THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

March 2007, Week One

Page Three

 

Libby convicted on four of five counts in perjury trial

• March 6: Lewis Libby is convicted on four of the five counts brought against him.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  Libby now faces up to 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. Libby is convicted of obstruction of justice by intentionally deceiving the grand jury investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson; convicted of making a false statement to the FBI about his conversation with NBC journalist Tim Russert; perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert; perjury when he lied in court about his conversations with other reporters. He was found not guilty of making a false statement in relation to his conversation with Time magazine's Matthew Cooper. Libby will, of course, appeal the verdict.
• The jury was down to eleven members, as one juror was dismissed last week after admitting she had obtained outside information about the trial that resulted in her disqualifications. The prosecution objected, but the defense agreed to continue with only 11 jurors, and Judge Reggie Walton allowed the deliberations to continue.
• In the hours after the verdict was handed down, one of the jurors discussed the deliberations. Most of the jurors felt that, though Libby was plainly guilty, he was the "fall guy" for more senior White House officials. Denis Collins says that "a number of times" they asked themselves, "what is HE doing here? Where is Rove and all these other guys.... I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells [his lawyer] put it, he was the fall guy." The jurors were sure that Dick Cheney did indeed "task him to talk to reporters." According to Collins, "some jurors said at one point, 'We wish we weren't judging Libby...this sucks.'" More than once he said many jurors found Libby "sympathetic." By and large, the jurors found the reporters who testified, especially NBC's Tim Russert, "very credible." The defense's "badgering" of the New York Times's Judith Miller may have hurt them as some jurors developed "sympathy" for her. Even though she admitted having a "bad memory," the fact that she had notes counted a lot in her favor, Collins says.
• Collins, himself a journalist who has written for the Washington Post, says the jury deliberated in a painstaking fashion. He says there were several "managerial types" on the jury and they spent many days just assembling their notes in some kind or "buildings blocks" fashion. "What we came up with from that," he says, "was that Libby was told about Mrs. Wilson [Valerie Plame] nine times" in that time period. "We believed he DID have a bad memory, but it seemed very unlikely he would not remember about being told about Mrs. Wilson so many times.... Hard to believe he would remember on Tuesday and forget on Thursday." Collins says they failed to convict Libby on the Matt Cooper charge, feeling it was pretty much one man's word against the others, especially since Cooper had no notes. He adds that politics played no role in the verdict, and claimed most jurors didn't know how others felt politically. "The primary thing which convinced us on most of the accounts was the conversation...the alleged conversation...with Tim Russert," he says.
• Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, "Today's guilty verdicts are not solely about the acts of one individual. This trial provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed -- at the highest levels of the Bush administration -- a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq." And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, "I welcome the jury's verdict. It's about time someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics. Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct." DNC chairman Howard Dean says, "Today the American legal system did something the Bush Administration hasn't, by holding Scooter Libby accountable for his illegal actions. Many unanswered questions remain about the other key Bush advisors who participated in the administration's efforts to mislead the American people and smear its critics who have yet to be held accountable. Ultimately, the buck stops with President Bush. While he failed to keep his promise to fire the leaker, he should pledge not to pardon Scooter Libby. It's appalling to think that while President Bush had a high level team in place to sell the Iraq War and viciously smear its critics, it has not given that same attention to plan for postwar Iraq, providing the proper equipment for our troops or ensuring that our troops and veterans receive the care they deserve."
• Even some Republicans are dismayed by the revelations of high-level skullduggery and orchestrated classified information leaks from the White House that came from the trial. "This has been a huge cloud over the White House," says Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist close to the Bush team. "It caused a lot of intellectual, emotional and political energy to be expended when it should have been expended on the agenda. They're never going to fully recover from this. If you're looking at legacy, this episode gets prominently mentioned in every recap of the Bush administration, much like Iran-Contra and Monica Lewinsky." Of course, some other Republicans react defensively. Former Cheney aide Mary Matalin, herself involved in the White House leak scheme, says that the trial verdict displays a double standard and cites the non-existent documents-smuggling case of former Clinton national security adviser Samuel Berger -- who was cleared of any wrongdoing. "Scooter didn't do anything," Matalin insists. "And his personal record and service are impeccable. How do you make sense of a system where a security principal [Berger] admits to stuffing classified docs in his pants and says, 'I'm sorry,' and a guy who is rebutting a demonstrable partisan liar is going through this madness?" The errors and lies in Matalin's short statement are, of course, easily refuted. And a senior White House official denies that the Republican-led Congress failed to hold the White House accountable for anything. "I don't buy the conventional wisdom that we haven't had accountability in the past," he says. "Is it different because Democrats are in charge? Of course.... But that's fine, that's a reality that we're prepared to deal with."
• The National Review leads the conservative charge a mere two hours after the verdict, demanding that Bush pardon Libby. The rationales of the editorial writers are diagrammatic of the usual conservative talking points, lined up one after another: accusations that a partisan, "scandal-hungry media" whipped up a frenzy of interest and anger about the case; insisting, again, that Valerie Plame was not covert; blaming the CIA for instigating the leak investigation in order to distract attention from their own intelligence failures; and pinning the responsibility for the appointment of Fitzgerald on scandal-mongering Democrats and docile, overly compliant senior officials at the Department of Justice, among other assertions and sundry grousings. The entire article is linked below; if the reader cares to sort through the tangle of lies, misinformation, half-truths, and spin the National Review editorialists provide, they are welcome to do so.
• Of the administration's expression of sadness for Libby and disappointment in the verdict, Democratic Underground writer "Earl G." observes, "It's all a bit strange really, given that Scooter is now a convicted felon. How come neither Dick Cheney nor George W. Bush saw fit to mention that they were, oh, I dunno, disappointed with his behavior? Or perhaps point out that they're not really cool with members of their staff committing crimes? The fact that they didn't, and that nobody even really noticed that they didn't, pretty much sums up the sad state of the administration's affairs these days."
• Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, the victims of the Bush smear campaign that outed Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent, write in response to the verdict, "Their prosecution of a senior White House official illustrates that we are a nation of laws and that no man is above the law. ...The Wilsons will continue to pursue the civil case against Vice President Cheney, Mr. Libby, [Karl] Rove and [Richard] Armitage because it hinges on additional and different facts from those underlying the criminal case. The criminal trial was about whether or not Mr. Libby obstructed justice and committed perjury by lying to FBI agents and the grand jury about the fact that he had disclosed to reporters that Valerie Wilson worked for the CIA. The civil suit, on the other hand, hinges on whether or not the defendants violated the constitutional rights of Valerie and Joe Wilson by making those disclosures in a concerted effort to retaliate against Joe Wilson for revealing the falsity of the president's rationale for the Iraq war." (You can watch a video clip of Wilson's reaction to the Libby verdict on Keith Olbermann's Countdown by clicking here.)
• Writing for the Guardian, columnist Michael Tomasky observes, "So what does this mean? At least three important things. First, the verdict means that it's now been officially established in a court of law that the administration was engaged in a campaign to discredit an undercover officer and a diplomat, Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson. Libby's defense -- that he learned about Plame's identity from journalists -- paralleled the administration's public arguments that it made no effort to try to expose Plame and Wilson to criticism. The jury didn't buy that.
• "Second, the verdict vindicates the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. Mountains of calumny have been heaped on him by the right since he brought the indictment against Libby. Conservatives were waiting for an acquittal to pounce on Fitzgerald, on Wilson, on Plame -- and on Democrats and liberals generally for having made a federal case out of nothing. They would have used an acquittal to shut down all the talk about the manipulation of pre-war intelligence, which was Joe Wilson's initial accusation. And not only conservatives -- a lot of the paragons of Washington morality (yes, an oxymoron) were waiting, too. Bob Woodward, who used to be a great investigative reporter, once called Fitzgerald a 'junkyard dog prosecutor.' Can't be said now.
• "Third and most important, the guilty verdict means that pre-war intelligence manipulation will continue to be a political issue. When it was in Republican hands, the United States Senate summarily shut down an inquiry into the matter. Now that Democrats are in charge, they will pursue it. The trial was focused on Libby, but questions remain about how directly Cheney and chief presidential aide Karl Rove were involved in all this. The verdict gives Democrats, who by dint of their majority control can now subpoena administration officials, added momentum to turn over the rocks. A juror said that Libby, though guilty, was just a 'fall guy.' Congress now has to look higher than Libby's level, especially at Cheney. Far from being the sideshow that conservatives and moralists like Woodward described, this trial was always centrally about the Iraq war. The Bush administration built much of its case for invasion on lies. When those lies were exposed, its response was to try to destroy the whistleblowers -- even one who was a covert CIA officer."
• At the other end of "reality," Fox News attempts to mislead its viewers by a simple twist of truth: anchor Brit Hume announces that Libby was found not guilty. (See the graphic below this item.)
• One of the biggest questions remaining is, will Libby now "flip" and provide evidence of wrongdoing on the parts of his former bosses? John Barrett, an Iran-Contra prosecutor who teaches at St. John's University, recalled James McCord in Watergate and Alan Fiers in Iran-Contra, who under threat of prison recanted past versions of events. If the jury was right that Libby lied, Barrett says, Libby is "now sitting wherever he is with cold sweat and troubled stomach and truth that he hasn't told.... Whatever the chips, if he held them and didn't lay them down, this may be the moment to decide." (CNN, Guardian, Editor and Publisher, Yubanet, Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democrats, Fox News/Daily Kos, Buzzflash, Washington Post, MSNBC/Crooks and Liars [link to video], National Review, Democratic Underground)

