Login HereThere is a tendency in the blogosphere to camp out in the weeds when covering the CIA leak case, and we forget that most people's eyes glaze over when we start talking about what CIA briefer was copied on what memo on which day. With the close of the Libby trial, I'd like to step back and start trying to define what the important, overarching narratives to emerge from the case actually are:
1. The administration lied us into war and tried to abuse its power to punish the whistleblower who told the American public the truth.
2. Scooter is the firewall to Shooter.
3. Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby and other members of the administration conspired to keep federal investigators from uncovering their crimes.
4. The media was complicit in spreading administration propaganda rather than doing investigative journalism, and are now helping to set the table for a pardon.
5. The journalistic standards that have been exposed in the case (witness Tim Russert, Judy Miller, Andrea Mitchell, Robert Novak and others) are reprehensible, and have undermined the public trust in the media.
6. The degree to which this story about the lies that lead to war has been ignored by the media (relative to the feeding frenzy over a Clinton blowjob) left a huge opening that the blogs have filled.
What am I missing?
Update: Quote of the day, Zhiv from the comments: "I think we’re all going to look back quite fondly at the PoliticsTV clips with emptywheel’s hair blowing all over her face, like she was on an early bad date in her relationship with destiny."
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Fitz!!!
JANE!
This trial represents the only time this administration has ever been held accountable to tell the truth in response to questions it wishes to avoid.
This is related both to the media’s refusal to to perform its public duty as a check on government power, and also to the failure, frankly, of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to oppose or otherwise perform appropriate oversight over the administration.
Why hasn’t Russert been fired? (among so many others)
Yes Jane, you nailed it. That’s the way it is. It appears to me that 90 percent of the MSM has been forbidden from even reporting on the Libby trial.
Jane,
Also:
Twasn’t a CIA leak case. They betrayed Valerie Wilson!
Not missing a thing, Jane, except maybe a sense of cynicism that would preclude any surprise at the disgusting and irreparable behavior of the guilty.
Best encapsulation that I’ve seen yet.
You’ve missed nothing, Jane, except this great line:
It’s like Tony Blair’s secretary blowing James Bond’s cover.
And I humbly apologize for forgetting who posted that.
Brilliant distillation.
Oops! Did I leave a bold close off? Mods - help me if I did, since I never can get Edit to work.
Pachacutec @
3
Yep, it’s the accountability.
Oh my! Scooter started nodding when Fitzgerald described leaking? Sounds compulsive like a facist tapping his toe to martial music. I hope the jury saw that.
Eureka Springs, AR @
4
Because the corporate media SO doesn’t care about journalistic standards. They are entirely, oligarchically, complicit. I very much did not want to believe this in the early years of the Bush dark ages but the conclusion is inescapable. The media has become a sleight of hand trick = a carny con…look over there, why, it’s Brittney and that poor, poor Anna Nicole Smith…they are waving and Paris Hilton is blowing kisses.
This IS good. It has always (for me ) been about the lies of Cheney and Bush in the lead up to the attack on Iraq. Both these characters are, it seems, vulnerable to eventual prosecution on this issue. I am so pleased we are getting down to the nub of the matter.
And… I don’t take Broder seriously. He’s a whore. As for the MSM? They are irrelevant to the the facts and the truth.
Eureka Springs, AR @
4
Never mind Russert. Why hasn’t Karl Rove been fired? Testimony was given under oath that he leaked V. Wilson’s CIA identity to the press.
Hell yes it is about the accountability, or lack thereof. All these people were under oath, they can’t bullshit their way out, or Fitz will nail them too. Truly a no-spin zone!
I’m getting caught up on today’s posts, and I’m particularly struck by Scarecrow’s observation about just how careless and cavalier Libby & Cheney (and probably Rove) were about the identity of a covert agent. Martin and the CIA guys all had qualms about revealing a covert agent, and Fleischer *maybe* did, depending on whether you believe that he didn’t know Plame was covert.
mui @
12
Well that’s runner up for quote of the day.
