Fineman: What lies behind CIA leak scandal (Pretty good stuff)

Ol' Howie can occasionally hit the nail on the head. Check it out. It's a piece on the war between the CIA and the WH.

<snip>
IN WASHINGTON, legal controversies are like whitecaps on a stormy sea: surface manifestations of stronger, deeper forces. Watergate wasn’t really about a third-rate burglary, or even obstruction of justice, but about the political establishment, and, eventually, the country, rising against Richard Nixon’s megalomaniacal presidency. The impeachment of Bill Clinton wasn’t really about perjury, per se, it was about the culture wars of the ’90s: his laissez faire mores vs. the GOP’s (often hypocritical) Bible Belt propriety.
       Now a new legal firestorm is consuming the Beltway world. The plot line: Unnamed White House insiders are being investigated by the Department of Justice for having leaked the name of a CIA operative, supposedly with the aim of discrediting or intimidating her husband, Wilson, a former American diplomat who had the temerity to attack President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. There are the inevitable calls for a “special prosecutor” and lots of heavy breathing by the usual legal pundits who emerge from their law school carrels at such times. But what’s this new furor really about? Here is my sense:
</snip>

I particularly liked this line: The impeachment of Bill Clinton wasn’t really about perjury, per se, it was about the culture wars of the ’90s: his laissez faire mores vs. the GOP’s (often hypocritical) Bible Belt propriety. (emphasis mine)

http://www.msnbc.com/news/974912.asp?0cv=CA01

Here's a good bit:
Bush preaches humility, and believes it is a cardinal virtue. But some of the people around him honor it in the breach. If it can be proved that they did, in fact, leak Mrs. Wilson’s name and job, they committed an act of arrogance — and political stupidity. You’d think that the Bush White House would know an essential lesson of presidential survival in Washington: You don’t pick a fight with the CIA. Nixon learned the consequences of doing so; Bush One, a former director of the CIA, could have explained it to his son.

Bastard struts around and talks like an arrogant fool! Howie Fineman still has his nose in the backside of Bush's jeans.

Fineman is basically saying this is about a larger issue and so
what if a crime was committed. His notion that Tenet could(should)
have squelched the investigation is absurd.

if bush*'s numbers do start to rise again (a BIG if) he will be back slobbering over how manly and moral bush* is. He blows with the wind and the wind is starting to resemble a hurricane.

Immediately after Wilson's op-ed in the _Times_, he was known as the investigator sent to Niger on the behalf of the Vice-President. When Novak became interested to know how a Clinton appointee had be entrusted with such a mission, who would he have initally called?

Scooter Libbly, Cheney's Chief-of-Staff, or a staff member directly below Scooter. So he naturally calls Scooter, and Scooter was ready for him.

They talked about Wilson's editorial, why the State-of-the-Union Speech referred to Nigerian yellow-cake uranium and why Powell didn't mention it at the UN, and how Cheney had never heard of Wilson. Then Scooter explains, telling Novak that Cheney, the previous summer, had asked the CIA to look into the reports of uranium sales to Iraq from Niger and that it was the CIA who had sent Wilson. Then Scooter lets it drop, "Well, did you know Wilson's wife works at the Bureau? Let's see . . . yeah, right Valerie Plame. Word is that she was the one who had him sent to Niger." Novak's ears perk up (all he hears is "nepotism," missing the real insinuation: that Wilson put his wife up to having him sent because he had an anti-War agenda or because he was anti-administration and wanted to put the breaks on the rising crescendo of war rhetoric that fall). Novak checks spelling ("P-L-A-M-E"), thanks Scooter, hangs up. Checks second source, etc.

It's important to realize the purpose was to discredit Wilson as a maverick-with-an-agenda, getting his wife to send him on a mission the results of which would undercut Bush's bellicose rhetoric or make Bush pull back from his decision to invade Iraq.

Given the circumstance of the following summer (2003) when everyone was questioning the existence of WMD and then to have a key item in the President's State of the Union Speech undercut in a NY Times editorial-length letter, Scooter's plant was artful and effective, despite Novak's dull-witted interpretation (nepotism). I was clever without crushing anyone (Libby is more circumspect and pragmatic than Rove). The purpose was not primarily to inflict revenge upon Wilson, nor was it necessarily a warning to others who might take similar public stands, but to undercut an opponent who had momentarily risen in their midst. Bloodlessly, swiftly.


Coda: Wistful Thinking

I'm guessing Scooter Libby is spending the day with lawyers and staff, figuring out how to minimize legal and politial damage. Tomorrow he'll resign.

I don't think they'll find a fall guy that easy...



This does carry a possible 10 year sentence. Besides it besmirch the the VP's office.

Maybe if if they could cop a plea for a year or two at club fed, then they could find a patsie.

But that could cost them the next election. I think they're gonna' stonewall on this.

</irony>

as an analyst. Was she undercover or what?