Ethics -- McClellan's Plame Disillusionment

June 5, 2008

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, and Benjamin Armbruster

ETHICS

McClellan's Plame Disillusionment

Last week, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan made the media rounds to promote his insider's account of his time in the Bush administration. The book has revived interest in the Valerie Plame leak scandal, what McClellan calls a "defining moment" in his "disillusionment" with the Bush White House. Pointing to passages in the book, House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) requested more documents from the FBI this week after learning that Scooter Libby, who was convicted of crimes for his role in the scandal, "told the FBI that it's possible he was instructed by Cheney to disseminate information to the press about Plame." Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Robert Wexler (D-FL) have called on McClellan to testify before Congress as well. Not surprisingly, the White House is already indicating it might try to block that testimony. Last month, Plame appealed last year's dismissal of her civil lawsuit against Bush officials for outing her identity as a CIA agent-- allowing the White House and Karl Rove to continue to duck questions about the scandal by citing the open legal case.

DID BUSH AUTHORIZE PLAME LEAK?: McClellan's account confirms that President Bush was directly behind at least one aspect of the leak scandal. Some history: In July 2003, former ambassador Joseph Wilson published a New York Times op-ed arguing that, contrary to Bush's State of the Union assertion, Wilson had found no evidence that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, when he went on a fact-finding mission to the African country in 2002. The next day, White House officials admitted the Niger claim was based on "bogus" intelligence. Still, the White House went into attack mode to discredit Wilson. A week later, Robert Novak published a column outing Wilson's wife, Plame, as a covert CIA agent. At the same time, "Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby" to leak to the media portions of "a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility" of Wilson. The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) "detailed the intelligence community's conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq"; Bush instructed Cheney to "get it out" to push back against Wilson. Appearing on NBC's Today Show last week, McClellan revealed that Bush confirmed to him in 2006 that he had personally authorized the declassification of the NIE. McClellan said, "Here we were, learning that the President had authorized the same thing we had criticized" -- namely, "the selective leaking of classified information." "I was kinda taken aback," he added. This information reveals that Bush was personally involved in the push-back against Wilson. As McClellan wondered aloud to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, "Did this set in motion the chain of events that led to the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity?"

ROVE VERSUS McCLELLAN: McClellan said on the Today Show that he "grew increasingly disillusioned" with the Bush administration when it was clear "that what I'd been told by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby -- that they were in no way involved in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity" -- turned out to be false. When asked by Olbermann whether he had ever lied from the podium, McClellan admitted that he had "unknowingly" lied "when it came to the issue of the Valerie Plame leak episode." "I had been given assurances by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that they were not involved in the leak but it turned out later they were," he said. To rebut these charges, Rove took to the airways himself last week, "maintaining his hair-splitting defense that since he didn't use Plame's name, he didn't reveal her identity." "What I told Scott was that I didn't know her name, didn't reveal her name, didn't know what she did at the CIA, and that I wasn't the source for the leak," Rove said. On NBC's Meet the Press last Sunday, McClellan called Rove's defense "pretty disingenuous." "When I said, 'were you involved in this in any way...he categorically said, 'no,'" McClellan said. McClellan recalled Bush's vow to fire anyone in his administration involved in the leak. "I think the president should have stood by the word and that meant Karl should have left," McClellan said.

RIGHT WING POINTS TO ARMITAGE: Besides parsing his language on what, exactly, he told McClellan, Rove, and his conservative allies are deflecting McClellan's criticisms by pointing their own finger of blame to former State Department official Richard Armitage. As the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin wrote Tuesday, "Armitage was the first to disclose Plame's identity to journalists, but that doesn't change the fact that Rove and Libby did so too, likely for more nefarious reasons than Armitage, and then lied about it." Talking to Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, Rove emphasized that "the identity of Valerie Plame was leaked to Robert Novak by Richard Armitage." Right-wing website Newsbusters picked up Rove's talking points, complaining that during McClellan's interviews, "Richard Armitage, who was the actual leaker, was virtually ignored." Novak argued in a June 2 column that McClellan "virtually ignores" Armitage's role because it "undermines the Democratic theory, now accepted by McClellan, that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove aimed to delegitimize Wilson as a war critic." Regardless of the right wing's misdirection campaign, it is a fact that Rove also directly leaked Plame's identity to at least one person: the New York Times's Matt Cooper, who said last August, "I didn't know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD."

CIVIL RIGHTS -- VOTER ID LAWS ARE WIDENING THE IDENTIFICATION DIVIDE: While trying to vote in Indiana's presidential primary last month, 12 nuns, all over age 80, were turned away from a polling place because they lacked a state or federal photo ID, as mandated by a state law recently upheld by the Supreme Court. In fact, those nuns "are among 20 million other voting age citizens without driver's licenses, and they join those 26.5 million veterans and many millions of other Americans who suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of...the ID Divide -- Americans who lack official identification, suffer from identity theft, are improperly placed on watch lists, or otherwise face burdens when asked for identification," observe Peter Swire and Cassandra Butts of the Center for American Progress. Those without IDs "are finding themselves squeezed out of many parts of daily life, including finding a job, opening a bank account, flying on an airplane, and even exercising the right to vote." The CATO Institute's Jim Harper, who also advises the Department of Homeland Security on privacy issues, recently said that the Bush administration's identity verification efforts are merely "an extended, knee-jerk reaction" to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In a report on the ID divide, Swire and Butts advocate a "due diligence" process when considering and implementing identification systems because ID systems "created in the name of security should only be implemented if they actually will improve security and do so cost-effectively."