7) the administration sacrificed national security by outing key uncover nuclear proliferation intelligence resources as petty payback for those assests not finding the admistration’s imaginary Iraqi WMDs and for being publically called out in their lies.
.
I was hoping you’d work the poodles in somehow.
It doesn’t seem like you’re missing a thing — either of you.
Thanks and kudos to all for your efforts and insight.
And, Britney Spears in her Sinead O’Connor phase is rilly, rilly, rilly important, y’know?
PLAMEGATE!!
Oh, also - and I can’t remember where I saw this - remember when Dubya said that anyone involved with the leak would be fired?
We’re wai-ting…
The Penguin says its a good sign that the British are pulling out while America sends 20K more troops. Seems the Brits have got their area in the Southern zone prepared to hand off to the Iraqis.
If the Brits’ work is finished there, why can’t they be relocated to Baghdad? What’s the rush? The party’s just getting started.
These guys are really grasping at straws. Last throes, if you will.
The only point I would add to Jane’s narrative summary are the unknown consequences of Shooter’s treason–the exposing of Valerie Plame’s sources and what has happened as a result of her outing.
hackworth @ 25
I think pulling out our troops would be an even *better* sign.
What am I missing, Jane asks? The future…where cable “news” drowns itself in a sludge of tabloid sleaze on every topic.
From the dimwitted woman on the brief slice of O-Lielly who said she respected conservatives because when they attacked they provided details!!!!!! [blue dress vs. lied us into war, I guess that doesn’t count as a “detail”]
To Dobbs saying it’s a known fact that marijuana causes brain damage [Big Timber destroyed the hemp industry once already with its strawmen]…guess he’s never met a besotted old drunk….
To the endless blonde-in-crises…..just to cite a few examples.
While the blogosphere takes its institutional memory, and its instant liveblogging, and its richness of expertise and experience to show the reality of the world, leaving the MSM chattering to itself within its beltway moat, oblivious to their total obsolescence….
Which is to say, dear Jane, you’ve missed nothing.
ADB HRC
Eli @ 24
You really aren’t holding your breath I hope.
AZ Matt @ 29
Why…
do…
you…
*thud*
hackworth @ 25
After Keith, Scarborough started covering the WH’s pathetic little spin. I’m not a Scarborugh fan though.
This may distill a few of those points, but, what this shows is that it’s a whole lot easier to lie to the current bunch of slobs in the White House Correspondents Association than it is to a grand jury… and that Scooter and Shooter didn’t know that before, but, they sure as hell do now….
Eli @ 30
Is there a doctor in the blog!!
pluege @ 19
Adding to this one, PLame was working on nuclear proliferation specifically focused on Iran, and whose efforts we could greatly benefit from right now.
Eli @ 27
Damn Right. Dubya’s War is a Disaster. Our sons and daughters are stuck in the middle of his Clusterfuck without body armor and he wants more death.
I want Cheney’s and Bush’s asses. Figuratively speaking. If there’s an aquittal, it’s over.
Great & concise elucidation Jane.
It’s about life, death, the rule of law and taking our country back from these liars and thieves.
montag @ 32
Which is tangential to another point that came to my mind earlier:
It never even *occurred* to them that this wouldn’t be successfully covered up. They probably thought they had either covered their tracks well enough that no-one could prove anything, or that the prosecutor would be some crony who would just go through the motions and then give a shrug and a wink.
I would add in the role of the Congress: The Republicans for facilitating Bush Administration criminality, the Democrats for failing to act like an opposition party.
And the media still manage to miss most of the story most of the time
Speaking of “journalistic standards,” Dana Milbank really pissed me off on KO tonight. (I see this was discussed downstairs, but wait! There’s more!)
In addition to a fine round of “whatever happens, it’s good (or at least, not too bad) for Republicans” on either a guilty or not guilty verdict, he stated in response to KO’s question that if Libby is convicted, the time for making a deal is long past. Quoi? It’s bad enough for someone apparently ignorant of legal dealings to be commenting on a trial, but to say this when there are half a dozen prominent Republicans currently providing information based on deals made after their convictions, well, that’s just breathtaking.
