Juliette Kayyem on the latest State Department terror stats:

... Indeed, 11,000 [terrorist attacks in 2005] is a number I can't get my head around; it's too big for an attack by attack analysis (at least by me). So, I'll focus on three. In the last week, we've heard from the top three terrorist leaders alive today: bin laden, zarqawi and now zawahiri. That seems to me to be an equally relevant number we should follow. Three. They are not on the run, they are not in a cave, they have access to enough support and technology to speak to the world (and, if they have that, they can also likely speak to their partners in arms. )

The Boston Globe on Bush and the law:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional. ...

Long A1 story worth reading.

And don't miss this from the end, from Reagan-era deputy attorney general:

Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said the American system of government relies upon the leaders of each branch ''to exercise some self-restraint." But Bush has declared himself the sole judge of his own powers, he said, and then ruled for himself every time.

''This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy," Fein said. ''There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

Okay, this Wonkette post is a classic.

Bad Intel. Do you notice any similarities between his source and his source, beyond the fact that the source was apparently wrong about the very same allegation? More here and here. A bad tip can happen to any of us. Then again, few are lobbying to get their sources on the US government payroll as an Iran intelligence asset, as Congressman Weldon is.

Speaking "truthiness to power" -- Editor & Publisher:

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face—“and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."

He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, just three tables away from Karl Rove, and that he had brought " Valerie Plame." Then, worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, "Uh, I mean... he brought Joseph Wilson's wife." He might have "dodged the bullet," he said, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't there.

Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, “photo ops” on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, melting glaciers and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face. He advised the crowd, "if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail. "

Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, "When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday."

Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side." [...]

E&P's Joe Strupp, in the crowd, observed that quite a few sitting near [the President] looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting--or too much speaking "truthiness" to power. ....

Video here. (Via Atrios).

Update: More here and here.

Longtime investigative reporter Jeff Stein, at the conclusion of a piece worth reading:

We’ve created a huge counterterror superstructure at home and around the world that, at bottom, is supposed to make sure people talk to one another.

They still don’t, according to last week’s report from the Government Accountability Office on information-sharing. Five years and jillions of dollars down the road from 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies still aren’t freely passing terror data back and forth, the GAO said.

Something has been lost in the global war on terror.

It’s the human dimension.

Trust.

Stop Darfur genocide rallies Sunday. More info here. From the Post: "The rally comes as the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is worsening. In the past month, 60,000 Darfuris have been displaced, according to the United Nations. The Janjaweed continue to murder and rape women and children of different ethnicity, human rights groups say. Friday, the U.N. World Food Program said it lacked the funds to feed millions in Darfur. Rally speakers are expected to press the Bush administration to push harder for a multinational peacekeeping force to be sent to Darfur and to take a tougher stance against Sudan."

Reader S writes with an interesting connection that hadn't occurred to me:

...Also, there was a story in the WaPo this week about [the recently fired former CIA Inspector General officer Mary] McCarthy:

A onetime Africa specialist who served in the early 1990s as the NIC's senior officer responsible for warning of imminent security threats to the country, McCarthy went on to help oversee U.S. intelligence programs on the National Security Council from 1996 to 2001. In that role, she had access to details of every covert intelligence action authorized by the president.

Joe Wilson was on the NSC in 1997-98, so he and McCarthy would have to know each other, right? They were both working on Africa issues in the same agency. This is a bit far fetched, but what if she was a professional ally of Wilson and Plame? Would the Bush WH be so petty as to go after someone who may have been on their side, even if not actually involved in the situation (as far as I know)?...

The real meaning of the Cunningham affair. Some thoughts on the item below.

What was Charlie Wilson about? He was about implementing the policy inside the policy, the secret policy that a faction inside the White House and the intelligence services and the right (and in Wilson's case, a hawkish wing of the nat'l security Democrats) wanted to be run, even as it officially didn't exist, wasn't approved, evaded oversight until long after the fact. It wasn't about the money for Wilson, it was about the cause. And from what I've heard of the very large contract Wilkes was in discussions to potentially receive from the CIA, to set up an off the books plane network for the Agency, and Wilkes and Foggo's earlier activities, for instance, supporting covert US efforts to arm and fund the contras, that fits right into the paradigm, the off-the-books secret policy that the tough guys run steering under the radar of a democratic system, with an informal network of friends, profiteers, true believers and wanna-bes on the inside and the outside. Was it just about the money? Or was it about the semi deniable policy within the policy, run by those who had proved themselves over time, from Central America and Afghanistan to cigar-smoke filled Watergate suites, to be reliable members of the club that doesn't overly concern itself with the law? More than that: it's about this club's conviction that the law is an impediment to the national security cause, that the way to run things is through these informal networks. One can imagine over time the kind of arrogance, recklessness and contempt for the law, democratic governance and just simple standards of morality that might breed among those who have operated in this milieu. It's hardly a surprise that people who have done business for years with those who share these convictions would use prostitutes, pay bribes and take bribes; in a deeper way, they have been the go-to guys for policies that were incompatable with the law and democracy all along, from arming the mujahedeen to Iran contra to extraordinary renditions, but which they may have believed were worthy.

It turns out one of the Watergate poker parties I had heard was covered in the 90s by the Post was actually reported by an Atlanta Journal Constitution journalist and pal of Charlie Wilson's back in 1994. Here is "A Fun Bunch of Guys When the (poker) Chips Are Down, Depend on Your CIA to Be There," by Joe Murray, Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 20, 1994:

WASHINGTON - The CIA plays for high stakes. Some of the pots are close to $ 1,000.

For these agents, international intrigue isn't the only game in town. Once a week, in a suite at the Watergate Hotel, they play poker. I'm not sure how they chose the Watergate. Perhaps because of a sense of history. Either that or a sense of humor.

Playing cards, these fellows are a bunch of cards. Funny? You wouldn't believe it. I'm telling you, they'll kill you.

I stopped by the game with my old friend, Charlie Wilson, the Texas congressman from my home town. Charlie is a CIA kind of guy. He rode with the rebels in Afghanistan's revolt against the Soviets. A year ago, he received the CIA's "Honored Colleague" medal, first time ever that it went to anyone outside the agency.

A book written by "60 Minutes" producer George Crile is soon to be published about Charlie's exploits. A movie deal is also in the works. Harrison Ford supposedly is interested. Maybe there'll be a role for me. Is Smiley Burnett still around?

Meanwhile, I was getting to know his CIA pals. I was meeting Charlie in the lobby of the Watergate. He said to be sure to wait for him.

"Don't go up to the desk and ask where the CIA poker game is," he warned. "Then they'd have to take care of you."

I asked, exactly, what he meant by take care of me.

"Oh, nothing elaborate. Probably they'd just dress you in a chef's uniform and say you were some Hungarian cook who suffered a heart attack."

Charlie laughed loudly. I laughed weakly.

It turned out they were a great bunch of fellows. For one thing, they smoke cigars. Never mind that the suite is on a no-smoking floor. We hit it off right away.

Charlie brought gifts as well, a sack full of pistols that included a Soviet automatic used by Russian paratroopers. "Note that it's bored for a silencer," Charlie said. They nodded approvingly.

Everybody was given pens, the kind that are definitely mightier than the sword. Instead of ink cartridges, these carry .32 cartridges. Pop the end and you pop the enemy.

All of a sudden everybody in the room started snapping their pens. I started to duck.

"How's it work?"

"Oh, this is great!"

"Boy, I wish I'd had it this afternoon."

"If only Aldrich Ames were here."

Funny? You wouldn't believe it.

Charlie and I didn't stay long. But I had the opportunity to ask them about world hot spots. I'd been a few places where they go. Tbilisi, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, for instance.

One of the agents looks Russian and, on occasion, is Russian. I asked him if Georgia's ousted leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was really dead. Supposedly he committed suicide. "Gamsakhurdia is really dead," he said.

As I was leaving, they offered me one of their cigars, a Dominican. I offered them one of mine, a Cuban.

"Geez! Take our whole box," I was told.

The agent added, "You know, of course, this is considered contraband. But you've done the right thing as a good citizen. You've turned it in to the proper government agency. Be assured that very shortly it will be destroyed by fire."

Interesting. Now we know a bit more: the Watergate suite was presumably paid for by Wilkes. The poker parties were happening every week, for years. At least among congressmen Charlie Wilson was a regular. And some folks from the CIA. Interesting.

Also heard tonight there was a third hotel between the Wilkes-era at the Watergate and the Wilkes-epoch at the Westin Grand: a time period in the late 1990s when he rented space at the Capital Hilton.

It's funny, from the moment Cunningham pled guilty in November, I remember thinking about the particular Congressional subcommittees he was on and how it made me think of Charlie Wilson's position on the defense appropriations subcommittee and how much secret power he had from that perch. Here's what I wrote at the time back in November:

If you've read Charlie Wilson's War, you might remember how powerful was the subcommittee that both Wilson and until today, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, sat on, the House Appropriations committee subcommittee on defense. As I remember from the book, that subcommittee was aggressively courted not just by defense contractors, but by lobbyists for foreign governments interested in swinging US defense spending in certain directions. It is really where the checks are signed, and decisions about funding sometimes wholly undebated aspects of US national security policy are made. What I'm wondering is, is the Cunningham story one of just simple corruption, or is there more to it? Was he bought just to help steer contracts to MZM, or was there other stuff going on? Stuff that had policy implications?

The pattern is interesting, and not only for what it says about Cunningham: it speaks also about the ends of the people who cultivated him. Was the Wilkes/Wade operation wholly just about making a lot of money, or something else? Why does Wilkes seem from so early on to be so connected to elements of the CIA? There's his long friendship with Foggo, including when Wilkes accompanied Foggo to Central America (Honduras, el Salvador, Panama) when Foggo was reportedly a CIA money man funding the contras during Iran Contra; and Wilkes would bring down mostly right-wing congressmen from Washington for a front-row view of the action. There are hints that at least Wilkes considered himself a kind of de facto CIA adjunct or associate, a friend of the Cold War era Agency, particularly in Central America. Perhaps it was useful too for the CIA to have friends in Wilkes' position, in private companies, who, as the San Diego Trib wrote, knew how to grease the wheels. And useful to all of them were a few key congressmen, needed to authorize the funding to pay for it.

