Interesting reading. Josh Marshall on various ways of reading the various narratives around the White House identification of a working CIA agent. In other words, the Wilson/Plame issues.
(September 28th, 2003 -- 2:39 PM EDT // link)
talkingpointsmemo.com
At the end of July I devoted my column in The Hill to the Wilson/Plame scandal. And I asked a question that is as appropriate today as it was two months ago.
I'd put it this way ...
The word from the White House today is that they cannot comment on the two top White House officials who exposed Valerie Plame's status as a CIA employee under non-official-cover, and that the matter should be left to the official investigative process at the Justice Department. In Condi Rice's words: "This has been referred to the Justice Department. I think that is the appropriate place for it ... Let's just see what the Justice Department does."
The only response to this is: Why? Why can't the White House act on its own?
We now know that administration officials know who did it. We can guess. But they know. They even have a pretty good tally of how many journalists were called.
So the president knows that two of his top aides blew the cover of a CIA employee under non-official-cover to take revenge against one of the his critics, and that in doing so they almost certainly broke federal law. In the unlikely -- but possible -- event that he does not yet know their identities right now he could pick up the phone and find out in a matter of minutes.
But he's leaving them in place and, as far as we know, hasn't disciplined them in any way. He's waiting for the Justice Department to decide whether there should be a criminal investigation.
Why?
If this is really as outrageous and unacceptable as it seems why doesn't the president act now? The folks at the White House clearly know who did this. So why is it still secret from the public?
Of course, there's also the question of why the White House did nothing about this for going on three months. On this, see this exchange between Rice and Tony Snow on Fox this morning ...
SNOW: Well, when the story came out — his wife's name is in the paper — was it known in the White House that she was a CIA employee?
RICE: I'm not going to go into this, Tony, because the problem here is this has been referred to the Justice Department. I think that's the appropriate place...
SNOW: Well, but it is revealing, or it's important to figure out what the White House reaction was at the time. For years and years and years, for instance, the administrations chased Phillip Agee all around the globe because he had revealed the name of a CIA officer. This is a grave offense, if you have CIA officers.
Was there, at least within the White House, a gasp when somebody said, "Uh oh"? And if so, did the White House take any action, back then in June, when the story appeared?
Apparently there wasn't.
-- Josh Marshall
(September 28th, 2003 -- 10:38 AM EDT // link)
One of the big questions people are asking now is: who is that "senior administration official" who spilled the beans about the Wilson/Plame matter to the Washington Post?
Obviously there's a certain gossip value in knowing. But it's more important than just that, because the identity of the senior administration official would tell us a lot about just what's going on here.
Here's what I mean.
One scenario is that this is damage control. It's planned. And one of the president's top advisors is helping the White House get out ahead of a very bad story. The other possibility is that this really is a top official turning his guns on the White House.
So who's the "senior administration official"?
Here are some things that strike me as clues.
The article says: "Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife."
This isn't certain. But the authors seem to be distinguishing between administration officials and White House officials. And I think we can probably infer --- probably, but by no means certainly --- that the source is not in the White House.
Another clue. Later in the piece it says: "It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another."
Again, it doesn't use the term 'White House officials', but the broader term, 'administration officials'. We know from the article that the people who leaked Plame's identity are from the White House. So I think we can infer that the source is not from the White House.
(A contrary way of interpreting this wording would be to say that the authors used the broader term in order to give more cover to their source, in order to expand the number of people who could have been the source. That's certainly possible.)
Now, if the source isn't in the White House, who could it be?
The phrase "senior administration official" customarily refers to cabinet secretaries and their deputies and some similarly ranked people in the administration. It doesn't mean an Assistant Secretary or something like that. So we're talking about a pretty small group of people.
So who seems like a good candidate? Here it gets a little dicier. But what struck me about the Post article is that the "senior administration official" seemed to know some really detailed information about just what had happened. This person said that "two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife."
At least six? That's pretty specific. It sounds like this person was privy to some sort of informal investigation or at least saw the conclusions of it.
So who would have that kind of information and be a 'senior administration official'. Or let's frame it this way: would Spence Abraham know this? Of course, not. Would Colin Powell? If he wanted to, probably. But I figure he and Richard Armitage would have wanted to steer really clear of this whole mess. And I don't know why in the course of their normal work they would have had to get into this.
Now, there is one person who would quite fairly be termed a senior administration official (SAO) and who almost certainly had to deal with this issue and know these details: CIA Director George Tenet.
Of course, this information has probably come across John Ashcroft's desk too. And he's a SAO But to me Tenet seems like a better fit.
And there's another clue. Look at the byline: Mike Allen and Dana Priest.
Mike Allen doesn't require much explanation. This is a White House story. But how about Dana Priest? She covers intelligence and military issues.
Clearly, this is in part an intelligence story since it involves the CIA. So her work on this story could be certainly be explained by the clear CIA dimension of the issue. But it's really mainly a White House story. If Tenet were the senior administration official, though, it would make a lot of sense that Priest's byline would be there.
This possible inference I'm drawing about Dana Priest is very speculative. It's a thin reed. But I think it's worth considering, given that I think there are other clues pointing in the direction of the CIA.
Now, let me be very clear. Some of what you read in TPM is opinion. Much of it is reported fact, in as much as those facts can be confirmed. This, however, is what I'd call informed speculation. Any one the assumptions above, or the inferences I've drawn from them, could simply be wrong. For instance, maybe the source actually is in the White House, contrary to my reasoning above. Then my whole theory falls apart. This is just my attempt to make sense of what this article means.
-- Josh Marshall
(September 28th, 2003 -- 9:27 AM EDT // link)
Just flipped on the TV and found Fox News interviewing Condi Rice. As it happened, a minute or two after I tuned in Brit Hume asked Rice about the Wilson/Plame matter. Let's be honest, I didn't expect Hume and Tony Snow to be the most hard-hitting questioners on this issue. But you couldn't watch the exchange without seeing how big a deal this is. First of all, Rice denied nothing. It was, in so many words, all no comments. More telling I thought was how visibly rattled Rice seemed. She seemed to have a hard time getting her words out. Her breathing was halting.
To their credit, Hume and Snow followed up by noting that this was a sufficiently serious charge that a bland 'no comment' didn't really cut it. But all Rice could do was awkwardly say that she wasn't going to answer questions because it's in the Justice Department's hands, they're investigating, and that this is the kind of thing that the president doesn't accept. What I took from this is that the White House was stunned by this rapid escalation of events. And they haven't figured out what to do. Or, if they have, they haven't let Condi in on it yet.
When your best argument is 'the Justice Department is investigating us and we hope they get to the bottom of it', you're in a jam.
-- Josh Marshall |