Twisted Martini @ 34
I have seen the suggestion that this was a bankshot - if you want to drum up fear of nukes about a country that *doesn’t* have nukes, maybe you don’t actually want anyone keeping tabs on them.
Hugh @ 39
Yes.
Regarding your two points about the media, one of the things I find most remarkable is that once the establishment journalists were given the identity of Valerie Plame, they completely missed the real story. No one seemed to think that an administration outing a CIA agent to get back a critic was a story that should be followed. It should have been obvious from the beginning that the real issue here was not any possible boondoggle on the part of the Wilsons but the extent to which this administration would go to conceal the fact that the justifications for going to war in Iraq were lies.
In not covering this, mainstream journalists ensured that the American people have never learned just how dangerous and deceitful this administration has been.
The appaling and unprofessional conduct of most political journalists is, in a sense, the flip side of the journalistic role in Watergate. At that time, journalists took tremendous risks to expose wrongdoing by those in power. Now, taking no risk at all, they side with the powerful to conceal wrongs.
One small example: in the trial, we learned that Judy Miller’s reaction to Joseph Wilson’s editorial in the Times: “How was he able to publish this? ” Not: “Was this true? Did the administration know this? Why are they now interested in smearing Joe Wilson?”
This trial has shown just how broken mainstream journalism is and why the internet is now so vital. Vive les blogs!
I think those points are key. In general, too, the case pulls open the curtain on the string-pulling and manipulation of the VP’s office in the march to war and exposes how single-mindedly and ruthlessly this gang will protect its own political interests with no regard for the public good or the law.
Hugh @ 39
ditto.
Amongst emptywheel’s paean to Fitz: “getting weedier than I have ever been” . . . . truly a high compliment.
Either way. After the verdict: look out Iran.
mayan @
13
And just to prove your point, MSNBC spent the ENTIRE DAY today LIVE at the Anna Nicole hearing thing - THE WHOLE DAY (until court adjourned for the day)!
Has ANYBODY ever seen them go to a House or Senate hearing for more than a minute or two? They spent a little bit of time on the Alito confirmation, of course - just long enough to obsess over poor Mrs. Alito’s show of tears - but that’s it.
They have all day for Anna Nicole and 2 minutes for the most important issues facing this country - priorities doncha know…
They’re proud of Timmeh boy and they pay him handsomely for pretending to do EXACTLY what he doesn’t do - journalism.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 47
If you’re a blonde woman, DYE YOUR HAIR.
It’s the conspiring to keep the truth from the public that I think will resonate the most with Middle America. From the beginning, the talking points of the Right have been that this is no big deal, there was no crime committed. I think the more this particular point is hammered, the more it will be brought into the consciousness of the ordinary citizen. It’ll be the backlash to the “no one was charged with leaking, so what’s the big deal” defense that every mainstream outlet has allowed on air and in print.
You have pretty much nailed it. I was a newspaper editor and reporter for many years and what the news media or MSM has done over the past few years is beyond “reprehensible.”
When I went to the Journalism School at the University of Texas in the the mid 70s there was a lot of talk about the news “must also entertain.”
Many of my brothers and sisters in the media are in the “form over substance” mode or just ass kissing careerists.
I fear the interests of big business and the climate of corruption that now dominates our political process will be targeting the interactive media with more intensity in the months and years ahead. We should kick their asses while we can. Interactive media is one of the last places of community discussion and you better believe there are people with money and power that do not want a public forum.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 36
Samurai Fitz played to two crowds, too. The jury.
And the court of public opinion…When even Al Neuharth is proclaiming Bush worst president ever, you know his legacy is sealed for all time. Although there certainly seemed enough meat in that close for some nice impeachment startup….as though Fitz were saying if I can do no more here’s what you/Congress can do….
