News Intelligence Analysis
From the American Prospect OnLine Edition
TAPPED
On Scooter Libby and His White
House Friends
David Addington to Replace
Libby
Continuous commentary from
The American Prospect Online.
[Yurica Report Editor's Note: Sometimes a 'conversation' is more than a conversation. Real insight and information make these comments worth reading.]
October 28, 2005
THE LAME DUCKS. I can't help but notice that more and more administration
officials are having problems with lameness that are more than
metaphorical. Since having surgery to remove aneurysms behind
his knees, Vice President Dick Cheney has been photographed on
crutches. His former aide Scooter Libby is currently on crutches,
on account of what appears to be an injured foot. And the president
himself gave up running some time ago on account of having quite
literally gone weak in the knees. Three's a trend, right? What's
going on here? Paging Robin Givhan...
--Garance Franke-Ruta
Posted at 05:08 PM
LIBBY'S REPLACEMENT. Via MyDD, I see The New York Daily News is reporting that attorney David Addington will be replacing Scooter Libby as the vice president's chief of staff. Who is Addington? Dubbed one of the president's "torture lawyers" by Slate, Addington was profiled by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post just over a year ago:
Cheney has tried to increase executive power with a series of bold actions -- some so audacious that even conservatives on the Supreme Court sympathetic to Cheney's view have rejected them as overreaching. The vice president's point man in this is longtime aide David Addington, who serves as Cheney's top lawyer.
Where there has been controversy over the past four years, there has often been Addington. He was a principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects. He was a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts.Addington also led the fight with Congress and environmentalists over access to information about corporations that advised the White House on energy policy. He was instrumental in the series of fights with the Sept. 11 commission and its requests for information. And he was a main backer of the nomination of Pentagon lawyer William J. Haynes II for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Haynes's confirmation has been a source of huge friction on Capitol Hill.
Colleagues say Addington stands out for his devotion to secrecy in an administration noted for its confidentiality. He declined to be interviewed or photographed for this article, and he did not respond to a list of specific points made in the article...
Even in a White House known for its dedication to conservative philosophy, Addington is known as an ideologue, an adherent of an obscure philosophy called the unitary executive theory that favors an extraordinarily powerful president.
The unitary executive notion can be found in the torture memo. "In light of the president's complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority in these areas," the memo said. Prohibitions on torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority. . . . Congress may no more regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield." The same would go for "federal officials acting pursuant to the president's constitutional authority."
"The Framers understood the [commander in chief] clause as investing the president with the fullest range of power," the memo said, including "the conduct of warfare and the defense of the nation unless expressly assigned in the Constitution to Congress." That "sweeping grant" of power, it continued, is given because "national security decisions require the unity in purpose and energy in action that characterize the presidency rather than Congress."
On the job, colleagues describe Addington as hard-edged and a bureaucratic infighter who frequently clashes with others, particularly the National Security Council's top lawyer, John Bellinger. Officials say disputes between Addington and Jack Goldsmith, head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, led Goldsmith to resign after eight months in the job; Addington had sought to persuade OLC to take a more permissive line on torture.
Looks like just the sort of uncontroversial fellow to ensure
things go smoothly for the vice president in the years to come.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
Posted at 04:51 PM
THE ROAD AHEAD. Today's indictment is really just the beginning
of a very intensive process, namely, the trial and judgement
phase of prosecution. With Scooter Libby facing up to 50 years
in prison on what appear to be solidly documented charges, that
means there will have to be extensive depositions, exhibits,
and witness testimony. The Associated Press notes that "Any
trial would shine a spotlight on the secret deliberations of
Bush and his team as they built the case for war against Iraq."
It may do more than that. Given that journalists Matt Cooper,
Tim Russert, and Judy Miller were all witnesses whose testimony
was central to the charging documents, the question now is: Will
they have to testify again before a judge or jury, possibly even
in open court? Or will their grand jury testimony be made public?
Sam asks where Russert is and why he has been silent so far. I'd cut the man some slack. Everyone mentioned in the indictment will need to be silent for a few hours or days until they sort out what likely future legal involvement in this case they may have to have.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
Posted at 04:28 PM
TIMMY? Certainly Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, and Pat Buchanan
are all doing a fine job in their MSNBC post-game analysis belittling
the significance of the charges and giving cover to Scooter Libby.
(Dan Abrams, for the brief time he was on, was doing the Lord's
work attempting to explain basic elements of the law to Matthews.)
But where exactly is NBC's Washington bureau chief Tim Russert?
Why isn't he on MSNBC offering his personal take on what it feels
like to hear that a top White House official attempted to pin
the revelation of Wilson's identity on him before the grand jury
(which certainly seems to be a clear lie)? It's simply bizarre
that Russert isn't appearing right now and discussing this. All
indications are that he was pretty clearly wronged here. Why
the silence?
UPDATE: Reader JM writes in:
Because the indictment makes clear that Russert IS THE MAIN
WITNESS IN THE TRIAL. If he says a lot on TV he is just setting
himself up for a horrific cross-examination experience. Every
time he tells the story, the words will be different, and will
set up a line of cross-examination. I'm sure both Fitgerald and
his own lawyer have told him to say as little as possible.