More from POGO, Muckraker, and the Post.

Given the week's news, I found this photo kind of interesting:

(Thx to Kevin Drum for the formatting help).

Steve Aftergood is especially worth reading today.

A question on the limo service retained by Brent Wilkes getting a $21.2 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security last year, despite the fact that its owner apparently has a 62-page rap sheet which reporter Ken Silverstein has obtained. Until now we've been hearing a lot about congressmen from the appropriations and intel committees specifically cultivated by Wilkes and Wade. So, this DHS contract makes one wonder: who on the Homeland Security committee might have steered business to Shirlington? Anyone at the poker parties?

P.S. A lawyer/reader writes, "This may prove to be the most important paragraph in today's San Diego Tribune story about hookergate":

Two of Wilkes' former business associates say they were present on several occasions when Shirlington Limousine & Transportation Service of northern Virginia brought prostitutes to the suite. They say they did not see lawmakers in the suites on those occasions, though both had heard rumors of congressmen bringing women to the rooms.

"The limousine company was in Virginia and, it appears, it transported prostitutes across state lines into the District of Columbia. That's a federal crime - and one that's in an entirely different class than merely providing an illegal gratuity to a congressmen. If Wilkes is convicted of sex trafficking, he'll face significant jail time. More importantly for him, such a conviction will affect where he serves time - sex traffickers don't go to minimum security work camps - they go to, at best, medium security prisons."

Update: A contact who knows Wilkes and his limo driver Chris Baker and Foggo -- the whole crew -- from way back called me as I was running out the door for lunch. I was trying to write as I was walking down the street on a scrap of paper, and commit the rest to memory, mostly just context for some of the stories above and below. In any case, some of this person's recollections: apparently Wilkes used to basically live and work out of the Watergate when he was in DC. Later, he got a deal on a presidential suite at the Westin Grand, so his business office, and apparently the poker parties moved there. Two of the former congressmen who this person remembers at some of the poker parties are Bill Lowery and Charlie Wilson, the latter as the SDUT has already reported.

Apparently Chris Baker of Shirlington Limo was Wilkes' driver from way back when.... he would pick up documents and stuff around town for Wilkes.

Also recollected: that one evening a reporter from the Washington Post came to one of the poker parties, and wrote about it in the paper (I take it this would have been in the 1990s). Apparently people (congressmen and lobbyists) were a little bit nervous about the piece, but I've been scouring Nexis for it and can't find it.

The LAT's Paul Watson and Zulfiqar Ali on an extraordinary security breach in Afghanistan potentially contributing to Taliban squads executing those suspected of cooperating iwth the US.

More Cunningham Case Allegations: Poker Parties, Prostitutes -- and Planes. The San Diego Union-Tribune on the poker parties sponsored by Wilkes and Wade:

...A source close to the [Cunningham] bribery case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, told the Union-Tribune that Mitchell Wade, who pleaded guilty in February to bribing Cunningham, told federal prosecutors that he periodically helped arrange for a prostitute for the then-congressman.

A limousine would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and take them to the ADCS hospitality suite, Wade reportedly told investigators. Federal agents are investigating whether other legislators had similar arrangements with Wilkes or Wade, a business associate of Wilkes who ran his own defense contracting company, MZM Inc. [...]

Two of Wilkes' former business associates say they were present on several occasions when Shirlington Limousine & Transportation Service of northern Virginia brought prostitutes to the suite. They say they did not see lawmakers in the suites on those occasions, though both had heard rumors of congressmen bringing women to the rooms.

Shirlington's attorney, Bobby S. Stafford, confirmed in a letter that from the company's founding in 1990 through the early 2000s, Shirlington President Christopher Baker “provided limousine services for Mr. Wilkes for whatever entertainment he had in the Watergate.”

Stafford's letter stated that Baker was “never in attendance in any party where any women were being used for prostitution purposes.”

Last year, Shirlington won a $21 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security.

According to the Journal, FBI agents have interviewed women employed at escort services in Washington, as well as other potential witnesses. ...

And further down, meet "Nine Fingers":

Several of Wilkes' former employees and business associates say he used the hospitality suites over the past 15 years to curry favor with lawmakers as well as officials with the CIA, where both Wilkes and Wade sought contracts.

Wilkes hosted parties for lawmakers and periodic poker games that included CIA officials as well as members of the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees. Cunningham, who sat on both committees, was a frequent guest, according to some of the participants in the poker games.

People who were present at the games said one of the regular players was Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo, who has been Wilkes' best friend since the two attended junior high school in Chula Vista in the late 1960s. In October, Foggo was named the CIA's executive director – the agency's third-highest position.

Another player was a CIA agent known as “Nine Fingers,” so named because he lost one of his digits while on assignment.

“I remember big spreads of food and alcohol, but mostly cigars,” said former Rep. Charlie Wilson of Texas, who attended a couple of the poker parties during the 1990s.

Wilson said nearly all the poker players at the two games he attended were CIA officials, including Foggo and Nine Fingers. He said there were no women or other lawmakers present, but added that he had to leave the games early “because the cigar smoke was too thick, and I don't deal well with that.”

Foggo, who occasionally hosted the poker parties at his house in northern Virginia, is under investigation by the CIA's inspector general to determine whether he helped Wilkes gain CIA contracts.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said such an investigation is routine when questions are raised about an official's actions at the agency...

I can imagine that Mr. Gimigliano, who has been hearing about these allegations for months, has invested in an industrial size bottle of Advil by now. What a source mentioned to me was that among spooks, Wilkes and Wade were known as "lobbyists," who sponsored poker parties at hotel suites involving their buddies and congressmen sometimes entertained by prostitutes. The point: to cultivate and bond with those who could throw business their way. I'm told these poker parties may have indirectly helped put Dusty Foggo on Porter Goss's radar, when the CIA was looking to fill the executive director spot, and Goss's first choice became problematic. According to various sources, Foggo was apparently on the outs with his predecessor Buzzy Krongaard, and would spend time away from the office playing poker with the Wilkes-linked group. Writes one source, "...Wilkes and Foggo played cards together in washington in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Foggo was rumored to be on the outs with then executive director Buzzy Krongaard. It is apparently through this connection that Foggo came to the attention of Goss when Goss' first choice for executive director, Michael Kostiw, was nixed..."

So was the Wilkes-Foggo relationship purely social? A person in the lobbying business told me the other day that on a visit to Wilkes's offices while in San Diego, Wilkes pointed to a room in his ADCS Poway headquarters as "Dusty's playpen" full of the technological gizmos he apparently loves. And according to another source, Wilkes was in discussions to get a very large contract from the Agency, beyond the $2 to $3 million contract a company he controlled through his nephew had already received from the Agency: as I have previously reported, the contract under discussion was to set up an off-the-books plane network. "There were several more opportunities on the board when the federal investigation came down on Wilkes," a source indicates. "Opportunities worth much more than the $5M or $10 million/year deals Wilkes was used to. The FBI probably knows about these from the raids they conducted, but I wonder if they have shared that information with the CIA." The alleged amount of the contract under negotiation? Close to $300 million, I've heard.

Mark Hosenball:

It’s not exactly the full-scale congressional inquiry Bush critics have long demanded. But some time fairly soon, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are going to have an opportunity to grill a senior Central Intelligence Agency official in public and private about the agency’s controversial procedures for handling high-level terrorist suspects—and about the CIA’s efforts to thwart media leaks. [...]

In his current position as CIA senior deputy general counsel, and in his previous job as deputy general counsel for the agency’s Operations Division, which conducts clandestine and covert espionage activities, Rizzo was privy to key decisions and legal opinions rendered by CIA and other government lawyers regarding potentially contentious counterterror operations involving the agency, particularly following the 9/11 attacks. Aside from rendition, these operations include the CIA’s own use of aggressive, or “enhanced” interrogation techniques—including some alleged techniques that human-rights activists describe as torture—and the agency’s operation of what amounts to a secret network of detention centers where it is believed to be holding two to three dozen high-level Al Qaeda detainees...

Islamic world scholar and dean of the neoconservatives Bernard Lewis is turning 90 .... and his girlfriend is throwing him a conference to celebrate.

Harper's on the Wilkes/Cunningham/DHS Limo Service ... and its owner's 62 page rap sheet.

Via Ezra Klein, TNR's Ryan Lizza profiles 2008 presidential hopeful, Virginia Senator George Allen:

....Fortunately for Allen, he has a protean ability to shift political personas to adapt to the prevailing political fashions. In the 1980s, he was a Reagan revolutionary. As governor of Virginia at the height of the Gingrich insurgency, he promoted his own version of the Contract with America throughout his state. As Virginia modernized, with high-tech eclipsing the tobacco economy, he remade himself as a traveling-salesman governor, luring new companies to the state.

Even in these early days of his budding presidential campaign, he has slipped out of the self-styled image of Bush's most loyal foot soldier. He now says the president is welcome to campaign for him but expresses no enthusiasm for the idea. He tells reporters he is more like Ronald Reagan than George W. Bush. But it's not Bush from whom Allen ultimately needs to distance himself. There is a graveyard of old Allen personas--unpresidential personas, downright ugly ones--that could threaten his political ascendance. Even his authentic self--or, rather, the man described by his own family--might prove just as great a liability. His identity crisis has created the most intriguing duel of 2008: Before he runs for president, George Allen has to run against himself. [...]

George Allen is the oldest child of legendary football coach George Herbert Allen, and, when his father was on the road, young George often acted as a surrogate dad to his siblings. According to his sister Jennifer, he was particularly strict about bedtimes. One night, his brother Bruce stayed up past his bedtime. George threw him through a sliding glass door. For the same offense, on a different occasion, George tackled his brother Gregory and broke his collarbone. When Jennifer broke her bedtime curfew, George dragged her upstairs by her hair.

