1 Boring Old Man

The actual crime in the C.I.A. Leak case was the willful exposure of the identity of Valerie Plame who was an undercover C.I.A. Agent. No one was charged with that crime because it cannot yet be proved that any of the people who leaked her identity knew that she was undercover.

Leaked/Confirmed Valerie Plame’s Identity to Reporters

In addition, we learned late that President Bush authorized the leaking of the National Intelligence Estimate by declassifying it [according to Vice President Cheney] and approved leaking it to reporters in response to Joseph Wilson’s critical oped article in the New York Times.

Leaked the National Intelligence Estimate

In the course of this investigation, we’ve learned a lot about what happened back in the days leading up to and immediately following the invasion of Iraq.

We’ve learned that Vice President Dick Cheney and his Chief of Staff repeatedly went to the C.I.A. with intelligence gathered outside usual channels – from several different Agencies in the Department of Defense. One of those was a claim that Iraq was seeking to buy high grade Uranium from the african nation of Niger. We learned that Vice President Cheney personally asked the C.I.A. to investigate this allegation. We’ve learned that the C.I.A. asked former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who had connections in that country to go there and make inquiries. In February 2002, he went for several weeks and returned reporting that he thought the claims were without basis. We also know, all too well, that Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a C.I.A. undercover agent working in the C.I.A. on the very issue of Saddam Hussein’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons.

Those of us who are not brain dead or ideologically challenged have learned that the invasion Iraq was hatched before George W. Bush was elected, before the 9/11 attack, and had little to do with intelligence of any kind. Whether the motive was the Neoconservative ideology of American Dominion, or the influence of pro-Israeli forces in our government, or the lust for the oil reserves under Iraq is not clear. But we know it had nothing to do with any threat to our national security. And we know it had nothing to do with al Qaeda/Saddam Hussein ties.

"Who killed Norma Jean?" asked Pete Seeger in his 60’s song after Marilyn Monroe died. And today, what have we learned about the "outing" of our equally beautiful spy, Valerie Plame, a No Official Cover C.I.A. Agent? Of course, the first answer to "Who outed Valerie Plame?" that comes to mind is her husband, Joseph Wilson. Wilson is a genuine whistle blower. In his January 28th, 2003 State of the Union speech, President George Bush said, "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." We now know a lot of things about that statement, but the biggest thing we know is that it was, at the core, a falsehood. Our intelligence community had already debunked the claim. The only reason Bush attributed it to the British was that they were still holding on to it. Who knows if Joseph Wilson’s reaction was that of an ignored person, or as a patriot, or both?

What we have learned in this investigation is that whatever his personal internal struggles, Joseph Wilson carried a painful truth. He knew that the sixteen words were being said in deceit. He knew that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. He knew when we didn’t find weapons of mass destruction that the Administration had gambled on a lie and lost. A lot of us thought those thoughts, but he knew they were correct. That’s different. He tried to speak out indirectly and it didn’t work. Presumabely, he was aware that his speaking out moved his wife’s secret a step closer to the surface, but he did it anyway. I’m eternally grateful that he did speak out. A lot of us are. But it cannot be denied that his article was the first step in the outing of a secret agent.

But we learned something else in this investigation. Wilson’s early attempts to say what he knew set off a bomb in the White House, particularly in the nearby office of Vice President Dick Cheney. By early June, they knew who he was. They knew about his mission to Niger. And they knew his wife worked at the C.I.A. There were at least two leaks to reporters before Joseph Wilson ever wrote his article [Richard Armitage to Bob Woodward and Scooter Libby to Judith Miller]. We’ve learned that when Wilson’s article was published, the Office of the Vice President became the War room for retaliating, led by thje Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney and put into action by his Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby. George Tenet, head of the C.I.A. took responsibility for the sixteen words, then Stephen Hadley. That was public. But privately Cheney mounted a smear campaign against Joseph Wilson culminating in his wife’s C.I.A. identity being leaked eight days after the article came out. What we’ve also learned from this investigation is that the repeated denials about this campaign from the involved parties [Rove, Libby, Cheney, Bush, Rice, etc.] were all lies, carefully crafted to be half truths that lied. When these denials became untentable, they claimed they were passing on gossip they heard from reporters, and we’ve learned that this was also not true.

So like Marilyn Monroe, lots of people were involved in "Who outed Valerie Plame?" But we’ve learned that the main culprit was Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States. The only real question left is "Why?" Why would the Vice President of the United States, a man who appears to be impervious to criticism, go to all the trouble of "outing" Valerie Plame? We know the answer, but we haven’t learned it all from this investigation. We’ve learned that answer in other ways, and it’s an altogether nasty story.