--Sam Rosenfeld
Posted at 03:55 PM
MILLER REVISITED. One thing that's now clear is that everyone
who claimed, asserted, or assumed that Judith Miller went to
jail to protect journalists' right to preserve the anonymity
of their sources was mistaken. Miller herself was lying. Bill
Keller and Arthur Sulzberger may well have simply been wrong
due to negligence on their own part. Be that as it may, long
before Miller got out of jail Scooter Libby had already outed
himself as her source. He did this in one or the other of his
two interviews with the FBI on either October 13 or November
26 of 2003 when he stated, falsely, that he didn't discuss Valerie
Plame in conversations with Miller. If Miller hadn't been subpoenaed,
her source would have been revealed. If the Supreme Court had
ruled in her favor, her source would have been revealed. If Miller
had refused to testify, her source would have been revealed.
The anonymity of sources, in short, had nothing to do with it.
Miller was, in fact, protecting Libby. But she was protecting him from a perjury charge, not protecting his anonymity. I'm not familiar with any construal of journalistic evidence wherein a reporter has an obligation to help a source who's already identified himself as a source cover up criminal conduct. The entire back-and-forth about whether or not Libby's waivers were or were not uncoerced was a red herring. Insofar as Libby didn't want Miller to testify, that was because he wanted her to cover for his perjury. He had long ago identified himself.
--Matthew Yglesias
Posted at 03:52 PM
LIBBY (ALMOST CERTAINLY) KNEW. One of the big talking points
out there recently has been that though someone might go down
for perjury or obstruction of justice, there was no underlying
crime here. That theory is based on the idea that (a) there was
no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act because
the culpable parties didn't know Valerie Plame was covert, and
(b) the Espionage Act isn't a real law. Point (b) has never made
any sense. Point (a) looks very weak in light of this from the
indictment:
Shortly after publication of the article in The New Republic,
LIBBY spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed
the article. That official asked LIBBY whether information about
Wilson’s trip could be shared with the press to rebut the
allegations that the Vice President had sent Wilson. LIBBY responded
that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that
information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter
on a non-secure telephone line.
Now I'll happily concede that "LIBBY responded that there
would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information
publicly" isn't going to reach the "beyond reasonable
doubt" burden of proof. But it seems pretty clear that it
means that Libby did, indeed, know Wilson was covert. This gets
us to the point of the story where lying under oath is wrong
and punishable by law. Obviously, the only way to know what happened
here for sure would be for the relevant people to speak truthfully
to investigators. Since the relevant people don't seem to want
to do that, it's all but impossible to prove the underlying offense.
If Scooter wants to be a stand-up guy, he can always just plead
guilty, take his lumps, and try and explain what was really going
on here.
--Matthew Yglesias
Posted at 02:04 PM
WHO MIGHT THAT BE? Page four of the indictment claims that Scooter
Libby of asked a certain “Undersecretary of State”
for information about the unnamed ambassador’s trip to Niger:
On or about May 29, 2003, in the White House, LIBBY asked an
Under Secretary of State (“Under Secretary”) for information
concerning the unnamed ambassadors travel to Niger to investigate
claims about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium yellowcake. The
Under Secretary thereafter directed the State Departments Bureau
of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report concerning the
ambassador and his trip. The Under Secretary provided LIBBY with
interim oral reports in late May and early June 2003, and advised
LIBBY that Wilson was the former ambassador who took the trip.
Hmm, so an undersecretary of State told Libby who Joe Wilson
was only a few days after Libby asked. I wonder who that might
have been? If this former undersecretary is who I think it is,
his chief of staff would certainly have been in a position to
know about Wilson’s trip to Niger. His chief of staff, after
all, had worked in the same CIA bureau as Valerie Plame.
--Mark Leon Goldberg
Posted at 01:53 PM
THE NATURE OF THE CASE. The indictment (PDF) of I. Lewis Libby
lays out just what went down during the spring and summer of
2003 between Libby, the vice president, and a number of reporters.
The biggest news is that the real pushback against Wilson was
sparked not just by Nick Kristof's New York Times op-ed and Walter
Pincus' dogged reporting, but by an anonymous quote in The New
Republic, in the article "The Selling of the Iraq War: The
First Casualty" by John Judis and Spencer Ackerman. To avoid
the PDF and read the backstory, click through... MORE...
Posted at 01:47 PM
ISN'T IT IRONIC? Apropos of Matt's post, Paul Begala on CNN just
told Wolf Blitzer: “So now it looks like there are going
to go after Joe Wilson, which is what got them in trouble in
the first place.”
-- Mark Leon Goldberg
Posted at 01:39 PM
SLIME AND DEFEND ... THE WRONG GUY. Watching CNN it's obvious
that the conservative strategy on these indictments is the same
old playbook: Slime and defend. Except they can't slime Patrick
Fitzgerald, so instead they're going to attack ... Joe Wilson.
But why? Wilson has literally nothing to do with the allegations
being made here. Scooter Libby said some things under oath to
the grand jury. Some of those things were false. Those are crimes.
In addition, there's the issue of why Libby lied. Maybe he lied
in order to cover-up violations on his part of the Intelligence
Identities Protection Act. Maybe he lied in order to cover up
a conspiracy involving Dick Cheney or Karl Rove. We can't tell
exactly what other crimes may or may not have been committed
precisely because a witness at the center of things has been
lying under oath. These are the issues. Perhaps you don't think
they're serious ones. But things Wilson said about his trip to
Niger just have nothing to do with it.
--Matthew Yglesias
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