Jane,
An excellent and cogent outline of the outrages. The only thing missing is acknowledgment that those crimes are multiplied a hundredfold in the realities 911.
hackworth @ 25
Yeah, I wonder if anyone at all is buying this spin. Even if it were true that everything’s great in Basra (read Juan Cole for the reality there), what kind of “coalition” is it where if your piece goes well, you get to go home, even if other regions supposedly need more troops?
The girls both look so beautiful and so honest and home-grown. You’d never think they were such weedwhackers looking at them.
DeeCee TradMed continues to dismiss this case as a story only those “inside-the-Beltway” care about — while offering up their expertise:
1 Plame wasn’t covert
2 Fitz is outta control
3 There’s no underlying crime
4 Armi leaked her name and wasn’t charged
5 Fitz’s work is done
The Libby case breaches both fortifications: CheneyCo’s lies for war AND TradMed’s complicity. Thus the pearl-clutching at our incivility: there ain’t just one house of cards resting on an acquittal on all counts.
Eli @ 38
That’s right. With a complicit media, they’ve successfully covered up all of their sins. Gannon Guckert; Dick, H-burton, Enron, CA energy blackouts, Osama and Saddam switcheroo, Gutting of education, environmental regs, VA benefits, Medicaid, Medicare; massive job losses; tax cuts for the wealthy, higher taxes on workers and poor; and etc. They have not been called out on any of these crimes against the people.
It is time to spotlight this post WIDE.
ccmask @ 55
Did someone say weedwhackers?
Eli @ 49
Or shave your head? *g*
Sexism: The outing of Valerie Plame was done so easily and so carelessly because no one (to borrow Condi’s phrase) could have imagined that a woman was a covert officer with real and deadly ramifications if her identity was blown despite what Victoria Toesuck would have us believe. I love you guys!!!!
hackworth @ 57
They may have failed in the coverup, but they still have a chance at the spin and suppression. It’s not exactly getting a full-court press in the media, and it pales beside *real* news like dead/bald Blondes In Trouble.
They’re focusing on the wrong blonde, IMO…
Redshift @ 40
Milbank has passed his sell-by date. I’m hoping the Countdown team looks elsewhere — and soon! — for a DeeCee commentator.
After every PoliticsTV video of late, I find myself sighing in relief and satisfaction. This place is alive with truth. Thank you one and all.
AZ Matt @ 60
Maybe Brit’s smarter than we thought. I bet she’s staying away from sharks, too.
TeddySanFran @ 63
Milbank = MoDo with a wang.
Eli @ 62
Y’mean Bush is an undiscovered blonde joke, eh?
Something else to remember. The current administration (deciders) don’t give a second thought to what we think or say. They lose no sleep over their actions. They are so detached from pain and suffering it is nothing more than a TV show or video game. Chickenhawks have not smelled death.
Best comment I read on Barack Obama yet. Regarding what Obama would have said if he chose not to blow off unions in Nevada and actually attended the AFSCME event, one poster wrote the following:
http://www.mydd.com/comments/200…e; showrate=1#26
“If he had showed up, he probably would have endorsed hope. Maybe take a shot at cynacism. Boldly criticize “old politics” while taking a shot at the Clinton campaign financing in 1995.
But he chose not to come.”
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
montag @ 67
No, just sayin’ there’s an attractive blonde woman that the media should be paying more attention to…
Eli—that’s a mighty fine link on the blog roll.
RBG @ 71
Yes. Yes, it is. Thanks muchly - I’ve even gotten a few hits from it.
Pretty complete and concise description of what this case means.
I may be misremembering, but wasn’t Cooper’s piece kind of about “why is the administration pumping this story?” rather than “oooh, shiny new object”…. One could only hope somebody was on the ball in the MSM and could discern the outline of the game afoot. Bloggers caught the true scent of the rabbit (not to just mash metaphors together like guacamole).
TeddySanFran @ 63
I would nominate the ladies of the lake, but what can I say? I am selfish. I would rather have Jane and Christy lakeside.
