I found it interesting and thought you all might like to know that to date, Kevin Drum has written close to 70 posts about Valerie Plame, including this one titled NATIONAL SECURITY VS. PETTY POLITICS.
Matthew Yglesias wrote 22 posts on the subject. I am not going to bother counting the posts from the always hyperventilang Atrios and Josh Marshall. Searching Oliver’s site comes up with three google pages linking to Oliver posts about Plame.
I am not even goign to bother with Kos or Mark Kleiman or the other ‘moderates’ out there. My point is that these ‘straight-shooters’ wrote a helluva lot about the Plame affair, most of it gaseous eruptions which turned out to be unfounded. Most of them were written with a tone “That this is just outrageous! This is National Security.” They care nothing abuot national security- they care about elections. Remember this, right before Calpundit latched onto the Plame affair as his new battlefront:
If Josh Marshall and Chris Nelson are to be believed, the shit is about to hit the proverbial fan this week. After two weeks of softening up George Bush’s credibility via African uranium and the ever changing explanations for it, we’re now set for brand new battles on two fronts:
Do I really think all of these guys don’t care about national security and are just opportunistic partisan hacks? I doubt it, but it sure looks like it when they manage with all this huffing and puffing about Valerie Plame, and still, three days after the story broke, have failed to even acknowledge this story:
Congressional Republicans were livid yesterday over a staff memo in which Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats lay out a plan to gain politically from the probe into prewar intelligence.
The memo, first revealed by the Fox News Channel, outlines a plan by Democrats to cooperate with Republicans on the Intelligence Committee to squeeze information out of the Bush administration – and then surprise them next year by calling for a new independent probe while accusing the Republicans of foot-dragging.
On the Senate floor, Intelligence Committee member Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said, “I never saw the kind of blatant partisan politics that has apparently emerged as revealed in this memo.
“It is a disgusting possibility that members of the Senate would try to politicize intelligence, especially at a time of war . . . it is reprehensible.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the top Intelligence Committee Democrat, tried to focus on the leak of the memo, claiming it was taken from a waste bucket or through unauthorized computer access.
“The memo clearly reflects staff frustration with the conduct of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and the difficulties of obtaining information from the administration,” he said.
I guess leaking classified information and launching partisan investigations is ok if you are a Democrat. How the hell else am I supposed to interpret their collective silence? Why can’t I find one mention of this on any of these ‘moderates’ websites?
Kimmitt
Let me see if I understand this correctly — a memo suggesting that the Dems might try to use Republican intransigence as an election issue is comparable to burning spooks as petty revenge?
Or that they might try to time calls for appropriate action so as to gain the most attention and possible success?
Sounds like the Dems were planning on being real assholes to their colleagues across the aisle. Good; it’s about damn time. Bipartisanship is, after all, date rape.
Pauly
Kimmitt, you just validated my hypothesis on what Dems would say in this whole thing:
1) The right is all over it, so I figure I need to give an alternative look at it(or none at all).
2) This is nothing compared to what the other side has done in “insert example here”, get your priorities straight.
3)You’re wrong, I’m right.
You also added the bonus of “we’re finally fighting back!”
It’s the same every time. At least mix it up some.
GFW
John, exactly what classified information was in that memo?
DANEgerus
Specifically the memo confirms the Plame-tactics… business as usual for the (D)’s
Hipocrite
Textbook Glennuendo.
Andrew Lazarus
Can someone point me to the full text of the memo?
John Cole
There is nothing ckassified in the memo- what is there is the strategy (which they are in the midst of), in which they will leak information:
” (Note: we can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.)”
Not to mention this is a clear politicization of the issue, intending to launch an investigation, even before the current one is conducted, and to place it in the middle of a Presidential election.
Kimmitt- No one has proven anyone in the Whie House intentionally leaked the information, so you are right- this case is more serious, as Rockefeller has admitted the note is accurate and we know who is culpable.
smith
i’ve pretty much decided atrios cannot be sid blumenthal or even gene-O lyons, ’cause both of those fellers make enough bucks not to resort to panhandling for laptops and Enya cds.
