charges. They also are trying to train some fire on retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, the husband of Valerie Plame, the Central Intelligence Agency operative whose identity was disclosed. Mr. Wilson charged that the White House leaked the name of his wife to undercut his criticism of the administration’s war policy. The Republican National Committee distributed to some politicians talking points titled, “Joe Wilson’s Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements.”

During weekend television talk shows, some Republican lawmakers even floated the idea of perjury and obstruction of justice charges amounting to little more than legal foot faults.

That may be a tricky path to pursue, in part because of the Republicans’ record of attacking the Clinton administration for not being truthful. Democrats yesterday quickly circulated a recap of Republican outrage over President Clinton’s misleading comments about his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky. “Republicans: Against Perjury and Obstruction Before They Were For It,” read the document’s headline. Republicans also may have to maneuver without their master strategist, White House political adviser Karl Rove, who is one of the likely targets of the investigation.

The Democrats? Well — Jesus, people! Chill, will you?!

“It’s not in the Democrats’ interest to go nuts,” said Mark Corallo, a media consultant and former Justice Department official under Attorney General John Ashcroft. Their thinking, he says, should be: “Our enemy has set himself on fire. Instead of pouring gasoline that can blow up and burn us all, why don’t we just step away and let them burn.”

Raw Story has Democratic leaders “privately planning ‘indictment’ strategy. Whew.

The WSJ piece adds, “The Democrats’ talking points begin: ‘The White House leak case is about how the Bush administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for war in Iraq’.”

Okay, that sounds like a start. Now I just pray that you don’t make “We were duped!” a main theme because you’ll look like idiots. After all, we the lowly were able to figure out that it was all lies, and you couldn’t or wouldn’t. So, begin with an apology! Please. We might forgive you (?).

And don’t miss pateacher’s new diary, “Shameful Republican Hypocrisy.”

“BAGHDAD (AFP) – The US death toll in Iraq reportedly hit 2,000 amid a sharp spike in violence that killed 14 Iraqis … with the deaths of two more soldiers. … (AFP) Thank you, Tehanu, for alerting us.

Bread and Circuses

Mired in heat and dust and sand

Gallant band of brothers true
Country’s service is their aim

Death and maiming is their due


In where angels fear to tread

Foolish, dreaded leaders rush

Bringing power’s fearsome groan

Leaving only graveyard’s hush



“By the pricking of my thumbs”

This way comes the wicked pawn

Drunk with drinking conquest’s draught

Juggernaut goes crushing on

Continued below:

I’m watching the live feed of Democracy Now!. Amy Goodman is interviewing Mel Goodman, a former CIA analyst and a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. There is no tape or transcript yet. My notes:

Robert Novak: “A useful idiot.”

Lewis “Scooter” Libby: ” is just a aparatchik” — his patron was Dick Cheney

Cheney has lost his “plausible denial.” He may end up — it’s a long shot — as an unindicted co-conspirator.

It is very significant that the Niger documents are being investigated by Fitzgerald. The UPI story over the weeekend was by a very good longtime journalist.

Fitzgerald has access to the Italian parliamentary investigation. The Italians have investigated the documents, and they know something about the docs. FORMER AGENCY PEOPLE could be involved. Under Bill Casey, there was serious misuse of the agency … this could be a covert action to allow the president to say something in the State of Union that was not accurate.

Again, why didn’t the Senate Intel Committee look at this? Why didn’t the media? Because they were obsessed wtih leaks and sources.

The SP (Fitzgerald] is doing the job that the Senate should have done, the media should have done, Congress should have done. He is a hero.

WHIG (White House Iraq Group) was set up at the same time that Donald Rumsfeld set up a secret shop in the Pentagon.

The Office of Special Plans created fake intel — passed it along to WHIG — their job was to write materials for Condi Rice and Dick and Rummy so they could talk about the aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds, etc.. … More when the audio or transcript becomes available.

MORE SOURCES: David Wurmser et al.: See my “More Cheney Aides Targeted in CIA Leak Inquiry,” BooMan’s “As Indictments Loom: Old Hands Pile On Cheney,” Larisa and Jason’s brilliant report on Wurmser yesterday at Raw Story, and my Glengarry Glen Rove “bio pic” piece on the WHIG group.

— Just announced by Aaron Brown. Thank you, Rosa. Thank you with all our hearts. We’ll never forget you. The world won’t forget you.

The NYT new lead story: “Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Notes Show.”

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

[…..]

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

The article says that Tenet did not testify and “had been interviewed by the special prosecutor and his staff in early 2004.” “Mr. Tenet has not talked since then to the prosecutors, [a former intelligence] official said.” The NYT couldn’t reach Tenet for comment tonight. Hmmm.

Also: The NYT is referring to the 1982 law here. I think they’re wrong. But I’m going to toss this up and read the article again thoroughly. Also:

It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry.

[T]he notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald’s possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson — who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame — from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson’s wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the C.I.A. and that she may have helped arrange her husband’s trip.

OOPS! There goes another …. Oops! There goes another …. Oops! There goes another Republican Talking POINT!

(You know, the GOP talking point that Wilson was saying that Cheney requested he take the Niger trip, which Wilson did not say. The same point repeated ad nauseum by Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews. Andrea Mitchell even said that Joe Wilson lied about the Cheney connection. Even though she has the story all wrong — Wilson said no such thing — it’s also clear that Cheney indeed was aware of Mr. Wilson’s trip arrangements.)

[T]he evidence of Mr. Cheney’s direct involvement in the effort to learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political pressure on the White House in a week of high anxiety among Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow to Mr. Bush’s presidency.

I bet so.

And, in the first paragraph, ” lawyers involved in the case said Monday” refers, surely, to Joseph Tate, Scooter Libby’s attorney whose veracity has been questionable in dealings with Judith Miller’s attorneys and it was only through the direct intervention of SP Patrick Fitzgerald that the roadblock before Ms. Miller’s release from jail was removed.