Let see Glenn Greenwald did a pretty good surgical job on that wingnut Gaffney. I think Glenn is the ticket.
The complicity of the so-called mainstream media in supporting lies is astonishing. Our efforts this week to respond to the mendacious piece by Victoria Toensing in the Washington Post have been for naught. Can’t get the owners and editors of the Post to own up. The inner club mentality on display in this trial is but a symptom of a deeper sickness.
Larry Johnson @ 76
Hi Larry.
louisianagirl @ 69
Some herald a Clinton/Obama ticket for 08. Yuk.
Jane and Marcy, you’re the BEST! Can you give us a wrap-up of the news every night? Don’t stop now - keep it up.
Pachacutec @
3
After reading the first 67 comments this still struck me as the best simple summation of what this is all about. In the prior thread I left a comment about how disturbing it was to read a Russian Daily article on the Libby trial and see a far higher quality of journalism there than in what I have been seeing from the American MSM on this issue. As seriously as I take the damage done to the covert intelligence community by this, the damage that Bushco and the complicit MSM have done to the American way of life is even more serious a matter than the outing itself is.
My hope has been that this will force things to happen especially given the tenacity of Fitzgerald when he is on the path of genuine wrongdoing and abuse of government powers as his history underscores. In the process I am hoping that blogs like this one and many others will be able to force the wider media to start playing more by the older rules of journalism where factual accuracy and impartiality was the rule, and especially where they comfort the afflicted and afflict the powerful instead of the reverse we have seen proven out in this trail as being the norm in Washington D.C. It is for that reason the first amendment was established where free speech was concerned and how it related to a free press, was it not? If the press is not willing to act in such a manner then does it deserve the privileges it is demanding in terms of shield protections? I am not inclined to think so and I am a big believer in the freedom of the press, but I also believe in the civic responsibility of said free press to hold those that hold the power for all in a democratic society accountable for what they do in the names of those that elected them.
Larry Johnson @ 76
As a non-DCer I really want to understand that sickness better.
Larry Johnson @ 76
It’s kind of their job. Their real job, I mean.
Larry Johnson @
76
Where there’s death, there’s hope. The advertising revenue stream of the mainstream media is rapidly shifting to the Internet. They’re having to cut corners and print all the news the cheap to acquire. Their days are numbered.
Larry Johnson @ 76
In a way, no surprise there, since their own fair-haired boy, Booby Woody, was up to his tonsils in the story and still sat on it (although that’s just a symptom of, rather than a cause for, the Post’s willingness to spin this).
In answer to Jane’s question about the mainstream media’s credibility: I don’t watch mainstream news anymore to find out what the news is. I watch it to find out what they have decided to pretend the news is.
Then I read the blogs to find out what is really going on.
The first step toward freedom is to realize that there is a man behind the curtain. Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, etc etc are all avatars of the Great And Powerful Oz. They are means, not ends, and certainly not catalysts. In the vernacular, and quite literally, they are tools.
Our attention is the air in their balloons. But they are pitiful, all puffed up as they are, because if I know they are tools, then millions do and millions more will. They have become court jesters, nothing more.
Oklahoma kiddo @
78
I rose from bed with a migraine after I had a dream about it myself. Talk about two candidates who will damage Democrats lower on the ticket.
I love these video clips!
We need to consider aggressive legislation that will force the media to do their duty. The public airwaves are owned by us. We need the Fairness Doctrine or something similar to break the conservative stranglehold on media ownership. It’s also time to break up the media monopolies.
Winning back the White House and Congress won’t accomplish much if the Mighty Wurlitzer can just tear it all down again.
Just pausing in watching the video clip . . . Brilliant, Jane, in going after David Broder with your Al Capone/tax evasion analogy. I truly hope some of the MSM folks in the increased traffic here today note that, and take it to heart.
Just watched a PBS show on the Marines [my dad was a WW II Marine in the Pacific]. Part of the show featured the martial arts program they began in 1999. Hoplology–the study of combat behavior and warrior cultures. One Marine talked about the importance of that program and what meant the most to him–character building, the teaching of ethos. Right from wrong.
