The Common Ills

The Js: Jane (Mayer), Jude (Iddybud) and Judith (Miller)

I'm not seeing Jane Mayer's piece up at The New Yorker. However, they do have a "Q. & A.: In Gitmo" with Mayer conducted by Amy Davidson:

Your article this week is titled "The Experiment," and you quote a lawyer for a detainee who, after describing alleged abuses, says, "The whole place appears to be one giant human experiment." What kind of experiment does he mean?

The chief focus of the U.S. military detention center in Guantánamo Bay is to gain "actionable intelligence" by interrogating the detainees. Everything there is geared towards this end. The reason that some critics have called it a giant psychological experiment is that U.S. military officials have deployed Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, or BSCTS, to help devise and implement interrogation strategies--a melding of psychology and military intelligence. The psychologists and psychiatrists who work in these bscts apparently develop individually tailored psychological approaches aimed at creating rapport with--or, if necessary, breaking the resistance of--each detainee. The techniques they have employed, I was told, follow very closely the techniques studied and perfected by behavioral scientists working in a different capacity for the military since the Cold War.

You discuss the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program, known by its acronym, SERE. What is SERE, and how is it related to the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo?

Before 9/11, many of these behavioral scientists were affiliated with sere schools, where they used their knowledge to train U.S. soldiers how to resist coercive interrogations. But since 9/11, several sources told me, these same behavioral scientists began to "reverse engineer" the process. Instead of teaching resistance, they used their skills to help overcome resistance in U.S.-held detainees.
The SERE program was designed to inoculate soldiers against the psychological coercion, abuse, and torture that they might be subjected to if they were captured. It was created after the Korean War, during which Americans were convinced that U.S. soldiers who were captured by the enemy would be "brainwashed" into giving up secrets. The school was expanded to include every branch of the service after the Vietnam War, when worries centered more on whether returning soldiers had been traumatized by their experiences. The curriculum was devised in part by behavioral scientists conversant in the sorts of nightmarish treatment that P.O.W.s have had to endure. The theory was that soldiers could be trained to resist such coercion if they had practice enduring it. So they went through a course of simulated abuse--all carefully calibrated and monitored to ensure that no U.S. soldier was actually hurt. Much of the curriculum is classified, but sources described some of the techniques to me. They include a number of methods aimed at increasing the soldiers' stress levels to approximate acute anxiety. The Navy's course actually has included a form of physical torture, waterboarding, while most of the courses mostly use less brutal psychological methods, such as sleep deprivation, hunger, hooding, exposure to temperature extremes, noxious noise, and gambits involving religion, flags, and sex.

What is a doctor’s obligation to a prisoner, a suspected terrorist, being held by his government?

A doctor's first obligation is always, as the Hippocratic Oath puts it, to "do no harm." But beyond that, there is a serious argument underway within the professional medical and psychological societies about whether medical personnel can and should participate in supporting interrogations. Doctors and psychologists, obviously, are citizens too, and when they're in the military, they are often spoken of as having dual loyalties--to their patients and to their country. There seems to be a consensus, however, that while medical personnel may play non-treating roles in some circumstances, they should not take part in coercive, abusive, or torturous treatment of prisoners. This violates the World Medical Association's 1975 protocol, and violates pretty much every other national and international standard. Nor can scientists participate in experimenting on human subjects without their informed consent, even for national-security reasons. It is this last bit that the Pentagon has reinterpreted. It has allowed non-treating medical personnel to assist in interrogations, and treating medical personnel to violate patient confidentiality if national security is at stake. The Pentagon argues that this is no different than policies inside U.S. prisons. But prisoners there, unlike those in Guantánamo, are covered by U.S. laws banning coercive interrogations.

Please note that here's what's planned for Thursday's Democracy Now!:

Thurs, July 7:
* A conversation with New York Times Op-Ed columnist Bob Herbert about his
new book, "Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream."
* Part II of our conversation with reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine about her article "The Gitmo Experiment" which reveals how methods developed by the U.S. Military for withstanding torture are being used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

And from today's Democracy Now!, we'll do an excerpt from "The Gitmo Experiment: How Methods Developed by the U.S. Military For Withstanding Torture are Being Used Against Detainees at Guantanamo Bay:"

JANE MAYER: Well, what sources told me was that the program is basically reverse engineered by some of the behavioral scientists that's had worked in it. And what they did was instead of trying to help soldiers to resist torture and torment should they ever been taken captive, the same experts in behavioral science started advising our interrogators who were holding terror suspects captive, and some of the same techniques that we feared would ever be used on our people started being used by us on people in our own custody.
To me it was just fascinating in that for a long time I had been wondering why is it the same really strange sort of allegations of abuse are coming up in places as disparate as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan and in places where undisclosed locations where the C.I.A. is holding people, and every investigation by the government of itself has found that, you know, there is no system here, they’ve said that there’s -- abuse is just sort of an aberration, but I think what I found in this piece is there is actually a curriculum.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the curriculum.
JANE MAYER: It's bizarre to many of us who are not part of the military, I think. It’s a curriculum that is designed to create maximum stress and anxiety. They talk about acute anxiety. The idea is that if we can put our own people through something almost as bad as what they might have to go through if they were taken captive, they will inoculate themselves. It would be like practicing going off a high dive. So under very, very carefully monitored circumstances, soldiers in danger of being taken captive are put through this classified program in which they -- they're hooded, they’re bound, they're deprived of sleep, they’re exposed to extremes of temperature, they’re held in tiny little cells, they are starved to some extent. They are sometimes water-boarded which is a form of torture in which you're bound to a board and they pour water on your face so that you can’t breathe; you have the sense that you’re going to die of asphyxiation.

Now, we'll note Jude's "G8 Summit: Bush vs. Blair" that Maria e-mailed to highlight this morning:

"I really don't view our relationship as one of quid pro quo," George W. Bush told Britain's ITV1 television in an interview about the G8 Summit, the agenda of "climate change," and the obvious talk about the U.S. "owing" Tony Blair, seeing that Britain so willingly joined the Iraq War effort. "If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is 'no'. The Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy," said Bush.
Tony Blair's diplomatic reputation is on the line, and will be measured by how much Blair can get Bush to support bold initiatives on Africa and climate change. On the issue of climate change, diplomats say the Kyoto Protocol (intended to curb greenhouse gas emissions) will not even rate a mention in the summit’s final communiqué because Bush rejects the treaty as 'fundamentally flawed'.

(Jude is of course the strong voice of Iddybud. And Jude's full name is Jude Nagurney Camwell. We usually refer to her as "Jude" only because that's all members need. In fact, if we said "Jude Nagurney Camwell has an entry today . . ." They might react with, "Why are we being so formal about Jude? Do you call your sister by her first and last names?")

Now we're going to deal with Judith Miller. (Apologies to Jude. There's no correlation between the two and none implied, I'm going through the e-mails.) Ten visitors write about something online claiming that Miller and Matt Cooper have different sources.

Those are "thoughts." They are "opinions." Unless whomever wrote it has insider information. Miller, the Times and her lawyers' (including Floyd Abrams) defense has not changed. And it has never been, "Oh, you signed a waiver so I can talk!" Quite the contrary, the defense has been that a waiver that people were ordered to sign is meaningless and that a source is a source. (Of course, of course. Hey, the Timid's done a very poor job arguing the case to their readers. A little Dr. Seus might be in order. Although, actually, that was more Mr. Ed than Dr. Seus.)

The argument they have made is that a waiver may or may not be signed under duress. They have made the argument that a source may or may not give permission under duress. The argument Miller, the Times and her attornies have made is that a source is protected. If the source wants to step forward, that's her/his business. But Miller is not providing any details on a source.

Someone may have additional information that's not public record, but if they're going by the public record, there's been no indication of who is or isn't Miller's source or sources because her stance has consistently been, "I'm not talking."

Cooper's coming forward but Miller's not does not lead to a conclusion (without additional, insider information) that they must have different sources. It may demonstrate a lack of understanding as to what made up each individual's defense (if someone doesn't have insider information).

Now granted, Cooper's defense line changed a bit when the magazine he works for (Time) caved. But that really doesn't matter. Cooper had testified already against Scooter Libby. Miller hasn't talked.

Others are e-mailing because someone's saying that Miller's stance must mean there are two different sources. Miller's stance means Miller's not talking.

As for two different sources, that's been public record for almost a week now. Rove was outed on Friday. He was the second one. Back in 2004, Cooper had spoken of Scooter Libby. That's public record.

Stepping to a different question (from George) wondering if the friend I have who is a friend of Miller's made an appeal for me to go "nice on Judy," no, she didn't. This is the position that I've had all along. You can go back through the entries and you'll see that I've stated I don't mind seeing her squirm but she doesn't need to go to jail. That's my opinion. I have presented other sides such as when we noted Democracy Now!'s discussion with Rick MacArthur and Jim Naureckas. I have offered the quandry that some journalists feel Miller's defense has put them in. But, for the record, this has always been my position and there was no appeal made to me by a mutual friend to change my position. (I don't know Miller, by the way.)

I understand Naureckas point of view (whistleblowers are whistleblowers -- people informing for the public good) and I respect it. I disagree with it. Go back to the December 31st entry on Robert Novak and I expressed my opinion then (and possibly before) that Miller shouldn't go to jail. We have presented other opinions. I respect those other opinions. There's one opinion that hasn't been expressed but a member e-mailed on it. Since they didn't give permission to be quoted, I'll summarize it: The 'save Miller' for this instance could create a halo effect around her that will lead to a shutting down of discussion of her WMD and other stories. I understand that fear and respect it.

But I have no control over what someone else chooses to do. (Which includes members who have taken the position that Miller needs to go to jail.) I certainly won't table my criticism of Miller (the offer was made by The Third Estate Sunday Review, Rebecca,Bettyand myself if they'd seriously address the Downing St. Memo, that didn't happen).

People are entitled to their opinions. That means people who feel as I do, people who disagree and people (like Rebecca) who are indifferent to the matter. That also includes someone's opinion that Cooper caving (no surprise when Time won't back him -- no surprise that Time caved) and Miller's refusal to means that they spoke to different people. That's an opinion.

There's no basis for it in Miller's defense but the person/persons is/are entitled to their opinion.
As for two sources, again, Cooper rolled over on Scoots a long time ago. This is public knowledge. (The Washington Post reported it in 2004.) Miller has refused to testify on any source.

I'm not a fan of Miller's reporting, neither is the community. I'm also aware that not everyone in the community feels as I do that Miller shouldn't go to jail. For those reasons I didn't provide a link to Miller's website. But I will do so now because anyone thinking that Miller's actions today mean that she and Cooper have different information needs to bone up on the arguments that Miller and her legal team have made.

Note The Sonoma Index Tribune's editorial (which is displayed on Miller's site):

As this editorial was being written, the owners of Time magazine announced that they would turn over Cooper's notes to the federal prosecutor. It may make the holdout by Miller moot.

"It may make the holdout by Miller moot." The paper's going by what is known. And by what is known, Miller's legal defense and statements to the press, her holdout was based on the principle, that waiver or not, Miller wasn't forking over any information.

Miller and Cooper may have different sources. They may have the same. The events today in court do not demonstrate that they have different sources so someone's going by their opinion (and possibly insider information) but they are not going by the public record. And for anyone to ask if there could be two sources suggests that they've slept through this case since Rove has been identified by the press and since Scoots was long ago identified by Matthew Cooper. (And we've noted that here.)

If people are making the mistakes that the e-mails suggest that they are making, blame it on the Times for doing such a poor job of conveying the case.

Go to Miller's site and you'll find articles from the Times on the case (ones that we've noted here). From a Liptak article:

Mr. Fitzgerald quoted at length from news accounts about Time's decision to demonstrate that journalists and others are not of one mind about the obligation of news organizations and reporters to obey final court orders concerning their confidential sources. He also quoted from opinion columns, essays and a Los Angeles Times editorial suggesting that reporters should not take absolutist positions.

and this:

"She has to keep a cool head," he said. "It isn't going to last forever, and it's an important position to take. You have to do what you believe is right, what your conscience tells you to do, what is in the traditions of the profession and hope that the federal authorities, like the states, will recognize that we deserve some protection."

Note that those are from different articles posted at Miller's site. Go there, I'm in no mood to recap what we've gone over (and over) already. I will note that, to my surprise, Miller has posted Scott Shane's article in full (the only one I'm seeing posted in full) and it's on Valerie Plame and not about Miller. It's a strong article and good for Miller for posting it. She hasn't run from the issues of the case of late. It's the Times that has failed to convey what's at stake. But what's at stake to Miller is very clear from this article (and we pull quoted this section when it ran in the Times):

In her papers, Ms. Miller argued that it was pointless to imprison her because she will never talk. She provided Judge Hogan with letters from soldiers with whom she was embedded during the war in Iraq attesting to that.

People may be confusing Cooper's stance with Miller's. They are not the same stance. They did not have the same attornies. Their publications took different routes (Time caved, no surprise; the New York Times stood up -- to their credit, my opinion). Miller has never said, "If my source will give me permission, I will talk!" She has stuck to the First Amendment principle and the fact that no one's going to speak to a journalist if they don't feel they have confidentiality. That's been her legal argument from the start.

I don't mean to be rude to the visitors, but it's really not my job to spoonfeed you. I'm sorry you didn't keep up with the case. That's not really my problem or the problem of members of this community. Any member who thinks Miller should go to jail could still talk you through what her defense is because we've paid attention. That's why Miller's spoken of Shield Laws.
Members aren't confused by this. They may think Miller needs to go to jail or they may not, but they understand her legal position.

I can't comment on the commentary or commentaries because no one included a link. One e-mailer noted a first name. It wasn't "Laura" but let's say it was "Laura." Okay, so I'm going to google "laura" and somewhere in all the pages of results find whatever some visitors are e-mailing about? No.

More importantly, the person or persons may have insider information. I have no information on who outed Valerie Plame. I'm going by what's in the public record. The public record on Miller's defense has been that you do not rat out your source regardless of whether your source is a rat or not. (Okay, I added the last part -- beginning with "regardless"). She's not talking.
That's her position. And I hope she sticks with it. She needs to brave now more than before. There's no Matthew Cooper standing next to her now. She's on her own. And if she caves (there's talk she may now face five years), it will be that much harder for any other reporter to take a stand like Miller has. (It's a brave stand. It's a stand for a free press. My opinion.)

