Explosions Rock London..

For those wondering, we have heard from four of our UK members thus far. Pru reports that the bombings have been "confusing" and filled with confusing reports that alternate from moment to the next. Gareth notes that there is concern that opposition to the ID program may go out the window in the face of this morning's events.

For those who haven't heard yet, "'Multiple explosions' hit London" from The Independent appears to be the strongest overview offered thus far:


Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said there had been at least six explosions, but said the picture was still "very confused".
There was no official death toll but survivors of blasts at Edgware Road station and between Aldgate and Liverpool Street reported seeing piles of bodies.Police at the scene of the bus blast also said several people had died.
The Prime Minister was preparing to make a live televised statement on the explosions, Downing Street saidThe blasts were initially blamed on a power surge but it soon became clear that it was a co-ordinated terrorist attack on the capital.

Also see "Passenger tells of terror on the Tube" from The Independent. I had planned to steer to some things offered by BuzzFlash this morning but when I heard the news on the radio, immediately started going through the e-mails. If you're a UK member, please check in today.

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

Ruth: Thank you to everyone who wrote regarding Friday's The Diane Rehm Show. As those who were listening know, Diane did tackle the issue of Kenneth Tomlinson hiring a monitor to spy on her program and Tavis Smiley's. That story was quickly overshadowed by the announcement that Sandra Day O'Connor was retiring.

On that topic, I want to thank C.I. for commenting here and at The Third Estate Sunday Review about the issue of the make up of the judiciary committee. I share the shock that fourteen years after Anita Hill faced an all male, all white judiciary committee what has passed for "improvement" is the addition of one and only one female to the committee.

Rachel had e-mailed on that and I share Rachel's anger. No, one female is not an improvement and no, one female does not "cut it."

What also has not "cut it" has been the endless turning to males by the media to address this topic. The all male panels that made up the Sunday Chat & Chews, as has already pointed out here, do not speak to the issue nor address the reality of where we are and where we should be now.

How has Morning Edition addressed the topic? Very poorly. There have been three stories on it from Monday through Wednesday. One of those was Cokie Roberts "analyzing" and the less said about the better but it should be noted she's the only woman who's weighed in on Morning Edition thus far. Cokie spoke on Monday.

On Tuesday, we had the other two stories. This included a commentary by a male:

O'Connor's Departure Will Move Court to Right
by Mark Tushnet
Morning Edition, July 5, 2005 · In the second of two different perspectives, commentator Mark Tushnet offers his thoughts on the tenure of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Tushnet argues that O'Connor was the centrist on this Court, and now the center will shift to the right.

The first commentary apparently aired on the weekend edition of Morning Edition.
The other feature this week, also on Tuesday, was this:

Looking Toward a Replacement for O'Connor
Morning Edition, July 5, 2005 · NPR's Juan Williams analyzes the political battle in the Senate over who might replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Nina Totenberg, the person who should be commenting on this story because she covers the Court for NPR, must be on vacation since they're bringing out the light weight Juan to "analyze."

Three stories has been all that Morning Edition has offered from Monday through Wednesday.
As Rachel would say, that doesn't cut it.


A far better job was done by, no surprise here to members, The Diane Rehm Show on Tuesday:

10:00 Supreme Court
President Bush has said he will choose a Supreme Court nominee in a timely manner to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. We'll talk about the likely confirmation battles ahead.
Guests
Joan Biskupic, reporter, "USA Today"
David Savage, reporter, "Los Angeles Times"
Stuart Taylor, "National Journal"

And for anyone who has time, Wednesday The Diane Rehm Show had a report that would be of interest to community members:

11:00 Geneva Overholser: "The Press" (Oxford)
Diane speaks with the co-editor of a new volume of essays on journalism and its role in American society.
Guests
Geneva Overholser, Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting, Missouri School of Journalism. She is former editor of the "Des Moines Register" and former ombudsman for the "Washington Post."

The topics included the state of the the press and the monitoring of PBS and NPR programs was addressed. Ms. Overholser had much to say on the commercialization of our press and the dangers that have arisen. The issue of Judith Miller was also addressed.

The news of O'Connor's retirement has depressed me. I e-mailed C.I. that I might not have a report this week and was told that was fine. Today's report isn't much but I'm hoping that by getting something completed, however weak, I'll be able to regain my focus.

[This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

"The law presented Judy with the choice between betraying a trust to a confidential source or going to jail," Mr. [Bill] Keller [executive editor of the New York Times] said after the hearing. "The choice she made is a brave and principled choice, and it reflects a valuing of individual conscience that has been part of this country's tradition since its founding."