>Fired US attorneys confirm political nature of dismissals; confirm threats from Justice Department if they don't remain silent

• March 6: Four fired US attorneys testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee: San Diego's Carol Lam, Seattle's John McKay, New Mexico's David Iglesias and Arkansas' Bud Cummins.

  US Attorney firings

  The hearings are fraught with bombshell revelations that indicate the firings were far more politically motivated than anyone in the White House or the Justice Department will admit.
• Shortly after the hearings begin, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, who had questioned Lam's performance in August 2006 regarding Lam's prosecution of immigration cases, says she received a letter from the Justice Department supporting Lam. The letter stated that the DOJ was "satisfied" with Lam's performance.
• Iglesias is forthright about his conversations with Republican senator Pete Domenici and Republican representative Heather Wilson. He says Domenici called him at home to specifically ask about the New Mexico public corruption investigation of a Democrat and whether the indictments would be filed before November. Iglesias told Domenici no; the senator said he was very sorry to hear that, and hung up on Iglesias. The former attorney says he felt pressured by Domenici and "leaned on," telling questioners, "I felt leaned on. I felt pressured to get these matters moving." The call made him "sick," he recalls, noting that it was "unprecedented" for him to get a call from a member of Congress at home. Iglesias says that two weeks before, he received a call from Wilson while he was in a DC hotel room on DOJ business. That call was also brief, and Iglesias said Wilson asked whether there were any "sealed indictments." Iglesias, as is proper under the law, refused to give any details on the matter --"I was evasive and nonresponsive to her question, [and s]he was not happy with that answer," he testifies. Wilson said she guessed she would have to take his word for it and the call ended, according to Iglesias. Asked by Democrat Charles Schumer if he felt pressured by that call, Iglesias replies,"Yes sir, I did."
• Cummins and McKay corroborate news reports that Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, threatened the attorneys that if they continued to stir up controversy, the DOJ would retaliate. McKay calls Elston's communication "hugely inappropriate." McKay also reveals that Republican House member Doc Hastings's chief of staff called him to question him about an investigation. According to McKay, Hastings's chief of staff, Ed Cassidy (now a senior adviser to Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner) called him to inquire about whether the FBI was were investigating allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 Washington governor's race. McKay said he stopped the chief of staff before he went too far with his questions, but was troubled enough by the call to discuss it with his top assistant. Cummins offers a copy of a February 20 e-mail he sent to five other fired US attorneys -- Lam, McKay, Iglesias, Paul Charlton, and Daniel Bogden -- about Elston's phone call to him. In the e-mail, he says Elston threatened that if he or the other fired attorneys continued to speak out about their firings, or discuss the firings with anyone in Congress, that the Justice Department would, in Cummins's words, "feel forced to somehow pull their gloves off and offer public criticisms to defend their positions more fully." Elston told Cummins that the DOJ would view any of the attorneys testifying before Congress as "a major escalation of the conflict" that would warrant "unspecified retaliation." In the e-mail, Cummins wrote, "I don't want to overstate the threatening undercurrent in the call, but the message was clearly there."
• Hastings responds by admitting the call to McKay, but denies that he tried to influence McKay's decision to investigate the so-called voter fraud. "It was a simple inquiry and nothing more -- and it was the only call any federal official from my office on this subject during or after the recount ordeal," Hastings says. "Tom McCabe of the Building Industry Association of Washington did contact my office in July of 2005 to ask that I urge the White House to replace Mr. McKay and I flat out refused to do so, which Ed Cassidy told him in the bluntest of terms."
• Perhaps the biggest revelation of the hearings is the statement by Cummins, McKay and Iglesias that they would have opened an obstruction investigation based on the phone call to Cummins from Elston if they were still in office.
• One of the Republicans on the committee, Arlen Specter, says, "If the allegations are correct, then there has been serious misconduct in what has occurred in the terminations of these United States attorneys. ...United States attorneys have to be allowed to do their job in an unfettered way." Specter is particularly troubled by the contacts by Wilson and Domenici that pressured Iglesias to bring indictments for political purposes. Feinstein adds, "For over 150 years the process of appointing interim US attorneys has worked well with virtually no problems. We need to assure that this kind of politicization of the US attorney's offices does not happen again."
• At the hearings, Justice Department associate deputy attorney general William Moschella says that all of the eight fired attorneys were handled properly, and that none of them were improperly pressured or were fired to make room for Republican political allies. Most of the firings were inspired by performance-related issues, Moschella says. Lam, for example, was let go because her prosecution rate for violent crime and border violations was insufficient, Moschella says. Iglesias was fired because he had delegated too much to a deputy. Moschella's testimony is in direct conflict with the performance evaluations of both attorneys. Moschella says defiantly, "This administration has never removed a United States attorney to retaliate against them. Not once. The department stands by its decision to ask these US attorneys to resign." And DOJ spokesman Briah Roehrkasse says of the Cummins e-mail, insulting Cummins's integrity in the process: "A private and collegial conversation between Mike Elston and Bud Cummins is now somehow being twisted into a perceived threat by former disgruntled employees grandstanding before Congress. ...Mike Elston did not tell any US attorney what they should or should not say publicly about their departure, and any suggestion that such a conversation took place is ridiculous and not based on fact." (TPM Muckraker [links to videos], Talking Points Memo [link to video], Talking Points Memo [link to video], Talking Points Memo [copy of Cummins's e-mail], AP/National Examiner, CNN, KNDO-TV)
• March 6: Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says he has no plans to conduct further investigations of White House officials in the aftermath of the Libby verdict.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  He does, however, promise to cooperate with any any Congressional investigation that might follow the trial, perhaps including turning over sealed files from his grand jury investigation. "I do not expect to file any further charges, the investigation was inactive prior to the trial," he says. "We're all going back to our day jobs." But, "[i]f new information comes to light, of course we'll do that."
• Fitzgerald refuses to speculate on whether he might reduce his sentence recommendation for Libby if Libby were to proffer more information to the prosecution than he has previously revealed. "They can contact us," Fitzgerald says of Libby and his attorneys.
• The trial was absolutely necessary, he says, because Libby told lies in the course of an important investigation. "We could not walk away from that, it is inconceivable any prosecutor could walk away from that," he says. "We cannot tolerate perjury...if you don't tell the truth, we cannot make the judicial system work." The fact that such a high-level White House official lied under oath in a national security-related investigation is extremely serious, he observes.
• Of the right to journalists to protect confidential sources, the usually reticent Fitzgerald says, "What was unique about this case...the reporters involved were not just getting whistleblower tips, it was not whistleblowing, they were not reporting something that otherwise would not have been heard, they were potential eyewitnesses to a crime. ...We cannot bring the case without talking to reporters, that's irresponsible. I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful, there should be Attorney General guidelines on resorting to questioning reporters, and it should be a last resort in a very unusual case, but what people should realize, it's never off the table." (Raw Story)
• March 6: Philip Mattera, the head of the Corporate Research Project, says that the Walter Reed outrage should not be laid at the feet of the "callous Army officials running the facility."