This isn't about Miller in terms of her legal defense (or in terms of how I see it), it's about a free press. I understand the other arguments and I respect them. But this is now will Miller back down in the face of a lenthy sentence or will she stand?

Do most people even know where this is coming from? Judy Garland, if you can believe it. She was fired from one of the networks (CBS, I think). A reporter wrote a network exec's opinion of Garland (that she was concerned about her weight, if I'm remembering correctly). Garland sued. The reporter refused to testify. Marie Torre was her name and she worked for the New York Herald Tribune (which some would argue exists today as the International Herald Tribune -- I wouldn't make that argument). Torre refused to back down.

Hold on. From Carlowe University:

Founded in 1997, the Marie Torre Memorial Lecture Series and Award was established to commemorate Marie Torre, a pioneer and role model for women in the field of communications, and to honor individuals who are exemplars of ethical and professional leadership. Previous awardees include Mike Wallace (1997) Carol Marin (1998) and Thalia Assuras (2001).

Okay, look at this from The Goddess Cafe:

"I think it's very important to have a free flow of information between source and reporter."
Torre was probably the first woman journalist to go to jail for refusing to reveal a news source. She always stood by her principles, and fought for the rights of journalists to protect where their information came from.
[. . .]
Torre later became associate editor for the New York Herald Tribune, and wrote a syndicated column in addition to general reporting and reviewing. In 1959, a television executive told her that he thought a famous actress didn't want to do a TV special because she thought she was toofat. Torre quoted him in her column, but didn't reveal his name because she knew he could lose his job for saying something like that. The actress sued the paper, and the courts demanded that Torre tell them the executive's name. She refused, and her paper supported her, since many other states at that time had laws protecting journalists. She was put in jail for 10 days, but never revealed her source.

The actress was Judy Garland. I believe the year's wrong (I could be the one that's wrong). I'm thinking it's 1957. (The case drug on for years.) Hold on. When in doubt, pick up the phone. The year is 1957. As with Miller's case, the Supreme Court refused to hear it (and let the second circuit's decision stand). Torre refused to identify her source to anyone (other than her editor).
And to take it back to Miller, after the initial time was served, if the judge had continued to push the issue, the fear was the public would see it as persecution of Torre.

The same principles are at stake with Miller. The case before involved a network exec calling Judy Garland "terribly fat" (according to the friend I phoned). A celebrity being called overweight (true or not) might not seem like the basis for a First Amendment case. But people don't get to say, "Okay, when I take my stand for the First Amendment, I'll do it on this issue."
Miller's taken her stand. I hope she sticks to it. Her stance is that it's not about her. It's about journalistic responsibilities and ethics.

This isn't the best case to fight it on (and I've noted that here) but you don't get to pick when you'll stand up. You either do or you don't. Miller's elected to stand up here. More power to her. Though the issue isn't about her, she is the one who'll have to do time if sentenced. So it's a brave stand. It's not the best case to take that stand on, the climate in the country is not favorable to reporters. (Nor is it favorable to her personally.) But she's staked out her ground (which I hope she sticks to) and she's fighting it on the grounds of a free press.

Members don't have to agree with me on this (or anything) and many don't. But I can support her cause and get behind it without the need to hail Miller as the best reporter in the world. I wouldn't call her a hero but her stance may be heroic because, as argued, it goes beyond her.

If Fitzgerald has Cooper's notes and, presumably, testimony from Novak (as well as Tim Russert and others) he doesn't need Miller to make a case. If he thinks it goes high up, he can use what is known to attempt to get someone fingered to roll over on a higher up. Torre stuck to her guns and let's hope Miller does as well. I think it was on Democracy Now! that Rick MacArthur spoke of a slippery slope. And people should think about that. They may still feel Miller needs to testify (and we've gone over the reasons why that would be the case here).

If you're forced to give up your source because the prosecutor deems your source not worthy of confidentiality, well the reality is no prosecutor's ever going to say, "Your honor, the reporter needs to come forward because I need the information but I will admit that the source has a right to confidentiality." MacArther's slippery slope is something we need to be aware of before we dismiss it.

From Democracy Now!'s "Protecting Whistleblowers or Shielding Government Wrongdoing? Supreme Court on Journalists and Anonymous Sources:"

RICK MacARTHUR: Well, I understand Jim's point and, of course, we live in a country where we used to pride ourselves, at least, in the notion that nobody was above the law. So, the -- part of me is sympathetic to what he's saying, I mean, because, of course, you don't want reporters to consider themselves, broadly speaking, above the law. But I'm also very mindful of precedence: the Morrison case during the Reagan administration, and so on, where the government sees an opportunity to chill leakers, and that the overall ambition of the Bush administration and of the Justice Department is to scare the hell out of the bureaucracy. It's to scare the hell out of the civil service so that they don't leak and so that reporters – and to discourage reporters from taking leaks or from taking information from confidential sources, because any time you get into one of these confidential source cases, you have to assume that the intimidation is not just aimed at the reporters, it's aimed the at civil service. It's aimed at the bureaucrats who might consider leaking in the future. And if Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper actually do time for this, it sends a message to the whole bureaucracy, to the whole federal civil service, similar to the leak of the Valerie Plame -- Valerie Plame's identity, saying don't leak, and if you do leak, the reporters who you leak to may be punished, and next time, maybe the reporters won't be so principled, and they'll name you. So, I'm very, very concerned as a journalist. And I understand this is a slippery slope. It's tricky. But overall, I think Judith Miller, who is a disgrace as a reporter, a real disgrace, and Matthew Cooper, who I don't know anything about, as a matter of principle they need to be defended.

From the same report:

RICK MacARTHUR: Well, Joe Wilson, I think that's a pretty good statement, because at least he expresses some sympathy for the freedom of the press aspect of this, the journalists' side of this, but there again, you see, I'm pretty radical on this, I -- if it were Novak under the gun, I would defend him just the same as -- as hateful as he is, I would defend him just as sincerely as I would -- as I defend Judith Miller as a matter of principle, because in a national security state of the sort we live in, if leaks get shut down, if this kind of leak gets shut down, by the bad guys, as well as by the good guys, the country becomes significantly less democratic. And less -- we have less and less recourse to the press as a balancing factor in what's becoming more and more a one-sided argument in favor of national security.
So, whatever the -- it's a little bit odd the way Wilson phrases it, but I think he's right that ultimately if there is going to be a law about naming C.I.A. agents, the people who should be punished for not cooperating are people in the administration, not reporters who happen to listen in to conversations.
Once again -- I'm not that troubled by Valerie Plame being named in a newspaper column. I think the cult of secrecy around the C.I.A. is absurd as it goes back 30 years to the case of the C.I.A. station chief in Athens, his name being revealed, and then him being killed I think six or seven days later, assassinated six or seven days later. I think he was -- his name appeared in a newsletter, a sort of a left wing anti-C.I.A. newsletter. And the response at that time was, ‘Ah, this proves that if you name agents, they're going to be killed, or they're going to be compromised,’ and so on and so forth. Except that everybody who wanted to know who the C.I.A. station chief in Athens already knew who it was. So I never bought that. It's the job of the C.I.A. station chief in a given city, foreign city, to be known, so that they can be approached by other agents and by people who want to leak them information.
So, I don't have -- I have never been able to get that upset about Valerie Plame's name being placed in Novak's column. It's tit for tat. It's the Bushies getting even with Joe Wilson, who I think was trying to stand up for the integrity and the honor of the civil service, because if you recall, the context of this is that after the invasion of Iraq, and it became aware -- it became clear that they weren't going to find any atomic bombs buried underground, Bush and the administration started blaming the civil service, saying, ‘Well, it's their fault, they told us there were going to be -- -- there were chemical weapons and atomic bomb components all over the place. It's their fault.’ And I think to some extent Wilson was speaking for a beleaguered and insult-injured civil service that said we're not going to take the fall for this. This was a political decision to manipulate the intelligence.
AMY GOODMAN: Jim --
RICK MacARTHUR: By the Bush administration. It wasn't us.

[Note John MacArthur is the publisher of Harper's and goes by "Rick." Also note that I'm not presenting the other side. It's been presented at length here. I hadn't planned to get into this topic but there were e-mails about it and I've been writing this for almost three hours. Not carefully crafting this entry. These are rough drafts that go up here.]

And we'll let Miller have the last word via Editor & Publisher's "Miller Refuses to Name Source, Sentenced to Jail:"

Miller said she did not want to go to jail but had no choice but to protect her sources. "If journalists cannot be trusted to keep confidences, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press," she said.
"There is still a realistic possibility that confinement might cause her to testify," U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said.
Miller stood up, hugged her lawyer and was escorted from the courtroom.
According to the Washington Post, Miller told the judge that if U.S. troops could risk death in Iraq, "surely, I can face prison to defend a free press."

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 08:16 pm by thecommonills
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Mike on Marti Hiken's "Understanding The U.S. Military" from CODEPINK'S Stop The Next War Now

On July 1st, Mike blogged on a section of the CODEPINK book. With his permission, we're reprinting the entire entry and we'll provide links to it as we move through Stop The Next War Now.

"Marti Hiken's "Understanding The U.S. Military"

We open with the news of Marti Hiken's "Understanding The U.S. Military" which is a two page section of the CODEPINK book Stop The Next War Now. Hiken is with the National Lawyers Guild and the co-chair of their Military Law Task Force.

Marti Hiken writes of the fact that the enlisted are needed to stop the war because the enlisted "control the war; they're the ones who can throw their shoes into the machinery; they're the ones who can put down the guns." To let men and women in the service know that they are supported in their opposition to the war, Hiken offers "some ways you can help."

"SUPPORT THE GI RIGHTS HOTLINE."
The hotline for the military is 1-800-394-9544 and they can also visit www.nlg.org/mltf online.

I'll add that web site to my blog roll this weekend.

"ORGANIZE ON THE BASES THEMSELVES."
This will allow you to hear from those serving and to make contact.

"STEP UP THE COUNTER-RECRUITMENT PROJECTS IN HIGH SCHOOLS AND COLLEGE CAMPUSES."
For this one, I'm going to quote in full:

The American Friends Service Committee and the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft have both organized good efforts in this vein, but more are needed. See www.objector.org, the Web site of the Central Commitee for Conscientious Objectors, for a list of groups doing counter-recruitment. Download the literature, go to your local high schools, and pass it out.

I'll add that web site to the blog roll this weekend too.

Over at The Common Ills, C.I. has been discussing each section of the book. C.I. e-mailed me the two pages Hiken's section appears on (pages 19 and 20) because recruiters is a topic I talk about a lot. This was a really good part of the book. I've read the things C.I. has done and thought, "I need to pick this book up" but even with Wally, Rebecca and Jim urging me to I hadn't done that yet. I read the whole pages (thanks for scanning them C.I.) at the library on campus this afternoon and went out and got the book on my way home. You can also order it through CODEPINK. I made the mistake of leaving the sack on the kitchen table when I got home while I made myself a snack. Then I head off to get ready for my date. I come back through on my way out and Dad's reading it. He said he saw the sack and wondered what was in it so he went nosing around and started reading and now he's got to finish it. He's a fast reader and I got in late a little while ago so knowing Dad he's probably finished it by now. But Dad's someone who reads the Boston Globe each morning and that's about it. So for him to get caught in this book should tell you that you should check it out. Besides your book stores, you can also get it from CODEPINK by visiting this page.

Jim and the gang at The Third Estate Sunday Review are always talking up libraries so you can also check with your library to see if they have a copy.

I'll also nudge you over to Democracy Now! which reported this today:

Rumsfeld Urged to Launch Do Not Call List Over Recruiting
This new on military recruiting: A group of parents from the Leave My Child Alone coalition are calling on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today to establish a National Do Not Call List to safeguard family privacy from unwanted military recruitment. The request comes a week after it was disclosed that the Pentagon has teamed with a private marketing firm called BeNOW to form a massive database of high school and college students to target for recruitment purposes. The New York Times reports there are already 30 million names in the database. Megan Matson of the Leave My Child Alone coalition said, "Millions applauded when the FCC formed a Do Not Call List for consumers. Now we need the armed forces to create one to protect our children's privacy."

CounterRecruiter talked about it yesterday and make sure you're telling people about this. I don't know how old any of my readers are unless they write and tell me so there may be older people reading and all but I do know that a lot of the people writing in are high school or college age. So make sure you are keeping your brothers and sisters and cousins as well as your friends informed at a minimum. And older readers make sure you are passing the news on to parents and young people you know at a minimum.

I'm responding to one e-mail here tonight because it's not tonight, it's morning and I'm pretty worn out and need to grab some sleep.

Loretta's bothered my advice to Ward and Bree Tuesday. Loretta asked why I talked about their questions and thinks a small penis (Bree's problem with her boyfriend) doesn't deserve attention. Loretta, if someone asks a question and I think I can take a crack at, I'll answer it.

My answer may be wrong or right and each reader can decide that all by themselves. But if a small penis is a topic no one should talk about, explain to me this "Don't super-size me" at Alternet's Peek. Evan Derkacz wrote about this Thursday. He's talking about a thing written on Wednesday and a thing written on Thursday. Now why Evan can't give credit to my site and what I wrote Tuesday is a good question but obviously other sites are talking about even if we did talk about it on Tuesday before other sites did this week. Maybe cause we were dealing with a question by Bree and not something written in an online magazine? Maybe it was a little too democratic? Or maybe because it's not possible to know everything going on online so any blog report is bound to miss something?

Loretta felt my advice was "glib." Loretta, Bree had a problem with her boyfriend's penis size and Ward had a problem with his girlfriend's breast size. What would you have told them? Ignore it and get married? I told them they needed to think about it. They do. If this stuff is important to them they are not going to be happy with their current partners and everyone involved would be better off moving on. Loretta wrote that "all relationships are sacred" which means she's been very lucky on the dating scene. My observation is that most relationships are based on superficial bonds and when you find yourself in one like that you need to be honest about it before you end up doing something stupid like getting married to someone you have nothing in common with.

