The notion that the Administration was trying to wait out the press so that they could announce the SC nominee and thereby blunt the Rove matter has been around for a few weeks now. It got pretty some play in the Washington Post and I posted a comment to that effect within the last week or so.
I don’t know if that’s what my friends think, but the professional press certainly does.
Well, its pretty small potatoes. Note, however, the acceleration of the timetable from later this month to prime time whoopity whoop right now! Granted, the nomination of SC justice is important, but a prime time interruption? Smells to me like somebody aches to be seen being presidential and dignified.
It may be mere coincidence, but that seems unlikely. At any rate, they cannot be entirely ignorant of the distraction value. But even so, its got a pretty limited effect, it may calm down the news for a day or two (which might very well have happened anyway) but sooner or later Mr. Fitzgerald is going to show his cards.
And from here it looks a lot like the trajectory of the shit will intersect the locus of the fan.
(Note to PatX: Calpundit/WaMo says FindLaw is assembling the relevent documents. Wonk heaven! Freak freely!)
Well, shit. That’s not at all how I imagined you saying it.
Come on, you guys. I’m disappointed. I thought you had all pretty much decided that when Bush needs to get out of a jam he simply raises the terror level. Heck, in the aftermath of the London bombings he could’ve easily done this anytime during the past week or so.
He did. Orange to Yellow. But nobody takes that seriously anymore.
One prominent conservative said he believes the White House may be moving the timetable up a week to shift media attention away from Karl Rove… Paul Weyrich , chairman of the Free Congress Foundation. “I have pleaded. There’s a lot of pressure to name him in order to get the Rove story and other things off the front page.”
Well, this is closer to what I had in mind…but I guess “prominent conservative” can mean different things to different people.
Paul Weyrich was the man who MADE the 1994 Republican revolution in Congress. He runs just about every direct-mail appeal for funds or votes that the right wing puts out, and he’s completely committed to all of the issues and causes that make all the good little moderate-to-left-wing Dopers like me cringe.
If WE vouch for his bona fides, you know he’s important.
I just want to clarify because I got Weyrich and his partner-in-political-buffoonery Richard Viguerie all mixed up with each other. Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation, the most prestigious right-wing think tank extant. He’s the one who brought Viguerie’s direct-mail company into partnership with the right-wing in Congress. Viguerie himself is the direct-mail king.
Piffle. That’s sooo last week.
I posted a link to that on my blog on the 13th.
Y’know, Twin might have a point there. The current administration and it’s supporters continually argue that unless you could actually be indicted and tried for perjury it’s not a lie. In short, none of the Iraq war claims was made while the maker was under oath, so the claims weren’t lies.
By the same argument there is no reason to hold anyone accountable for shoddy practices, even if they endanger itelligence operations, unless they are actual, indictable crimes.
AKA ‘returning morality to Government.’
Here’s an open letter from 11 former intelligence officers to the House and Senate regarding the Plame matter:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/intel.officers.letter.pdf
Republicans with honor, please step up. Your country needs you.
I’ve found the part referenced here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/07/14/plame/print.html
The three-page addendum by the ranking Republicans followed the now well-worn attack lines: “The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee.”
The CIA subsequently issued a statement, as reported by New York Newsday and CNN, that the Republican senators’ conclusion about Plame’s role was wholly inaccurate.
and
CIA officials maintain that Plame never ordered up the trip.
The Newsday article is here:
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked “alongside” the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. “They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,” he said. “There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,” he said. “I can’t figure out what it could be.”
Note that this’s the CIA saying both that she was undercover and that she did not recommend Mr. Wilson.
HOWEVER, I’m still looking for leads on the possibility that the memo mentioned here contained falshoods and was written with the intent to deliberatley deceive.
Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband’s trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.
CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame’s alleged role in arranging Wilson’s trip could not have attended the meeting.
Well, sure, CIA would say something like that, hotbed of liberal activism that it is. Always been kinda “pink”. Not as infested with fellow-travelers as State, to be sure. And don’t get me started about those wild-eyed one-worlders at FBI!
The Administration really messed up on this one. They did the equivalent of the corrupt mayor having a police officer “hit” because he was or was associated with someone who was whistleblowing on the corruption. The CIA, like a police department, is closing ranks to wholeheartedly oppose the people responsible for it.
I thought the first rule of political leadership was “Don’t alienate your intelligence agency”…
We have no leadership, therefore the rule doesn’t apply.
The CIA’s just trying to get back at Bush because he courageously exposed their lies about Hussein’s WMDs and ties to al Qaeda, doncha know?
I see the invisible hand of the Illuminati at work here. 
Ari’s missing press gaggle (July 13, 2003) (not on white house site):
http://canberra.usembassy.gov/hyper/2003/0709/epf301.htm
Ari’s last press gaggle (July 14, 2003):
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030714-4.html
Ari Announces His Resignation (May 19, 2003)
There’s lots of Wilson/Yellow-cakey goodness in the two gaggles, but I like this quote from the missing one:
A bit more focus on details of the Memo on the Airplane:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072002517_pf.html
Dateline tomorrow morning. That “this week” enough, Patx? freakin’ wonk!