  Walter Reed scandal

  The problem with Walter Reed, and with scores of Army hospitals and medical clinics throughout the country, also lies with the Bush administration's decision to outsource care to companies patently incompetent to handle the task, as well as in the minutiae of a giant "hedge fund" owned by a former member of the Bush cabinet. Mattera writes, "The private sector has indirectly had a hand in converting the once legendary Walter Reed into a symbol of the shameful treatment of people who have been maimed in the service of their country."
• A company called IAP Worldwide Services took over many of the management functions at Walter Reed last year. But the Bush administration, its predecessor, and the Army, has been trying to outsource many of the military's hospital management functions since early 2000, when the Army began a cost-comparison study of support services at the medical center. Such studies, which were being promoted by the Clinton administration's "reinventing government" initiative led by Al Gore, forced groups of federal workers to compete with potential contractors to figure out which could perform a given function more efficiently. The review lasted for years before it was finally determined that the bid by federal civilian employees at Walter Reed was the better one. However, that decision was overturned by the Army Audit Agency and upheld by the GAO. This allowed IAP to get a five-year, $120 million contract.
• Now Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, is presenting evidence that outsourcing, and its subsequent job cuts, have had tremendously negative effects on morale and efficiency at Walter Reed. One document, an internal memo sent last summer by Walter Reed Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi, warned his superiors that substantial numbers of skilled workers were leaving because of the impending takeover by IAP.
• This decision was undertaken largely to benefit the corporate coffers of IAP. Mattera notes, "The company is an odd choice to help manage one of the nation's premier military medical facilities. It was founded in 1989 by a South Carolina entrepreneur who enlisted the help of a logistics expert who had recently left the Army. They rode the rising wave of military outsourcing in the 1990s, specializing in supplying electric generators, while also getting federal civilian contracts for prosaic functions such as providing ice in natural disasters (a responsibility it later botched during Hurricane Katrina). Last year IAP got a $103 million contract to handle file management at the IRS but was unable to get up and running by the specified start date. Management of the company is now in the hands of Al Neffgen and David Swindle, two former executives with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root -- one of the giants of military outsourcing and the subject of numerous allegations about overcharging the federal government. Today, IAP's board of directors includes former Vice President Dan Quayle, a former commandant of the Marines, and a former vice chief of staff of the Air Force. Such connections have undoubtedly helped the company rise up the ranks of federal contractors. Its volume of business with Uncle Sam has grown from about $222 million in 2000 to some $1.2 billion in 2005."
• Mattera notes that IAP is controlled by the huge hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management, which has swallowed dozens of companies and "is now more of a conglomerate than an investment fund." Cerberus is now chaired by former Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow; Snow was selected just as IAP was intensifying its effort to take over a multi-billion-dollar military logistics contract now held by Halliburton. Mattera writes, "The entire situation is a remarkable illustration of how the federal government has become a vehicle for the promotion of private interests. The zeal with which large contracts are awarded to a small universe of companies, with little attention paid to performance, suggests that outsourcing is less an effort to improve efficiency and more a matter of enriching those with the right connections. But this time the privatization game may have backfired in the face of the Bush administration and its friends in the corporate world. It is one thing to screw workers -- unfortunately, that's now considered business as usual -- but in the case of Walter Reed the ultimate victims are a much more revered group. The stark evidence that the Bush administration, for all its rhetoric about supporting the troops, is much more interested in supporting the contractors, could be leading to a political earthquake." (TomPaine)
• March 6: Democrat Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, demands information about General Services Adminstration (GSA) chair Lurita Doan's attempts to use her agency to help Republican candidates for office, a clear breach of her position, and to steer a $20,000 no-bid contract to her old friend Edie Fraser.

