Waxman subpoenas FBI for Bush & Cheney Plame interviews

The House Oversight Committee on Monday - just days before Scotty McClellan will appear before the Judiciary Committee on Friday - subpoenaed records of the FBI's interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in an act of political revenge after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote the now-famous New York Times op-ed in 2003 that brought up the issue of stroked intel to sell the war that aWol was intent on starting.

Waxman said that McClellan's book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," also raised suspicion that Dick Cheney had directed McClellan to "mislead the public."


Waxman also wants the unredacted transcripts of FBI interviews with McClellan, former White House political adviser Karl Rove, Libby and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the department was reviewing the subpoena to determine how to respond. The committee set a deadline of noon next Monday for the Attorney General to respond.

McClellan wrote that Bush and Cheney directed him to "exonerate" Libby in his daily news briefings and that Cheney may have been among the senior White House officials who knew the truth but encouraged the former spokesman "to repeat a lie." McClellan also contended that Bush told him he'd authorized the leak of Plame's name.

Bush said in a 2004 news briefing that "If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of."

Last week, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Keith Nelson turned down the committee's request for the FBI reports on Bush and Cheney, saying that the committee's request "raises serious separation of powers" and confidentiality concerns.

However, Waxman said there were "no sound reasons" that the Justice Department couldn't release the documents. He's accused the Justice Department of blocking Fitzgerald from turning over the documents.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Peter Carr, said the department was reviewing the committees subpoena to determine how to respond.

The two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into the outing of Plame yielded the conviction if I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on charges of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI. Bush bought Libby's silence when he commuted the sentence but did not pardon him - had he pardoned him, he would have been immune from further prosecution and brought before the committee and forced to spill his guts about the whole rotten crew.

Scott McClellan Rolls Over on the Bush Administration

UPDATED 11:57PM: McClellan is just "disgruntled."

The White House blasted former press secretary Scott McClellan Wednesday, claiming that his new book about President Bush and the Iraq war shows McClellan is a "disgruntled" former employee.

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. "For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad — this is not the Scott we knew."

Excuse me, but we're ALL "disgruntled." And does anyone really know anyone, though?

-original post-

Hey, welcome back to the reality based community Mr. McClellan. Did you enjoy your sojourn into hell? What does it feel like to have your soul back?

Bush is depicted as an out-of-touch leader, operating in a political bubble, who has stubbornly refused to admit mistakes. McClellan defends the president's intellect -- "Bush is plenty smart enough to be president," he writes -- but casts him as unwilling or unable to be reflective about his job.

"A more self-confident executive would be willing to acknowledge failure, to trust people's ability to forgive those who seek redemption for mistakes and show a readiness to change," he writes.

In another section, McClellan describes Bush as able to convince himself of his own spin and relates a phone call he overheard Bush having during the 2000 campaign, in which he said he could not remember whether he had used cocaine. "I remember thinking to myself, 'How can that be?' " he writes.

How can that be? Only someone who knows that Bush really did use cocaine would dare write that. As I said last night to Blue Girl, how is it that McClellan isn't dead in a car wreck already?

We're not going to pimp the book from Scott McClellan, but we might enjoy making some rather derisive comments as more of these "revelations" come out.

Here is the most obvious comparison we can give you.
[Video below the fold]

Here's Karl Rove, the "architect," pretending there is no public record of what he did and claiming that McClellan sounds like a "left wing blogger:"



Here's David Gregory handing McClellan his ass back to him because Karl Rove is a proven liar:



Here's a little bonus video for your morning fun:



Yes, it was all about treason. And McClellan has gotten us closer to understanding what really went on and why there aren't guilty men at the end of a rope.

Update on the Roger Stone Hate Group

Oddly enough, we were "visited" by Roger Stone not too long before the night in question. You can actually SEE Stone's snarky little comment here and judge for yourself whether or not he is, indeed a "prankster."

It was a little before midnight on Tuesday, Jan. 27 that MSNBC correspondent David Shuster hit the “Send” button on a curt e-mail to Republican rabble-rouser Roger Stone.

Days earlier, Mr. Stone and others had filed papers with the I.R.S. to form a “527” organization dedicated to educating “the American Public about what Hillary Clinton really is.” The organization was called “Citizens United Not Timid,” i.e., C.U.N.T.

“Hey Roger Stone,” wrote Mr. Shuster in an e-mail to Mr. Stone’s personal Web site, the Stone Zone. “Why not put your own name on this?”

Mr. Stone was in no mood to take flack from an uptight reporter unable to take a joke. Mr. Stone felt the suggestion that he was hiding behind the site was ludicrous. After all, he had invited reporter Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard to sit in on the organization’s planning meeting.

The next afternoon, he responded. “Hey David Shuster,” Mr. Stone wrote back. “I in essence did when I let the entire planning meeting be on the record for a reporter.”