George tormented Jennifer enough that, when she grew up, she wrote a memoir of what it was like living in the Allen family. In one sense, the book, Fifth Quarter, from which these details are culled, is unprecedented. No modern presidential candidate has ever had such a harsh and personal account of his life delivered to the public by a close family member. The book paints Allen as a cartoonishly sadistic older brother who holds Jennifer by her feet over Niagara Falls on a family trip (instilling in her a lifelong fear of heights) and slams a pool cue into her new boyfriend's head. "George hoped someday to become a dentist," she writes. "George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession--getting paid to make people suffer."

Whuppin' his siblings might have been a natural prelude to Confederate sympathies and noose-collecting if Allen had grown up in, say, a shack in Alabama. But what is most puzzling about Allen's interest in the old Confederacy is that he didn't grow up in the South. Like a military brat, Allen hopscotched around the country on a route set by his father's coaching career. The son was born in Whittier, California, in 1952 (Whittier College Poets), moved to the suburbs of Chicago for eight years (the Bears), and arrived in Southern California as a teenager (the Rams). In Palos Verdes, an exclusive cliffside community, he lived in a palatial home with sweeping views of downtown Los Angeles and the Santa Monica basin. It had handmade Italian tiles and staircases that his eccentric mother, Etty, designed to match those in the Louvre. "It looks like a French château," says Linda Hurt Germany, a high school classmate.

Even the elder George Allen wasn't Southern--he grew up in the Midwest--but the oddest part of the myth of George Allen's Dixie rusticity is his mother. Rather than a Southern belle, Etty was, in fact, French, and, as such, she was a deliciously indiscreet cultural libertine. She would do housework in her bra and panties. She wore muumuus and wraparound sunglasses and once won a belly button contest. According to Jennifer, "Mom prided herself for being un-American. ... She was ashamed that she had given up her French citizenship to become a citizen of a country she deemed infantile." When her husband later moved the family to Virginia, Etty despised living in the state. She was also anti-Washington before her son ever was, albeit in a slightly more continental fashion....

Go read. As Ezra notes, the piece is pretty devastating.

Ken Silverstein on anonymous earmarks: "... It's a bizarre quirk of our government that the companies and organizations that benefit from earmarking are permitted to remain anonymous (see my article on earmarking from the July 2005 Harper's Magazine for more background). It's clearly a system that is too easy to abuse, so much so that getting a handout is a streamlined, four-step process, as both Visclosky and Mollohan could attest. First you select a member of Congress on the House or Senate appropriations committees; you then purchase their influence with campaign donations; you then retain the member's favored lobby shop; and for the fourth step—just watch your business grow."

Bribery by other means. Putting new meaning in the Cunningham affair, an alleged sex scandal to go along with the Cunningham corruption case. More potential headaches for the CIA IG office, too. Writes a reader, "Somehow I don't think the House is going to vote on the lobbying reform bill today." Update: He adds, "And they didn't. Rep. Drier pull the rule for debating the lobbying reform bill off the House floor at 11:30."

"Rushing the enemy and slapping him in the face." Chris Nelson of The Nelson Report with the latest capital reading of events Iran:

The leaders of Iran have amused themselves, if few others, in the past 24 hours by deliberately crossing over the Bush Administration’s declared “red line” for both Iran and North Korea...that is, threatening to proliferate nuclear and missile technology to rogue states like Sudan.

This, following a week of statements from senior Iranian officials...not just the increasingly over-the-top President Ahmadinejad...saying Iran has no intention of complying with Friday’s “deadline” (April 28) to provide the IAEA with answers for its report to the United Nations Security Council.

So the bad news is that the world can no longer comfort itself with the thought that while Ahmadinejad is obviously an irresponsible political agitator, there are still presumably responsible elements of control in the mullah leadership which really controls Iran, and its military and nuclear assets in particular. (Remember, Ahmadinejad is not “president” in the US or Russian sense, he does not have his “finger on the nuclear button”.)

In any event, the net is that Administration officials are reduced to threatening the Security Council by saying if it does not allow an Article 7 debate (implying the possibility of sanctions as an outcome) the UNSC will “lose credibility”.

The real target of this tepid US response is China, which continues to say it wants diplomacy, but rejects all talk of sanctions...as President Hu Jintao made very clear last week, in what is increasingly being seen as a seriously flawed US-China Summit. (More on that in tomorrow’s Report...)

A friend who watches the Iran situation closely said that what we’ve seen in recent days from Iran amounts to the Middle Eastern equivalent of the American Plains Indian’s show of bravado in the face of the enemy....”counting coup”. That is, in contemporary terms, rushing up to the enemy and slapping him in the face, despite his weapons and superpower position.

The American Indian risked death by such an act, hence it’s highly honored place in the warrior society. The Iranians clearly don’t think they are at risk. Still, such a public act of international defiance makes Iran look brave in the eyes of the Islamic world, while it makes the US and the UN look foolish...so the net in leverage is seen in Teheran, at least, as a gain for Iran, this analyst warns.

The “counting coup” tactic has a strategic goal, of course...”splitting the Five”...the US, the EU-3, and Russia. As with the stalled (failed?) US policy on N. Korea, it is the existence of the “Five” which, itself, as a practical matter, constitutes US policy toward Iran, just as the US must cling to the fiction that the 6 Party Talks amount to a real policy toward N. Korea.

“Maintaining the solidarity of The Five is all the policy we have,” our analyst friend laments. “All the rest is BS.” [...]

So where are we? It seems clear to our expert sources that Iran has no intention of complying with IAEA demands in time for Friday’s deadline, and that the result will be a repeat of last month’s UNSC debate, with both China and Russia continuing to oppose sanctions, and Iran continuing to poke and probe for ways to split the “alliance” against them.

On balance, our sources think the “real” White House thinking on its Iran options is a good deal more sophisticated (or sensible...take your pick) than some of the media coverage, and some of the Op Ed pieces by war hawks, would indicate. At least in part, this analysis rests on continued confidence in the basic scientific opinion that Iran will not be ready to produce weapons grade plutonium for many more years.

And Bush is given credit for understanding, however imperfectly, how his Iraq adventure has limited his military options in the Middle East, if not also in Asia. ...

Former US Ambassador to Nato, Robert Hunter, in the Post, "Time to talk With Iran":

... Summits with the opposition are a great American tradition. President Richard Nixon went to Beijing even though China was aiding North Vietnam in its fight against U.S. forces. President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the Soviet Union "an evil empire" but still negotiated agreements with it on arms control and other issues. And the Bush administration talks directly to North Korea, perhaps the most dangerous and delusional regime in the world. America has never limited itself to talking only with its friends abroad. ...

The Allies. There don't appear to be any public US government inquiries into the US policy of renditions, but Europe is investigating the US practice on its territory, and finding that at least some European governments would appear to be tacitly cooperating, namely Italy, Sweden and Bosnia. A group of European lawmakers is headed to Washington to ask Sec. of State Rice and CIA Director Porter Goss about the practice next month.

Pat Roberts' invasion-eve comments potentially jeopardized US sources and methods in Iraq, according to this report by Murray Waas in National Journal:

...Three years ago on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, [Senate Intelligence committee chair Pat] Roberts himself was involved in disclosing sensitive intelligence information that, according to four former senior intelligence officers, impaired efforts to capture Saddam Hussein and potentially threatened the lives of Iraqis who were spying for the United States.

On March 20, 2003, at the onset of military hostilities between U.S. and Iraqi forces, Roberts said in a speech to the National Newspaper Association that he had "been in touch with our intelligence community" and that the CIA had informed President Bush and the National Security Council "of intelligence information from what we call human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein and his leadership in a bunker in the suburbs of Baghdad."

The former intelligence officials said in interviews that Roberts was never held accountable for his comments, which bore directly on the issue of intelligence-gathering sources and methods, and revealed that Iraqis close to Hussein were probably talking to the United States. These former officials contrasted the Roberts case with last week's firing of CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy, as examples of how rank and file intelligence professionals now have much to fear from legitimate and even inadvertent contacts with journalists, while senior executive branch officials and members of Congress are almost never held accountable when they seriously breach national security through leaks of information.

"On a scale of one to ten, if Mary McCarthy did what she is accused of doing, it would be at best a six or seven," said one former senior intelligence official, whose position required involvement in numerous leak investigations. "What Pat Roberts did, from a legal and national security point of view, was an eleven." [...]

At the time, it was one of the most sensitive secrets in government that the CIA had recruited Iraqi nationals who claimed to have infiltrated Hussein's inner circle to be able to follow his movements at the onset of war.

Read the whole piece. And you'll remember that Roberts' predecessor as ranking Republican on the Senate Intel committee, Richard Shelby, had a similar problem. From the WaPo, "Investigators Concluded that Shelby Leaked Message." Putting aside polygraphs and federal investigations for the moment, one might wonder if, for those who live in such glass houses, a smidgeon of humility might be in order? Update: "The stuff [in the above story] has been well known around here and I have been surprised at how vocal Roberts has been on leaks given this vulnerability," one Hill veteran observes. "I think it was just a matter of time before someone picked up on it."

Via Steve Aftergood, this Balt Sun piece from Siobahn Gorman raises some interesting possibilities. "At the request of National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte, the legislation would allow agency security forces at the NSA and CIA to make arrests outside the grounds of those agencies."

The Hill: "Sen. Roberts seeks delay of Intel probe."

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he wants to divide his panel’s inquiry into the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq-related intelligence into two parts, a move that would push off its most politically controversial elements to a later time.

The inquiry has dragged on for more than two years, a slow pace that prompted Democrats to force the Senate into an extraordinary closed-door session in November. Republicans then promised to speed up the probe.

"Timely manner?" Your call. Via Muckraker.

Worth reading: Dana Milbank's John Negroponte sketch.

Newsweek: "A former colleague says the fired Mary McCarthy 'categorically denies' being the source of the leak on agency renditions."

A Whodunnit? Or lull before the storm? How long can the discussion remain focused on "the leaker" before it turns to what is the nature and circumstance of what was leaked? That is, how much discomfort is there within the intelligence community about the rendition program? And don't miss the very practical legal and financial concerns embedded in this story. Those are captured in this Harper's piece on "The CIA's 'Wehrmacht'" and in this Post piece from Saturday:

A former intelligence official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said he knew of CIA officials who had refused to attend meetings related to the rendition -- or capture and transfer -- of suspected terrorists, because of opposition or anxiety about the legality of the practice. "They believe that if one chamber of Congress goes to the other party, there will be investigations, and those involved could be impoverished by legal fees."