  Republican corruption

  Waxman notes, "GSA plays a vital role in federal procurement, and the agency is expected to maintain the highest standards of accountability and transparency." Waxman has been pursuing the matter since January; according to Waxman, "Documents now reveal that Administrator Doan had a long-standing business relationship with Ms. Fraser that has not been disclosed previously, that Ms. Fraser used her professional connections to advance Doan's nomination to GSA and to provide personal favors, and that Ms. Fraser continued to provide services with the expectation of payment to Ms. Doan after she became GSA Administrator." A September 6, 2006 e-mail from Fraser to Doan reads in part, "Lurita, I will do anything for you and will do for the rest of my life.... But I have spent so much time at GSA from the report planning to these sessions with ZERO $$. How do we solve[?]"
• More generally, Doan hosted a January teleconference with GSA officials where she asked those officials to, in Waxman's words, "find opportunities to help Republican political candidates." Such a request is in clear violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits Executive Branch officials from engaging in partisan politics while on duty. The GSA's Inspector General has referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel for investigation. (The Project for Government Oversight's Beth Daley warns, "Don't expect much from the Office of Special Counsel which has a reputation for protecting administration appointees and is under investigation itself for cronyism.")
• News of Doan's sweetheart deal with Fraser first broke in January, when the Washington Post reported that Doan, a former government contractor appointed to head the GSA by Bush, made the deal with Fraser in early 2006. The contract was terminated after GSA lawyers and other agency officials pointed out possible procurement violations, including the failure to adequately justify the no-bid deal or have it reviewed in advance by trained procurement officers. Doan, of course, says she did nothing wrong, but simply "made a mistake." She said in January, "I thought I was moving this along. I was immediately informed that I wasn't necessarily moving it along in the way that was best for it. So at which point they canceled it, life went on, no money exchanged hands, no contract exchanged hands. I'm stunned, absolutely stunned by the amount of legs that this has taken, you know, how this has like kind of jumped up and run away with things." But contracting experts say that Doan should have known better than to sign such a contract. Procurement specialist Steven Schooner says, "One of the things you're trying to avoid is political favoritism. You don't want the process polluted or corrupted by political influence."
• Doan has bitterly fought attempts to rein in spending by the GSA, and has fought attempts to audit the agency. In December, she compared the office of the GSA Inspector General's attempts to audit her agency to "terrorism." The audits have saved over $1 billion in tax dollars over the last two years. In February, her lawyer called the OIG investigation a "push back" by the inspector general's office against her attempt to "reduce wasteful spending throughout the agency, including the OIG." In total, Dean has hired three lawyers and a media consultant to represent her in the inquiries.
• Doan is a rising star in the Republican Party, one of the few African-Americans in the administration, who likes to regale audiences with tales of her grandmother's attempts to support her family in New Orleans by selling pralines on the city's docks. She was appointed to run the GSA after a 15-year career as owner of New Technology Management Inc. During her business career, Doan developed close ties to the GOP. Between 1999 and 2006, she and her husband, Douglas, a former military intelligence officer and business liaison official at the Department of Homeland Security, donated nearly $226,000 to Republican campaigns and causes. Doan spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention, and retired in 2005 after selling her business to a group of investors. Bush asked Doan to take over the GSA in the spring of 2006, after the agency had been rocked by its connections to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Former chief of staff David Safavian, a close cohort of Abramoff's, was convicted of fraud and corruption due to his dealings with Abramoff.
• But only two months after taking over the office, Doan signed the no-bid contract with Fraser's company, Public Affairs Group Ltd. She has her own close ties to Fraser's businesses, and has often spoken at company events. In 1980, one of Fraser's businesses won then-Senator William Proxmire's famous "Golden Fleece" awards for mismanagement of taxpayer dollars.
• In September 2006, Doan stymied an effort to determine whether five major contractors should be suspended from doing business with the government after being accused of making fraudulent claims. The firms -- KPMG, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Booz Allen Hamilton and BearingPoint Inc. -- had paid the Justice Department more than $66 million to settle allegations that they kept travel rebates from airlines and hotels that should have gone to the GSA. The GSA's debarment office initiated "suspension actions" against the companies and issued "show-cause" letters, asking the firms to explain why they should not be suspended or debarred, but Doan quickly put a halt to the investigation. She said of her intervention, which many feel was improper, "As the head of this agency, I have an obligation to weigh in and say, 'What is this matter, do you know what this matter is?' I don't want to be a rubber-stamp kind of figurehead administrator of this agency. I do not want to participate in the old go-along-to-get-along kind of Washington two-step-type activity. This is not what I'm here for. So, yes, I am going to be involved."
• POGO's Daley writes, "It turns out that putting a contractor in charge of the government's buying arm might not have been a good idea after all. Lurita Doan personifies a breed of political appointee who treats the federal government like their personal ATM machine." (House Oversight Committee, Project on Government Oversight, Washington Post, Washington Post)
• March 6: Former Bush White House spokesman Scott McClellan raises eyebrows by saying, on CNN's Larry King Live, that if he was still advising the president he would urge him and his team to drop their policy of not talking about the Libby/CIA leak case.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  "I would advise the White House to find a way to get out there and talk about it and answer some of the questions," McClellan says. He adds that it will be "interesting to see" if the White House can sustain its refusal to say anything through the appeal process. McClellan is well remembered for dutifully stonewalling the press about anything concerned with the Valerie Plame Wilson leak, as well as assuring reporters -- falsely, as it turns out -- that the White House would fire anyone involved in the leak. King plays a clip of McClellan's October 23, 2003 statement where McClellan told reporters he had personally spoken to the suspects in the White House and had been assured that they had no involvement in the leak -- assurances that proved to be lies. King asks if McClellan believes he was lied to. McClellan responds, "I said what I believed at the time, based on the assurances given. Knowing what I know now," he says, he would not have made that all-clear statement.
• Former White House adviser David Gergen agrees, saying the White House should address the questions about why Libby lied and why Libby and Dick Cheney refused to testify. "There's clearly something they don't want to come out," he says. There's "a lot more to know," he says. Of Libby, Gergen says, "He was betrayed. ...It was terribly unfair to him."
• Time reporter John Dickerson says that McClellan's predecessor, Ari Fleischer, lied on the stand when he told the jury he had leaked Plame's name to Dickerson. (Fleischer has been verified as leaking Plame's name to a number of other reporters.) Dickerson says of Fleischer's apparent lying, "Having covered the White House when Ari was press secretary, I was used to him saying things that weren't true." (Editor's note: then why didn't Dickerson or any of his White House press corps colleagues ever call Fleischer on his lies?) (Editor and Publisher)
• March 6: The media watchdog site Media Matters conducts a pre-emptive fact correction against the expected barrage of misinformation -- the site calls them "myths and falsehoods" -- from conservatives and mainstream media figures surrounding the Libby verdict and the CIA leak case.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  While this item summarizes Media Matters' arguments, the complete article, available through the link at the end of this item, contains much more specific information along with a plethora of links sourcing each stated fact.
  • No underlying crime was committed. This is perhaps the most oft-repeated argument among mainstream media commentators and pundits. However, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has shown that Libby's obstructions prevented him and Fitzgerald's grand jury from determining whether the leak violated federal law.
  • There was no concerted White House effort to smear Wilson. While a favorite assertion of right-wing media pundits, this has been extensively disproven. One of the most detailed sources for the entire smear campaign is the book Hubris, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, which is heavily excerpted in this site. Another fine source of information, not cited by Media Matters, is the series of articles written for the National Journal by Murray Waas.
  • Libby was not responsible for the leak of Plame's identity. While Libby was not the only White House official, or even the first, to leak Plame's name to the press, Libby leaked Plame's name to New York Times reporter Judith Wilson on multiple occasions, and confirmed her identity to several others.
  • Libby merely "left out some facts." Another favorite of the less rabid media outlets, this is disproven by the testimony of a number of witnesses, including FBI agent Deborah Bond, who testified that Libby lied to her in 2003 about disclosing Plame's name to reporters.
  • Libby's leak was an effort to set the record straight. This is an offshoot of the White House claim that the White House was merely defending itself against an orchestrated attack by the CIA, which was bent on making sure the blame for the false intelligence surrounding the Iraq invasion did not fall on the agency. This is just flat wrong. The lie centers on the false claim that Joseph Wilson said that Cheney sent him to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium from the African country. But, Wilson never directly made this assertion. Instead, Wilson wrote that it was "agency officials" from the CIA who "asked if I would travel to Niger" and "check out" a "particular intelligence report" that "Cheney's office had questions about," so that CIA officials "could provide a response to the vice president's office."
  • There is no evidence that the Plame leak compromised national security. This goes along with the above assertion, part of the attempt to shift blame onto the CIA. Many CIA officials have asserted directly that Plame's outing put other agents as well as an entire network of CIA assets at risk. And Fitzgerald stated that Plame's identity had been protected by the CIA "not just for the officer, but for the nation's security." Isikoff and Corn also revealed that , at the time of the leak, Plame was the chief of operations for the CIA's Joint Task Force on Iraq, which "mount[ed] espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have."
  • Fitzgerald is a partisan prosecutor. This is a favorite of the more hardline conservative commentators. Fitzgerald is no Democrat, nor a partisan figure. Instead, he is a Bush administration political appointee who, as US attorney, has investigated high-level public officials from both parties, including former Illinois governor George Ryan, Chicago mayor Richard Daley, and Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich -- one Republican and two Democrats. Indeed, further perusal of this site will reveal several warnings by liberal and progressive observers warning that Fitzgerald's ties to the Bush administration might prejudice his investigation in favor of Libby and the White House.
  • Fitzgerald exceeded his mandate in investigating violations beyond the IIPA. The administration's defenders also have accused Fitzgerald of exceeding his original mandate. Media figures have repeatedly asserted or implied that Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate possible violations of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), which prohibits the knowing disclosure of the identity of a covert intelligence officer. In fact, his mandate was far broader. The Department of Justice granted Fitzgerald "plenary" authority to investigate the "alleged unauthorized disclosure" of Plame's identity.
  • Plame's employment with the CIA was widely known. This is demonstrably not true. Contrary to conservative assertions, Plame's identity as a CIA agent was not known to Washington insiders. Her status was known only within the higher echelons of the CIA. While the Washington Times asserted that "numerous neighbors were aware that she worked for the agency," none of the neighbors cited in the Times's own news reports or in other reports said that they knew before reading the Novak column that Plame worked at the CIA. Her acquaintances told reporters that they believed she worked as a private "consultant."(Media Matters [multiple sources])

• March 6: In sometimes testy exchanges before a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, Army leaders take responsibility for the array of problems uncovered at the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center, but refuse to admit that they knew anything about the problems themselves.