From there the confrontation fizzled, leaving Mr. Stone, weeks later, wondering what motivated Mr. Shuster to e-mail him about C.U.N.T. in the first place. Was Mr. Shuster working on a story? Or was he acting out of—irony alert!—indignation on behalf of Hillary Clinton?

Let me hazard a guess--Shuster was just as outraged as everyone else was about this brazen and hateful use of the word "cunt" to attack Hillary Clinton. Stone probably wasn't too keen on seeing his name exposed the way it was--after all, he's after attention and money, and in that order. Shuster is a lot bigger fish than a humble little old blog like this. Stone was probably happy to see us talking about him, but a little uncomfortable seeing his meal ticket threatened by the likes of a reporter like Shuster.

Stone has no credibility and no standing with the Republican Party. He's like Anne Coulter--they pretend to be outraged by his schtick, secretly they love what he does, but is anyone going to stand next to him and proclaim him a valued supporter or employee? Hell no. He's radioactive, and consigned to third-rate commenting gigs and the occasional dirty trick parade. Too bad about the hair, Roger. Too bad about all the money you spent on that hair.

I didn't comment on the whole controversy over Shuster and his suggestion that the Clinton campaign was "pimping" Chelsea Clinton. It was a stupid remark, to be sure, and I agree with suspending Shuster. What I find ironic is that worse things come out of the mouths of Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, and pretty much everyone at Fox News and nothing is done about it. John Gibson can joke about Heath Ledger and Brokeback Mountain and nothing happens? Bill O'Reilly can weasel out of his contention that there are no homeless Veterans sleeping under bridges by suggesting that they're sex offenders instead? Choose your example.

Shuster is an excellent journalist. His work on the Valerie Plame case stood out for years as being above equal. I hope he gets back on TV soon and remembers that you can pretty much say anything, so long as you're Chris Matthews.

Sibel Edmonds calls out the FBI

Where the hell is the American foreign policy press beat? (That's a rhetorical question. I know where they are - the useless idiots are wagging their cocktail weenies at Washington gatherings and hob-nobbing with the jackals they are supposed to be keeping in check...)

It is detestable that they have totally abdicated their responsibilities and completely ignored the allegations leveled by former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. I am not one to go rushing off in a big hurry to be one of the first to leap to a conclusion. I like independent corroboration. The thing is, Sibel Edmonds has it. An Inspector General even found that she was fired for being outspoken about, you know, how it's wrong for the State Department to trade in nuclear secrets with other countries - especially when they are less than concerned with US interests.

The woman is simply not playing the game the way our useless media prefers. She is not making it easy to dismiss her as a crackpot. God help 'em - there seems to be some "there" there, if you know what I mean. And the chattering classes are struck dumb.

Fortunately, there is the foreign press, and we have the internet...

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file. (emphasis added)

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter in the possession of the Sunday Times provides the name of a high-level government official who is alleged to have been secretly recorded speaking to a high Turkish official at the Turkish embassy in the last half of 2001. The letter maintains that the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should refuse dealings with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front, working in counter proliferation. Remember Brewster Jennings? That was Valerie Plame's cover company. Where she battled to keep nukes out of the wrong hands, and put her life on the line to do so, until she was treasonously outed for political reasons. (And if we had a functioning press corps, that little tidbit right there, all by itself, would set them off like a pack of baying bloodhounds. But we have a bunch of complacent, utterly worthless lap-dogs instead. Sickening. Absolutely sickening...)

Edmonds, meantime is not giving up, in spite of being encumbered by numerous state secret gag-orders to prevent her from talking further about the investigations she provided translative services for, is not giving up. So she is beating the drum and repeating whats on the record and helping to connect the various and disparate dots as best she can within the confines of the strictures placed upon her. “I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists. This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.” (emphasis mine)

I dunno about you, but I would rather see the press concentrate on this story than the hour-by-hour progress reports on Britney's most recent downward spiral.

Mr. Waxman, Please Meet Mr. McClellan

Scott McClellan may be the man to bring down the Bush Administration.

For a former loyalist and former member of the Texas Mafia to speak out like this--if it holds up--is the biggest story of 2007. And when I say "holds up," I mean if he actually tells the truth about the things that Patrick Fitzgerald couldn't get at because he was stonewalled by Libby's lying.

From McClellan's new book:
The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself.

Unbelievable.

Scotty has decided to roll over and put everyone in jeopardy.

Will it hold up? I don't know. But for McClellan to say that he had "unknowingly passed along false information" is just another way of saying that he was duped into covering up a crime someone had committed. It's time for Chairman Waxman to ask Scotty to tell all, under oath, and to enter into the public record Scotty's testimony as evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, and begin the process of impeachment.

Oh, and Mr. Fitzgerald? This is all you need to bring charges that you were unable to bring earlier. Get Scotty under oath, give him immunity--and let's fix this mess.