But, unlike Marilyn Monroe, the blonde beauty whose death may well have had it’s political overtones, our beautiful spy, Valerie Plame, was outed sight unseen. As Patrick Fitzgerald said, "Her name is Valerie Wilson. She had a life before Joe Wilson. But to them she wasn’t Val Wilson, she wasn’t a person, she was an argument, she was a fact to use against Wilson." Valerie Plame is alive and something of a celebrity. She didn’t die like Marilyn Monroe, a casualty of her looks and her association with people in high places. But Valerie Plame’s life was changed involuntarily from one of service to her country, a career she presumably chose for herself, to that of a pawn in a chess game she could neither control nor even speak about. The people she worked for turned on her without a second thought – and they killed a little piece of what America means in the process…

from Jane Hamsher:

… He was a very thoughtful guy who said the jury was very serious and took their responsibility very seriously, and that there were many tears at the end.

… He said that this was true and that the first thing they did was fill out 34 or so of the huge "post it" pads (2′ x 3′) with names, dates and details.

… He said the other jurors may want to talk to the press at some point but for now they did not want to be identified. He was very impressed with how methodical they were and he used the word "dispassionate" to describe their deliberations. He said they deliberated for a whole week before they reached a verdict on any of the charges.

… He eventually got dragged before the cameras and said that there was a lot of compassion on the jury for Libby, that they felt he was the"fallguy," and they wanted to know where Karl Rove was in all of this.

… He was loathe to answer questions about Dick Cheney beyond the fact that Libby was obviously doing whatever he did at Cheney’s behest, and the Cheney notes on the Wilson July 6 article seemed especially damning.

… He did say that Hannah’s testimony totally screwed Libby, and I got a chuckle out of that. At the same time Hannah was talking about how bad Libby’s memory was, he also claimed that Libby had an incredible grasp of detail, and the jury believed he just would not have forgotten so much in the way that the defense was trying to claim.

… They found Russert to be a credible witness but thought there was enough reasonable doubt in the Cooper false statement charge (he said/he said) for "someone" to assume reasonable doubt. It appears there was only one holdout on Count Three that kept Libby from a 5 count grand slam.

On her own blog, Jane Hamsher said, " It’s a good day to be an American, huh?" Well put. Myself, I’m a little speechless. I’m not sure what I feel, except relieved that I’m not feeling what I’d feel if the decision had gone the other way – an emotion that I’ve come to call the election night 2004 feeling, because I’ve only felt it once in my life. Mostly, I wonder what the people who elected President Bush and opened the door for this cadre of neoconservatives are feeling about all of this. They didn’t pore over the minute to minute testimony in the trial from emptywheel‘s daily live-blog. They haven’t read Libby’s notes, or seen the annotations on the newspaper articles, or parsed the timeline of leak week. They don’t know first-hand the levels of deceit, deviousness, and vengfulness that was presented as fact in this trial. All they know is the verdict. I hope in the days that follow, the Media finally puts this information on the front page for everyone to deal with. "News" is literally what is new. For most of us Plame junkies, this is a very old story. For most Americans, it’s brand new.

This weekend, I went on a fifteen hundred mile road trip to meet with a group of people who share an interest in, of all things, old trees. We call them Indian Trail Trees, though their origin remains scientifically unproven. We had a grand time, sharing pictures and thoughts about the trees, clomping around in the Arkansas Wilderness looking at examples. I didn’t think much about the Libby Trial, though my old friend who accompanied me on this trek and I did talk politics a bit on the long drive. Old Liberals don’t talk politics frequently, or for very long. There’s not that much to say anymore.

It’s interesting to ponder this dark part of our history – to look back on how expediency over-rode the Constitution and principles in our youthful nation. Watching it happen now isn’t so interesting to me, it’s terrifying. We’re older and we ought to know better. And we don’t know how it’s going to come out – the Iraq War misadventure. We don’t know if those principles of ours are going to survive the current example of political expediency masquerading as policy. We don’t yet even know if a conviction in the Libby Trial will lead to further exposure of the betrayal of America by our leaders. But today, the Libby Trial is all we’ve got, so my fingers are crossed [and I wish I’d kept that rabbit’s foot that was such a comfort when I was a kid].

Former ACLU Chapter President Arrested for Child Pornography

Federal agents arrested Charles Rust-Tierney, the former president of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU, Friday in Arlington for allegedly possessing child pornography.

