1) The original "senior administration official". When this leak was reported about in the Washington Post (9/28/03), they quoted a senior administration official who outright stated that two WH officials called six reporters and leaked Valerie Plame info "purely and simply for revenge."Actually, the identity of this official was revealed a couple of days ago. It's Colin Powell. Does that constitute hitting the jackpot? I doubt it. Powell owes too much to the elder Bush...
Let's think about that for a second. Doesn't that senior admin official sound outraged? So outraged, they were willing to spill the beans to one of the biggest newspapers in the country. What else did that senior administration official know about the White House? You can be sure that Fitz has talked to whoever it was. And if that person has a bigger beef, Fitz hit the jackpot.
To continue:
I agree that Fitz is loading for bear -- big bear. But I doubt that he can get at a whole den of man-killers, which is precisely what we find in this remarkably good Kos diary entry. The piece focuses on Cheney, his cronies (including seemingly omni-present Michael Ledeen) as they prepare us for the next war:
The biggest clue about Fitzgerald's whole case comes from his line of questioning. Notice what he continued to ask Miller about? Cheney. Notice what he wanted to talk to Rove about? Someone other than Libby & Miller.
The Aspens are connected at the roots. Get it? I'm sure Judy did:
The neo-con wing of the Aspen Institute began targeting Iran decades ago - even holding a symposium in Persepolis, Iran, in 1975. Now 30 years later, they are ready to move in and realise their ambitions.
I think it will be air strikes on the supposed nuclear facilities, but only as a ruse to justify the occupation of the oil-rich Ahwazi region bordering southern Iraq as a "security zone".
The USA and UK regimes are manufacturing a rationale for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets. I also expect occupation to the Ahwaz region. The fact that so many are on to their fraud this time has forced them to accelerate beyond prudence. I don't think they care that we know it's a fraud.
Judith Miller - who spoke at the Aspen Strategy Group in 2003 on "What About Iran Should (or Shouldn't) Concern You" - will indeed have "work to do", as Scooter suggested. He wants her to focus on areas of interest already to the Aspen Institute: Biological threats and the Middle East.A plan begins to take shape. Are we talking about justifying war via a CBW attack (ascribed to the Iranians) on the United States? Or perhaps these addled Aspenites were considering launching germ warfare against Tehran?
Today, Iraq; tomorrow, a world...in chaos.
Oh...regarding Judy:
Ponder, if you will, the surreal spectacle of a newswoman claiming that she went to jail to protect a source whose name she now cannot recall. Some witnesses ask for amnesty; Judy hopes to be granted amnesia.
Clearly, this plot includes the men at the very top. Clearly, Miller's in with the bastards.
So how did she achieve such autonomy at the NYT? I've long suspected the existence of a program to give "spooked up" individuals top journalism positions. Some feel that Bob Woodward himself was the beneficiary of such an arrangement. The Wshington Post's Reagan-era Moscow correspondent was CIA, as were several other reporters working behind-the-Iron-Curtain beats.
Why would the Times editors acquiesce to a scheme of this sort? We may presume the existence of the usual carrots and the usual sticks. Who knows? There may be more Jayson Blair-sized skeletons in the Times' closet.
5 comments:
The issue of Miller's security clearance all but renders the question of whether she's *officially* on the CIA payroll moot.
Here is a reporter who's *obliged" to report lies -- outright or by omission -- because she's signed a confidentiality agreement with the government not to reveal the truth. This alone makes her an accomplice -- obviously.
Beyond Miller, the NYT has a long history of collaboration, which ranges from the informal (reporters and commentators who have fully internalized ruling class norms) to the brazen.
Until recently a certain Juan Forero covered South America (including Venezuela) in a remarkably biased manner -- neoliberal pro-Washington editorals masquerading as news, without even a pretence of neutrality. Then it was revealed he had certain personal interests in certain governments....
Even unimportant stories in the Times are shaded to reflect establishment interests. This can range from the absurd -- a business reporter noting, as if it were an undisputed fact, that the new bankruptcy law was created to avoid consumer abuses of the credit system, to the full-blown WMD debate.
You see it every day in the Times. Judy is only a somewhat more egregious example, who got caught.
The sad thing is, most of these people don't even have to be bought. They deliver themselves on a platter, to controlling interests.
The best critique of Times is by the late John Hess, who worked there. His point is simple but irrefutable: the Times is highly authoritative, unless one actually happens to know something about the something they're dealing with. Then it's hopeless incompetent.
joe, i'm not convinced the high official is colin powell at all. he decidedly was not in the whig, and that's where the action was. powell attended none of those meetings and was kept out of that loop, so why would he necessarily know anything, right?
my bet is it's someone in the whig, like matalin, maybe ari fleischer. or maybe even cheney's spokesperson who just disappeared to baghdad (for safety??); such timing.
we'll know soon.
meanwhile, if we don't elevate the debate on the free press from source protection to the higher first amendment principle behind that, we're screwed.
green? You're the second personto say that. I don[t' see it on either IE or Firefox. Is that some sort of default color for your browser? Is there a browser out there that interprets #ffffff as green? I'll check on it...
joe, check this out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/politics/18card.html?ei=5094&en=e890ad69eedb2f6d&hp=&ex=1129608000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all
a story on andy card, not at all like the c-span interview that is clearly staged to up his public image, etc. (said the man who knows about marketing new products in the summer)
as for the green... this is interesting. from my ibook, which i have cleaned up and updated in the past month, as opposed to my imac, which is woefully in need of attention and tlc. for reasons i won't bore you with, i still rely on explorer on the imac, whereas i use safai on the ibook, where all's well, nice manageable readability, very classy. and NO green!
in fact, i meant to mention that the green reminded me of bradblog, where i have terminal troubles reading his small print against that background. and from explorer, the text doesn't wraparound, just all spells out in a string.
really must take a day and do the cleanup on that thing, but finding a day....????
lll... I've been saying for a while that what we desperately need right now is a John Dean. So you think Andy Card is him?
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