Sure would be nice to have Valerie Plame on the job about now...

MOSCOW - Russia test-launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile Tuesday capable of carrying multiple independent warheads, the Russian Space Forces said.

The missile, called the RS-24, had not yet reached its designated target, a space forces spokesman said, declining to give further information.

Russian news reports said the missile is seen as eventually replacing the aging RS-18s and RS-20s that are the backbone of the country's missile forces.

Yes – You read that right. This morning the Russians tested a new MRV. For the uninitiated a MRV is a Multiple Reentry Vehicle. In layman's terms, one missile goes up, and multiple guided warheads fall back to earth. MRV’s are prominent players in my cold-war-steeped nightmares. Remember this bit about MRV's: some warheads can be set to “air burst” and kill a lot of people, and others can be set to “ground burst” for the purpose of destroying infrastructure. With a MRV, you don’t have to choose! Do both!

So much for that view of Pooty-Poot’s soul that the Useless Tool™ famously took a gander at.

Seriously – this is really bad, people. Bad to the point that my husband, upon hearing the news, poured a shot of whiskey in his coffee this morning, and he doesn’t drink. The country that could actually represent a clear and present danger to the American way of life is now in the catbirds seat, and we are suckin’ hind tit.

We are buried under a mountain of Chinese debt, accrued to finance a vanity war that was launched on lies. A war that didn't need to be fought against a third rate dictator which was run by a second rate wannabe dictator who doesn't have a single first-rate person serving in his government. How serious are these people? They had to go find a war czar. They've ignored the Iraq study group--now they're paying attention to it. They stand in front of row after row of uniformed soldiers because that's all they have left--they have to stand in front of people who face punishment if they criticize the government or speak out. They are a captive audience, forced to obey. Tell me again that we don't have an authoritarian in charge. Tell me again that Rudy Guiliani doesn't give these people their throbbing war woody because he's exactly the type of authoritarian they love...

And a real threat looms, reemerging from the nooks and crannies of the Kremlin, and brings with it more danger than we need have faced.

In a week, Scooter Libby will be sentenced.

Scooter Libby committed a treason against this nation when he “outed” Valerie Plame Wilson, our number one intelligence asset on the issue of nuclear proliferation.

I do hope that at his sentencing, this action on the part of the Russians is taken into consideration by the judge, because the actions of Libby damaged irreparably the intelligence program that confronted issues like the advent of entire new Russian MRV IBCM systems.

[Cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose]

CREW Calls for Fitzgerald to Reopen Plame Investigation

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government is calling on Patrick Fitzgerald to reopen his investigation into the political outing of covert CIA asset Valerie Plame-Wilson after her husband wrote a New York Times Op-Ed questioning the veracity of the Bush administration and their reasons for going to war in Iraq.

From Raw Story:

"It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson," said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director.

In light of the missing emails and what they might contain, Sloan urges that Fitzgerald "should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."

When the Libby trial concluded, Mr. Fitzgerald was asked if he planned further investigations into the Plame matter. "If new information comes to light, of course we'll do that." He replied at the time.

Well Mr. Fitzgerald, I do believe that this qualifies as new information coming to light.

Spychodrama

Treason: 1. Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. 2. A betrayal of trust or confidence. --American Heritage Dictionary

Valerie Plame testified before Representative Waxman's Oversight Committee today.

Wow. What a woman. I'm glad she was out there working for me for those two decades, and pissed that her career was cut short. That kind of asset is not found by running an advert in the Sunday paper.

After a life in the shadows, she spoke out and spoke up publicly today, in a voice that was strong and clear.

She is angry, and justifiably so.

"I know I am here under oath, and I am here to say that I was covert," she said.

I served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14, 2003, after a leak by administration officials.

Today, I can tell this committee even more. In the run-up to the war with Iraq I worked in the counter proliferation division of the CIA -- still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified.

....While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

That a vital security asset was compromised for political reasons is tantamount to treason. I want satisfaction here.

No one approached her before her name was made public. Knowing a little something about how covert operations work, it is extremely fortunate that her outing did not cost an asset on foreign soil his or her life. No one involved in this sorry spectacle though that was worthy of consideration.

According to her testimony, when she saw her name in print in the Novak column, she felt like she had been “hit in the gut.”

When asked how she felt about Rove telling Chris Matthews that she was “fair game” she did not personalize the insult – she said she would feel awful about hearing of the outing of any CIA agent.

No one involved in risking her life and the lives of her team has apologized or expressed any misgivings. But it is obvious what happened - she was expendable because her husband had the audacity to report the truth about what he didn't find in Africa.

The Vice President went Wrath-of-Khan, scorched-earth insane with rage. All that mattered was punishing that bastard Joe Wilson. The welfare of the nation be damned. And that is an impeachable offense. Will the Democrats in Congress get on with it already?