  Walter Reed scandal

  "We can't fail one of these soldiers or their families, not one. And we did," says Major General George Weightman, who was in charge of Walter Reed from August 2006 until he was fired last week. "We did not fully recognize the frustrating bureaucratic and administrative processes some of these soldiers go through. We should have, and in this I failed."
• Both Democrats and Republicans on the committee say the failings go far beyond a single hospital, and demand action. "I'm afraid this is just the tip of the iceberg, that when we got out into the field we may find more of this," says Democrat Tom Davis. "My question is, where have you been?" Democrat John Tierney asks Army Undersecretary Peter Geren, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker and Vice Chief Gen. Richard Cody. "All the things that [were] heard, read about and heard earlier today, clearly, this can't all be pushed down at the lower level. Clearly this is not some junior officer's responsibility that nobody else has to claim anything for." In one reply, Schoomaker retorts, "I've got a daughter and a son-in-law that are on the way to combat. This is not something about people who don't care. And I am not going to sit here and have anybody tell me that we don't care about." Tierney refuses to be buffaloed. "Nobody said anything about people not caring, so we'll put that red herring aside and, if I can, calm you down and get you back to the issue here," he says. Schoomaker adds, "I couldn't be madder, and I couldn't be more embarrassed and ashamed of the kinds of things that have turned up, because clearly it's not what my impression would have been based upon the feedback that I've gotten as I've talked to soldiers and the family."
• In a speech to war veterans, Dick Cheney promises that the problems at Walter Reed would be fixed, while attempting to shift the blame to the nameless "bureaucracy." "There will be no excuses, only action," Cheney tells an assemblage of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). "And the federal bureaucracy will not slow that action down." Meanwhile, Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson says his office is taking steps to improve veterans' care. "Our goal is to do things that serve the veterans in the manner that they deserve the best way that we can," he says.
• Weightman's temporary replacement at Walter Reed, Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley, tells the committee that he knew of some of the issues at Reed, including an October service assessment citing problems with Walter Reed staffing, medical evaluations and patient handling. When asked by Republican Christopher Shays why he hadn't previously asked Congress for money to fix the problems, Kiley responds that he did not think money was the issue. Kiley calls the system for outpatient care "complex, confusing and frustrating" and says that more doctors, nurses and other staff are being brought in. But Shays is not convinced. "What you're saying though, under oath, is that you have all the resources necessary to you," he tells Kiley. "And I honestly don't believe that. I don't believe that." Democrat Henry Waxman points to several investigative reports including assessments by the Rand Corp. and the Government Accountability Office dating back two years ago that sounded "alarm bells." Waxman says, "Despite all the work that went on before, top Pentagon officials reacted to the reports at Walter Reed two weeks ago by claiming surprise." And ranking Republican Thomas Davis tells Kiley bluntly, "You knew these were problems. You may not have known specifically what it looked like, and you may not have been able to put faces and stories behind it, but there was an ongoing concern."
• Perhaps the most emotional moments of the hearing come when a number of wounded veterans, including several profiled in the Washington Post series about Walter Reed, testify about the incredible lack of care they received upon returning from Iraq. "My biggest concern is having young men and women who have had their lives shattered in service to their country...get taken care of," says Staff Sergeant John Shannon. (ABC News, Washington Post)

---

• March 7: Bush names a blue-ribbon panel to investigate the calamitous state of affairs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and, after his administration has routinely ignored the medical care of wounded and disabled veterans for his entire tenure as president, now says that shoddy health care for America's veterans will not be tolerated.

  Walter Reed scandal

  The panel is headed by former Republican senator Bob Dole, a decorated World War II veteran who was partially disabled during combat, and former Clinton-era Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.
• "Any report of medical neglect will be taken seriously by this administration," Bush says in an initial meeting with Dole and Shalala. "I'm confident that this commission will bring forth the truth." Dole, who says the other seven members of the commission will be named within days, says laconically, "Obviously somebody dropped the ball." Shalala, currently president of the University of Miami, calls the conditions at Walter Reed an "embarrassment to the country."
• Democratic senator Dick Durbin is pushing for the addition of Iraqi veteran and 2006 House candidate Tammy Duckworth on the panel. Duckworth, who lost both legs in combat, spent 13 months at Walter Reed and has firsthand experience with the problems running rampant through that facility. The staff was overworked and rarely had time to help young soldiers who found themselves lost in the system. "We called them the missing patients," she says. "There was nobody keeping track of where they were." Duckworth says she received invaluable support and assistance from her husband, Major Bryan Bowlsbey, but that many of the soldiers at Reed didn't have that kind of familial support. "He wasn't going to put up with any bureaucracy," she says. "But it's really different for the 19-year-old who has a brain injury and six months in the Army. He doesn't understand the system." Duckworth says it is vitally important to have a wounded Iraqi veteran on the commission: "I would be honored to serve because it's about taking care of my buddies," she says. "I am exactly the kind of patient that is taxing the military medical system and will drain the VA resources. If that is the cost of the war, then the American people should be told that is the cost of the war."
• Duckworth says that while she sailed through Walter Reed's complex bureaucracy with relative ease, the Reed staff didn't have nearly as many outpatients to deal with then as it does now. "My social worker had probably 30 or 40 patients," she recalls. "He's probably taking care of hundreds now. When he was taking care of me, he was already working a 70-hour week. I can't even imagine what his workweek is like now."
• Her living conditions at Reed were nice -- "like living at a rich relative's house," she recalls -- but says she knows that many of the outpatients don't have the same access to decent living conditions that she had. She says she doesn't think that Building 18, described in recent news stories as a dilapidated wreck with mold in the walls and holes in the floors, was in use when she was at Walter Reed. She wants to know if Building 18 was opened too soon because of the constant stream of wounded soldiers arriving from Afghanistan and Iraq. She also wants to find out whether contracting out janitorial services led to the poor conditions there. She also wonders whether funding decreased for Walter Reed facilities after the military medical complex was listed for closing in 2005. Funding should have increased as the number of patients grew, she says.
• The Walter Reed bureaucracy can be maddening, she recalls. Many young wounded soldiers and their families don't understand how important the requested information is, she says, nor how to provide it properly. She and her husband tried to help others with their forms during her time at Walter Reed, but she worries about others who have no such guidance. She also saw cases where soldiers were still getting combat pay after arriving at Walter Reed. When the military discovered the accounting error, it began deducting large amounts from the soldiers' pay to make up the difference. And that left the soldiers and their families in a bind. "That's the kind of stupid stuff that was going on," she says. Funding for the VA, she says, needs to increase because of an unprecedented boom in demand as Vietnam War and Korean War vets get older and as wounded soldiers return from today's war on terror. "I don't think it's ready to handle what's coming," she says.
• Bush also says that an interagency task force of seven Cabinet secretaries, led by Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, would be convened to determine what can be done immediately to improve veterans' care. Nicholson's Veterans Administration has been the focus of criticism and outcries by veterans, veterans' families, veterans organizations, and administration critics for years, but until the Walter Reed scandal was reported in February by the Washington Post, the administration has ignored the calls for correction. Nicholson defends the VA in a statement to reporters, but admits there is, as he calls it, room for improvement. "When you're seeing over 1 million patients a week, you have to be very good, and if there is any one patient who doesn't get the care that they deserve, that's unacceptable," he says. He says his agency is hiring 100 new patient advocates who will help troops returning from war deal with the bureaucracy. "The American people can feel very good about the health care system that their VA is providing to veterans," Nicholson intones, "but if there is a case where a veteran gets lost in the system, or suffers anxiety or their family does as a result of something we're not doing, that is unacceptable." (AP/USA Today, Chicago Tribune)
• March 7: House Democratic leaders are discussing whether to hold immediate hearings on the White House smear campaign against former ambassador Joe Wilson, and are considering whether to subpoena special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who just won a guilty verdict against Lewis Libby.