If these reports are true, it would seem there is a cadre of officers opting out if not speaking out.

Larry Johnson raises an interesting point. Is there a CIA IG investigation of secret prisons?

More from the WaPo:

The inspector general's combination of independence and access may have been combustible in McCarthy's case, if allegations about her involvement in leaks prove true. Since the revelation in 2004 of prisoner abuses by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the CIA inspector general's office was charged with examining allegations of torture and other ill treatment of detainees by CIA officers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The allegations arose, according to sources, from complaints made by others within the agency about wrongdoing.

The resulting reports have never been made public, although the agency has confirmed that it submitted several requests for prosecution of CIA-related employees to the Justice Department. Only one trial has resulted, in North Carolina, involving a CIA contractor. [...]

Whatever the motivation in this case, intelligence officials confirmed that the leaks apparently at issue now occurred at a time of extraordinary ferment within the intelligence community about the propriety of some Bush administration policies. Several former CIA officials, including the head of its operations in Europe and one of its top Middle East analysts, have recently publicly described what they see as bitterness within the agency about allegations that the administration misused intelligence resources and reports in connection with the war.

A former intelligence official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said he knew of CIA officials who had refused to attend meetings related to the rendition -- or capture and transfer -- of suspected terrorists, because of opposition or anxiety about the legality of the practice. "They believe that if one chamber of Congress goes to the other party, there will be investigations, and those involved could be impoverished by legal fees."

Go read Kevin Drum on the war inside the Bush administration over Iran policy.

Hannah Allam on Iran's fashionistas soldiering on under Ahmadinejad.

Expensive problems getting out of the F-22. Literally.

Retired Army General John Batiste, "A Case for Accountability."

Bob Novak: "Feds know who outed CIA agent."

Check out the latest from Harper's on the "Curt Weldon Employment Agency." One beneficiary: daughter Kim Weldon, who has found herself employed by the Italian defense contractor Weldon helped get the contract to build the presidential helicopter:

Representative Curt Weldon (R., Penn.), a powerful member of the House Armed Services Committee, has been a good friend to the Italian firm Finmeccanica, and it appears that his good deeds on its behalf have been rewarded. Last year, Weldon was a key supporter of a long-shot bid by AgustaWestland, Finmeccanica’s helicopter unit, to land a $1.6-billion contract to build the new presidential helicopter. With Weldon’s help, an AgustaWestland partnership with LockheedMartin beat out a bid from United Technologies Corp., which had been favored. On November 29, 2005, AgustaWestland broke ground on an addition to its Philadelphia-area plant. The project, said Weldon, who was on hand that day, “provides a direct and sustained stimulus to the regional economy by way of increased investment and job creation.”

One job at AgustaWestland has been filled by Weldon's daughter, Kim.

You'll remember that another of Weldon's daughters, Karen, has set up a lobbying firm with an old Republican hand from Weldon's district which got a contract from a Russian energy firm seeking favors from the Congressman:

It doesn’t stop there. Weldon’s twenty-something daughter Karen was once hired by Boeing, one of the congressman's major campaign donors, and later became a high-powered lobbyist who built her company on her father’s connections (a story I reported with a colleague in the February 20, 2004, L.A. Times). Weldon “family friend” and realtor-turned-lobbyist Cecelia Grimes was retained by Oto Melara, yet another subsidiary of Finmeccanica, and by several other firms with close ties to the congressman as well. Given all of this, Kim Weldon’s new job looks less like an overwhelming coincidence and more like the continuation of a proud Weldon family tradition.

Weldon has five kids; wonder what the other three are up to?

Oversight in Real Time? On hold, reports US News:

The main lesson that the Senate Intelligence Committee drew from the run-up to the Iraq war was that Washington needs intense scrutiny of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. So with all the buzz about nukes in Iran, it would be safe to assume that the committee is deep into an inquiry, right? Well, not quite. Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, the committee chair, warns that "we have not made the progress on our oversight of Iran intelligence, which is critical." The panel has done only piecemeal scrutiny of the spy agencies' work on Iran. "There is no organized committee staff effort to look at Iran right now," says majority staff director Bill Duhnke. "It's all sort of on hold." Roberts blames it on Democrats who are "more focused on intelligence failures of the past." Committee staffers who would conduct the Iran inquiry are instead tied up with the long-awaited second phase of the panel's review of prewar intelligence on Iraq (which covers how the Bush administration used the intelligence). Democrats say Roberts is stalling on Phase 2. "If the committee has not conducted a review of Iran intelligence, it's not because of a lack of resources," says Wendy Morigi, spokeswoman for Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the committee's ranking Democrat. Roberts says he is pushing hard to complete the Iraq inquiry, which could take several more months. Then, the committee can focus more on Iran. Perhaps Tehran will be kind enough to wait for them.

Rendition Tremors. Ken Silverstein on "The CIA 'Wehrmacht.'"

Interesting:

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Tuesday he had heard that Mohammad Nahavandian, a senior aide to Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, was in Washington but he had not met U.S. officials and his presence was being looked into.

"It's a matter of interest for us and if I have any other information to share on the matter today or in the days ahead, I'll do so," McCormack told reporters.

Nahavandian's successful entry into the United States is embarrassing for Washington, which is pushing hard for other countries to impose travel restrictions on Iranian officials in talks in Moscow this week.

The talks follow Iran's announcement last week that it had enriched uranium for use in fueling power stations for the first time in defiance of a March 29 U.N. Security Council demand that it halt its enrichment program.

McCormack declined to say how Nahavandian got into the United States, where strict restrictions are in place on Iranian officials wanting to visit.

Nahavandian was in the United States legally, but not enter with a visa. This could mean he holds legal permanent residency in the United States or be traveling on the passport of a country where visas were not needed, said McCormack.

"We have no record of issuing a visa to a person with this name," he said, noting that the United States does not have diplomatic ties with Tehran and there are clear restrictions on travel by Iranian officials.

A colleague says he understands that Nahavandian used to teach here and probably has a green card and that may be why they have no record of him applying for a visa.

Jason Vest: "Haunted by Abu Ghraib."

Via Kevin Drum, Dick Morris on the Republican Jimmy Carter: "Bush has truly become the Republican equivalent of President Jimmy Carter, out of control, dropping in popularity, unable to resume command..."

Chronicle of Higher Ed: "The late muckraking journalist Jack Anderson, who died last December, left some 200 boxes of papers to George Washington University's library, an archive that could be a trove of information about state secrets and old-fashioned investigative journalism for historians and reporters..." Guess who wants to get a look at it first, to do some vetting?

Check out Justin Rood on Cunningham, Kontogiannis and their meeting with Saudi crown prince Abdullah.

Just heard from an admired colleague who found out today he won the Pulitzer prize for journalism. BIG congratulations to the San Diego Union Tribune/Copley News for winning the Pulitzer for their astounding series on Duke Cunningham. (Here's one highlight of the series). And for the New York Times which apparently won too for its NSA warrantless domestic spying story (it was a tie). Update: And from the peanut gallery, big kudos as well to the Post's Dana Priest for her black site prisons series.

Rasmussen. Reader JK writes, "Today's Rasmussen numbers are even stronger anti-Bush:

strongly approve: 19%
somewhat approve: 20%
somewhat disapprove: 16%
strongly disapprove: 44%

overall:
39% approve
60% disapprove

"These are the strongest anti-Bush numbers ever in this poll. Forty-four per cent 'strong disapproval' is remarkable; more than double 'strong approval.' ..."

Check out Bob Dreyfuss' new piece on Cheney's staff.

The Cut-Out. Or what apartheid-era South Africa Intelligence taught Jack Abramoff. My friend, investigative journalist Ken Silverstein, has just taken over the helm as Washington editor of Harper's Magazine, and is creating a new reported/investigative journalism weblog at the Harper's site. Kicking off the expanded online operation, Ken has a new piece on an underreported aspect of Jack Abramoff's early career on the payroll of the apartheid era South African military intelligence service. Newsday had reported years ago that a right-wing foundation Abramoff ran in the 1980s, the International Freedom Foundation, was in fact funded by the apartheid era South African intelligence service. But Ken has two sources who tell him what has never been reported before -- that Abramoff was fully witting to that fact:

...Abramoff, according to my sources, was a willing asset of the apartheid government.

It started when Abramoff, as Chairman of the College Republican National Committee, visited South Africa in 1983. There, he came to know Russell Crystal, a South African intelligence asset who headed a government-funded student front group. Presumably, it was Crystal who in 1986 brought Abramoff in as the first chairman of the International Freedom Foundation (IFF)—a seemingly independent right-wing group headquartered in Washington, D.C., that was effectively run from Johannesburg and given the code name “Pacman” by South African intelligence. I spoke to a source who was intimately familiar with the IFF and the key players behind it, and who asked not to be identified. “The South Africans needed front men,” he told me. “Abramoff was identified early on as an ambitious, up-and-coming American conservative who could be useful.” [...]

“Yes, some people were duped by the IFF,” said my source. “But Jack was not one of them. As chairman [of the IFF], he understood where the money was coming from. He knew exactly who he was playing with.” [...]A second source, who also asked not to be identified, agreed: “The only reason that Dolph Lundgren and Grace Jones were traipsing around Namibia was that the movie [which Abramoff produced, Red Scorpion] was an official propaganda project.” [...]

And certainly it appears that Abramoff learned the tricks he brought to the lobbying trade—cut-outs, bogus charities, financial trickery, and double- and triple-budgeted projects—from his friends at South African intelligence...

Calling Rabbi Lapin. Go read the Making of a Lobbyist, and bookmark the blog.