Fooling yourself or someone else will only hurt both of you. So until you find the sacred relationship, you don't need to kid yourself or someone else. And telling someone who's in a short term relationship to ignore a problem they are having, whatever the problem is, isn't being realistic. Would I dump a girl I was seeing because of her breast size? No because I'm not hung up on breast size. (A pair of legs catch my eyes much quicker. Which is why summer is my favorite time of year.) But let's pick a problem that's not body parts. Loretta, you're dating me and you get mad at every meal because I'm chewing with my mouth open. You're telling all your friends, "I am so tired of his smacking like a cow!" Should your friends tell you, "Oh ignore it, you're so great together"? If they do that and we keep seeing each other and marry one another you're looking at possibly spending your life at the table with someone who annoys you at every meal. Is that what you want for your life?

It may be. That's why Ward and Bree, and anyone else who writes, is urged to think about what is important to them. I think if we got married you'd be go crazy and wonder why you didn't keep ignoring this issue that bothered you and realize how annoying it was to you and always would be to you.

You feel I "lack wisdom" and you're probably right. Check out my profile, I'm 19 years old. If someone writes in with a question, I'll answer it to the best of my ability. Considering the questions coming in, you probably will find many topics "gross" so you need to ask yourself is this a site you want to visit or not.

Headed to bed now but before I do, I do not chew with my mouth open. Ma would be so upset if she read this and tell me off for letting people think that she did not enstill good table manners in all her kids. She also taught us all to say please and thank you so let me say thank you publicly to C.I. for passing on the section from Stop The Next War Now.

Again, we'll start noting Mike's entry in the "what's been covered." What am I talking about?

For those keeping track, we've now excerpted from Mary Ann Wright's "Essential Dissent," Cindy Sheehan's "From Cindy to George," Nancy Lessin's "Breaking The Code Of Silence," Camilo Mejia's "Regaining My Humanity," Arundhati Roy's "Introduction," Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans preface, and Alice Walker's foreword. In addition, Dallas has provided a list of all the contributors to CODEPINK's Stop The Next War Now.

On May 4th we noted this:

Code Pink has a book out entitled Stop the Next War Now. For more information, see Code Pink or BuzzFlash. The book contains contributions from a number of women this community has noted and highlighted. Among the contributors: Medea Benjamin, Amy Goodman, Barbara Lee, Naomi Klein, Eve Ensler, and Arianna Huffington.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 08:14 pm by thecommonills
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Democracy Now: G8, Jane Mayer, Isikoff on Rove; Bob Somerby, Matthew Rothschild, Ruth Conniff, UK Indymedia

New Pentagon Plan Calls For Greater Domestic Role
The Pentagon has adopted a new homeland security plan that calls for the U.S. military to greatly expand its domestic role. The Washington Post reports the new plan expands the military's presence not only in the air and sea at home but also on the ground and in other less traditional areas including intelligence sharing with civilian law enforcement. According to the Post, the document does not ask for new legal authority to use military forces on U.S. soil, but it raises the likelihood that U.S. combat troops will take action in the event that civilian and National Guard forces are overwhelmed. The document also calls for military intelligence analysts to be teamed with civilian law enforcement to identify and track suspected terrorists. And it asserts the president's authority to deploy ground combat forces on U.S. territory to "intercept and defeat threats." The Post reports that in the area of intelligence, the document speaks of developing "a cadre" of Pentagon terrorism specialists and of deploying a number of them domestically to work with the FBI and local police forces. Gene Healy of the Cato Institute said, "The move toward a domestic intelligence capability by the military is troubling. The last time the military got heavily involved in domestic surveillance, during the Vietnam War era, military intelligence kept thousands of files on Americans guilty of nothing more than opposing the war." Healy added, "I don't think we want to go down that road again."

The above is from Democracy Now! ("always worth watching," as Marcia says) and Carl e-mailed to highlight the lead story in today's Headlines.

Headlines for July 6, 2005

- New Pentagon Plan Calls For Greater Domestic Role
- Central Asian Group Calls For U.S. To Withdraw From Region
- Mass Protests Greet G8 Summit In Scotland
- U.S. Moves Toward Creating Nuclear Bunker Buster Bombs
- Justice Dept: "Journalists Not Entitled to Promise Confidentiality"
- United Church of Christ Endorses Same Sex Marriage
- Florida Abortion Clinic Set Ablaze
- Tibetan Leader Dalai Lama Turns 70

Karl Rove Again Linked to Outting of CIA Operative Valerie Plame

Two years after Ambassador Joe Wilson first named Karl Rove in the outting of his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, all eyes turn again to the man some say is the most powerful unelected official in the country - Karl Rove. We speak with Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff.

Newsweek Reporter Michael Isikoff Discusses His Coverage of Koran Desecration at Guantanamo

In a rare interview about his controversial article on Koran desecration at Guantanamo Bay, Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff says, "[The Pentagon] had a report of five cases of misconduct, including the urination one, Korans being kicked, stepped on, all of which was taken place prior to the entire controversy...None of that was public at the time at the time of the controversy. I think had it been so, the controversy would have been viewed in a different light." [includes rush transcript]

World Leaders Gather in Scotland for G8 Summit; Africa, Climate Change to Top Agenda

Leaders from the world's richest nations are gathering today for the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland. African poverty and global climate change are at the top of the agenda, yet it is unclear how much action will come out of the meetings. We speak with Salih Booker of Africa Action and we go to Scotland to speak with Demba Moussa Dembele, a coordinator of the Forum for African Alternatives.

The Gitmo Experiment: How Methods Developed by the U.S. Military For Withstanding Torture are Being Used Against Detainees at Guantanamo Bay

A major article in this week's issue of The New Yorker magazine reveals how methods developed by the US military for withstanding torture are being used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay. We speak with Jane Mayer, the reporter who wrote the story for The New Yorker.

From The Daily Howler, we'll note Bob Somerby's addressing test scores:

Blah blah blah, etcetera and so on! History is clear: Sitting "experts" are always prepared to credit their bosses for pleasing score gains. And they always seem prepared to rattle off answers like this one:

WINERIP (continuing directly); When Ms. Moskowitz asked how Dr. Mei knew these programs were responsible for test gains--given that Yonkers, Syracuse and Rochester used different programs and improved more than New York City--Dr. Mei said she wasn't familiar with other districts.

Pathetic, isn't it? The most obvious question in the world is greeted with a non-answer answer. But our analysts really came out of their chairs as Winerip reported another Mei comment. Moskowitz challenged score gains on tests in other grades, noting that these city-made tests aren't available for public scrutiny. What was Mei's answer to this? "Trust us," the bureaucrat said:

WINERIP: When Ms. Moskowitz countered that the city tests are hard to monitor since they're not made public, Dr. Mei deferred to representatives from Harcourt Assessment (which does the city English tests) and CTB/McGraw Hill (math), who testified that the city tests were scientifically scaled.
Mr. Tobias suggested that it would be useful for the city to appoint an independent panel to analyze test results, but city officials were not interested. "We have the testing companies, myself, everybody has said that these test scores are O.K.," said Dr. Mei.

Would it be useful to establish a panel? Nonsense! Everyone says that these scores are OK! Even the testing companies say it, the city's prime test expert said. And yes--the two companies had "testified" to the fact that their own tests were well-founded!

Trust us, the test director said. Everyone says that the scores are OK! But as we noted in yesterday's Part 1, every party on whom Mei relied has a personal stake in this matter. Everyone gains when a test hoax occurs--everyone except the urban children whose lives provide the stage for the hoax. And how much faith should we put in test companies? Our thoughts drifted back about twenty-fives years, to the long telephonic discussions we held with our own very-high-placed "Steep Throat."

This is an important issue with Somerby (who was an educator in the public school systems long before he became one online) and one he intends to address tomorrow as well. It's also a topic that should matter to the community and not just to those who, like Maria, are teachers. Somerby's also addressing the media coverage on judicial nominees.

Brenda e-mails to note Matthew Rothschild's "Bush Won't Choose Consensus Nominee:"

George Bush is not going to nominate a moderate justice like Sandra Day O’Connor to fill her seat on the Supreme Court. He’s going to pick a hard right ideologue.

Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer, you’re wasting your breath by urging Bush to pick a “consensus” replacement.

And People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, and Planned Parenthood, you’re wasting your time and money by urging Bush to pick a “consensus” nominee.

Plus, you’re wasting your memberships’ energy by having them send e-mails to Bush with the same message.

Bush doesn’t listen to you, or to your members.

He listens to his conservative base.

What’s more, he doesn’t know what the word “consensus” means.
He thinks it’s a baseball player with a steroid problem--you know, Jose Consensus.

And we'll note Ruth Conniff's "Backing Away From Journalism:"

So now Time has joined Newsweek in backing away from controversy that puts it at odds with the Government. In Newsweek's case, it was the quick capitulation to Administration pressure to retract a story of Koran desecration by U.S. troops. Time's case is different: handing over the notes taken by reporter Matt Cooper to a court that held Cooper in contempt for not revealing a source.
It may be the best immediate result for Cooper--a funny and talented guy who held to principle under pressure and now, through the intervention of his editors, may be off the hook (although prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is still calling for Cooper's head).

But in the long term, for journalists and the public, it's a lousy precedent. What new Deep Throat will come forward knowing that reporters cannot credibly guarantee the anonymity of a source?

No one who cares about journalism's role in a democracy can applaud Time's decision. And essentially it is not a journalistic but a business decision anyway. It is the risk-averse strategy of a corporation that sees a possible dent in profits from a legal battle, not the principled stand of editors who believe in getting the news, that made Time decide to squeal.

Now let's move over to UK Indymedia.

We'll start with passerby's "EU Parliament votes against software patents:"

The EU Parlimanet has rejected the software patents directive by 648-14 vote.

There are links but that is the story. Why are we emphasizing a one line story? Because no one wants to talk about it. Because we've talked about it repeatedly. Because we've said it's an issue. And it is one. If you read that sentence and don't get it, don't blame yourself, blame your media. When I first mentioned the issue here months ago, our European members were surprised. As I told them in private e-mails, credit Frances Moore Lappe who raised the issue of patents and copyrights with regards to India long ago and is the only reason I even thought about it in relation to the EU. But yes, it is a big issue in Europe. And it's a big issue to a huge number of international companies. One would think that since it's such a big issue, we might get a little reporting on it in this country. Yeah, right.

From the BBC's "Software patent bill thrown out:"

European politicians have thrown out a controversial bill that could have led to software being patented.

The European Parliament voted 648 to 14 to reject the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive.

The bill was reportedly rejected because, politicians said, it pleased no-one in its current form.

Responding to the rejection the European Commission said it would not draw up or submit any more versions of the original proposal.

[. . .]

Opponents said, if passed, the bill would lead to the patenting of software which would jeopardise the prospects of small firms and open source developers.

It's news. And better believe it is news to a number of international companies but you probably won't hear much about it.

We'll note this from UK Indymedia, "G8 Summitt Quicklinks:"

For those wondering, Jane Mayer's New Yorker article isn't available online yet. When it is, we'll note it. (If it's not, I'll note it when the print edition arrives in the mail.) Here's what it currently states at The New Yorker:

"Coming Later: Jane Mayer on what’s happening at Guantanamo."

Those who are impatient, have one more reason to go to the Democracy Now! report "The Gitmo Experiment: How Methods Developed by the U.S. Military For Withstanding Torture are Being Used Against Detainees at Guantanamo Bay:"

A major article in this week's issue of The New Yorker magazine reveals how methods developed by the US military for withstanding torture are being used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

According to the article, titled "The Gitmo Experiment," a number of medical and scientific personnel working at Guantanmo Bay are not at the prison camp to provide care for detainees but rather to use their skills to assist in interrogations. The people working in this capacity are members of what are called Behavioral Science Consultation Teams or BSCT's - in military jargon they are known simply as Biscuits.

After September 11th, interrogators and BSCT's at Guantanamo were advised by psychologists and medical staff versed in techniques employed at a Pentagon-funded program known as SERE or "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape."

SERE was created by the Air Force, at the end of the Korean War, to teach pilots and other personnel considered at high risk of being captured by enemy forces how to withstand and resist extreme forms of abuse.

The New Yorker writes, "The theory behind the SERE program is that soldiers who are exposed to nightmarish treatment during training will be better equipped to deal with such terrors should they face them in the real world. Accordingly, the program is a storehouse of knowledge about coercive methods of interrogation."

Those methods included desecration of religious texts such as the Bible, waterboarding, sexual embarrassment and humiliation. The New Yorker writes, "Ideas intended to help Americans resist abuse spread to Americans who used them to perpetrate abuse."

Lastly, tomorrow night:

Internationally acclaimed journalist Amy Goodman, host of the national daily, radio/TV program Democracy Now!, is on a national tour to mark the launch of her first book The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them. Join us for this exciting event. Support independent media. Tell your friends about the event:

Monterey, CA:

Thursday, July 7, 7:30 pm

Alliance for Community Media Conference
Monterey Conference Center
Stienbeck Forum

Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door
To purchase, call 831-333-1267
For more information, visit http://ampmedia.org/

Second to lastly. Maria's just e-mailed about Jude's latest. We'll go over it in an evening post tonight. But here's the link for anyone who's already impatient over the Jane Mayer article. (Jude of Iddybud -- as all members know but in case a visitor's confused.)

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 08:13 pm by thecommonills
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NYT: "Prosecutor in Leak Case Calls for Reporters' Jailing" (Adam Liptak)

"The court should advise Miller that if she persists in defying the court's order that she will be committing a crime," Mr. Fitzgerald wrote. "Miller and The New York Times appear to have confused Miller's ability to commit contempt with a legal right to do so."
He added: "Much of what appears to motivate Miller to commit contempt is the misguided reinforcement from others (specifically including her publisher) that placing herself above the law can be condoned." The publisher of The Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., has repeatedly said the newspaper supports Ms. Miller.
Mr. Fitzgerald quoted at length from news accounts about Time's decision to demonstrate that journalists and others are not of one mind about the obligation of news organizations and reporters to obey final court orders concerning their confidential sources. He also quoted from opinion columns, essays and a Los Angeles Times editorial suggesting that reporters should not take absolutist positions.

Two spotlight entries? Yes. We'll make that the focus of this morning's Times. The above is from Adam Liptak's "Prosecutor in Leak Case Calls for Reporters' Jailing." We'll note that Liptak's article mentions the fingering of Karl (the first mention of it I'm aware of in the paper).

We'll also note that the paper (including Miller) have a right to disobey a court order if they feel it isn't correct. Civil disobedience is allowed and the left has long supported it. Reading it, I thought, "I hope no one starts making the argument, from the left, that the court order is God."
It's not God. On the left, civil disobedience has long been a bedrock principle. The Times (and Miller) are allowed to excercise it as much as anyone else. If they feel that a court order violates the First Amendment rights or some other principle, they have the right to disobey it.