JKC
John- I don’t like the morally relativistic argument of “they did it too” but I don’t recall any conservative outrage over Karl Rove’s decision that 9/11 could be used to further the political advantage of the GOP.
Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, pot.
tom scott
Andrew, here is a copy of the memo.
HH
So did Karl Rove say he would leak possibly sensitive information to further the GOP politically? Did he say he would time certain sensitive information for best political advantage? We have the quotes from this memo, but we don’t have anything but an assertion on the other side, and a rather weak comparison at that.
John Cole
I hope you guys never have to take the Miller analogy Test.
Question: Husband is to wife as boyfriend is to _____?
JKC: Fruitbasket?!
Andrew Lazarus: Aliens!
Kimmitt: Oil Baron Bush!?
Just kidding…
JKC
Cheap shot, John. Funny, but cheap. : )
John, we’re not going to get anywhere pretending the other side is Evil Incarnate while our side is All That Is Good And Holy. Both sides of the aisle have messed up in the past. I’m sure they’ll continue to do so.
But I think it’s intellectually dishonest to say “Democrats Bad!” while ignoring the Plame scandal, just as it’s wrong to do the opposite.
Dodd
Dean nailed this in my comments earlier today:
“Not quite comparable, but look at the reception that Rumsfeld’s memo got.
Here’s Rumsfeld, basically saying, “Okay, guys, what are we doing right, and more importantly, what are we doing wrong? What can we do to improve?” And how is it characterized? “We’re losing the war, even Rummy admits it!”
So, such a memo, I think, would get a lot more coverage [if it had been written by the GOP], and it would be far nastier. This would not be merely a partisan memo. This would be proof that the GOP puts the troops at risk. Has anyone characterized the memo that way yet?”
Dead on. Kimmit can spin this all he likes – and throw in all the delusional “we’ve been far too nice for far too long” canards he likes – but the truth is that this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Dems don’t give a rat’s ass about national security. For them it’s just another means to score points. As such, they will gladly bastardize what should be the least political committee in Congress and splash its deliberations all over the front page if they think it will get them a 1% boost to their chances of taking the White House back.
Zell Miller (D-GA) called this perniciousness ‘near treason.’ I won’t go that far, but it stinks to high heaven – and the Usual Suspects are totally giving it a pass. Yet, within two weeks, they’ll be schreeching from the rooftops about some outrage of Bush’s they’ve manufactured in their own fevered imaginations and *demanding* that we all denounce it.
Kimmitt
“No one has proven anyone in the Whie House intentionally leaked the information,”
Do you think that it is possible that it could be proven, given Bush’s and Ashcroft’s near-total capacity to block or misdirect the investigation?
Andrew Lazarus
Hmmmm. Democrats want to expand the investigation into our botched intelligence, that’s political. Might embarrass the Pres. Bad. Most Repubs want to restrict the investigation. President is protected. That’s Patriotic. Good.
Like, Blowjobgate wasn’t political. Who could imagine injecting politics into an investigation of High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Your guys’ double standards are a hoot. (If you don’t think the White House was behind the Plame memo, I’d like to introduce you to a friend who thinks O.J. is innocent, except EVEN I don’t have one.)
Ricky
I’m throwing the “it was all about a blowjob” flag, for a 15 yard hyperbole penalty.
Dean
Andrew,
Come off it.
There have been quite a few conservatives (myself included) who have wondered, out loud, what the HELL Tenet is still doing in his job. There WERE intelligence blunders, and they need to be investigated. But the results should NOT be leaked, they should NOT be used as some kind of political grist.
More importantly, it’s YOUR side of the g**d*** fence that everytime an investigation is mentioned, inevitably suggests “And we’ll show that Bush LET IT HAPPEN ON PURPOSE (LIHOP)!” or “Bush knew!” Pardon me if this makes some of us believe that any investigation will automatically become a circus.