Richard Holbrooke:

The major reason the nation needs a new defense secretary is far more urgent. Put simply, the failed strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be fixed as long as Rumsfeld remains at the epicenter of the chain of command. Rumsfeld's famous "long screwdriver," with which he sometimes micromanages policy, now thwarts the top-to-bottom reexamination of strategy that is absolutely essential in both war zones. Lyndon Johnson understood this in 1968 when he eased another micromanaging secretary of defense, McNamara, out of the Pentagon and replaced him with Clark M. Clifford. Within weeks, Clifford had revisited every aspect of policy and begun the long, painful process of unwinding the commitment. Today, those decisions are still the subject of intense dispute, and there are many differences between the two situations. But one thing was clear then and is clear today: Unless the secretary of defense is replaced, the policy will not and cannot change.

That first White House reaction will not be the end of the story. If more angry generals emerge -- and they will -- if some of them are on active duty, as seems probable; if the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan does not turn around (and there is little reason to think it will, alas), then this storm will continue until finally it consumes not only Donald Rumsfeld. The only question is: Will it come so late that there is no longer any hope of salvaging something in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Copley News Service's Joe Cantlupe profiles alleged Duke Cunningham co-conspirator, Tommy Kontogiannis -- and their visits to the White House:

... The congressman [Cunningham] and the balding, nattily-clad businessman [Kontogiannis] met about 15 years ago through a mutual acquaintance, Kontogiannis said in an interview with Copley News Service in June.

They sometimes dined together in Washington, D.C., and Kontogiannis invited Cunningham to his daughter's wedding. One of Kontogiannis' nieces also worked in Cunningham's congressional office for several years, according to House legislative records.

The two men also visited the White House together. Kontogiannis had his picture taken with Cunningham at a White House reception, and friends of Kontogiannis say the businessman kept a photo of himself with Cunningham and President Bush in his house.

Building on their relationship, Kontogiannis joined Cunningham on a December 2004 trip to Saudi Arabia. They were accompanied by Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Riverside, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Rancho Santa Fe businessman Ziyad Abduljawad, who paid for the trip.

Cunningham, who was a member of the appropriations and intelligence committees at the time, has said their goal was to promote better relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Sources said Kontogiannis' interest appeared to center on an oil business he owned in Europe.

In September, two months before Cunningham's plea agreement was made public, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies raided Kontogiannis' home and office. ...

Newsweek: "Is the Pentagon creating a secret police force?"

Guy Dinmore on feelers from Iran.

Oops, indeed.

Now he tells us. Howie Kurtz:

"Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, told students and faculty at the University of South Dakota Monday that the United States should pull out of Iraq and leave a small force there, just as it did post-war in Korea and Germany.

" 'It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003,' Gingrich said during a question-and-answer session at the school. 'We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it.' "

Now he tells us. If Newt has called this an enormous mistake in his many Fox News appearances, or called for a major military pullback, I, for one, have missed it.

Karona. As promised, Bill Arkin writes about the Marines wargaming conflict with a thinly veiled country called Karona:

In 2005, a Karonan reformist president is voted out in a fraudulent and hotly contested election. And riots and unrest broke out throughout the country. The conservatives eventually emerged victorious, but Karonan society split. By 2010, the military had been purged of those who supported the earlier reformists. But the military had also suffered under the new government and was not, in the words of the Marine Corps "a truly modern force."

By 2010, "radical" Karona was not only asserting itself in the region, but resisting any U.S. presence. Oil prices dropped in 2013 -- who writes these things? -- and Karona decides to boost its revenues by taking control of the waters off its coast, including international waters, charging a tariff on all products, particularly oil, passing through.

In 2014, the United Nations passes a resolution denouncing Karona’s actions as a violation of the freedom of the seas, but the Security Council stops short of approving any action. The American President directs CENTCOM to open international waters along the coast, and the Marine Corps springs in action.

Go read what happens next.

Arkin adds, "In the real world though, Karona easily morphs into Iran. Like the early 1990's nuclear war planning I discussed yesterday, the danger with the Karonan scenario is that in the U.S. military, the political scenario and over-the-top characterization of the enemy begins to look like reality. For Iranians looking in, the certain assumption on the part of the Americans of an aggressive and reckless Iran feeds a picture of American military preparedness that could be seen not just as prudent but also as a harbinger of a pre-ordained clash."

Tomorrow on Arkin's itinerary, Army planning.

Strategic ambiguity. The NYT on who may be the intended target of Iran strike chatter: China and Russia:

"Is it a good thing for the Iranians to think there are occasions where the U.S. would use force? Sure," said Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who directed the Air Force's definitive study of the first war against Iraq. "But I don't get a sense that people in the administration are champing at the bit to launch another war in the Persian Gulf."

Others suggest that the vague drumbeat of talk about military action may be less aimed at Tehran than at China and Russia — two countries that have said they oppose even the threat of economic sanctions against Iran, much less threats to set back the Iranian program by obliterating its facilities.

"In Tehran, the threat of military action is double-edged," said Ashton B. Carter, a Harvard security expert who worked on nuclear issues in the Clinton administration. "It may scare the leadership, but it could also cause people to rally around the leadership. Where it's most effective is showing the Russians and the Chinese that we are serious about stopping this program."

The question is how serious, and on that question the administration seems happy to create a strategic fog. Officials at the Pentagon say military planners are examining and updating a variety of contingencies for possible military action against Iran. But they quickly add that such updates are routine.

Bill Arkin has a teaser for tomorrow's Early Warning entry -- "Current land warfare war gaming and planning for Iran -- you read it here first" -- that begs the question: with what army?

And Arkin's post yesterday is also worth reading:

A war with Iran started purposefully or by accident, will be a mess. What is happening now though is not just an administration prudently preparing . . . against an aggressive and crazed state, it is also aggressive and crazed, driven by groupthink and a closed circle of bears.

The public needs to know first, that this planning includes preemptive plans that the President could approve and implement with 12 hours notice. Congress should take notice of the fact that there is a real war plan -- CONPLAN 8022 -- and it could be implemented tomorrow.

Second, the public needs to know that the train has left the station on bigger war planning, that a ground war -- despite the Post claim yesterday that a land invasion 'is not contemplated' -- is also being prepared. It is a real war plan; I've heard CONPLAN 1025.

Like early 2002, the floodgates have opened and the stories about Iran war planning have started. Some claim Dick Cheney has already made the decision, some claim war this spring, some say the U.S. and Israel are collaborating.

As convincing a case made that this sort of higher level operational strke planning is taking place, until a few days ago I was under the impression that the center of gravity on Iran policy in the Bush administration's second term had largely moved away from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, with Cheney's office also influential. It's hard to see how the saber rattling can be any help to the internal and external opposition which State has increasingly been exploring ways to support.

Phantom of Corleone arrest. Some timing, huh?

Charlie Cook on the mute button:

The continuing gloomy numbers in national polls have raised the question of whether President Bush's problems, and by extension, his party's, have not only jelled but have hardened.

In the latest Cook Political Report/RT Strategies poll of 1,000 adults nationwide, Bush's approval was at 37 percent, down from 40 percent in late February [PDF]; his disapproval rating was 56 percent, up two points from that last poll. The more important finding in the poll ... was that only 18 percent strongly approved of the job Bush is doing, while 43 percent strongly disapproved. [...] So in the last three polls that measured the intensity of job approval, the president's strong approval ranged from 18 percent to 20 percent but his strong disapproval ranged from 42 percent to 47 percent. [...]

There comes a point for some unfortunate presidents when the American people begin to hit the mute button; they just stop listening. Or to put it differently, when the public turns strongly against an elected official on an issue, they begin to turn on that official on everything. In this case, Iraq has become a ball and chain for President Bush, weighing him down on every issue. The separation between his weakest issue, Iraq, and his strongest, terrorism, is just five points.

Bill Kristol is urging the White House to fight with "teeth" against the revelations from the Fitzgerald investigation, but it's worth noting that a couple months back he was urging the White House to get out there and have the president explain its Iraq policy to try to stem a rising tide of discontent. And lo and behold the president has been doing it, getting out there more and even taking questions from the audience for a change. And yet, a slew of recent polls would suggest that it hasn't stopped massive public loss of confidence in either the war or this president. On the contrary. Public opinion turns further against the Iraq war every week and the president has slipped a couple points in the polls even since a few months ago (including edging significantly into Republican numbers). The strategy wouldn't appear to be working. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but the news from Iraq has been too bad for too long for people to believe the rhetoric, even as it comes down a few notches closer to earth from the surreality of the administration's three years of overly optimistic pronouncements. And the spinning and tactical advice won't change that the public has lost confidence in the core thing that is being spun, a war they don't see has done anything but damage US national security and prestige in the world and drastically limit US choices for future crises. With 68% disapproval for the Iraq war, the public may get their big idea, but doesn't seem to endorse it and no longer trusts this administration to manage it. And one other thing: fighting dirty with war intelligence is what got the White House in trouble in the first place. Kristol's advice just reminds the public that these guys were always playing politics first with our national security. And it just feeds Fitzgerald's revelations that the White House was involved at the very highest levels in a conspiracy of retribution against a war critic. By urging his minions to ramp up the attacks, Kristol just adds credibility to the substance of Fitzgerald's emerging findings.

E.J. Dionne:

... These arguments merely distract attention from why Fitzgerald's disclosure was so important. When a fuss was kicked up in the fall of 2003 about the leaking of the name of Wilson's wife, former CIA operative Valerie Plame, to the media earlier in the year, the president spoke and acted as if he knew nothing and was incensed that any leaking was going on in his administration.

In its issue of Oct. 13, 2003, Time magazine quoted Bush as saying: "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information." Then the magazine's writers made an observation that turns out to be prescient: "Bush," they wrote, "seemed to emphasize those last two words as if hanging on to a legal life preserver in choppy seas."

The key words here are classified information. Did Bush at the time he made that statement know perfectly well that Cheney and Libby were involved with the leak, but that it didn't involve "classified information" because the president himself had authorized them to act? Talk about a legalistic defense.

Could it be that Bush -- heading into what he knew would be a difficult election -- was creating the impression of wanting the full story out when he already knew what most of the story was?

Which leads to another question: What exactly did Attorney General John Ashcroft know when he recused himself from the leak investigation? Did he know the investigation was getting dangerously close to Bush, Cheney, Libby and White House senior political adviser Karl Rove?