Time (magazine) caved. That was no surprise. It always caves which is why before it caved, we noted it would. Their interpretation of the First Amendment has either never mattered or else it's an interpretation that operates under some "free speech until we might lose business."

I think the New York Times has bungled this from the start. I think the Times has done a lousy job conveying the issues involved. I find it disturbing that they've cared little for principles until now. I wouldn't be surprised if after the Miller issue is resolved they go back to being the New York Timid completely. But they have a right to fight back. (And I personally support that right -- the community is divided on this matter.) If they feel the court order is in violation of the First Amendment and harmful to the freedom of the press, they should disobey it.

They should continue to fight this. Even if Miller goes to jail, they should continue to fight it. They've done a really bad job getting the issues, as they see them, across to their readers. They need to designate a point person to speak to the press and go on TV. It should be Jill Abramson. She's managing editor and she knows the D.C. beat. She has a level of respect that others may not have and she also would (hopefully) be better at stating the issues. Bill Keller's too close to it and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. nearly torpedoes Miller any time he attempts to defend her (by offering poor examples that don't help). (Keller gets snippy when questioned on Miller.)

Today doesn't look good for Miller and the Times needs to realize that. The coverage has improved in the last few days (Seelye* and Liptak). But if Miller goes to jail, they'll want people on the news. Miller's come out fighting (noted in Saturday's report in the Times) and hopefully she'll continue to make her own case strongly. But Fitzgerald is now calling in the paper's itself into question.

The Times needs to be prepared to respond. That means going on television. They need a point person and Abramson's the person they need to go with. Yes, Sulzberger on television would give additional weight. But the Times needs to realize that he's not helped, though he's tried. He wants to bring up cases that are not going to find sympathy in the current climate. Keller's prone to piping off with "circle jerk" and "arm chair media critics." The public won't respond to that. Abramson may not want the task (then again she may) but she's the highest ranking at the paper that could have any level of respect on this issue.

Her past work means that some who might dismiss any discussion with "Oh Judy, the one who got it all wrong on WMD! Who cares?" might pay attention. They won't listen to Keller (who will probably lose his temper if the issue of WMD reporting comes up) and Sulzberger will go into some previous case that will win no sympathy from the audience.

If they leave it to Miller and her attornies it will appear that the Times isn't actively involved in this case anymore. They've been actively involved from the start and now that Fitzgerald has publicly questioned their stance (and their understanding of journalism ethics), they need to get out there. There are some criticisms they can shrug off. A very public court case is not one of them.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[*Note: Apologies to all. "Katherine Q. Seelye." I've mispelled her name numerous times -- "Seeyle" at this site. Time permitting, they'll be corrected tonight. The post from Monday has been corrected. Thanks to ___ for pointing it out.]

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 04:52 am by thecommonills
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NYT: "Psychologist Warned on Role in Detentions" (Neil A. Lewis)

The American Psychological Association, responding to reports that some of its members may have advised officials on how to conduct harsh interrogations of detainees, issued a report Tuesday telling its members of the ethical dangers of such activities.
The report by a group convened to study the ethical boundaries for psychologists at places like the detainment center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded that it was acceptable to act as behavioral consultants to interrogators of the prisoners from Afghanistan who are held there.
The report said the psychologists should not use a detainee's medical information "to the detriment and safety of an individual's well-being." It also said that psychologists serving as consultants to interrogations involving national security should be "mindful of factors unique to these roles and contexts that require special ethical consideration."
The report thus appears to avoid explicit answers to questions as to whether psychologists may advise interrogators on how to increase stress on detainees to make them more cooperative if the advice is not based on medical files but only on observation of the detainees.

The above is from Neil A. Lewis' "Psychologists Warned on Role in Detentions" in this morning's New York Times. It's sad to know that the APA can't make a finding with regards to the actions of their own members. Did those participating in the report just sit calmly in their chair saying, "Very interesting. And then what?" Were they all Freudians?

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This post originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 04:50 am by thecommonills
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The basics on the outing of Valerie Plame

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
Based on my experience with the adminstration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

So begins Joseph Wilson's "What I Didn't Find In Africa," his July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed that started it all.

Eight days later, Robert Novak will publish his column outing Wilson's wife Valerie Plame and sourcing his claim with "two senior administration officals told me." This was the first print announcement. (This was not, however, Novak's first public comment on Plame. On July 8th, two days after Wilson's op-ed in the Times, Novak was naming Plame as CIA and "a weapons of mass destruction specialist" on Pennsylvania Avenue.)

As David Corn has noted:

I became the first journalist to write that these two Bush administration sources might have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection act of 1982, which makes it illegal for a government official (not a reporter) to reveal the identity of an undercover intelligence official.

We noted Corn's comments earlier tonight (in a longer excerpt) because they're important and people seem to miss that. Occassionally Corn (or someone else, but generally it's Corn) will make the point that it wasn't a crime for a reporter. And for a day or two, everyone will grasp that that's following the outing of Valerie Plame. Then within a week, it's back to "Novak broke the law!" Novak did not break the law. People can repeat that endlessly all they want, but he did not break the law.

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 comes about for a variety of reason but among those reasons were Philip Agee. The Bully Boy's family has never cared for Philip Agee's actions:

Philip Agee published Inside the Company: CIA Diary in 1975, without agency review. He had been a CIA agent who during the Vietnam War came to view US policy as wrong. His book, a sweeping exposé of agency misconduct, named names of agents. As a result of Agee's book and political activities, the United States pressured five NATO countries to expel him and eventually revoked his passport. The book was translated into nineteen languages. He went on to write a memoir of the experience, On the Run, published in 1987. Today Agee lives in Havana and promotes tourism from the United States at his website www.cubalinda.com.

Here's Agee from a talk that was originally published by Z Magazine:

When I read that, I thought, how interesting one of those rare statements that contain two revelations. Back in the 1970s, when he was director of the CIA, [Poppy] Bush tried to get a criminal indictment against me for revelations I was making about CIA operations and personnel. But he couldn't get it, I discovered later in documents I received under the Freedom of Information Act. The reason was that in the early 1970s the CIA had committed crimes against me while I was in Europe writing my first book. If they indicted and persecuted me, I would learn the details of those crimes, whatever they were: conspiracy to assassination, kidnapping, a drug plant. So they couldn't indict because the CIA under Bush, and before him under William Colby, said the details had to stay secret. So what did Bush do? He prevailed on President Ford to send Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, to Britain where I was living, to get them to take action. A few weeks after Kissinger's secret trip a Cambridge policeman arrived at my door with a deportation notice. After living in Britain nearly five years, I had suddenly become a threat to security of the realm. During the next two years I was not only expelled from Britain, but also from France, Holland, West Germany, and Italy all under U.S. pressure. For two years I didn't know where I was living, and my two sons, then teenagers, attended four different schools in four different countries.

[Agee's book should also be seen in the context of the times -- the revelations of Watergate, the Church Committee and the Pike Committee, etc. The two Congressional committes have both vanished from public record for many and idiots like Patti Limerick Nelson are intent on rehabilitating the Watergate criminals for "context." The Nation and The Progressive would be doing a public service if they'd make available some of their real-time stories on the Church and Pike committees. We've noted before that the committees seemed to have vanished from our public knowledge. CounterPunch does cover both -- and Alexander Cockburn recently brought up the Church committee -- use the search engine at CounterPunch if you're interested in finding out more.]

The Bully Boy's family has long been at odds with Agee.

From Democracy Now!'s "Former CIA Agent Phillip Agee On the Wilson Affair, the Iraq Invasion and Why Bush Sr. Calls Him A Traitor:"

Many believe the law was passed in direct response to former CIA agent Philip Agee’s blowing the whistle on CIA dirty tricks in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary George H.W. Bush, who was vice-president when the law was passed, said some of the criticism of the Agency ruined secret U.S. clandestine operations in foreign countries.

From that report:

PHILLIP AGEE: Well, first you have to realize that this law, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, under which someone in the White House may be indicted, is his father's law.
This is the -- this is a law sought by George Bush senior, when he was C.I.A. director and later as Vice President, he worked hard to get that law passed.
It is the irony of ironies that the law is violated, I believe for the first time in a serious way, by someone working in the office of his own son. This is simply dirty politics, I believe. The ambassador, that is ambassador Wilson, poked a hole in this whole pack of lies that have been concocted to justify the war; and in retaliation, they try to ruin his wife's career and get even with him, you could say that it's dirty politics as usual. But also one has to wonder what Poppa Bush is thinking about the fact that it's his own son's office that has violated the law that he works so hard to get passed.

[Sidebar: ABC World News Tonight did an interview with Philip Agee, Jake Tapper was the interviewer. Is there a reason it's not available online? "Philip Agee" returns nothing. "Valerie Plame" returns only ten articles -- ending with Jeff Gannon -- and when you click "view more ABC News results" you are told there are no more results to be displayed. Or if you try repeatedly, you can get the next nine -- again ending with Gannon. Tapper's interview does not show up. I'm not familiar with ABC's website. Before Tom Brokaw retired, if I watched the network evening news, I watched Nightly News. Like Rebecca, you couldn't pay me to sit through the show currently as hosted by the disgusting I-Wanted-Nixon-As-My-Pen-Pal Brian Williams. But that's not how NBC's website works. Of course, ABC's scrubbing is nothing new as many know after the Nightline transcript for PNAC disappeared from the website.]

Here's Poppy in 2003:

Remember Philip Agee, who I consider a traitor to our country?

Here's Poppy in 1991 (note, this takes you to the Bush library so consider yourself warned):

I was only out at Langley a short time. And just before I went there -- I want to relate something to you because few moments for me have been more painful than the occasion I had just before I became DCI: To meet with the son of Richard Welch, a CIA station chief murdered by left-wing terrorists after his name and position had been disclosed to the press. What was I to say to this young man? Why has his father died? So that a reckless ideologue could sell more books, Philip Agee's "Counterspy'', having blown Richard Welch's cover? I don't care how long I live, I will never forgive Philip Agee and those like him who wantonly sacrifice the lives of intelligence officers who loyally serve their country.

Here's Poppy in 1999 (heads up, this takes you to the CIA's official site):

Anyway, it was a dangerous time for our country. But it merits noting that it was a particularly difficult time for the men and women who worked for the Agency. We all remember those days. Thanks to among others one Philip Agee, who tried to sue my wife when she wrote something nasty about him in the book, but have at it, Philip, because what I think is, I think he betrayed a solemn trust in helping to expose the identity of our undercover agents and I can't think of anything that in my book is more traitorous or more offensive to the decency that is the American way. To this day I believe he bears a moral responsibility for the lives lost in the wake of those actions. And if I may add, that treachery of Agee’s, like that of Aldrich Ames or - who was it - Howard, is a good reason why we must never let the guard down on our counterintelligence. The Agency's people are its strongest asset, a point every DCI sitting out here understands as well if not better than I do.
[. . .]
As we saw in the Agee and Ames cases, even though there's always a danger that they or one of their comrades could be killed if their cover is blown, our people continue to serve with honor - and thank God for that.

[Sidebar, also of note, for different reasons are the following by Poppy from the same speech:
As for me, the PDB, the Presidential Daily Brief, was the first order of business on my calendar, too. I made it a point from Day One to read the PDB in the presence of a CIA officer and either Brent or his deputy. We tried to protect the distribution of the PDB because we knew very well once it was faxed or put through a Xerox machine, then the people preparing it with their oath to protect sources and methods would be inclined to pull back and not give the President the frankest possible intelligence assessments presenting the best possible intelligence.
So I made it a point there to read it with the CIA officer and usually Brent Scowcroft or sometimes his deputy or sometimes both. This way I could ask the briefers for more information of matters of critical interest, consult with Brent on matters affecting policy. I think it helped those who were working night and day out there in Langley to prepare the PDB to know that at least their product was being looked at by the President himself. I think it helped a little bit in the morale of that section of the CIA that works so hard to put this book together.]

Not getting that it's personal with Poppy? We could go on and on with his comments re: Agee but we'll wrap up by noting page 560 of Kitty Kelley's The Family (which by the way was not Agee "trying to sue" as Poppy claimed -- Agee did sue and did get a retraction demonstrating once again that reality isn't a strong suit in the Bully Boy family):

In writing her book Barbara Bush: A Memoir, George H.W.'s wife achieved the distinction of becoming the only First Lady ever to be sued for libel. Barbara had written that Philip Agee, a former CIA agent, had identified Richard Welch as an agency operative in "a traitorous tell-all book" that caused Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, to be assassinated in December 1975. Agee denied her allegation and filed a $4 million libel lawsuit against her and her publisher, Lisa Drew Books of Charles Scribner's Sons. Agee proved that he had not identified Welch in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary, and he demanded an apology from Mrs. Bush, plus an immediate retraction in the paperback edition of her book. Barbara refused to apologize for her mistake, but she did make the retraction.

[Please note, there is an attempt by some to equate the current trash Hillary book with Kitty Kelley's The Family. I find that line of reasoning to be nonsense and not just because Kelley knows how to wear mascara. Rebecca's written on Kitty Kelley's book and I agree with Rebecca's take. I'll also note that the woman who sued Kelley, mentioned in Rebecca's entry, dropped the lawsuit. As she should have.]

It was personal for Poppy and that's why he pushed for the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. There's the bad poetry to this father & son pair. Call it The Sun Also Fumbles.
Poppy pushes and backs the law for his own personal reasons (which is why he's possibly not too concerned over the outing of Valerie Plame) and Bully Boy's administration appears to be the first to violate the law.

But Robert Novak didn't violate the law. We'll again note Jeffrey Goldberg's "Real Insiders: A pro-Israel lobby and an F.B.I. sting" (from The New Yorker):

According to an AIPAC source, an eleven-second portion of the telephone conversation between Rosen, Weissman, and the Post’s Glenn Kessler, which the F.B.I. had recorded, was played for Lewin. In that conversation, Rosen is alleged to have told Kessler about Iranian agents in southern Iraq--information that Weissman had received from Franklin. In the part of the conversation that Lewin heard, Rosen jokes about "not getting in trouble" over the information. He also notes, "At least we have no Official Secrets Act"--the British law that makes journalists liable to prosecution if they publish classified material.