ETHICS -- PROSECUTORS DROP EFFORT TO SECURE HARSH SENTENCE FOR SIEGELMAN: Federal prosecutors have dropped their sentence appeal this week against former Alabama governor. Don Siegelman, ending the prosecution's bid to increase Siegelman's prison sentence from seven years to 30 years. Siegelman's conviction for bribery in 2006 was criticized by both parties for being politically motivated. In June 2007, an Alabama lawyer and longtime Republican activist said she heard a Republican operative say that Karl Rove "had spoken with the Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Siegelman. Last month, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Rove to force him to testify about Bush administration's meddling in the Justice Department along with his role in the Siegelman case, but he continues to refuse to testify publicly and under oath; on ABC's This Week last month, Rove issued a non-denial of his involvement in Siegelman's prosecution, claiming, "I read about it in the newspaper." Siegelman is currently free on bond pending his appeal of his conviction. Last week, a bipartisan group of 54 former state attorneys general filed a brief supporting Siegelman, writing that the prosecution "raised serious First Amendment concerns."

IRAQ -- PARLIAMENTARIAN SAYS 70 PERCENT OF IRAQIS WANT WITHDRAWAL, HUGE U.S. EMBASSY NOT A 'POSITIVE SIGNAL': Yesterday, the House held a hearing featuring two members of the Iraqi parliament in order "to hear their assessment of the proposed U.S.-Iraq Security Agreement," an agreement put forth by the Bush administration permitting combat forces in Iraq for an unspecified period of time. Iraq is currently seeing "growing and widespread protests…over the scope of the agreement." In the hearing, parliamentarians Nadeem Al-Jaberi and Khalaf Al-Ulayyan expressed their support for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. In an exchange with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Al-Jaberi said that U.S. presence in Iraq is highly unpopular with the public, adding that "the majority of the people of Iraq are with the withdrawal. ... Perhaps even about 70 percent." Given Iraqis' opposition to U.S. forces, Paul asked how the public perceives the 104-acre, $700 million U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which consists of 27 buildings and 3,000 employees. Jaberi criticized its massive scale, saying that the embassy "certainly would not be a very positive signal to the Iraqi people." Also yesterday, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) released a letter from 31 Iraqi legislators who agreed with Jaberi and Ulayyan, saying that "the majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject" any agreement with the U.S. that is not "linked" to a clear timetable for withdrawal.

Today, the Senate Intelligence Committee will release "the last in a series of reports" on the Bush administration's use of false intelligence ahead of the Iraq invasion. "The report reinvigorates a longstanding debate over whether the intelligence failures in the lead-up to the Iraq war were largely because of faulty intelligence or because of policy makers' faulty use of intelligence."

The Bush administration is bypassing the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and talking directly with Democrats about re-writing the nation's surveillance laws. "He's not really in it," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) says of his colleague, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO). "Bond, he's just complicating things." Bond said the White House has "assured him that it was not negotiating behind his back."

While President Bush has been "on a crusade against lawmakers' pet projects" known as earmarks, today "he plans to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for a $100 million whopper that was slipped into a spending bill almost four years ago." The funds were earmarked for the new headquarters of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

In an attempt "to tie Democrats to high gas prices," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is urging Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to bring global warming legislation to the floor "as soon as possible." GOP leaders are calling the legislation a "cap-and-tax" plan.

"Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and John McCain (R-AZ) are quietly working together on a good-government bill" authored by Obama and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). McCain's Senate office contacted Obama's on Monday, asking to sign on to the bill "opening federal government contracts to public scrutiny." Obama's staff was happy to comply because "they knew support from the two presumptive nominees" would help the measure pass.

According to a new Pew Hispanic Center report, "[u]nemployment among Latinos -- particularly immigrants -- jumped in the last year, wiping out many of their economic gains." The report also found that "aggressive new enforcement raids by immigration officials may be a contributing factor to the rising rate of joblessness."

Yesterday, a pair of explosions in Baghdad killed at least 22 people as "insurgents launched attacks aimed at Iraqi police officers. It was the deadliest day in the capital in several months. Three U.S. soldiers were killed by small-arms fire in an attack in Hawija, near the northern oil city of Kirkuk."

And finally: Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) was hospitalized Monday, "shortly after he released a strongly-worded statement condemning Vice President Dick Cheney for making an incest joke" at the expense of his state. Yesterday, Byrd was reportedly feeling "much better," and "had just one burning question for his staff during a conference call with aides this morning: Did the vice president apologize yet to the people of West Virginia?" (He had.)

The tally from the 2007 Combined Federal Campaign, the government's workplace charity drive, finds that government employees donated $273.1 million last year, "an increase from 2006, when the campaign raised $271.6 million, and set an annual record for the charity drive."

MARYLAND: "Concerned that military veterans in need of mental health care are falling between the cracks in the federal system, Maryland launched a program this week to help service members get treatment."

WASHINGTON: Last week, Gov. Chris Gregoire's (D) "budget director sent a memo to all agency directors, college presidents and statewide elected officials urging them to 'save fuel and control costs.'"

CALIFORNIA: "California Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stay its landmark decision allowing same-sex marriage, clearing the way for gay weddings to begin statewide later this month."

THINK PROGRESS: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): Abuse at Guantanamo was simply like "hazing pranks from some fraternity."

WONK ROOM: Right-wing senators oppose a New Deal to solve global warming.

WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT: Iraqi parliamentarian: U.S. invasion led to "the destruction of the country."

COAL IS DIRTY: General Electric claims carbon dioxide is a "possible contributing factor" to climate change.

"[W]e have no desire for permanent bases [in Iraq]."
-- Former White House press secretary Tony Snow, 6/15/06

VERSUS

"A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November. ... US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law."
-- The Independent, 6/5/08

Think Progress

McClellan's Plame Disillusionment

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