NYT: "From the early days of the C.I.A. leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was no effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration's case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons. But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was 'a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House,' to undermine Mr. Wilson. The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, have put administration officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charges against Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr. Mr. Fitzgerald's filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of 'a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson.' It concludes, 'It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.'' With more filings expected from Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor's work has the potential to keep the focus on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney at a time when the president is struggling with his lowest approval ratings since he took office. ..." A cancer on this presidency, in Cheney's office? The article all but says it.

The latest from Italy: "Now that was breathless. A win by 25000 votes. So Prodi is next with a divided nation..."

Via Sully, the National Review's George Conway longing for the end of the most incompetent "administration that the nation has had in over a quarter century."

I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don't consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption — and, I know folks on this web site don't want to hear it, but deep down they know it's true — foreign and military policy incompetence. Frankly, speaking of incompetence, I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century. The good news about it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's almost over.

Chris Nelson on Iran strike chatter:

Every paper and magazine of national stature has pieces with increasingly anxious quotes from past and present US officials, increasingly frank about their fears for the future.

Step back, and think about what we are really hearing from the US intelligence and military community: on one level, sure, there is a big psy-war operation being conducted by both Washington and Teheran (see today’s Washington Post) as each seeks to influence the sanctions debate at the United Nations, and whatever comes next.

But if you look at the pattern of stories in recent weeks, examine the details of both anonymous and on-the-record quotes, you see that there’s another game underway, and our sources say it’s called “pre-empting Bush” by laying out contingency plans, including the most bizarre, such as using tactical nuclear weapons on the Natanz reactor complex.

The rising drum beat of revelations, our sources argue, can have only one serious meaning: US military leaders want to force a public debate which makes it difficult for the President to talk himself into ordering a military solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. [...]

What terrifies serious US military, intelligence, and diplomatic players is how this Administration can turn a tactical military victory into strategic catastrophe.

Hit Natanz...then what? That’s the big question our sources are asking. After any US air strikes, does Iran meekly fold its nuclear tent and bow to the all-mighty will of George Bush? Or does Iran escalate its intervention in Iraq against US troops and interests...then Jordan...then Turkey...and, always, Israel...not to mention the Asian and European oil lifelines in the Gulf?

AP says Italian race too close to call. Says friend in Italy, results will make Italy "ungovernable. [...] The full count isn’t in, but it appears Berlusconi will win. [...] Whatever, Italy cannot be governed by either party, which is what B wanted." More here.

ABC/WaPo poll: "Bush approval rating at new career low." All interesting numbers, but I found the fact that double the number of people polled strongly disapprove of Bush (47%) than strongly approve of Bush (20%) quite interesting. "At the start of Bush's second term, he had the same number of strong supporters and strong opponents." Along with falling support for Bush among Republicans, it's another indicator that would seem to suggest some Republicans may just stay home come November, while Democrats and independents will come out because disapproval is more intense. Meantime, 58% of the public now says the Iraq war was not worth fighting.

Kudos to the new Woodward.

Just got a call from Italy. It seems that Berlusconi will lose and that Prodi is running 5-6 points ahead. More here. Exit polls here and here.

USA Today attacks Bush leak hypocrisy. "In a less forgiving light, the effort can be cast as a Nixonesque attempt to intimidate anyone who dares interfere with administration policy by disclosing facts that it is hiding. [...] Leaking classified information, then decrying other leaks and sending prosecutors to hunt down the leakers just underscores the absurdity of the entire exercise."

Presidential leaks and the Bush administration possibly planning to nuke Iran are important, of course, but don't miss this Page 6 shocker. Are these people crazy??? It sounds like there really was a pay for favorable coverage thing going on there and that Rupert Murdoch employee Jared Paul Stern may not have been the only one involved in working out arrangements with the very rich. Unbelievable. More here and here.

Credibility Gap Widens to Size of Texas If you make a big show of being against leaks, and have taken to threatening news organizations for publishing leaks, and your credibility has become a major issue, on a subject as important as a war, you probably don't want to get caught personally authorizing a leak of distorted classified information to a news organization. Especially if you are the President of the United States. But now he's been caught. And I don't think when he's been caught with his hand so very deep in the cookie jar like that, that there's much he and his handlers can do to stop the continued erosion in his credibility with the American public. People were at first wondering if Bush was in a bubble, then thought he was incompetent, and now they can see plainly that the president is a phoney and a hypocrite, who has actively misled the public on several occasions. And Bush now has a real problem, because when he opens his mouth, whether on Iraq or terrorism or the economy or warrantless domestic spying, it's hard to imagine that much of the public would be terribly inclined to believe him -- or trust his judgment. (Can you still picture the ads of Bush's father mouthing the words "no new taxes"? Now we have W as the poster child for the leaker in chief who condemns leaks. Hypocrisy is something people understand). Two words this administration can't say again: trust me. That trust between the public and this administration has been broken.

A Libby Plea, and presidential pardon, to avoid a trial? This from the LAT:

The special prosecutor signaled in his court filing last week that he intended to call several former Bush aides as witnesses against Libby, including former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer — raising the specter of court proceedings that could lay bare the inner workings of the White House.

"I can't imagine this case going to trial," [former Reagan era prosecutor Joseph E.] DiGenova said. "You'll see a pardon first."

Proof That The White House Knowingly Lied About the NIE. The NYT points out that, according to Libby's grand jury testimony as revealed by Fitzgerald, not only did Libby say he was directed by his superiors to leak selected portions of the classified NIE to reporter Miller, but that Libby was directed by his superiors to flat-out lie to Miller about the NIE's findings:

According to Mr. Fitzgerald's motion, Mr. Libby testified that he was directed by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush to describe the uranium allegations to Ms. Miller of The Times as a "key judgment" of the National Intelligence Estimate. Citing intelligence as a "key judgment" in such estimates carries great weight with policy makers, because the reports are meant to highlight the most important and solid judgments of the government's intelligence agencies.

"Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium," prosecutors wrote.

In fact, the estimate's key judgments, which were officially declassified 10 days after Mr. Libby's meeting with Ms. Miller, say nothing about the uranium allegations. [...]

In an interview with The Times in 2004, a senior intelligence official involved in drafting the estimate said the uranium allegations were excluded from the key judgments because the drafters knew there were serious doubts about their accuracy.

As a result, the official said, the drafters cast the uranium allegations as a minor element in the overall assessment of Iraq's nuclear capabilities. The assertion that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium was mentioned on the bottom of Page 24 of the 90-page document. The drafters also noted, in an annex attached to the end of the document, that State Department intelligence officials considered the uranium allegation "highly dubious."

The Left Coaster's eRiposte has been noting that the NIE key judgments don't mention efforts to procure uranium since the "leaker in chief" story broke a couple days ago. But I think it is worth pointing out as the Times does that Libby was specifically directed by his superiors to lie to Miller on this point. Libby is not a stupid man. He knows the difference between a key judgment and the back pages. Why was he directed to lie on this point by the Vice President and the President?

In other words, this is concrete evidence that has been entered into court that the White House at the very highest levels knowingly lied about the intelligence, in leaking to Miller that the uranium pitch was a key judgment when the White House knew it was not. Proof that they knowingly lied -- that the president and vice president told Libby to lie on this point -- is a big deal.

Update: Larry Johnson finds more evidence that the White House knowingly lied about the uranium claim in the Post today.

WaPo: Cheney at center of Anti-Wilson campaign.

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. [...]

Fitzgerald reported for the first time this week that "multiple officials in the White House"-- not only Libby and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who have previously been identified -- discussed Plame's CIA employment with reporters before and after publication of her name on July 14, 2003, in a column by Robert D. Novak. Fitzgerald said the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

A White House conspiracy to punish Wilson, and look where it's gotten everybody. Iraq is a disaster no one could have imagined in 2003 (who could have imagined in 2003 that the thought would be widespread come three years later that the US could lose in Iraq? Which anti-war Democrat could have imagined the Bush administration and Rumsfeld would have allowed the US to lose?), Bush, Cheney and Libby have been exposed as such petty, vindictive, self-obsessed types, incapable of saving the country from Hurricane Katrina much less a terrorist attack, the president's popularity rating has dropped so low few House Republicans want to be seen with him in their districts, and Iran is allegedly moving ahead with its nuclear aspirations. What left is there to say? They have a record. What is there to show for it?

This sounds like Italian government disinformation to me. As I reported in The American Prospect recently, "La Signora" almost certainly got the Niger forgeries from the Italian intelligence agency Sismi, for which she had worked as a Sismi mole inside two African embassies in Rome for decades:

Until now, press reports have indicated that La Signora concocted these documents in the Niger embassy with the help of an official from Niger. But new evidence suggests she got them from officers within SISMI itself.

The Prospect has independently confirmed that [forgeries middleman Rocco] Martino identified two other SISMI agents, along with [SISMI colonel Antonio] Nucera, who were involved in the forgery scheme from the beginning. According to a source who checked out the names Martino provided with SISMI contacts, the second agent “was a major in the [Italian] Army, and he is now a SISMI branch chief,” and the third was brought to SISMI from the Guardia di Finanzia [fiscal police] by SISMI director Nicolo Pollari. “Because of this, he can do no wrong,” this source said. Nucera and a second SISMI official involved in the Niger scheme work in SISMI’s eighth directorate on weapons-of-mass-destruction counterintelligence, while the third SISMI official works in the agency’s first directorate.

After the Italian elections Sunday, more is likely to come out on this.

Hersh on Iran. Let's hope this is all part of some massive disinformation campaign. It's hard to know. But it may be about a fight inside the administration, between the Veep's office and the State Department, for Bush's heart and mind. Dana Priest's article last Sunday about the possibility of Iranian backed terrorism against the US in retaliation for possible air strikes would seem to suggest that strikes are being contemplated at a more immediate level than at least I had realized. But it was also likely sourced by people in the bureaucracy who a) believe strikes are being contemplated and b) are trying to warn about the possible consequences. How can the US seem to have three Iran policies at once? Because there doesn't seem to be anyone at home where there needs to be. It's a sorry observation that 24 seems to have written this script.