David Perron
Ah, so Kimmitt is advancing the argument that Bush and Ashcroft must be impeding the investigation because evidence has not yet come forth that incriminates them. How novel, Kimmitt. Back to Philosophy 101 with you.
cameron
It sounds like the Dems. took a page out of the Reps. playbook.
Andrew
Former Senator Bob Kerrey and a former Vice-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, write in yesterday’s NYP the following:
“The production of a memo by an employee of a Democratic member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is an example of the destructive side of partisan politics. That it probably emerged as a consequence of an increasingly partisan environment in Washington and may have been provoked by equally destructive Republican acts is neither a comfort nor a defensible rationalization.”
As contrasted with that other Vietnam Vet, the one from Mass., Kerrey never once mentioned his service while campaigning back in Nebraska. This was a true hero, giving up a leg in the service of his country.
Andrew Lazarus
Dean, Tenet has his job because he has even more embarrassing to the WH material in reserve.
Do you see a parallel to the Kean Commission, which is also complaining of stalling? And Kean’s a moderate Republican. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the Dems blitzed the GOP this week in his home state of New Jersey.
Dean
Andrew,
So, you’re arguing the Tenet is the next J. Edgar HOOVER? And that he was even kept on by this Admin for some set of black-mailable info?
I think your tinfoil beanie needs adjusting.
And as for Kean, he was governor in the 1980s. He’s been dean of a college for most of the intervening fifteen years. New Jersey’s been trending Democrat for at least the last ten. If you want to argue that that trend is somehow accelerating, I’ll see your NJ and raise you KY.
As for the Kean Commission, frankly, I don’t know much about it, or what their complaints have been.
Even less do I see the relevance between them (notice they’ve apparently NOT chosen to go the Rockefeller route) and the memo in question.
M. Scott Eiland
“Do you think that it is possible that it could be proven, given Bush’s and Ashcroft’s near-total capacity to block or misdirect the investigation?”
Funny how that argument never seemed to hold any weight with the left when potential witnesses in investigations of Clinton-era scandals were taking the Fifth and leaving the country at a rate that would make Al Capone blush.
John Cole
JKC- You state:
“But I think it’s intellectually dishonest to say “Democrats Bad!” while ignoring the Plame scandal, just as it’s wrong to do the opposite.”
I agree- which is why I was asking why all of these Dems are picking and choosing heir opportunities to be outraged. I certainly discussed Plame, and that could be damaging to Bush.
Andrew- “Like, Blowjobgate wasn’t political. Who could imagine injecting politics into an investigation of High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
What the hell does this have to do with the current discussion?
Dean
Wait, now there’s a Plame MEMO??
Andrew L, can you please provide a link for this? What does it say? Is it actually instructing people to blow an agent’s cover? Does it identify her as such?
Tongue Boy
Andrew Lazarus writes:
“Hmmmm. Democrats want to expand the investigation into our botched intelligence, that’s political. Might embarrass the Pres. Bad. Most Repubs want to restrict the investigation. President is protected. That’s Patriotic. Good.”
Here is the memo summary:
“Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public’s concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in the revealing the misleading — if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives — of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration’s dubious motives and methods. (emphasis mine)
This statement makes quite clear that the Democrats are interested in an investigation focused on confirming an already-formed conclusion, that the administration is dishonest. Funny, they didn’t make mention that additional investigational objectives might be focused on something more bi-partisan in nature, like improving intelligence data collection and interpretation and using those improvements to bolster national security. A rather glaring ommission, don’t you think?
Andrew Lazarus
Tongue Boy: I thought we had all agreed, at this point, that the prewar intelligence was extremely faulty. I mean, we were feeding GPS coords to the UN inspectors (while they were still there), and they reported back no weapons. I’d like to know not only HOW things were this messed up, but WHY. If the Repubs can think up some innocent motives and find evidence for them, hey, go ahead. But the Repubs appear to be in stall mode.