This is all very basic but Corn had to note it today (and Keith felt this was the first time but Corn's noted it before).

There may be some desire on the part of some tossing around the term "traitor" and "criminal" to keep the issue of the outing of Valerie Plame alive. That's their opinion and they're welcome to it. But legally, there are no grounds for calling Novak a "criminal." ("Traitor" is a charged term that people use in non-legal sense -- I'm guessing.)

We noted here back in December:

Robert Novak is a strange sort of "journalist." Page A18 of today's New York Times addresses his role in the outing of Valerie Plame in Lorne Manly and Adam Liptak's "At Leak Inquiry's Center, a Circumspect Columnist." [The article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/politics/31novak.html?oref=login.]
It's there that he's quoted (answering a question from Brian Lamb on C-Span) saying, "I don't know why they're upset with me. They ought to worry about themselves. I worry about myself."
Like a character in an unfolding play by Moliere -- The School for GOP Hacks? -- Novak was trained by Rowland Evans, Jr. to always do his best to advance the interests of the GOP. Truly, he is the first act Agnes in Moliere's The School for Wives.
Joseph Wilson was bringing uncomfortable attention to the Bully Boy's remarks on yellow cake.The echo chamber went into overdrive to discredit Wilson and Novak was there to deliver the body blow, announce in his July 14,2003 column:
Wilson never worked for the C.I.A., but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger.
With those remarks, Novak sought to discredit Wilson. Now maybe Novak wasn't aware of a number of things. Maybe he wasn't aware that he was being used to silence a critic of the Bully Boy's? Maybe he wasn't aware that he was outing Plame? [Correction: Novak was aware. He spoke on the phone with Joe Wilson on July 10th. Page 344 of Wilson's The Politics of Truth details the conversation. Without noting the conversation, or when it occurred, Novak would refer to it himself in a later column as he noted that Wilson refused to talk to him about Plame.] Robert Evans had schooled Novak to be, like Agnes, the adoring idiot.
But where Agnes's intellect slowly develops over the course of the play, Novak's gone down a different path -- schooled to be a non-thinking opinion writer, he's only excelled further at his cause.
Novak has damaged the ability of Plame to do her job. In doing so, he's put her at risk, anyone who was seen with her in her undercover days at risk and, at a time when national security at least gets lip service, she has been taken "out" an asset when one would think the nation needs her more than ever.

Here's Ty and Jim (The Third Estate Sunday Review) on the issue of "traitor:"

Ty: Exactly. Here's today's talking points is what I hear too much when I listen to radio. That's why I listen to Democracy Now! and not a lot else, it provides the connections. Laura Flanders demonstrates the connections. Janeane Garofalo's usually attempting to but she gets cut off too much. And a lot of times I'm bothered by the rhetoric. I think Robert Novak did a hideous thing but when I hear "traitor!" I just recoil because that's a charge that, if convicted, comes with the death penalty which I don't support. And by all accounts Valerie Plame was a nice person and she was outed for political reasons. I find that sad and objectionable. But as an African-American male, I'm not going to start screaming "Traitor!" because someone outed a C.I.A. agent. I don't think you're going to find many African-Americans who are going to weep over the outing. They'll say it's wrong. They'll also say that a lot more outings need to take place with the C.I.A. I'm not going to join in the chorus of "traitor" and have it turned back on me when some new war against African-Americans is exposed and the right wants to call some journalist a traitor. Call him a hack, say he did it for no reason other than politics, talk about his teeth even but I do not think the word "traitor" is appropriate.
Jim: And that's a good point. That will come back to bite the left in the butt. Plame was outed for the wrong reason but I don't subscribe to the belief that it is wrong for a journalist to to out a CIA agent. Now Bully Boy's daddy does subscribe to that belief but I don't. There needs to be more sunshine on the CIA, not less. I think it was misjudgement and wrong of Novak to do it. I think he's a creep and needs to get those teeth fixed. But I'm not going to go "Traitor! Traitor!"
If tomorrow Robert Parry wants to out a CIA agent that's doing damage to the country, the right will scream "Traitor!" and then call the left hypocrites for not joining in.
Dona: Well, I think we need to make a distinction here because there's the left and there's partisans on either side. I think Novak should be forced to address his reasoning for the outing. I don't think there's a justification for it. But he should have to address it. And if he were of the left or even a mainstream journalist, look at Gary Webb, he'd have the right coming down on him and lose his job. But at a time when reporters, some good ones, some bad ones, are under attack, and we discussed this in class last month, for their actual reporting, I don't want to join in on the "traitor" screams. Hack, disgusting and con artist more than describe the way I feel regarding Robert Novak.

This morning we made Scott Shane's "Private Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case" the spotlight story from the New York Times:

There's one area of the article that I'll address this evening but it's the most comprehensive piece the Times has done (the only comprehensive piece).

What was the one issue? The one that was hoped to be addressed. We'll get there in a moment.
But a number of e-mails came in from visitors who wanted to insist that Novak committed a crime. (And I'm way behind in the e-mails as a result of those.) People are entitled to their opinion. But if it's based upon fact, no one backed it up. As the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 is written I'm not seeing where Novak committed a crime. (Perhaps people are feeling he's undercover CIA? Or possibly that, like Armstrong Williams, he's received some White House payment and therefore is part of the administration? If so, they aren't making those points in their e-mails.) It's fine to feel that he belongs bars if that's your feeling but if there's a legal backing for that feeling, I'm not finding it any law.

Now let's (finally) address the area I saw as problematic in Scott Shane's article. It falls into the area of "balance" that the Times so loves. Shane notes the "Republican critics" who claim that Plame had "orchestrated" Wilson's trip to Niger. Shane then offers that Wilson has outlined his version of it in his book (The Politics of Truth). Shane then notes that:

Mr. Wilson said that though his wife wrote a memorandum describing his expertise at the request of a CIA supervisor, she did not propose him for the Niger trip. He scoffs at the notion that a trip to one of the poorest countries on earth, for which he was paid only his expenses was some kind of prize.

Is that it? Is that what's out there? Wilson and then his critics? This is "balance." It also appears not to tell the full story.

From BuzzFlash, "Joe Wilson Once Again Under Character Assassination Attack by the GOP Junk Yard Dogs: His Response:"

First conclusion: "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee."
That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife sent to her superiors that says "my husband has good relations with the PM (prime minister) and the former Minister of Mines, (not to mention lots of French contacts) both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD reports officer stated the "the former ambassador’s wife 'offered up his name'"” (page 39) and a State Department Intelligence and Research officer that the "meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue."
In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD Reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government. Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, it is my understanding that the Reports Officer has a different conclusion about Valerie’s role than the one offered in the "additional comments". I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement.
It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA's position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July, 2003. They reported on July 22 that:
"A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
"But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. 'They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,’ he said. ‘There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. 'I can't figure out what it could be.’
"'We paid his (Wilson’s) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there,' the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said. he was reimbursed only for expenses." (Newsday article Columnist blows CIA Agent’s cover, dated July 22, 2003).
In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:
"'She did not propose me', he [Wilson] said--others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too.'"

Newsday is in the public record. The Times could have noted in. It's a competitor and noting it might violate the "balance" as they perceive it but if there's something that backs up Wilson's account (and Newsday as well as the body of the report appear to do so), the Times would be doing their readers a favor by informing them of that instead of acting as though it's a grey area where Wilson is pitted against "Republican critics" and no one can find their way out of the balance maze. If the paper exists to inform readers, it should have been noted. If (and this is the problem so many members have with "balance" at the Times) the Times is only interested in he said/she said and letting truth sit out the game on the bench (a sport's analogy because the Times understands those best) then there's no problem with failing to include the public record that takes it beyond what Wilson and "Republican critics" say. By not doing so, readers could be left with the impression that it's Wilson against "Republican critics" -- "critics" plural. There is backing for Wilson's version and the Times should have informed their readers of that.

There are basic facts involved. The Times would do well to inform readers of them. (Scott Shane's was the most indepth article the Times has done on the matter -- mentions and allusions don't count -- and he and the paper deserve credit for that but in regard to what's public record re: whether Plame "orchestrated" the trip or not, the paper and Shane failed the readers today.)

The Times notes Wilson's The Politics of Truth. I'll also note David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. (Both books were utilized for this entry.) There are basic facts involved and whether you want to leave that framework or not, you should be aware of them.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 12:53 am by thecommonills
Permalink

The basics on the outing of Valerie Plame

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
Based on my experience with the adminstration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

So begins Joseph Wilson's "What I Didn't Find In Africa," his July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed that started it all.

Eight days later, Robert Novak will publish his column outing Wilson's wife Valerie Plame and sourcing his claim with "two senior administration officals told me." This was the first print announcement. (This was not, however, Novak's first public comment on Plame. On July 8th, two days after Wilson's op-ed in the Times, Novak was naming Plame as CIA and "a weapons of mass destruction specialist" on Pennsylvania Avenue.)

As David Corn has noted:

I became the first journalist to write that these two Bush administration sources might have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection act of 1982, which makes it illegal for a government official (not a reporter) to reveal the identity of an undercover intelligence official.

We noted Corn's comments earlier tonight (in a longer excerpt) because they're important and people seem to miss that. Occassionally Corn (or someone else, but generally it's Corn) will make the point that it wasn't a crime for a reporter. And for a day or two, everyone will grasp that that's following the outing of Valerie Plame. Then within a week, it's back to "Novak broke the law!" Novak did not break the law. People can repeat that endlessly all they want, but he did not break the law.

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 comes about for a variety of reason but among those reasons were Philip Agee. The Bully Boy's family has never cared for Philip Agee's actions:

Philip Agee published Inside the Company: CIA Diary in 1975, without agency review. He had been a CIA agent who during the Vietnam War came to view US policy as wrong. His book, a sweeping exposé of agency misconduct, named names of agents. As a result of Agee's book and political activities, the United States pressured five NATO countries to expel him and eventually revoked his passport. The book was translated into nineteen languages. He went on to write a memoir of the experience, On the Run, published in 1987. Today Agee lives in Havana and promotes tourism from the United States at his website www.cubalinda.com.

Here's Agee from a talk that was originally published by Z Magazine:

When I read that, I thought, how interesting one of those rare statements that contain two revelations. Back in the 1970s, when he was director of the CIA, [Poppy] Bush tried to get a criminal indictment against me for revelations I was making about CIA operations and personnel. But he couldn't get it, I discovered later in documents I received under the Freedom of Information Act. The reason was that in the early 1970s the CIA had committed crimes against me while I was in Europe writing my first book. If they indicted and persecuted me, I would learn the details of those crimes, whatever they were: conspiracy to assassination, kidnapping, a drug plant. So they couldn't indict because the CIA under Bush, and before him under William Colby, said the details had to stay secret. So what did Bush do? He prevailed on President Ford to send Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, to Britain where I was living, to get them to take action. A few weeks after Kissinger's secret trip a Cambridge policeman arrived at my door with a deportation notice. After living in Britain nearly five years, I had suddenly become a threat to security of the realm. During the next two years I was not only expelled from Britain, but also from France, Holland, West Germany, and Italy all under U.S. pressure. For two years I didn't know where I was living, and my two sons, then teenagers, attended four different schools in four different countries.

[Agee's book should also be seen in the context of the times -- the revelations of Watergate, the Church Committee and the Pike Committee, etc. The two Congressional committes have both vanished from public record for many and idiots like Patti Limerick Nelson are intent on rehabilitating the Watergate criminals for "context." The Nation and The Progressive would be doing a public service if they'd make available some of their real-time stories on the Church and Pike committees. We've noted before that the committees seemed to have vanished from our public knowledge. CounterPunch does cover both -- and Alexander Cockburn recently brought up the Church committee -- use the search engine at CounterPunch if you're interested in finding out more.]

The Bully Boy's family has long been at odds with Agee.

From Democracy Now!'s "Former CIA Agent Phillip Agee On the Wilson Affair, the Iraq Invasion and Why Bush Sr. Calls Him A Traitor:"

Many believe the law was passed in direct response to former CIA agent Philip Agee’s blowing the whistle on CIA dirty tricks in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary George H.W. Bush, who was vice-president when the law was passed, said some of the criticism of the Agency ruined secret U.S. clandestine operations in foreign countries.

From that report:

PHILLIP AGEE: Well, first you have to realize that this law, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, under which someone in the White House may be indicted, is his father's law.
This is the -- this is a law sought by George Bush senior, when he was C.I.A. director and later as Vice President, he worked hard to get that law passed.
It is the irony of ironies that the law is violated, I believe for the first time in a serious way, by someone working in the office of his own son. This is simply dirty politics, I believe. The ambassador, that is ambassador Wilson, poked a hole in this whole pack of lies that have been concocted to justify the war; and in retaliation, they try to ruin his wife's career and get even with him, you could say that it's dirty politics as usual. But also one has to wonder what Poppa Bush is thinking about the fact that it's his own son's office that has violated the law that he works so hard to get passed.

[Sidebar: ABC World News Tonight did an interview with Philip Agee, Jake Tapper was the interviewer. Is there a reason it's not available online? "Philip Agee" returns nothing. "Valerie Plame" returns only ten articles -- ending with Jeff Gannon -- and when you click "view more ABC News results" you are told there are no more results to be displayed. Or if you try repeatedly, you can get the next nine -- again ending with Gannon. Tapper's interview does not show up. I'm not familiar with ABC's website. Before Tom Brokaw retired, if I watched the network evening news, I watched Nightly News. Like Rebecca, you couldn't pay me to sit through the show currently as hosted by the disgusting I-Wanted-Nixon-As-My-Pen-Pal Brian Williams. But that's not how NBC's website works. Of course, ABC's scrubbing is nothing new as many know after the Nightline transcript for PNAC disappeared from the website.]

Here's Poppy in 2003:

Remember Philip Agee, who I consider a traitor to our country?

Here's Poppy in 1991 (note, this takes you to the Bush library so consider yourself warned):

I was only out at Langley a short time. And just before I went there -- I want to relate something to you because few moments for me have been more painful than the occasion I had just before I became DCI: To meet with the son of Richard Welch, a CIA station chief murdered by left-wing terrorists after his name and position had been disclosed to the press. What was I to say to this young man? Why has his father died? So that a reckless ideologue could sell more books, Philip Agee's "Counterspy'', having blown Richard Welch's cover? I don't care how long I live, I will never forgive Philip Agee and those like him who wantonly sacrifice the lives of intelligence officers who loyally serve their country.