  Plame outing

  The target of the hearings will be to obtain details about Fitzgerald's four-year investigation into the leak case, focusing on the role Dick Cheney and other White House officials played in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. If the hearings take place, they will most likely take place with the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by John Conyers.
• An aide to senator Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, says his committee is also committed to investigating the flawed intelligence the administration used to convince Congress and the public to back the Iraq war. The Levin aide says the senator will likely seek testimony from Libby, Cheney, and senior members of the White House who played a role in the Plame leak, and that it "makes sense" to fold the issues surrounding the CIA leak case into the hearings about pre-war intelligence since they overlap with the leak case.
• Fitzgerald has said that if new information materializes he will "take action," but for now he plans on returning to his "day job." However, he says he will be inclined to share his evidence with Congress if so asked. Democratic representative Maurice Hinchey, who has spearheaded House Democrats' efforts to expand the CIA leak probe, says the guilty verdict returned against Libby does not go far enough in settling questions surrounding Cheney's role in the case, and he intends to call for a criminal probe to pursue charges against the vice president. Hinchey says that "other administration officials, starting with Vice President Cheney, must be held accountable for their role in this case. This case doesn't end with Mr. Libby's conviction. Testimony in the Libby trial made it even clearer that Vice President Cheney played a major role in the outing of [Valerie Plame] Wilson's identity. It is time to remove the cloud hanging over Vice President Cheney and the White House that Special Counsel Fitzgerald so aptly described in his closing remarks, and expose all of the lies that led to the outing of Mrs. Wilson's identity."
• Conyers and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have already had discussions with Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, about his intention of calling for hearings into the leak case and possibly getting answers to lingering questions about Cheney's hands-on role in the leak, and the role White House political adviser Karl Rove played as well. Two years ago, Waxman called for Congressional hearings to determine if there was a White House conspiracy to unmask Plame's covert status in retaliation for the criticism Wilson leveled against the administration's Iraq policy. "I think that the Congress must hold hearings, bring Karl Rove in, put him under oath and let him explain the situation from his point of view," Waxman said in July 2005. "Let him tell us what happened. It's ridiculous that Congress should stay out of all of this and not hold hearings." At the time of Waxman's comments, it was unknown how involved Cheney was in the matter. But two weeks ago, during closing arguments, Cheney was implicated in the leak. It was the first time Fitzgerald acknowledged that Cheney was intimately involved in the scandal, and that his investigation into the true nature of the vice president's involvement was impeded because Libby obstructed justice. Most interestingly, Libby's defense team attempted, with some success, to paint Libby as a scapegoat for Cheney and other White House officials. Libby's attorney, Theodore Wells, told jurors during closing arguments that Fitzgerald and his deputy have been attempting to build a case of conspiracy against the vice president and Libby, and that the prosecution believes Libby may have lied to federal investigators and a grand jury to protect Cheney.
• Responding to Wells's accusations that "the government, through its questions, really tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney," Fitzgerald told jurors, "You know what? [Wells] said something here that we're trying to put a cloud on the vice president. We'll talk straight. There is a cloud over the vice president. He sent Libby off to [meet with former New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting -- the two hour meeting -- the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]. We didn't put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice and lied about what happened. If you think that the vice president and the defendant 'Scooter' Libby weren't talking about [Plame] during the week where the vice president writes that [Plame] sent [Wilson] on a junket -- in [Wilson's] July 6 column, the vice president moves the number one talking point, 'not clear who authorized [Wilson's Niger trip] -- if you think that's a coincidence, well, that makes no sense."
• Democratic senator Charles Schumer, who led the push for the appointment of a special prosecutor in 2003 to investigate the leak, says the Libby trial demonstrated to him that Libby was indeed the "fall guy" and was covering up for other officials who "remain unpunished." "That is the real tragedy of this," Schumer says. (Truthout)
• March 7: A White House official says there is a "strong expectation" that Bush will pardon Lewis Libby, the former aide to Dick Cheney recently convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and lying to the FBI.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  Libby faces up to two years in prison. But, says the White House official, that it is highly unlikely Libby will go to prison. "There's a lot of anger about the way Libby has been treated," he says. "pThere's a strong expectation that if it comes to it, then the president will pardon him." According to the official, Bush believes that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pursued a "political vendetta" against the White House and that no one had committed any crime. "I don't think anything will happen yet, though," the official says. "There's an appeal to come and perhaps Libby will get off then." Libby is due to be sentenced in June but his defense team has said it will press for a retrial and, if that is denied, will appeal against his conviction. It could be close to the end of Bush's second term in January 2009 before a jail sentence would begin. Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan says, "The president has absolute authority, and we've seen in the final days of a presidency all bets are off. But I'd be surprised if he did anything before the legal process has run its course, and there's been a request through formal channels." McClellan's successor, Tony Snow, refuses to discuss the matter. "All of this conversation, speculation about a pardon, I know, makes for interesting speculation, but it's just that," he says. Snow says that Bush is "careful" about giving out pardons. "These are not things to be treated blithely. He wants to make sure that anybody who receives one, that it's warranted, but I would caution against any speculation in this case."
• Former White House speechwriter David Frum says he, too, believes Bush will pardon Libby: "Everyone assumes that he will. My guess is that it will not be very politically explosive because everyone feels Libby is the wrong person." Frum may be referring to Dick Cheney or Karl Rove, whom many on the jury felt pushed Libby out to be their "fall guy," or, as Libby supporters insist, Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state who leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson before Libby began spreading it around Washington. Frum says there is "a "farcical quality" to the trial because people were being told that Plame's status was the "secret of the century" while the official responsible escaped unpunished.
• But Libby may have to wait a while for his pardon -- not because of his guilt or innocence, but because he made the White House look bad. "What you saw was a vice president's office that was out of control," says a former White House staffer. According to trial testimony, Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer both disclosed the identity of Wilson's wife to reporters. But the way the White House sees it, Rove and Fleischer "went up to the line," the staffer says, "but they didn't cross it. The vice president's office crossed it." (Daily Telegraph, MSNBC)
• March 7: While Bush has the authority to pardon convicted felon Lewis Libby, he will have to flaunt Justice Department guidelines to do so.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  Until now, Bush has been quite stringent in insisting that any pardons he grants are to be compliant under DOJ guidelines. Bush, who has only granted 113 presidential pardons in six years -- mostly for white-collar crime and drug cases dating back decades -- has issued "fewer than any president in 100 years," according to Margaret Love, former pardon attorney at the Justice Department. "We were basically told [by then White House counsel and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales] that there weren't going to be pardons -- or if there were, there would be very few," recalls one former White House lawyer. Bush has always insisted that any pardons he handed out would go by the book, based on publicly available DOJ guidelines.
• If Bush follows those guidelines, then Libby is flatly unqualified. The guidelines "require a petitioner to wait a period of at least five years after conviction or release from confinement (whichever is later) before filing a pardon application." Moreover, in weighing whether to recommend a pardon, US attorneys are supposed to consider whether an applicant is remorseful. "The extent to which a petitioner has accepted responsibility for his or her criminal conduct and made restitution to...victims are important considerations. A petitioner should be genuinely desirous of forgiveness rather than vindication." Under either standard, Libby does not qualify.
• And while the Constitution certainly allows Bush to disregard these guidelines with impunity, Bush has publicly reaffirmed his determination to stick to the Justice pardon guidelines as recently as last month. In a February 1 interview with Fox News anchor Neal Cavuto, Cavuto asked Bush if he would pardon Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two former US Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug dealer who was fleeing across the border into Mexico. Their case has become a cause celebre for many conservatives and anti-immigrant activists who believe it symbolizes the federal government's lack of aggressive enforcement of border controls. Fueled by CNN immigration critic Lou Dobbs and Republican House member and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, supporters of the two former agents have been flooding the White House with e-mails and phone calls seeking pardons for Ramos and Compean. Bush told Cavuto time and again that he would rely on the Justice Department's procedures to help make his decision. "I'm saying...there is a process in any case for a president to make a pardon decision," he told Cavuto. "In other words, there is a series of steps that are followed, so that the pardon process is, you know, a rational process"
• Perhaps the most telling indication of Bush's state of mind regarding any possible pardon for Libby is the comment by a well-known Republican lobbyist and White House ally, who has been steering reporters away from the pardon idea this week. "The guidance I get is Libby doesn't qualify under the guidelines," the lobbyist told a reporter in a TV "green room" this week. The lobbyist wouldn't say who provided the information. Whether this will remain the case, particularly with an administration so well-known for flaunting the law and with the powerful Dick Cheney agitating for the pardon of his friend and former chief of staff, has yet to be seen. (MSNBC)
• March 7: Dick Cheney's credibility and integrity are at stake in the aftermath of the Libby verdict.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  Most observers, including the majority of Americans familiar with the case, seem to be in agreement with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who said during the summation, "There is a cloud over the vice president." Cheney has suffered political damage, say both critics and even some supporters, though how much cannot yet be assessed. "The trial has been death by 1,000 cuts for Cheney," says Republican strategist Scott Reed. "It's hurt him inside the administration. It's hurt him with the Congress, and it's hurt his stature around the world because it has shown a lot of the inner workings of the White House. It peeled the bark right off the way they operate."
• While the question of Libby's guilt has been settled (pending an appeal), the question of what Cheney did as part of the White House smear campaign against Joseph Wilson remains unsettled. Many believe that Cheney bears the ultimate responsibility for Libby's fate. "It was clear that what Scooter was doing in the Wilson case was at Dick's behest," says Kenneth Adelman, a former Reagan administration official who has been close with both men but has broken with Cheney over the Iraq war. "That was clear. It was clear from Dick's notes on the op-ed piece that he wanted to go get Wilson. And Scooter's not that type. He's not a vindictive person." The New York Times observes, "The trial painted a portrait of a man immersed in the kind of political pushback that is common to all White Houses, yet often presumed to be the province of low-level political operatives, not the vice president of the United States." Democratic senator Charles Schumer says, "I think there is a view in the public that Libby was the fall guy, and I do think we will look at how the case shows the misuse of intelligence both before and after the war in Iraq."
• Historian Robert Dallek says of the effects of the Libby trial on Cheney, "It will deepen the impressions of someone who was a tremendous manipulator and was very defensive about mistakes, and I think it will greatly deepen the impression of a political operator who knew the ins and outs of Washington hardball politics. He's going to be, I think, the most interesting vice president in history to study."
• While friends of Cheney say he is deeply troubled by the verdict against Libby, who is his close friend as well as former White House colleague, in public Cheney, always the most secretive of politicians, has said virtually nothing except to express his disappointment in the guilty verdict. Former Republican congressman and close Cheney friend Vin Weber says Cheney needs to explain himself. "I don't think he has to do a long apologia," Weber says, "but I think he should say something, just to pierce the boil a little bit." But Republican senator Lindsey Graham says he went hunting with Cheney late last year and did not sense that the trial was bothering him. "He's got a thick hide," says Graham, "and he needs it." (New York Times)
• March 7: Although Republican senator Pete Domenici says he did nothing wrong in contacting fired US attorney David Iglesias (see above items) before the November 2006 elections, now that Domenici is facing a Senate ethics investigation, he has hired a lawyer.