The above is from Adam Liptak's "Reporter Jailed After Refusing to Name Source" in this morning's New York Times. First we'll say well done to Adam Liptak for the best article he's written on the topic (as noted by Keesha, Rob, Kara, Jordan, Eli and Seth). We'll also note that Keller's found the proper angle to present the case.

"To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld," he said, referring to the secretary of defense, "you go to court with the case you've got. It would be nice if there was absolute clarity about the nature of this case. On the contrary, there's immense mystery about this case."

I agree with Eli who stated he could have done without the Donald Rumsfeld ref but thought it was still a strong statement.

That's not a "better late than never" congratulations. This isn't over. The battle didn't start with Judith Miller and it doesn't end with her being sent to jail. Besides the push for a national shield law, there's also the fact that this is a historical struggle on the part of the press to remain a free press. (We're speaking ideally.)


Another reporter who faced jail in the case, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was spared after announcing a last-minute deal with a confidential source that he said would allow him to testify before a grand jury.
Before being taken into custody by three court officers, Ms. Miller said she could not in good conscience violate promises to her sources. "If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality," she told Judge Thomas F. Hogan, "then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press."

One reporter made the case for a free press, one didn't. (In fairness to Cooper, his employer wasn't standing behind him. A chilling message to Time magazine -- who knows how much damage will be done to it's next trend story cover? Or possibly, out of fear that Time might tell the other, both Hilary Duff and Lindsay Loham will cancel out on the sure to be hard hitting feature cover.)

One organization stood behind their reporter and their concept of a free press, one didn't.

If you're counting on a Pentagon Papers to emerge in the next few months, cross Time off the list of possible publishers. Not just because they're so scared of their shadow but also because who's going to want to talk to them?

You're an assistant in the White House. You hear some explosive information that the public must know. Who do you go to? Only the insane would go to Time now. You'd remember that Time didn't back the reporter and turned over e-mails. You'd know that when push came to shove, Time would be right there helping the government push you around.

It's a good thing for the mega-mall (let's not call it a news organization) that is Time Warner ABC Disney CNN et al that they have "synergy." That'll allow them to exist on covering the "tough issues" of the movies the conglomerate's releasing, the ABC fall line up. It's really not like they can count on any hard hitting news. Who's going to tell them anything?


In a statement, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times, said Ms. Miller had followed her conscience, with the paper's support. "There are times when the greater good of our democracy demands an act of conscience," Mr. Sulzberger said. "I sincerely hope that now Congress will move forward on federal shield legislation so that other journalists will not have to face imprisonment for doing their jobs."

Who knew that the New York Times still had it in them to fight for a free press (as they understand it)? They did and do have it in them. And Miller's made the focus what's at stake.
Liptak's article is his strongest yet and one the Times can be proud of.

Hopefully, there's also a little pride in the halls over the way the organization and Miller behaved. They conducted themselves like news professionals. Others involved can't say the same.

We'll close with Miller's words:


In her statement in court, Ms. Miller said she had received no similar permission from her sources.
"Your Honor," she said, "in this case I cannot break my word just to stay out of jail. The right of civil disobedience based on personal conscience is fundamental to our system and honored throughout our history."
She noted that she had covered the war in Iraq, and had lived and worked all over the world.
"The freest and fairest societies are not only those with independent judiciaries," she said, "but those with an independent press that works every day to keep government accountable by publishing what the government might not want the public to know."

Whatever your opinion of Miller's reporting, in the court room she stood with the press. And her stance and the Times put others to shame.

We'll cover other news today (and do the Indymedia roundup tonight) but for the Times, this is the most important story today. So we'll make that our focus.

Kara: I hope this is a sign that the Times has woken up. I doubt it. But even if they just woke up for this one issue due to it being one of their reporters, it's more courage than I've seen in a year when Newsweek issued apologies and floated the apparent false rumor that a reporter might lose a job, a year when Time said "Oh we can't disobey a court order!" When back down and recline seem to be the only two positions for the press' easy chair the Times standing up mattered. And even though I'm not forgetting Miller's reporting, I will applaud her courage in the court room.

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

[Note: Membership is not all in agreement re: the Times decision to fight. If you're a member and want to have your say in this space, note your permission to be quoted. Members can also send links to stories or web entries that disagree with Miller & the Times' actions and we'll note those.]

[This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

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.]

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.]

---

"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.]

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.]
 

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.]