Here's Poppy in 1999 (heads up, this takes you to the CIA's official site):

Anyway, it was a dangerous time for our country. But it merits noting that it was a particularly difficult time for the men and women who worked for the Agency. We all remember those days. Thanks to among others one Philip Agee, who tried to sue my wife when she wrote something nasty about him in the book, but have at it, Philip, because what I think is, I think he betrayed a solemn trust in helping to expose the identity of our undercover agents and I can't think of anything that in my book is more traitorous or more offensive to the decency that is the American way. To this day I believe he bears a moral responsibility for the lives lost in the wake of those actions. And if I may add, that treachery of Agee’s, like that of Aldrich Ames or - who was it - Howard, is a good reason why we must never let the guard down on our counterintelligence. The Agency's people are its strongest asset, a point every DCI sitting out here understands as well if not better than I do.
[. . .]
As we saw in the Agee and Ames cases, even though there's always a danger that they or one of their comrades could be killed if their cover is blown, our people continue to serve with honor - and thank God for that.

[Sidebar, also of note, for different reasons are the following by Poppy from the same speech:
As for me, the PDB, the Presidential Daily Brief, was the first order of business on my calendar, too. I made it a point from Day One to read the PDB in the presence of a CIA officer and either Brent or his deputy. We tried to protect the distribution of the PDB because we knew very well once it was faxed or put through a Xerox machine, then the people preparing it with their oath to protect sources and methods would be inclined to pull back and not give the President the frankest possible intelligence assessments presenting the best possible intelligence.
So I made it a point there to read it with the CIA officer and usually Brent Scowcroft or sometimes his deputy or sometimes both. This way I could ask the briefers for more information of matters of critical interest, consult with Brent on matters affecting policy. I think it helped those who were working night and day out there in Langley to prepare the PDB to know that at least their product was being looked at by the President himself. I think it helped a little bit in the morale of that section of the CIA that works so hard to put this book together.]

Not getting that it's personal with Poppy? We could go on and on with his comments re: Agee but we'll wrap up by noting page 560 of Kitty Kelley's The Family (which by the way was not Agee "trying to sue" as Poppy claimed -- Agee did sue and did get a retraction demonstrating once again that reality isn't a strong suit in the Bully Boy family):

In writing her book Barbara Bush: A Memoir, George H.W.'s wife achieved the distinction of becoming the only First Lady ever to be sued for libel. Barbara had written that Philip Agee, a former CIA agent, had identified Richard Welch as an agency operative in "a traitorous tell-all book" that caused Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, to be assassinated in December 1975. Agee denied her allegation and filed a $4 million libel lawsuit against her and her publisher, Lisa Drew Books of Charles Scribner's Sons. Agee proved that he had not identified Welch in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary, and he demanded an apology from Mrs. Bush, plus an immediate retraction in the paperback edition of her book. Barbara refused to apologize for her mistake, but she did make the retraction.

[Please note, there is an attempt by some to equate the current trash Hillary book with Kitty Kelley's The Family. I find that line of reasoning to be nonsense and not just because Kelley knows how to wear mascara. Rebecca's written on Kitty Kelley's book and I agree with Rebecca's take. I'll also note that the woman who sued Kelley, mentioned in Rebecca's entry, dropped the lawsuit. As she should have.]

It was personal for Poppy and that's why he pushed for the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. There's the bad poetry to this father & son pair. Call it The Sun Also Fumbles.
Poppy pushes and backs the law for his own personal reasons (which is why he's possibly not too concerned over the outing of Valerie Plame) and Bully Boy's administration appears to be the first to violate the law.

But Robert Novak didn't violate the law. We'll again note Jeffrey Goldberg's "Real Insiders: A pro-Israel lobby and an F.B.I. sting" (from The New Yorker):

According to an AIPAC source, an eleven-second portion of the telephone conversation between Rosen, Weissman, and the Post’s Glenn Kessler, which the F.B.I. had recorded, was played for Lewin. In that conversation, Rosen is alleged to have told Kessler about Iranian agents in southern Iraq--information that Weissman had received from Franklin. In the part of the conversation that Lewin heard, Rosen jokes about "not getting in trouble" over the information. He also notes, "At least we have no Official Secrets Act"--the British law that makes journalists liable to prosecution if they publish classified material.

This is all very basic but Corn had to note it today (and Keith felt this was the first time but Corn's noted it before).

There may be some desire on the part of some tossing around the term "traitor" and "criminal" to keep the issue of the outing of Valerie Plame alive. That's their opinion and they're welcome to it. But legally, there are no grounds for calling Novak a "criminal." ("Traitor" is a charged term that people use in non-legal sense -- I'm guessing.)

We noted here back in December:

Robert Novak is a strange sort of "journalist." Page A18 of today's New York Times addresses his role in the outing of Valerie Plame in Lorne Manly and Adam Liptak's "At Leak Inquiry's Center, a Circumspect Columnist." [The article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/politics/31novak.html?oref=login.]
It's there that he's quoted (answering a question from Brian Lamb on C-Span) saying, "I don't know why they're upset with me. They ought to worry about themselves. I worry about myself."
Like a character in an unfolding play by Moliere -- The School for GOP Hacks? -- Novak was trained by Rowland Evans, Jr. to always do his best to advance the interests of the GOP. Truly, he is the first act Agnes in Moliere's The School for Wives.
Joseph Wilson was bringing uncomfortable attention to the Bully Boy's remarks on yellow cake.The echo chamber went into overdrive to discredit Wilson and Novak was there to deliver the body blow, announce in his July 14,2003 column:
Wilson never worked for the C.I.A., but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger.
With those remarks, Novak sought to discredit Wilson. Now maybe Novak wasn't aware of a number of things. Maybe he wasn't aware that he was being used to silence a critic of the Bully Boy's? Maybe he wasn't aware that he was outing Plame? [Correction: Novak was aware. He spoke on the phone with Joe Wilson on July 10th. Page 344 of Wilson's The Politics of Truth details the conversation. Without noting the conversation, or when it occurred, Novak would refer to it himself in a later column as he noted that Wilson refused to talk to him about Plame.] Robert Evans had schooled Novak to be, like Agnes, the adoring idiot.
But where Agnes's intellect slowly develops over the course of the play, Novak's gone down a different path -- schooled to be a non-thinking opinion writer, he's only excelled further at his cause.
Novak has damaged the ability of Plame to do her job. In doing so, he's put her at risk, anyone who was seen with her in her undercover days at risk and, at a time when national security at least gets lip service, she has been taken "out" an asset when one would think the nation needs her more than ever.

Here's Ty and Jim (The Third Estate Sunday Review) on the issue of "traitor:"

Ty: Exactly. Here's today's talking points is what I hear too much when I listen to radio. That's why I listen to Democracy Now! and not a lot else, it provides the connections. Laura Flanders demonstrates the connections. Janeane Garofalo's usually attempting to but she gets cut off too much. And a lot of times I'm bothered by the rhetoric. I think Robert Novak did a hideous thing but when I hear "traitor!" I just recoil because that's a charge that, if convicted, comes with the death penalty which I don't support. And by all accounts Valerie Plame was a nice person and she was outed for political reasons. I find that sad and objectionable. But as an African-American male, I'm not going to start screaming "Traitor!" because someone outed a C.I.A. agent. I don't think you're going to find many African-Americans who are going to weep over the outing. They'll say it's wrong. They'll also say that a lot more outings need to take place with the C.I.A. I'm not going to join in the chorus of "traitor" and have it turned back on me when some new war against African-Americans is exposed and the right wants to call some journalist a traitor. Call him a hack, say he did it for no reason other than politics, talk about his teeth even but I do not think the word "traitor" is appropriate.
Jim: And that's a good point. That will come back to bite the left in the butt. Plame was outed for the wrong reason but I don't subscribe to the belief that it is wrong for a journalist to to out a CIA agent. Now Bully Boy's daddy does subscribe to that belief but I don't. There needs to be more sunshine on the CIA, not less. I think it was misjudgement and wrong of Novak to do it. I think he's a creep and needs to get those teeth fixed. But I'm not going to go "Traitor! Traitor!"
If tomorrow Robert Parry wants to out a CIA agent that's doing damage to the country, the right will scream "Traitor!" and then call the left hypocrites for not joining in.
Dona: Well, I think we need to make a distinction here because there's the left and there's partisans on either side. I think Novak should be forced to address his reasoning for the outing. I don't think there's a justification for it. But he should have to address it. And if he were of the left or even a mainstream journalist, look at Gary Webb, he'd have the right coming down on him and lose his job. But at a time when reporters, some good ones, some bad ones, are under attack, and we discussed this in class last month, for their actual reporting, I don't want to join in on the "traitor" screams. Hack, disgusting and con artist more than describe the way I feel regarding Robert Novak.

This morning we made Scott Shane's "Private Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case" the spotlight story from the New York Times:

There's one area of the article that I'll address this evening but it's the most comprehensive piece the Times has done (the only comprehensive piece).

What was the one issue? The one that was hoped to be addressed. We'll get there in a moment.
But a number of e-mails came in from visitors who wanted to insist that Novak committed a crime. (And I'm way behind in the e-mails as a result of those.) People are entitled to their opinion. But if it's based upon fact, no one backed it up. As the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 is written I'm not seeing where Novak committed a crime. (Perhaps people are feeling he's undercover CIA? Or possibly that, like Armstrong Williams, he's received some White House payment and therefore is part of the administration? If so, they aren't making those points in their e-mails.) It's fine to feel that he belongs bars if that's your feeling but if there's a legal backing for that feeling, I'm not finding it any law.

Now let's (finally) address the area I saw as problematic in Scott Shane's article. It falls into the area of "balance" that the Times so loves. Shane notes the "Republican critics" who claim that Plame had "orchestrated" Wilson's trip to Niger. Shane then offers that Wilson has outlined his version of it in his book (The Politics of Truth). Shane then notes that:

Mr. Wilson said that though his wife wrote a memorandum describing his expertise at the request of a CIA supervisor, she did not propose him for the Niger trip. He scoffs at the notion that a trip to one of the poorest countries on earth, for which he was paid only his expenses was some kind of prize.

Is that it? Is that what's out there? Wilson and then his critics? This is "balance." It also appears not to tell the full story.

From BuzzFlash, "Joe Wilson Once Again Under Character Assassination Attack by the GOP Junk Yard Dogs: His Response:"

First conclusion: "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee."
That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife sent to her superiors that says "my husband has good relations with the PM (prime minister) and the former Minister of Mines, (not to mention lots of French contacts) both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD reports officer stated the "the former ambassador’s wife 'offered up his name'"” (page 39) and a State Department Intelligence and Research officer that the "meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue."
In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD Reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government. Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, it is my understanding that the Reports Officer has a different conclusion about Valerie’s role than the one offered in the "additional comments". I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement.
It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA's position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July, 2003. They reported on July 22 that:
"A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
"But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. 'They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,’ he said. ‘There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. 'I can't figure out what it could be.’
"'We paid his (Wilson’s) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there,' the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said. he was reimbursed only for expenses." (Newsday article Columnist blows CIA Agent’s cover, dated July 22, 2003).
In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:
"'She did not propose me', he [Wilson] said--others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too.'"

Newsday is in the public record. The Times could have noted in. It's a competitor and noting it might violate the "balance" as they perceive it but if there's something that backs up Wilson's account (and Newsday as well as the body of the report appear to do so), the Times would be doing their readers a favor by informing them of that instead of acting as though it's a grey area where Wilson is pitted against "Republican critics" and no one can find their way out of the balance maze. If the paper exists to inform readers, it should have been noted. If (and this is the problem so many members have with "balance" at the Times) the Times is only interested in he said/she said and letting truth sit out the game on the bench (a sport's analogy because the Times understands those best) then there's no problem with failing to include the public record that takes it beyond what Wilson and "Republican critics" say. By not doing so, readers could be left with the impression that it's Wilson against "Republican critics" -- "critics" plural. There is backing for Wilson's version and the Times should have informed their readers of that.

There are basic facts involved. The Times would do well to inform readers of them. (Scott Shane's was the most indepth article the Times has done on the matter -- mentions and allusions don't count -- and he and the paper deserve credit for that but in regard to what's public record re: whether Plame "orchestrated" the trip or not, the paper and Shane failed the readers today.)