According to a criminal complaint obtained by ABC News, Rust-Tierney allegedly used his e-mail address and credit card to subscribe to and access a child pornography website.

The complaint states that federal investigations into child pornography websites revealed that "Charles Rust-Tierney has subscribed to multiple child pornography website over a period of years."

As recently as last October, the complaint alleges, "Rust-Tierney purchased access to a group of hardcore commercial child pornography websites."

The news pundits of the Right are up in arms that the Media hasn’t been all over this story like it was about Ted Haggard or Mark Foley. Their point is that we rolled all over Ted Haggard and Mark Foley for championing a moral high road while living in a moral wasteland. Now, when an A.C.L.U. official who was championing free access to the Internet in libraries is arrested for being involved with hard core child pornography, the story doesn’t have legs and hasn’t made it to the front page.

I can think up arguments to make with Bill O’Reilly, like "this guy wasn’t a hypocrite" like Ted of Mark, but I don’t want to. They’re right. This man, Charles Rust-Tierney, was championing the cause of a free Internet for personal and unsavory reasons. That’s very wrong, and I hope the A.C.L.U. really investigates him thoroughly. And as for the Right’s complaints, they are right [as in correct]. You read it right here on a liberal blog.

• Certainly, the 911 attack on the Twin Trade Towers in New York as an essential ingredient. Without the resulting outrage, there would never have been sufficient support to mount this war.
• We now know that the Administration that was elected in 2000 was populated from groups that had long advocated a "regime change" in Iraq as the centerpiece for a new foreign policy for the United States, a policy of American Dominion in the world as the only remaining superpower after the end of the "Cold War."
• The stated reason for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and biological weapons that were a threat to the United States, and that he had connections with al Qaeda, the radical Islamic group behind the attack in New York. We now know that none of those things were true, and it is a near certainty that our government knew that they weren’t true before the invasion.
• Almost immediately as the war began, our stated Mission changed from national defense to liberation from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of a Democracy in Iraq – Operation Iraqi Freedom.
• Iraq sits atop the one of the largest oilfields on the planet. Our Vice President, a major proponent of this war, is an oil executive who spoke frequently about this oil reserve before being elected. Many of us suspect that the real goal in invading Iraq was to gain access to these oil resources.

What is this new war? It was called The Insurgency at first, advertised as Jihadists – foreigners streaming into Iraq to battle with us, maybe al Qaeda. Then it became clear that there was a reliogious Civil war between the Shia and Sunni sects, with armed militias. They were fighting each other, and neither cared much for us or the Iraqi government. Now, our government is claiming alternatively that the resistance is al Qaeda or supported by Iran. Frankly, whatever we are told by our own government is so colored by their political agenda du jour that it’s not to be believed. So we’re in a dead end fight with unspecified resistance.

The Choice on Iraq

BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN

Two months into the 110th Congress, Washington has never been more bitterly divided over our mission in Iraq. The Senate and House of Representatives are bracing for parliamentary trench warfare–trapped in an escalating dynamic of division and confrontation that will neither resolve the tough challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation against its terrorist enemies around the world.

What is remarkable about this state of affairs in Washington is just how removed it is from what is actually happening in Iraq. There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital.

Congress thus faces a choice in the weeks and months ahead. Will we allow our actions to be driven by the changing conditions on the ground in Iraq–or by the unchanging political and ideological positions long ago staked out in Washington? What ultimately matters more to us: the real fight over there, or the political fight over here?

If we stopped the legislative maneuvering and looked to Baghdad, we would see what the new security strategy actually entails and how dramatically it differs from previous efforts. For the first time in the Iraqi capital, the focus of the U.S. military is not just training indigenous forces or chasing down insurgents, but ensuring basic security–meaning an end, at last, to the large-scale sectarian slaughter and ethnic cleansing that has paralyzed Iraq for the past year.

Tamping down this violence is more than a moral imperative. Al Qaeda’s stated strategy in Iraq has been to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war, precisely because they recognize that it is their best chance to radicalize the country’s politics, derail any hope of democracy in the Middle East, and drive the U.S. to despair and retreat. It also takes advantage of what has been the single greatest American weakness in Iraq: the absence of sufficient troops to protect ordinary Iraqis from violence and terrorism.