Knowing what we now know as hard fact about how petty and politicized the White House national security operation is, how the President and Vice President themselves authorized the leaking of classified information for purely partisan political purposes and self protection, to counteract a critic, it is hard when reading articles like this to ignore the past evidence that they lack the self-discipline, the self-restraint to limit their oversightless, warrantless domestic spying from targeting their perceived political enemies. When have they shown the self-restraint not to? As we now know as fact, when they've had the chance to play dirty with intelligence, they've done it, and then lied and dissembled about it. What evidence is there to conclude this time is different? Go read this article.

More Abramoff relatives enriched in lobbying kickback schemes?

Tom Raum's AP piece is just perfect, "Leak-hating president as leaker-in-chief?"

President Bush insists a president "better mean what he says." Those words could return to haunt him.

After long denouncing leaks of all kinds, Bush is confronted with a statement - unchallenged by his aides - that he authorized a leak of classified material to undermine an Iraq war critic.

The allegation in the CIA leak case threatens the credibility of a president already falling in the polls, and it gives Democrats fresh material to accuse him of hypocrisy.

"In politics, what gets bad gets worse," said GOP strategist Ed Rogers. "And we've been on a a bad roll for quite some time. We're in an environment now where every mistake is a metaphor."

When's the last time the White House had a good week? Sometime last summer, before Katrina? What is one major single thing it has accomplished since the 2004 elections?

Reader JL on when parts of the NIE were declassified. "Check this out from the July 18 2003 press gaggle, the same day as Bartlett's major press conference upon the release to the press of parts of the NIE (via a commenter at firedoglake):

Q Scott, why did the administration put out all the information that the senior administration official put out today on the intel --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, well, we always want to share facts with the American people. And this information was just, as of today, officially declassified, and it was an opportunity to share with them some information that showed the clear and compelling case that we had for confronting the threat that Saddam Hussein posed.

[...]

Q When was it actually declassified?

MR. McCLELLAN: It was officially declassified today.

Q Just today?

So I guess, according to the White House, there's a difference between the Vice President-says-the prez-said-you-should-leak-this-to-the-NYT (July 8) and "officially declassified" (July 18)?

Cheney's Role in Authorizing Plame Leak. I also thought the Fitzgerald filings portrayed Cheney as being at the center of the conspiracy to attack Wilson by leaking to reporters information about his wife. This from the Post today seemed to reflect that view:

Fitzgerald argued, in essence, that the White House effort to rebut Wilson's criticism was so intense, and so preoccupying, that Libby could not have forgotten what he said about Plame. Fitzgerald also noted that Plame's employment was specifically raised as a relevant matter by Cheney, who had directed Libby to disclose information from the NIE.

Presumably Libby's trial will offer an opportunity to learn more about what Libby says Cheney told him to do, and what Cheney says he told Libby to do?

Andrew Sullivan on what Bush's role in authorizing the Libby leak says about the man:

This is an interesting insight into the president's character. It simply shows his willingness to use the prerorgatives of his office as the guardian of our national security to play political hardball against opponents. It shows a conscious capacity to mislead people by selectively disclosing data that skews - for a while - the public's understanding of the facts. It proves that this president is capable of deliberately misleading the American people as a gambit in a Beltway spat, or even just to keep ahead of the news cycle. It wasn't Karl Rove's dirty tricks or David Addington's Schmittian ideology or Dick Cheney's "dark side" here. It's George W. Bush -hard-assed political fighter, micro-managing press coverage of a minor matter, using the privileges of his constitutional position as commander-in-chief to play Washington hardball at a time of war. This is what we know. And it helps round out the picture of who this man is, doesn't it?

Sure does.

Hypocrite in Chief and Chairman Hypocrite. Slate's John Dickerson: "We've found the leaker in the White House! It's the president." Hypocrite in chief, indeed. Most of the papers offer analysis this morning suggesting the president probably has the authority to declassify whatever he wants, but that these latest revelations do considerable damage to his already sagging credibility. The White House just looks awful. And they erode the credibility of the president's supporters in Congress, particularly Pat Roberts, whose Intel committee non investigation of the White House's blatantly political use and abuse of pre-war intelligence -- as uncovered and documented as a side effect of the Fitzgerald probe -- has been exposed as motivated by nothing more than purely partisan concerns. Next time Roberts goes on TV to say anything about leaks or national security or the Democrats supposedly "politicizing" the Iraq intelligence issue, he should be laughed off the air.

The New York Times captures Roberts' particular hypocrisy on its editorial page today. "For more than two years, Senate Republicans have dragged out an investigation into how the Bush administration came to use bogus intelligence on Iraq to justify a war. A year ago, Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called it 'a monumental waste of time' to consider whether the White House manipulated intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, the evidence has steadily mounted that President Bush and his team not only did that before the war, but kept right on doing it after the invasion. The most recent additions to this pile came yesterday..."

As the administration is exposed as having orchestrated a leaking conspiracy and then a cover up surrounding just the pre-war intel manipulations Roberts has not only so far failed to investigate but repeatedly denied existed, Roberts is left holding the cover up bag and looking increasingly ridiculous, and worse. His foresaken duty is to provide comprehensive intelligence oversight for the people, not to conspire in a cover up to protect the executive and, as we have learned the White House directed, blame all the Iraq war mistakes on the intelligence community, in order to "insulate" the president. Roberts has truly failed his nation. Roberts for some reason is sensitive to press criticism -- perhaps as has been suggested to me, he is being misled by his staff and is insulated to some degree from some of these realities himself -- and his response to the editorials that will bash him is likely to be to "rush" out the completed parts of his Phase II report (if you can call more than three years after the invasion a rush). You can bet that, when they finally do appear, none of them will, by careful design, get to the heart of the matter that the Fitzgerald investigation has exposed.

The NY Sun's Josh Gerstein:

At a previously scheduled oversight hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, two Democratic congressmen from New York, Jerrold Nadler and Anthony Weiner, interrogated Attorney General Gonzales about Mr. Bush's authority to order the release of classified information.

"Is the president covered under the same law that you and I are?" Mr.Weiner asked.

"No, he's not," Mr. Gonzales replied. "I think the president has the inherent authority to decide who, in fact, should have classified information. And if the president decided that a person needed the information, that he could have that information shared."

"Can he do it for political reasons?" Mr. Nadler asked.

"The president has the constitutional authority to make the decision as to what is in the national interest of the country," Mr. Gonzales answered.

Mr. Weiner said the defense reminded him of President Nixon's explanations of his conduct during Watergate. "Your answer seems to be when the president does it, that means it is not illegal. That is exactly what President Richard Nixon said," the congressman said.

More from the Post.

Reporter Jeff Smith in Friday's WaPo: "Once the disclosure of Plame's name became the target of an investigation, Libby 'implored White House officials' to issue a statement exonerating him, according to Fitzgerald's account. When he was rebuffed, Libby requested that Cheney intervene. He also wrote a draft statement by hand, asserting that he 'did not leak classified information.'" Doesn't seem such a statement was forthcoming.

Again, Raw Story via Atrios, Jane Harman on the Leaker-in-Chief:

"If the disclosure is true, it's breathtaking. The President is revealed as the Leaker-in-Chief.

"Leaking classified information to the press when you want to get your side out or silence your critics is not appropriate.

"The reason we classify things is to protect our sources - those who risk their lives to give us secrets. Who knows how many sources were burned by giving Libby this 'license to leak'?

"If I had leaked the information, I'd be in jail. Why should the President be above the law?" [...]

"I am stunned that the President won't tell the full the Intelligence Committee about the NSA program because he's allegedly concerned about leaks, when it turns out that he is the Leaker-in-Chief."

More.

New Fox poll has Bush approval rating slipping to 36. (Via Atrios). Doesn't seem like getting out there and talking to the people is having the intended effect?

This is interesting too: "When read a list of seven issues, the economy (20 percent) and Iraq (19 percent) are the two issues that voters today say will matter most to them in the midterm election. Health care (17 percent) comes in third, edging out immigration (13 percent). Fewer than one in 10 say Social Security (9 percent), terrorism (9 percent) or ethics in Washington (6 percent) will be the most important issue to their vote. By a 10-percentage point margin, voters say they think Democrats (34 percent) would do a better job than Republicans (24 percent) handling immigration issues, with one in five saying 'neither.'"

Here are the poll results (.pdf).

Oversightless Warrantless Domestic Surveillance. The NPR reporter covering the House Judiciary committee hearing on NSA warrantless domestic surveillance just reported that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales indicated pretty clearly in his testimony today that the program the president has described as the "terrorist surveillance program" is not the only such domestic surveillance program going on. Specifically, Gonzales said, it is not the program that caused such consternation inside the Justice Department. And he wouldn't rule out that Bush had authorized warrantless surveillance of purely domestic communications. Link:

... The attorney general acknowledged that there had been disagreement about the monitoring inside the administration. But he took issue with published reports that detailed some of those disputes.

"They did not relate to the program the president disclosed," he said. "They related to something else and I can't get into that."

More from the NY Times. "A department spokeswoman, Tasia Scolinos, said, 'The attorney general's comments today should not be interpreted to suggest the existence or nonexistence of a domestic program or whether any such program would be lawful under the existing legal analysis.'" The NYT says that is the Justice Department backing away from the AG's testimony. I don't think so. That is the language agencies characteristically use to not deny something.

So what are the other programs? And is Congress really going to put up with being stonewalled on that point, as Judiciary committee chairman James Sensenbrenner accused the administration of doing? If you can believe it, the administration's rationale for subverting the Constitutional system of government and not telling Congress is they are afraid it would leak. Ahem.

If Libby was "authorized" to leak the classified NIE to selected reporters, by Cheney who allegedly got the OK from Bush, why wasn't the White House response to the Fitzgerald investigation: We authorized this leak?

Why did they act like it was not authorized at all? Why did they deny Libby and Rove's involvement? Why did they spend months obfuscating about who might have been involved?

Why the cover up?

Oh yeah, right. They were worried it would look like they had misled the nation to war, in advance of the 2004 presidential elections. So with the help of those like Pat Roberts, they tried to insulate the president, and blame everything on the CIA, as Murray Waas recently demonstrated.

Via Raw Story, "The 1,700 year old Gospel of Judas, out today, claims Christ ordered 'betrayal'." Anyone else notice a stunning parallel with another top headline from today's news?