  US Attorney firings

  And what a choice he has made: Lee Blalack, best known as the lawyer who represented convicted Republican lawmaker Randy Cunningham. Blalack unsuccessfully defended Cunningham in the prosecution headed by another ousted US attorney, Carol Lam.
• Domenici and other New Mexico Republicans could find their political careers short-circuited by their involvement in the attorney firings. Domenici, widely considered the "godfather" of New Mexico's GOP, had planned on running for a 7th term in the Senate, but the controversy sparked by his and his crony, Representative Heather Wilson's, attempts to influence Iglesias's decision to indict former New Mexico Senate President Manny Aragon before the 2006 elections may wreck both Wilson's and Domenici's careers.
• Domenici, until now, has rarely worried about his electability, but Wilson faced the toughest election challenge of her career in 2006, finally defeating Democrat Patricia Madrid by a hair's breadth. Domenici and Wilson both called Iglesias to pressure him about the indictments after polls were released showing Wilson trailing in the race.
• New Mexico is almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, with a popular Democratic governor -- Bill Richardson, a longshot presidential candidate -- a Republican and a Democratic senator, and a House delegation with two Republicans and one Democrat. New Mexico was a swing state in the past two presidential elections, giving Bush a 1 percentage-point margin in 2004 and Democrat Al Gore a razor-thin edge in 2000. Now the attorney scandal has the potential to tip the balance in New Mexico.
• Domenici is still a strong candidate for the Senate in 2008, even at age 76. He has held the seat since 1972, and has a smoothly efficient fundraising machine. Given these stats, "it would take something a lot more dramatic than this to threaten [Domenici's] viability," says Albuquerque pollster Brian Sanderoff. But Wilson is far more politically vulnerable. She is considered Domenici's heir apparent, but she has fought through several close races in her Albuquerque home district. And she will possibly face an even more powerful challenger in 2008, Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez. If Domenici retires rather than face a 2008 challenge, Chavez will probably run for his seat. If not, he will take on Wilson. He recently said, "Heather Wilson will no longer be elected in New Mexico" and called her actions "reprehensible." (TPM Muckraker, Congressional Quarterly)
• March 7: Fired US attorney John McKay was thwarted in his 2006 bid to become a federal judge, in part because national and Washington state Republicans complained about his refusal to pursue baseless voting fraud charges against Democrats after the 2004 gubernatorial elections, which saw Democrat Christine Gregoire win the seat by a razor-thin margin.

  US Attorney firings

  McKay told a Senate committee yesterday that he was grilled by then-White House counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley, and asked to explain "criticism that I mishandled the 2004 governor's election." McKay says the charge may have been led by Republican congressman Doc Hastings, saying that reporters "should ask Congressman Hastings if he contacted the White House in connection with my application to be district judge or contacted the justice department." Hastings denies that he or anyone on his staff "ever contacted anyone at the White House or the Department of Justice about whether John McKay should be removed as US attorney or whether he was qualified to be a federal judge." Hastings's then-chief of staff, Ed Cassidy, did call McKay to inquire about the investigation, though Cassidy says the call "was a routine effort to determine whether allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 gubernatorial election were, or were not, being investigated by federal authorities."
• But Washington state Republicans did pressure the White House to get rid of McKay, a moderate Republican. One, Tom McCabe of the Building Industry Association of Washington, wrote to Hastings demanding that Hastings "please ask the White House to replace Mr. McKay." Cc'ed on the letter -- which calls McKay a Democrat, even though he is a Republican -- were John Fund of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, former US attorney and current federal judge Greg Van Tatenhove, and Bob Williams of the conservative Evergreen Freedom Foundation, who went so far as to file a formal complaint with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2005 about McKay's handling of the voter fraud allegations. McCabe also "urged the President to fire McKay." McCabe's letter to Hastings urging McKay's firing can be viewed here. (Seattle Times, TPM Muckraker)
• March 7: Investigative journalist Greg Palast reveals evidence that Tim Griffin, the new US attorney in Arkansas who replaced the fired Bud Cummins, may be a criminal.