Rumsfeld’s finally gone. We’re not listening to Bush, or Cheney, or Rice any more. We’ve heard enough of their ridiculous rhetoric already. Now, we hear some very familiar thinking, but this time from a Democrat who failing to win on the Democratic ticket in the Primary, ran as an independent and won with the Republican vote. He says: "There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital." Note the familiar "spin." It’s got a new name – The Battle of Baghdad. We’ve got a new General [as if that mattered] and Lieberman points out unanimous support for his confirmation as if that means anything. General Petraeus didn’t come up with this plan. The Iraq Study group didn’t come up with this plan. The Congress didn’t come up with this plan. Bush et al did. Lieberman implies that this is a right thinking military plan, rather than Bush/Cheney obstructionism against our leaving. He implies that the Shia-Sunni Civil War has something to do with al Qaeda. Who says so? Where is the evidence? When Cheney says "al Qaeda’s plan…" where is the evidence that al Qaeda has a plan or has control over what the Iraqi Militias do? Without direct evidence to support those assertions, they might as well say the Martians are behind all of the problems in Iraq.

How did any of Lieberman’s assertions in this article come to be anything he knows about? It’s nothing but the Administration Talking Points now coming out of the mouth of a Zionist former Democrat turned Neoconservative. If any of the things he says in this article are true, it’s an accident. It’s not because it’s something he knows. Who cares what al Qaeda thinks about Iraq. I doubt the Iraqis care very much. We’re not fighting al Qaeda in Iraq. Al Qaeda is in Pakistan planning an assault on Afghanistan.

My conclusion? Tha Administration has a new spokesman – Joseph Lieberman, a new ally in their endless justifications for an American occuppied Iraq. From my point of view, a new person to tell to take a hike…

From Jane:

Pach and I just got back from the courtroom.  The jury is having a high old time together.  They were to a one grinning from ear to ear, giggling, having the time of their lives.  Pach noted that none of them looked at Libby, and they did not seem like a group of people who were in disharmony — there wasn’t one who was hanging back, nobody was pissed at somebody who was intractable. They seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the process.

As Pach and I were heading to the elevators, I told him that I suspected that the thing that was happening to the jury is what happened to people on the blogs who got into this story — they got addicted to it.  They’re busy sorting through the details, peeling back layers of the onion, fascinated by the process of mutual discovery as they explore the characters and events that led up to the trial. Pach said in his shrinky expert opinion that this made a lot of sense.

I didn’t get the feeling we’re getting out of here any time soon.

Sitting around waiting for the Libby Trial Jury to finish deliberating gets old fast. It’s pretty easy to get frustrated with the Jurors, particularly if you’re a hopelessly biased, mind-already-made-up, anti-Bush, anti-Cheney type that sees this verdict as the key to further investigation of the Administration’s criminal conduct in invading Iraq. But that aside, it’s also an amazing thing that eleven people off the streets of Washington have the final say in something that matters this much.

Jane Hamsher is borrowing a well worn metaphor – the one Freud used to describe psychoanalysis – the careful work of dissecting a personality one layer at a time. Certainly, Patrick Fitzgerald had done exactly that with a whole bushel of onions, putting this case in a format for the Jury to decide. There are comments here and there that he didn’t play the case right, mostly from lawyers schooled in the art of Jury Trials. I disagree. He went over and over the amassed information and distilled it down to the essential facts. He pursued reporters and government officials, none of whom wanted to testify. He threw one in jail for three months, threatened another, and had to go to court repeatedly to force his witnesses to answer simple questions of fact. When he zeroed in on Scooter Libby, an obvious central figure in the outing of Valerie Plame, he realized he was being told a scripted and false story. So he charged Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice, saying he could peel no further if a central witness was lying. His presentation was clear and to the point. The Jury is taking his case seriously, and poring over the details. Good for them.

There are a few other things to say about onions. They stink. And they make people cry. And this case fits both of those descripters. The crime this Trial revolves around is one of the more monsterous in American History. Our elected government took us to war with a country that was no threat, did not provoke us, and had no part in the things given as reasons for the war. In the process, thousands have died and Iraq is in shambles. We’ve betrayed any sense of decency we had  and watched our form of government undergo unimaginable revisions. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and has given us plenty to cry about.

So this Jury carries the weight of the world, and they don’t even get to decide the real case. They’ve just been given specific questions about a few specific things that happened. Even though it’s hardly possible that they can avoid knowing how big their decision is, they’ve been told to ignore the big picture and stick to the snapshot. So while waiting for them is excruciating, one has to respect the centuries that have gone into creating this way of deciding things. "They were to a one grinning from ear to ear, giggling, having the time of their lives" is as hard to hear as it is wonderfully human…