Check out Marc Perelman's piece on Iran war chatter:

"In recent months I have grown increasingly concerned that the administration has been giving thought to a heavy dose of air strikes against Iran's nuclear sector without giving enough weight to the possible ramifications of such action," said Wayne White, a former deputy director at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. White, who worked in the bureau's Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia, left government in early 2005 and is now an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute.

Several experts and former officials interviewed by the Forward pointed to Vice President Dick Cheney as one of the key figures who has concluded that the ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring Iran before the United Nations Security Council and eventually slap the Islamic regime with sanctions will come to naught, forcing Washington to resort to force to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

Meantime, Iranian dissident Mohsen Sazegara, who Jeet Heer and I profiled last year, analyzes Iran's path to democracy here.

NY Sun: "Bush Authorized Leak to Times."

...The new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter...

"Defendant testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was Ôpretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out," Mr. Fitzgerald wrote.

Mr. Libby is said to have testified that "at first" he rebuffed Mr. Cheney's suggestion to release the information because the estimate was classified. However, according to the vice presidential aide, Mr. Cheney subsequently said he got permission for the release directly from Mr. Bush. "Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE," the prosecution filing said.

Reading the same court documents overnight, reader JL writes, "Heads-up: there is some big news, it seems to me, in Fitzgerald's latest filings in the Libby case. Waas is going to go nuts. Among other things, Cheney wanted Libby to disclose the NIE to Miller, Libby had classification concerns, Cheney went to Bush, yes that Bush, and got approval for Libby to disclose the NIE to Miller and - check this out -Libby went to Addington for advice and got his opinion that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document. Wow. I'm not even through Fitzgerald's filing yet. There are other interesting bits, including previously unreported details about Cheney's seemingly rather extensive role in directing how Libby was to respond to Wilson in July 2003, including about that July 12 trip on the plane that the WaPo reported on and then withdrew.

"But the Bush thing strikes me as big news - along with the fact that Libby need Addington's opinion on declassificaiton and that appears to be all he got. So did Bush authorize Libby to disclose classified information?"

Furthermore, blogger eRiposte writes, "...The NY Sun is reporting that Libby had permission from Cheney and Bush to leak portions of the key judgments of the NIE because it bolstered the uranium claim. But as I have discussed before, the key judgments of the NIE specifically excluded the uranium claim. This is very interesting in terms of its implications. I’ve discussed this further here."

Here, via the Smoking Gun, is Fitzgerald's latest filing.

Update: Here's Murray Waas' piece in National Journal from this morning on the same filings. Furthermore, Waas reports, Cheney broadly directed Libby to leak classified information to a bunch of journalists, on multiple occasions, to make the White House's political case for war:

Although not reflected in the court papers, two senior government officials said in interviews with National Journal in recent days that Libby has also asserted that Cheney authorized him to leak classified information to a number of journalists during the run-up to war with Iraq. In some instances, the information leaked was directly discussed with the Vice President, while in other instances Libby believed he had broad authority to release information that would make the case to go to war.

In yet another instance, Libby had claimed that President Bush authorized Libby to speak to and provide classified information to Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward for "Plan of Attack," a book written by Woodward about the run-up to the Iraqi war.

Talk about the politicization of intelligence. Remember how many times Bush and Cheney have indicated they can't brief Congress on certain things for fear it'll leak? Uh huh.

More:

One former senior government official said that both the president and Cheney, in directing Libby to disclose classified information to defend the administration's case to go to war with Iraq and in formally declassifying portions of the NIE later, were misusing the classification process for political reasons.

The official said that while the administration declassified portions of the NIE that would appear exculpatory to the White House, it insisted that a one-page summary of the NIE which would have suggested that the President mischaracterized other intelligence information to go to war remain classified.

Let's just review. Senate Intel committee chair Pat Roberts says the American people don't deserve a real review of the administration's use and alleged abuse of pre-war intelligence, because the Dems are trying to make a political issue of it. But it turns out the White House treated the most classified intelligence as political footballs, to be leaked like a sieve when it might serve their political and PR cause. And that was directed from the very top. So, do we get to investigate the lack of an investigation?

Update II: Reader SS sends these quotes along:

"I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." [Bush Remarks: Chicago, Illinois, 9/30/03]

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." [White House Briefing, 9/29/03]

Uh huh.

Bill Arkin: "Iran threat rhetoric grows."

Meta Waas: eRiposte and gSargent.

Housekeeping....posting will be light, as we're migrating to a new computer, fact checking a very long article, and otherwise buried. Any more Congressional leaders resign, keep me posted.

Go read Kevin Drum on Bush draining money from democracy projects in the Middle East.

Wire story on new Amnesty report on black site prisons. Here's the new report.

Berlusconi continues his charm offensive. Elections are Sunday.

The Corner's Kate O'Beirne on meeting with Tom DeLay today:

Byron and I, along with a handful of other journalists, just had a session with Tom DeLay and I can report that he is relaxed--even relieved--and very upbeat. He walked through the thought process of the last 4 weeks or so that led to last evening's announcement. As a self-described "realist," he acknowledged the very tough re-election campaign he faced. He firmly reasserted that he has done "absolutely nothing illegal, nothing untoward, nothing unethical." The House majority that he had such a role in creating is losing its most effective and committed conservative, but Rep. DeLay said he is determined to help GOP candidates in every way possible this election season. Byron will have the full details on our interview later this evening--stay tuned.

From today's Progress Report:

IRAN -- ANALYST SAYS SOME SENIOR U.S. OFFICIALS DETERMINED TO STRIKE IRAN: "For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran," Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment, writes in Foreign Policy magazine. "In the last few weeks, I have changed my view." Cirincione says his shift was partly triggered by "colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran." The ramifications of such an attack could be disastrous. Not only would it likely "rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq"; most importantly, a military strike would "almost certainly speed up" Iran's nuclear weapons development by sparking a "crash nuclear program that could produce a bomb in a few years." (Longtime U.S. counterrorism chief Richard Clarke also spoke out yesterday against military action in Iran.) Cirincione advises that the key now is to get as much information about the status of Iran's nuclear program "on the table for an open debate."

LAT: "Two eyewitnesses say that former lobbyist Jack Abramoff proposed to sell his services to the much-criticized government of Sudan to help improve its abysmal reputation in the United States, especially among Christian evangelicals who were campaigning against human rights violations in the troubled African nation. Khidir Haroun Ahmed, Sudan's ambassador to the United States, said in an interview that Abramoff proposed a multimillion-dollar lobbying contract in late 2001 but that the proposal was "never seriously considered" by the Sudanese. He declined to elaborate. [...] The former [Abramoff] associate said the ex-lobbyist discussed the possible contract while sitting with the ambassador in Abramoff's skybox at Washington's Fed-Ex field during a Redskin football game in late 2001. The former associate, who did not want to be named out of fear it might damage future business opportunities, said that Abramoff proposed a $16- to $18-million contract — 'a staggering sum' for the destitute nation — but one that the lobbyist considered reasonable because international disapproval was so costly to Sudan's economy." Abramoff's spokesman told the paper that it was Abramoff's associate who discussed any contract specifics with the Sudanese ambassador, and that Abramoff berated the ambassador for Sudan's treatment of Christians.

Al Kamen gossip: Bolton's old assistant, Frederick Fleitz, is leaving State for the House intelligence panel. Also leaving State, for the private sector: Bolton's former deputy, Stephen Rademaker, otherwise known as Mr. Danielle Pletka.

Time: DeLay to resign from Congress, and won't seek reelection:

"I'm going to announce tomorrow that I'm not running for reelection and that I'm going to leave Congress," DeLay, who turns 59 on Saturday, said during a 90-minute interview on Monday. "I'm very much at peace with it." He notified President Bush in the afternoon. DeLay and his wife, Christine, said they had been prepared to fight, but that he decided last Wednesday, after months of prayer and contemplation, to spare his suburban Houston district the mudfest to come. "This had become a referendum on me," he said. "So it's better for me to step aside and let it be a referendum on ideas, Republican values and what's important for this district."

More from the Post.

(Thx to B.)

More on Rep. Dana Rorhbacher's idea to have the prisoners pick the fruit.

Via Justin Rood, CQ Politics' Rachel Kapochunas on corruption in San Diego, beyond Duke Cunningham.

Roll Call: Rudy pleads guilty, "probe moves closer to DeLay." And the conspiracy began as early as 1997:

In a largely overlooked element of the plea agreements, first Abramoff and now Tony Rudy both pleaded guilty to a bribery scheme that began in 1997 and ran through 2004, which suggests that the bribery of Members of Congress and their staffs began much earlier than has so far been publicly acknowledged.

Friday's deal with Rudy - like the deals previously struck with Abramoff and Mike Scanlon, the former DeLay aide and Abramoff business partner - detailed a series of actions that occurred mostly in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Most of those details leaked out to reporters well before Rudy pleaded guilty.

But Rudy pleaded guilty to a bribery conspiracy that ran January "1997 and through 2004," according to Friday's court filings.

In interviews, defense attorneys in Washington, D.C., suggested that this phrasing was notable, saying that Rudy must have turned over bribery details covering those years to the Justice Department, even if the prosecutors have chosen not yet to reveal them publicly.

"Something illegal happened then," said Stan Brand, an ethics lawyer at Brand and Frulla.

Chief CIA analyst has apparently given up "group think" for the "party line":

CIA Director Porter Goss has encouraged innovation and creativity in how the CIA approaches its mission. In the DI, we have been diligent in integrating fresh thinking and new perspectives into our analysis. Our in-house training center, the Sherman Kent School, features lessons learned from the Iraq WMD case; they are part of tradecraft courses taken by our analysts, including every recruit entering the DI. Our newest analysts -- and all first-line supervisors -- also have completed classes on alternative analysis and other analytic techniques.

Alternative analysis training and questioning ingrained assumptions sound like a good thing, but the politically fawning tone of this piece resembles what the generals in dictatorships say on May Day to the leader. See: we're putting on a great show of giving you what you asked for (which was at least one problem in the first place). One word missing from the piece is "independence."