  US Attorney firings

  A report by Palast for BBC Television proves that Griffin was the prime mover behind a 2004 scheme that wiped out the voting rights of 70,000 Florida voters. Griffin's prime targets were, according to Palast's documents (available on his Web site, at the link below), black soldiers, and homeless men and women. Palast notes that "Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965."
• Palast has revealed this evidence against Griffin before. In October 2004, Palast's investigative team at the BBC received what he calls "a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. He didn't mean to send them to us. They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC honchos." Griffin's mistake was sending the incriminating e-mails to the wrong domain -- "GeorgeWBush.org," which is a satirical Web site owned by John Wooden. Wooden forwarded the e-mails to Palast.
• The e-mails contained hard evidence of Griffin and his team's compilation of "caging" lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. The targeted voters were almost all black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts.
• From the Griffin documents, Palast learned that the Republican National Committee -- who then employed Griffin -- sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts marked, "Do not forward." Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city's State Street Rescue Mission. Another target was Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans. If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as "suspect" and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Palast observes, "Of course, these 'cages' captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters." One listed voter Palast contacted was Randall Prausa, whose wife admitted Prausa wasn't living at home at the time of the election. Prausa was serving in Iraq. Like the other We telephoned those on the hit list, Prausa's absentee ballot was marked to be challenged and not counted. And Prausa, like the others, wouldn't even know about it.
• The RNC attempted to lie about the caging lists, telling Palast that the sheets were not, in fact, illegal voter hit lists, but a roster of donors to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. Palast asks rhetorically, "Republican donors at homeless shelters?" Palast hopes that Democratic House Judiciary chairman John Conyers brings up Griffin's apparent criminal behavior at future hearings. (Greg Palast)
• March 7: Former Democratic senator and presidential nominee George McGovern says flatly that in light of the Libby verdict, Dick Cheney should resign.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  The trial revealed Cheney's deep involvement with the White House smear campaign against Joseph Wilson in retaliation for Wilson's outspoken anti-war statements. "What we have learned about how [Cheney] has conducted himself leaves no doubt that he should be out of office," he says. "If he had any respect for the Constitution or the country, he would resign."
• Of course, everyone knows that Cheney will not resign. In that case, McGovern says that both he and George Bush should be impeached. "There is no question in my mind that Cheney has committed impeachable offenses. So has George Bush," he says. "Bush is much more impeachable than Richard Nixon was. That's been clear for some time. There does not seem to be much sentiment for impeachment in Congress now, but around the country people are fed up with this administration."
• "I think this is the most lawless administration we've ever had," he says of the Bush-Cheney team. McGovern, who lost badly to Richard Nixon in 1972 even as the Watergate scandal was brewing, says there is no comparison between the two administrations. "I'd far rather have Nixon in the White House than these two fellows that we've got now," he says. "Nixon did some horrible things, which led to the effort to impeach him. But he simply was not as bad as Bush. On just about every level I can think of, Bush's actions are more impeachable than were those of Nixon." McGovern is particularly incensed about the Iraq war, which he opposed from the start. "The war was begun in clear violation of the Constitution," he says. "There was no declaration of war by the Congress. Secondly, it's a flagrant violation of international law: Iraq was not threatening the United States in any way. Yet, the United States went after Iraq. The president and vice president got away with it, at least initially, because they were willing to exploit the emotional power of the 9/11 attack to achieve their goal of getting us into a war in the Middle East." McGovern calls Congress "lily-livered" for failing to check and balance Bush and Cheney on the war. "I feel an obligation to speak up when I see these flagrant things happen," he says. "I can't be silent when President Bush and Vice President Cheney choose to disregard the Constitution. Maybe if there were other people in the White House, I could slow down a little. But I can't do that as long as this administration is in charge."
• McGovern isn't endorsing a Democratic presidential contender as yet, but he says, "Right now, Barack Obama looks awfully good." Then again, "I've gotten to the point where I think just about anyone would be better than Bush."
• Of McGovern, the Madison Capital Times writes, "At age 84, McGovern has attained the elder statesman status that is afforded politicians who held or sought the presidency. He enjoys the respect of fellow Democrats and more than a few Republicans for being, like former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, a straight-talking man of deep commitment who may have lost one presidential election but won the battle for a place of honor in the nation's history texts." Among his many projects is a partnership with former Republican senator and presidential nominee Bob Dole to combat alcoholism. (Madison Capital Times)
• March 7: The editors of the liberal news site Buzzflash believe that, if Lewis Libby doesn't manage to have his guilty verdict overturned or win an appeal, Bush will inevitably grant Libby a broad pardon -- because not to do so will likely result in impeachment and even jail time for both Bush and Dick Cheney.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  The White House has refused to speculate on any possible pardon, and, according to Buzzflash, it is too early for such a pardon. Instead, the editors write, "What the White House is going to do is wait and hope that the DC Court of Appeals, on which the infamous partisan Federal Judge David Sentelle sits, will save them from the issue of a pardon by overturning Libby's conviction on some technicality. Sentelle has an interesting history in this area. He was one of the judges who overturned the Iran-Contra felony convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter on a technicality." Sentelle is a right-wing extremist who believes that liberals are engaged in a traitorous conspiracy to destroy America. He is also the judge responsible for appointing Kenneth Starr as the special prosecutor to investigate Bill Clinton's sex life, at the behest of two equally extremist Republican senators, Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth. Buzzflash writes, "Sentelle is a partisan GOP judicial operative, who is there to save Republicans from legal jams that they get into. He also does the ideological bidding of the White House. In the last two weeks, he has been part of a 2-1 majority on the DC Court of Appeals ruling on the side of the White House to suspend habeas corpus."
• But ultimately, if the courts do not reverse the Libby conviction, "Bush will pardon Libby if he needs to, because Bush is already implicated in the Valerie Wilson outing -- as we know from the Libby trial. If Libby were to 'flip' and spill the beans to Fitzgerald, Bush and Cheney would be forced to resign or face impeachment. But Bush is going to wait it out and hope that the back bench of activist partisan right wing judges appointed during the Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations will save him the politically costly act of pardoning Libby. If for some unexpected reason, Judge Sentelle doesn't get the job done -- or [Antonin] Scalia fails if the Libby appeal reaches the Supreme Court -- then Scooter knows Bush will do the deed and grant him the ultimate Bush get-out-of-jail card: a pardon. Because if Libby talks, Bush and Cheney will likely face some hardcore jail time themselves." (Buzzflash)
• March 7: Mainstream blogger Mark Kleinman offers a short reality check on the hysteria from the right that centers on their claim that Lewis Libby committed no crime in leaking Valerie Plame's name.

  Lewis Libby perjury trial

  Kleinman writes, "When a prosecutor doesn't indict, that might mean no crime was committed. But it also might mean:
  • A. That a crime was committed, but there isn't enough admissible evidence to prove it beyond reasonable doubt.
  • B. That a provable crime was committed, but by somone who is immune from prosecution by reason of office (the President probably can't be indicted in federal court) or because of immunity given in return for testimony.
  • C. That a provable crime was committed by someone who can be indicted, but that it would be unjust or imprudent to bring a prosecution.
  "Based on Fitzgerald's 'umpire' analogy at his post-indictment press conference, my betting is on (A). Cheney is probably guilty of heading a conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, but most of the evidence to prove it would be Libby's testimony, and Libby's multiple lies to the grand jury made it impossible to convict anyone based on Libby's word. If this is right, don't expect to hear it from Fitzgerald. Prosecutors indict; they don't tattle." (Reality-Based Community)

 

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