The Times notes Wilson's The Politics of Truth. I'll also note David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. (Both books were utilized for this entry.) There are basic facts involved and whether you want to leave that framework or not, you should be aware of them.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 12:39 am by thecommonills
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Jeffrey Goldberg on Lawrence Franklin; Dahr Jamail's latest and Mike and David Corn on Plamegate

In the most recent New Yorker to grace my mailbox, Jeffrey Goldberg has an article entitled "Real Insiders: A pro-Israel lobby and an F.B.I. sting" (available online in full, I believe but I glanced quickly at the online version so I could be wrong) which addresses issues raised in the Lawrence Franklin case (he is charged with espionage). Here's an excerpt:

Franklin was not a high-ranking Pentagon official; he was five steps removed in the hierarchy from Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary for Policy. For two years, though, he had been trying to change American policy. His efforts took many forms, including calls to reporters, meetings with Rosen and Weissman and with the political counsellor at the Israeli Embassy, Naor Gilon. According to Tracy O’Grady-Walsh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, he was not acting on behalf of his superiors: "If Larry Franklin was formally or informally lobbying, he was doing it on his own."
Franklin also sought information from Iranian dissidents who might aid his cause. In December of 2001, he and Rhode met in Rome with Michael Ledeen and a group of Iranians, including Manucher Ghorbanifar. Ledeen, who helped arrange the meeting, told me that the dissidents gave Franklin and Rhode information about Iranian threats against American soldiers in Afghanistan. (Rhode did not return calls seeking comment.) Franklin was initially skeptical about the meeting, Ledeen said, but emerged believing that America could do business with these dissidents.
Franklin's meetings with Gilon and with the two aipac men make up the heart of the indictment against him. The indictment alleges that Rosen--"CC-1," or "Co-Conspirator 1"--called the Pentagon in early August of 2002, looking for the name of an Iran specialist. He made contact with Franklin a short time later, but, according to the indictment, they did not meet until February of 2003. In their meetings, according to several people with knowledge of the conversations, Franklin told the lobbyists that Secretary of State Colin Powell was resisting attempts by the Pentagon to formulate a tougher Iran policy. He apparently hoped to use aipac to lobby the Administration.
The Franklin indictment suggests that the F.B.I. had been watching Rosen as well; for instance, it alleges that, in February of 2003, Rosen, on his way to a meeting with Franklin, told someone on the phone that he "was excited to meet with a 'Pentagon guy' because this person was a 'real insider.' " Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman met openly four times in 2003. At one point, the indictment reads, somewhat mysteriously, "On or about March 10, 2003, Franklin, CC-1 and CC-2"-- Rosen and Weissman--"met at Union Station early in the morning. In the course of the meeting, the three men moved from one restaurant to another restaurant and then finished the meeting in an empty restaurant."
On June 26, 2003, at a lunch at the Tivoli Restaurant, near the Pentagon, Franklin reportedly told Rosen and Weissman about a draft of a National Security Presidential Directive that outlined a series of tougher steps that the U.S. could take against the Iranian leadership. The draft was written by a young Pentagon aide named Michael Rubin (who is now affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute). Franklin did not hand over a copy of the draft, but he described its contents, and, according to the indictment, talked about the "state of internal United States government deliberations." The indictment also alleges that Franklin gave the two men "highly classified" information about potential attacks on American forces in Iraq.
In mid-August of 2002, according to the indictment, Franklin met with Gilon--identified simply as "FO," or "foreign official"--at a restaurant, and Gilon explained to Franklin that he was the "policy" person at the Embassy. The two met regularly, the indictment alleges, often at the Pentagon Officers' Athletic Club, to discuss "foreign policy issues," particularly regarding a "Middle Eastern country"--Iran, by all accounts--and "its nuclear program." The indictment suggests that Franklin was receiving information and policy advice from Gilon; after one meeting, Franklin drafted an "Action Memo" to his supervisors incorporating Gilon's suggestions. Gilon is an expert on weapons proliferation, according to Danny Ayalon, the Israeli Ambassador, and has briefed reporters about Israel's position on Iran. According to Lawrence Di Rita, a Pentagon spokesman, it is part of the "job description" of Defense Department desk officers to meet with their foreign counterparts. "Desk officers meet with foreign officials all the time, not with ministers, but interactions with people at their level," he said. The indictment contends, however, that on two occasions Franklin gave Gilon classified information.
The issue of Israel's activities in Washington is unusually sensitive. Twenty years ago, a civilian Naval Intelligence analyst named Jonathan Pollard was caught stealing American secrets on behalf of an Israeli intelligence cell--a "rogue" cell, the Israelis later claimed. Pollard said that he was driven to treason because, as a Jew, he could not abide what he saw as America's unwillingness to share crucial intelligence with Israel. Pollard's actions were an embarrassment for American Jews, who fear the accusation of "dual loyalty"--the idea that they split their allegiance between the United States and Israel. For Israel, the case was a moral and political disaster. And there are some in the American intelligence community who suspect that Israel has never stopped spying on the United States.

Dahr Jamail has something new up at Iraq Dispatches:

Just in the last few days, according to USA Today, a "propaganda video purportedly made by al-Qaeda-linked terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi" has been released showing suicide attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq supposedly inspired by or ordered by him. Since George Bush first mentioned him in October 2002 in a speech in Cincinnati as proof of an al-Qaeda presence in Iraq, and so of Saddam Hussein's essential al-Qaeda-ness, Zarqawi has moved ever more front and center as Iraq's main terrorist threat. He now has an enormous bounty on his head and is cited regularly by the President as well as other administration officials as our enemy of enemies in that land, proof positive that Iraq is "the central theater in the war on terror." In the U.S., he has come to personify the war in Iraq, his presence both a kind of instant why-we-fight explanation for our being there and a living justification for everything we are doing there.

The above is from an introduction to Dahr Jamail's latest piece "The Zarqawi Phenomenon" (you're going to The Nation's TomDispatch for the article in full):

A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his organization Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn't claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets). Given that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be based upon administration lies and manipulations, I had begun to wonder if the vaunted Zarqawi even existed.
In Amman, where I was recently based, random interviews with Jordanians only generated more questions and no answers about Zarqawi. As it happens, though, the Jordanian capital is just a short cab ride from Zarqa, the city Zarqawi is said to be from. So I decided to slake my curiosity about him by traveling there and nosing around his old neighborhood.
"Zarqawi, I don't even know if he exists," said a scruffy taxi driver in Amman and his was a typical comment. "He's like Bin Laden, we don't even know if he exists; but if he does, I support that he fights the U.S. occupation of Iraq."

Now we're going to note what Keith's e-mailed to highlight, David Corn's "Is Rove It?" (The Nation):

O'Donnell's comment and Isikoff's report set off a wave of reaction. I received numerous emails proclaiming "Rove is it, he's the [deleted] who revealed Plame's identity." But a careful reading of the available facts leads to this unsatisfying conclusion: not so fast.
The issue at hand is the identity of who told conservative columnist Robert Novak that Plame was an undercover CIA official working on counterproliferation (that is, anti-WMD) matters. On July 14, 2003, Novak published a piece that was essentially a conveyor belt for White House criticism of Joseph Wilson. A week earlier, Wilson had written a much-noticed op-ed piece in The New York Times that argued that George W. Bush had misled the nation in his January 2003 State of the Union speech by claiming that Iraq had been shopping in Africa for uranium to be used in a nuclear weapons program. In his article, Wilson revealed for the first time that he had been dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate rumors of such Iraqi activity and had reported back that it was highly unlikely that Iraq was procuring weapons-related uranium there. Wilson's article--which followed his previous criticism of the administration for launching the war in Iraq--placed him in the line of fire. Republican and conservative allies of the White House blasted away. In the course of this attack, Novak wrote the piece that outed Wilson's wife and suggested that Wilson's trip to Niger had been a nepotistic junket of some sort.
Novak seemed to attribute his disclosure about Plame (which destroyed her career and perhaps threatened anti-WMD operations) to two unnamed "senior administration officials." (I use the word "seemed" because the attribution was technically indirect, though it appears clear these were Novak's sources.) Two days after Novak's column was published, I became the first journalist to write that these two Bush administration sources might have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection act of 1982, which makes it illegal for a government official (not a reporter) to reveal the identity of an undercover intelligence official. (It would not be until September 2003 that the CIA would ask the Justice Department to investigate this leak and an official inquiry would begin. ) Then on July 17, 2003, Time posted a piece by Matthew Cooper, Massimo Calabresi and John Dickerson headlined "A War on Wilson?"

Read the piece because Corn's been on the subject when no one cared and no one thought it was a story. (And for those who say, "You always praise Corn!" I've noted his work that he deserves credit for with regard to Valerie Plame and, as I've said all along, his book The Lies of George W. Bush is a strong one. If that's "always praising Corn" in someone's opinion, then I guess it's true. It's not in my book.)

Keith: He's making the same point so I hope you'll highlight it.

I believe Keith's referring to the point about it not being a crime for a reporter to out. If so, I'm sure David Corn's made that forever and I'm sure I've read him making it. (And this act was commented on in depth long before Novak or, for that matter, long before the Bully Boy became an oval office squatter). I do know that on the now cancelled Unfiltered (radio program from Air America, not the Tucker Carlson PBS show) it was made by Lizz Winstead, Rachel Maddow and a guest (who may have been Corn but I don't think so). Corn was on Randi Rhodes and he probably made the point there. Corn's been on the story forever, even those who don't like him (and some in the community don't) will hopefully give him credit for that. And read the article if you go to links. If you don't, note that Corn's been on this story forever and he's raising a hand and saying, "Not so fast."

[Note: Sam Seder has some big supporters in the community. He's filling in for Randi Rhodes tomorrow and Thursday. That's your head's up.]

And regarding the outing of Valerie Plame and Karl Rove, Mike's got some thoughts worth noting:

Right now, the way I understand, Karl's old defense was "I didn't leak." But he did say Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was "fair game." Sounds like maybe he might have confirmed a leak. So wouldn't that make him a leaker? If I'm reading Robert Novak's column outing Valerie Plame, I might just think, "Oh Mr. Bad Teeth is always getting something wrong." So if Karl confirmed it and only did that, I think it would still be just as bad.
But it's looking worse right now.
He was having contact with Matthew Cooper of Time and who knows who else?

And this isn't the planned entry. But it hit me on the way home that the planned entry might take some pulling together and so I'm posting this in case anyone's checking for something new.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 12:37 am by thecommonills
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Democracy Now: on G8, Africa and O'Connor; Cindy Sheehan (BuzzFlash); Somerby on op-eders; Bill Scher on filibuster; BuzzFlash interviews Paul Jay . . .

I finally got on to speak for my 82 seconds (all the time Larry King Live could spare for the peace message) about how this war is a catastrophe and how we should bring the troops home and quit forcing the Iraqi people to pay for our government's hubris and quit forcing innocent children to suffer so we can fight terrorism somewhere besides America. How absolutely racist and immoral is it to take America's battles to another land and make an entire country pay for the crimes of others? To me, this is blatant genocide. How dare we export our patriotic brand of flag waving death and devastation to a people who have been through so much already? It wasn't bad enough that our sanctions killed tens of thousands of Iraqis before we even started an active aggression on them, now we have to create confusion, chaos, and disorder there. How dare our president, Congress, and we Americans allow this to continue?

After my brief advocacy for peace, my position was refuted by another Mom whose son was killed in Iraq in 2003 who said she "totally disagrees" with me and "feels sorry" for me. Well, you know what? I feel ache for her blindness and for the millions of sheeple who have had the wool pulled over their eyes by the bunch of hypocritical, bad shepherds who are running disastrous herd over the world. I have distressing news for the Soccer Safety Moms and the NASCAR Dads who are such ardent supporters of this administration and war: Your grandchildren and children who will be entering Kindergarten this fall will be fighting George's endless war if he gets his way and is allowed to continue spreading the cancer of imperialism in the Middle-East. Donny Rumsfeld said we could be in Iraq for another dozen years. Does anybody think with all the billions of dollars that are being poured into constructing super-sized bases in Iraq that the war machine plans on relinquishing the cash-cow that is that poor, unfortunate land anytime soon? Think about it when you tuck your child into bed tonight.

The above is from Cindy Sheehan's "Not Worth It: Larry King, Part 2" at BuzzFlash. (Part 1 can be found here.) BuzzFlash credits her with the following:

Mom of Casey Sheehan, KIA in Sadr City Iraq, 04/04/04 Casey's Peace Page
Cofounder of Gold Star Families for Peace www.GSFP.org
Member of the After Downing Street Coalition www.AfterDowningStreet.org
www.CindySheehan.com

We'll add Military Familes Speak Out to the list. (To read Sheehan's testimony at the Conyers' Hearing on the Downing Street Memo, click here. To read an excerpt of her contribution to CODEPINK's Stop The Next War Now, click here.)

On to Democracy Now! ("always worth watching," as Marcia says)

Headlines for July 5, 2005

- Sandra Day O'Connor Resigns From Supreme Court
- Egypt's Top Diplomat Kidnapped in Baghdad
- Iraq Ambassador Accuses U.S. Of Killing His Nephew
- 200,000 March in "Make Poverty History" Protest in Scotland
- 2,000 Blockade Scottish Nuclear Sub Base
- 2005: Deadliest Year So Far For U.S. In Afghanistan
- Report: Karl Rove Linked to Outing of CIA Agent
- Israeli President Warns Sharon Could Be Assassinated

After Sandra Day O'Conner: High Stakes Battle Over Supreme Court Gears Up in Washington

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired from the bench last Friday. In 1981, O'Conner became the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Her resignation created a vacancy on the court for the first time in 11 years and set in motion a high stakes political battle in Washington that could last for months. We host a debate with the Alliance for Justice and the conservative Committee for Justice as well as Planned Parenthood.

Nelson Mandela on G8 Summit: "Overcoming Poverty is Not a Gesture of Charity, it is an Act of Justice"

After billions tuned into this weekend's Live 8 concerts and hundreds of thousands protested in the streets for debt relief, increased aid, and trade justice, leaders of the world's richest nations will begin a three-day summit in Gleneagles, Scotland on Wednesday. We speak with veteran reporter John Chiahemen, chief Southern Africa correspondent for Reuters and we go to Scotland to speak with sociology professor David Miller.

Jailed Native American Leader Leonard Peltier Transferred to Indiana Prison and Put in Solitary Confinement

Jailed Native American Leader Leonard Peltier was transferred from Leavenworth prison in Kansas to the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana where he was put in solitary confinement. We speak with his lead attorney, Barry Bachrach.

From today's Democracy Now! Headlines, Tori and Jonah each wanted one item highlighted:

200,000 March in "Make Poverty History" Protest in Scotland
President Bush is flying to Scotland today to take part in the Group of Eight summit. While the summit opens on Wednesday, Scotland has already been the scene of mass protests. On Saturday more than 200,000 demonstrators gathered in Edinburgh for the "Make Poverty History" march. That same day simultaneous concerts were held in 10 cities around the world in an attempt to increase the world's attention about poverty in Africa.

Iraq Ambassador Accuses U.S. Of Killing His Nephew
Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations -- Samir Sumaidaie -- is accusing U.S. Marines of shooting dead his 21-year-old nephew. According to the ambassador, his nephew was arrested because Marines found a rifle at his home. After Marines detained him, the young man was found dead with a bullet in his neck.

At The Daily Howler, Bob Somerby is addressing a number of topics (always) and we'll focus on the remarks on the New York Times columnists* for this excerpt:

For example, consider John Tierney's column this morning. Tierney starts by listing two questions he would pose to a Court nominee:

TIERNEY (7/5/05): Two questions I'd like to ask candidates for Sandra Day O'Connor's job:
1. Does the Constitution forbid the government from seizing your home and giving it to someone else?

2.If you're not sure, would you be willing to tour Pittsburgh before taking this job?

But how would a tour of Pittsburgh help someone know what the Constitution forbids? Answer: It wouldn't--of course. But so what? After a silly jibe at current Justices who are "not inclined to be too literal about the Bill of Rights," Tierney goes off on his latest tear. Urban renewal in his native Pittsburgh has been a disaster, he says--a decades-long string of bad decisions. And somehow, this is supposed to help O'Connor’s replacement know how to make a judicial ruling about eminent domain. Tierney wants this new Justice to read the Constitution literally--and to base her rulings on the way planners screwed up the Lower Hill District. Does any of this make a lick of sense? No--except at the Times.