[Dean: I mean to say leak instead of memo, very sorry. Fingers outran brain.]
Dean
Andrew,
I’m pretty sure I’ve suggested this to you before:
Read Roberta Wohlstetter’s “Warning and Decision”.
It lays out the many problems with intelligence processing and gathering, focusing on Pearl Harbor. It, and other volumes by folks like Richard Betts, make clear that intel failures are almost inevitable, that you can improve SOME aspects (sometimes), but that the bureaucratic nature of intelligence in a national context works at fundamental cross-purposes to intelligence work.
You want to call it “think up some innocent motives and find evidence for them,” fine. But the reality is that if you’re going to call, essentially, for a witch-hunt, especially some kind of LIHOP search, frankly, it WOULD probably be better to have no investigation at all.
Dodd
Andrew L: Apropos of another thread here at Mr. Cole’s site, I don’t *need* to come up with Leftie Conspisracy Theories that make sense. You produce plenty all by yourself. I am especially amused by the one in this thread that suggests that Tenet only has his job because he has blackmail material on President Bush. Is there *anything* you won’t beleive if it casts Bush in a bad light?!?
Andrew Lazarus
The Dems (and I) are starting from the same starting point: that the intelligence was mostly wrong, and that there was something systemic in our failure. The “Yellowcake” phrase, for instance, seems to have gotten into the SOTU through some very roundabout route, and our own agencies admit that it was a failure in process. But that’s hardly all. Why, for example, were we so convinced we knew where WMD were, when UN inspectors given GPS coordinates from our “intel” came up empty? What sort of hubris was it, that we didn’t go back to see what our sources were and re-evaluate their reliability? (I think we’ll find they were almost all defectors provided by Ahmed Chalabi, for a price.)
As far as the memo itself, it was crass. It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of a security leak, and it doesn’t compromise the security of the United States. It’s also an attempt to thwart a possible stall and cover-up by the Republicans. What sort of investigation of Whitewater do you think we would have had if instead of a special prosecutor, we had a bipartisam committee with Teddy Kennedy as the chairman? Do you think the Republicans would be a little worried that the investigation would be artificially constrained?
The flak over this memo is an attempt to distract attention from the lack of seriousness with which our prewar errors are being investigated. Perhaps, indeed, this is because they were deliberate and politically motivated!
The Administration’s completely unprecedented policy of replying only for information requests from Republicans terrifies me: sure, the GOP has all branches of the govt for now, but this is a step towards a one-party state in the worst sense of the word.
Prof. Michael Froomkin (who, incidentally, grew up on the same street as Our Hero and Brad DeLong) writes
and also, trenchantly, that the War on Terror is going so badly it has been compromised by a single memo. Froomkin on the new policy to take questions from only the sympathetic side of the aisle here.
Kimmitt
Now that I’ve read the memo, this is fucking bullshit.
The memo is clear — the Dems planned to cooperate with the Republicans until the inevitable stonewalling started, then planned to release the fact that the Republicans started stonewalling at a point which would bring maximum publicity.
The memo describes how Democrats planned to play nice and go by the rules until the Republican Party began playing their usual political football with the lives of this nation’s citizens, then planned to go to the American public with the best possible evidence of Republican malfeasance.
I retract all previous defenses of this suggested course of action — it requires no defense whatsoever. These are the actions of principled opposition lawmakers in a time of a corrupt and self-serving Administration.
Vote Republican if you have to, but don’t do it because the Democrats care enough about national security to call this Administration on its ongoing failures and contempt for public oversight.
John Cole
Kimmitt- Did you read the same memo as everyone else?
Andrew Lazarus
Calpundit on the memo (very intelligently too).
John Cole
YEah- that sure is intelligent. He reads a Democrat strategy piece and from it determines that Republicans are trying to block an investigation.
Deep thinking indeed.
Kimmitt
One does not need to read a strategy memo to determine that Republicans are planning to block investigations into the terrorist attacks. The newspaper suffices.
John Cole
John Cole is so unbelievably smart!!! I rock!!!
Andrew Lazarus
Former Rep Gov Thomas Kean is getting antsy. Is it just barely conceivable that the Bushies have a lot to hide?
David Perron
The Bushies must have something to hide, because the Dems haven’t gotten the dirt yet. This, by Kimmitt’s own logic.
Yes, folks, the only reason impeachment hearings haven’t yet begun is that Bush is busily obstructing. Remember, you heard it here first.
Kimmitt
The facts:
1) Somebody burned Valerie Plame.
2) We don’t know who, but someone was so pissed about it they leaked this information to the Washington Post.
3) It may have been merely malfeasant, rather than a petty act of revenge.
4) The Bush Administration sat on this for months, then refracted all evidence through the Counsel’s office before turning it over to an investigation headed by an appointee who is an ideological ally.
There are two interpretations:
A) There is no there there. The WaPo exaggerated, or somebody really did screw up, but it was a genuine error; they meant to smear Wilson but not to do damage to US intelligence assets. The Bush Administration is in damage control mode because it wishes to retain the counsel of the Burner Of The Plame.
B) Somebody (or a couple somebodies) burned Valerie Plame as an act of petty revenge, and the leadership was pretty clear on who did it within, at maximum, a week or two. A couple people are liable for felony convictions, and several are “after-the-fact” accessories. Any arrests or convictions mean the end of this Administration’s capacity to function as anything other than a caretaker for the remainder of the term, and Bush may or may not be the Republican nominee in ’04.
Both of these interpretations are reasonably consistent with the facts. I find the second one more compelling, but either of them gives the Administration both the power and the motive to impede the investigation.
David Perron
So, the fact that the only two explanations you can come up with point to obstruction is supposed to be convincing? I can’t say I’m surprised.
Here’s what I think: I think there’s any number of explanations, and you have cherry-picked (as you are apt to do, and have as much as admitted a penchant for) the ones that cast the administration in the worst possible light.
This is a reach, Kimmitt, and not a logically defensible one. It’d only work if those were the only possible scenarios.
JKC
“It’d only work if those were the only possible scenarios.”
And the other scenarios are, David? (Extra points given for plausibility.)
David Perron
Since all I have to do is come up with one:
C) Someone burned Plame, and the administration has given up any attempt to self-investigate and has asked Justice to do so.
Remember, your disbelief doesn’t constitute an actual argument. C is actually just about all we know about what happened, with a little benefit of a doubt thrown in. Have at it.
Kimmitt
How is C different from A?
David Perron
A asserts that it was accidental, or that it didn’t happen at all. C doesn’t make any assumptions (which is pretty much what ALL conjecture regarding Plame is based on) about whether there was intent or not. A asserts that Bush is trying to cover up or at least do some tactical planning WRT damage control; C doesn’t. A asserts that Bush wants to retain the Plame-burner; C doesn’t.
Other than those huge differences, they’re identical.
Kimmitt
Right, but doesn’t C ignore Fact 4? Or is that in dispute?
David Perron
Oh, you assert that everything in Item 4 is fact? Cite, please?
IOW, I’m thinking you’ve got evidence that absolutely nothing was done in this regard; the administration knew that a crime had been committed, yet deliberately did nothing. If you’ve got fact to support that a) they knew it was a crime, and b) they did nothing at all, then please provide.
The whole point about the investigation being conducted by an appointee is just nonsense. Or, rather, it doesn’t invalidate any theory of a straight-shooting Bush who wants an untainted investigation conducted by an outside agency.
And, once again, the entire affair is accompanied by such a dearth of facts that I could come up with any number of theories counter to yours that fit what is known. You, though, have formed your conclusion before much in the way of fact has come along to buttress it.