And then, as always, there's Kristof. Believe it or not, this is paragraph 10 of today's 14-paragraph column:

KRISTOF (7/5/05): The divide I portray between the left and right is, of course, a caricature. Some of the very best work to help the poor is done by liberal-leaning groups, like the Carter Center, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Doctors Without Borders. They all use their resources to make real changes on the ground.

Only Kristof thinks this way. Only Kristof tells us, in paragraph 10, that paragraphs 1-9 were "of course, a caricature"--a wild misstatement of reality. And as always, Kristof's "caricature" tilts in favor of magnificent Bush at the expense of those vile, worthless Dems. Only if you read all the way to the end do you escape his sprawling burlesque, finally getting a chance to learn what Bush has really done in Africa.

What has Bush actually done? Here at THE HOWLER, we don’t know, but here's what Kristof finally says: In paragraph 11, we learn that "because anything with a whiff of sex in it makes some conservatives go nuts, Mr. Bush's decision to cut off funds for the U.N. Population Fund means that more African girls will die in childbirth." And: "Even more tragic is the administration's blind hostility to condoms to fight AIDS--resulting in more dead Africans."

So Bush, the hero of the earlier caricature, is consigning many young Africans to death, for reasons that are utterly kooky.

Did you note "*"? Sunday, Ava and I did joint entries. Which included the morning entries on the New York Times. We'd just finished up (assisting The Third Estate Sunday Review for myself; Ava, of course, is a member of The Third Estate Sunday Review along with Jim, Dona, Ty and Jess) an all nighter that actually started in the afternoon. (And I'll take the blame/fall for that. Anytime there's a roundtable at The Third Estate Sunday Review, it takes a huge amount of time. I'm the one who suggested the roundtable -- and I did so at the last minute.) So the point is we were tired and seeing hardly any news in the main section. At which point, Ava said let's look at the op-eds or the Sunday Magazine. We ended up going with the op-ed. We noted Patricia Limerick Nelson ("Patti") who'd doodled on Saturday. (Also note that Ava and I were trying to provide humor in that entry and "The Manny named Brian" due to the fact that we felt we had so blown the humor in our TV review at The Third Estate Sunday Review: "TV Review: Make Room For Bully." And yes, to Martha, I'm much more comfortable seeing the humor in the review you enjoy best than this one we just did on Bully Boy's press conference.)

I've passed on some of the compliments to Ava (and we'll continue to do so) and while it's great that so many of you enjoyed it, we didn't address Patti's op-ed in the Times in terms of "she says ____ but she is incorrect." (We did critique her "opinion" that she'd offered in a CounterPunch op-ed.) But a number of you e-mailed expressing disappointment that this morning's op-eds weren't addressed. If Ava and I are doing a co-entry and she wants to take those on, we will. (And if Ava takes over the site, she'll do what she sees fit.) But I'm really not interested in the Times' op-eds as I've noted before. Somerby will critique them and we cite him as often as he has a new Howler (or at least as often as we're aware that their's a new Howler).

But a number of e-mails came in this morning asking where the critique of Tierney or Kristof were. They're at The Daily Howler as cited. As for the guest op-ed by Stephanie Coontz that twelve of you e-mailed about, if I did take on the op-eds, I'd probably have to excuse myself from Coontz's. (I know her.) I will, however, recommend that the people who enjoyed her op-ed seek out The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap which is my personal favorite of her books and one that is not listed by the Times this morning. I'll also add that members can comment on whatever they want. If you have opinions on an op-ed or an editorial, you're more than welcome to e-mail your thoughts and they will go up here if you give permission for that.

Kelli e-mails to note Rohan Pearce's "World Tribunal: Iraq needs justice, not occpation" (Green Left Weekly):

"In February 2003, weeks before war was declared on Iraq, millions of people protested in the streets of the world. That call went unheeded. No international institution had the courage or conscience to stand up to the aggression of the US and UK governments. No one could stop them. It is two years later now. Iraq has been invaded, occupied, and devastated. The attack on Iraq is an attack on justice, on liberty, on our safety, on our future, on us all. We the people of conscience decided to stand up. We formed the World Tribunal on Iraq, to demand justice and a peaceful future." -- from the preliminary declaration of the World Tribunal on Iraq, Istanbul, June 27.

On June 26, the World Tribunal on Iraq held its final session, the culmination of 20 commissions of inquiry and hearings held across the world over a period of two years. Sessions took place in London, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Brussels, New York, Japan, Stockholm, South Korea, Rome, Frankfurt, Geneva, Lisbon and Spain; the "Jury of Conscience" that rendered judgement on the war and occupation was drawn from 10 different countries.

The tribunal was formed by activists in the anti-war movement because of the absence, as the tribunal's statement on its legitimacy explains, of a "court or authority that will judge the acts of the US and its allies". It added: "If the official authorities fail, then authority derived from universal morals and human rights principles can speak for the world."

Jonah e-mails to note that Global Movements, Urban Struggles (Pacifica radio program airing Tuesdays on WBAI) addressed The World Tribunal on Iraq for the full hour this morning.

Jonah: Biju Matthew had clips from Dahr [Jamail] and other people speaking and Biju gave a really an indepth look. I'm not sure if the programs are archived or not, but people should be aware of this once a week program. They can probably listen online.

WBAI archives their programs and clicking here should take you to the July archive but note that Tuesday's programming is not yet archived. The World Tribunal on Iraq also maintains an archive.

Amanda e-mails to note Armando's "Damaging National Security" (Daily Kos) comments on this morning's front page article in the New York Times on the outing of Valerie Plame (penned by Scott Shane):

Which means that is one less agent we have to do the important work of stopping the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Not to mention the operatives who worked with Ms. Plame.

Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's a phrase you don't hear much from BushCo anymore.

Marcus e-mails to note Bill Scher's latest at Liberal Oasis:

Can Dems really just keep opposing and opposing? Won’t they just look political and obstructionist?

Yes they can, and no they won’t, if the principles are clear and laid out from the beginning.

When principles slosh around from nominee to nominee, that’s when it looks political.

Republicans are trying to prevent Dems from dragging things out.

On Sunday, a talking point from Sens. Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch was that the average nomination process was 72 days long, to try to set a benchmark for excessive fighting.

But remember, Dems have successfully fought out a protracted nomination battle.

From the time when the right-wing Robert Bork was nominated in 1987, to when the merely conservative Anthony Kennedy confirmed in 1988, took more than 200 days.

(There was even an empty seat on the Court from October to February. The Court stayed in business and the Republic survived.)

And Kennedy was Reagan’s third attempt. (Granted, Dems got a little lucky, as the second right-wing pick, Douglas Ginsburg, withdrew because he smoked pot.)

Sheila e-mailed to say that Anne E. Kornblut's article on Howard Dean was noted here June 10th. (The article, entitled "Dean's Remarks Draw Fire From Both Sides of the Aisle" was the subject of a correction by the Times which we noted this morning.) Sheila's correct (I was wrong), the article was noted. The quote corrected wasn't. Click here to read that entry from June 10th. (Scroll down to "Avoid Anne E. Kornblut's . . .") Thank you for catching that Sheila (and the earlier entry from this morning will be corrected this evening).

We'll note the latest BuzzFlash interview: "Paul Jay, Creator of Independent World Television, Intends to Challenge Corporate Broadcasters at Their Own Game:"

When we heard of Paul Jay's project to start an international television news network supported by viewer donations, we said to ourselves, "Now here is a guy who is truly BuzzFlashian!" After all, BuzzFlash was started in May of 2000 with sweat equity, and it has been supported ever since by its readers -- 5 million monthly, these days, although in the first month of our online existence, we only had 34 readers a day. When we met Paul Jay, we became convinced he's got the professional expertise and righteous indignation to maybe pull this idea off. After all, we did, on the Internet. So, we have joined his advisory committee, and BuzzFlash is fully supporting his efforts. After all, he's a kindred spirit who cherishes democracy, the free flow of ideas, and social justice. You can find out more about his vision and unfolding plans at the Independent World Television web site: http://www.iwtnews.com/

* * *

BuzzFlash: You're a successful producer of documentaries and also public affairs programming for the CBC in Canada, and you have enjoyed other accomplishments relating to films and television. Why at this point in your life would you undertake this gargantuan project to launch an international television news network?

Paul Jay: In many ways, everything I've been doing has led me here. I've been making long-form documentaries for over twenty years. The last film I did was in Afghanistan, a film called "Return to Kandahar." And that filmmaking experience gave me an opportunity to get a sense of just how serious, even dire, the world situation is. You can't go to a place like Afghanistan, and see the poverty and the destruction that's taken place -- the destruction of so many people's lives -- and not just feel moved, but feel the need to act in some way, to respond to it.

The more I know about the world, the more concerned I am about where it's going. Also, I've been doing a political debate show on Canadian TV for the last ten years called "counterSpin." So I've heard all the political debates.

BuzzFlash: It was on the CBC?

Paul Jay: Yes, on CBC News World. And it's the same thing. At least personally, I've increasingly felt that the only life that makes me happy is a life with meaning. For my life to have meaning, I have to act. It's not enough just to know. I asked myself, where and in what way should I act, beyond making films, beyond doing "counterSpin?"

Always ahead of the curve, BuzzFlash picked Karl Rove as their GOP Hypocrite of the Week Friday. And my apologies to Paul who e-mailed on that Friday night. (Ahead of the curve in this instance due to the reporting on Rove re: Plame case. And for members who took long holidays or missed it due to other reasons, check out The Third Estate Sunday Review's editorial from Sunday, "Karl Got Fingered.")

Pru e-mails to note that at UK Indymedia they have G8 radio and video live stream.

This morning a banner was hung from a tall crane near Edinburgh central train station saying "No More Brown Wash". The campaigning group WDM have been critical of both Make Poverty History and the Governments G8 spin [audio: mp3 from crane].

The above is the latest at UK Indymedia, "G8 Reports: Tuesday 5th July." (Nice photo of the banner, by the way.)

And we'll note from (Scotland's Indymedia) "Carnival of Full Enjoyment, Edinburgh:"

The Carnival for Full Enjoyment travelled around the streets of Edinburgh on Monday 4th, involving a cast of G8 Summit protesters, clowns, police and local people. The Carnival called upon 'workers, migrants, students, benefit claimers, New Dealers, work refusers, pensioners, dreamers, duckers & divers' to resist the 'daily grind of the institutions that plunge us into overwork, poverty and debt.'

The day started with police and groups of protestors playing cat and mouse through the streets, as police quickly started to stop and search people under the Section 60 imposed all over Edinburgh. At 12pm groups of people began to gather in and around Princes St. From that time on, and throughout the day, police tried to heavily repress any demonstration using scores of riot police, horses, dogs, and endless batton charges whilst attempting to pen in groups of people. As a result several clashes occurred in the Princes St and Canning St areas that resulted in more than 100 people arrested, and around 35 protesters treated in hospital for injuries caused by the heavy handed policing. Despite this many streets in central Edinburgh were taken over by protestors throughout the afternoon. Click here for a full appraisal of the day and here for the Timeline of Events.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 12:35 am by thecommonills
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NYT: Correction on Dean, NAACP, United Church of Christ, Pentagon "weighs strategy change"

For other entries in this morning's New York Times, we're going to start off by noting this from "Corrections: For the Record:"

An article on June 10 about criticism of Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, over several derogatory remarks he made about Republicans paraphrased incorrectly from his comment during an appearance in San Francisco. He said that the Republican Party was "pretty much a white, Christian party" - not that it was made up "only" of white Christian conservatives.

Why are we noting it? Did we note the article when it ran? "No" to the second. To the first, corrections have a way of vanishing over time. So from page A2, "Corrections: For the Record," there it is. Remember it in case reporters don't.

We'll note that David E. Sanger has a "Washington Memo" in today's paper. We're not commenting on it, but I will raise the question Ava and I raised two Sundays ago -- why is when the males do this it's a "Washington Memo" and when Elisabeth Bumiller does it, it's a "White House Letter?"

Cedric e-mails to note James Dao's "At N.A.A.C.P. Helm, an Economic Approach to Rights:"

When the N.A.A.C.P. recently announced plans to make Bruce S. Gordon, a retired Verizon executive, its new president, the reaction from some longtime civil rights activists was, "Bruce who?"
But black business leaders cheered, loudly.
"Like the excitement around the election of Barack Obama, Bruce Gordon will generate excitement in corporate America," said Earl G. Graves Sr., the founder and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, referring to the black United States senator from Illinois.
Those conflicting reactions say much about the divergent views many blacks and civil rights leaders have about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group, which is struggling to redefine itself in an era of resurgent political conservatism.

Keesha e-mailed to note Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt's "Pentagon Weighs Strategy Change to Deter Terror:"

The Pentagon's most senior planners are challenging the longstanding strategy that requires the armed forces to be prepared to fight two major wars at a time. Instead, they are weighing whether to shape the military to mount one conventional campaign while devoting more resources to defending American territory and antiterrorism efforts.
The consideration of these profound changes are at the center of the current top-to-bottom review of Pentagon strategy, as ordered by Congress every four years, and will determine the future size of the military as well as the fate of hundreds of billions of dollars in new weapons.

Keesha: This is a topic that should be a national discussion but with chasing down what every young girl has gone missing or breathless reporting on shark 'attacks,' this will get lost. And then something will happen and the media and the public will make their "Never again" remarks like they did after 9-11.

Marcia e-mails to note Shaila Dewan's "United Church of Christ Backs Same-Sex Marriage:"

The United Church of Christ became the first mainline Christian denomination to support same-sex marriage officially when its general synod passed a resolution on Monday affirming "equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender."
The resolution was adopted in the face of efforts to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. It was both a theological statement and a protest against discrimination, said the Rev. John H. Thomas, the president and general minister of the denomination, which has 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members.
"On this July 4, the United Church of Christ has courageously acted to declare freedom, affirming marriage equality, affirming the civil rights of gay - of same-gender - couples to have their relationships recognized as marriages by the state, and encouraging our local churches to celebrate those marriages," Mr. Thomas said at a news conference after the vote by the General Synod.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Posted at 12:34 am by thecommonills
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