BushCo Chee-knee are the anti-Marine.
Not fit to shine the boots of real heroes.
The truth is not in them. Nor honor either.
Semper fi, dad.
ADB HRC
louisianagirl @ 86
On the one hand, I was pretty irritated with MoDo’s snarky hatchet job against both of them today (I paid fifty bucks to read THAT???). On the other hand, I’m not a real big fan of their either. I’m not real thrilled with any of the Big Three, although Obama probably has the best chance of mobilizing and exciting people, even if they have no idea what he actually stands for…
Larry Johnson @
76
We gave it a go, Larry. War of attrition. You never know when what appears to be a stable, sturdy opposition may cave suddenly, yeilding much unanticipated ground in spurts. Systems can be quite stable, until, suddenly, they’re not.
But you already know all that.
LindaR @ 85
Well Tweety, Russert et al seem like a sad little puppet show.
Eli @ 91
Or even if he and his mindless handlers have no idea what he stands for.
Great summation here…once again. You nailed it with the big picture issues that will remain no matter what the verdict is…the media is part of the problem…a big part of the problem. And of course the reason they keep non chalantly pooh poohing this whole “perjury” issue and Fitz as No big deal, is because if Fitz wins (and that is a still a question mark) then he is more likely to continue down the path that Libby obstructed. And that road leads to more and more bad exposure of the water-carrying significantly compromised nature of this good ole Washington boys/girls Kewl Kids club. And to them that is what they really are so threatened and afraid of happening..apparently even moreso than anyone getting killed or our national security being threatened because a front company /cia agent was exposed…how sad is that.
oregondave @ 88
Joe Wilson also made that analogy.
i’m super hoping for a well-deserved conviction and I think there will be one, on at least some counts. But juries do strange things.
Butttt, if there is an aquittal, is this the end of Plamegate?
mui @ 95
Bears repeating, then. Plant it as a meme in the body politic’s psyche.
Goodness. What a great dialogue. I absolutely love the fact that Irving nodded his head as Fitz recounted Cathie Martin’s framing of a leak; you’re most effective to leak through one person…
Gosh, Irving, how’d an old hat like you get hung out to dry on an age old leak? Too many men on the field?
uptown @ 97
I wish I could believe. But I fear this is the kind of case where just throwing up a big ol’ cloud of smoke is enough to raise a reasonable doubt, by obscuring the narrative of the events.
Not sure why they would *want* PhD jurors, though. I would think they would want people who are easily confused - or am I being naive about PhDs?
mui @ 75
Why is it that a no-name radio DJ with zero ratings comes out of nowhere and gets a primetime show on CNN? Who was that twerp that briefly had the WaPoo blogger spot…Domenech? Victoria Toesuck can get front page space to LIE THROUGH HER TEETH. Even Dan Grrrrstein seems to making the rounds all of a sudden. This keeps going on and on, even though there are many obviously far superior choices for the the various Conglomerate Media outlets.
Jane and CHS have been stellar on the appearances I’ve seen or heard, and to top it off, they look great! There is no reason they shouldn’t be regular commentators on TV and radio instead of the same tired, and frequently wrong stable of pundits that have been shoved in our faces all these years.
That is of course, unless the Conglomerates don’t want any other voices to influence the electorate. It’s so painfully obvious to me that it is all a plan by the big stringpullers of the Conglomerates to control the message. Journalism has nothing to do with it.
You ladies are awesome. I’ve really enjoyed your reporting on the trial. You are absolutely right that the mainstream media has abdicated its responsibility by not giving this trial the unbiased coverage it deserved. I don’t trust them, anymore, to report the truth and I, for one, have turned to the internet and bloggers like yourselves for information. Keep up the great work. I look forward to your reporting.
bonkers @ 101
Usefulness is the most important qualification of all.
Pachacutec @ 91
Gave it a go, yes. And, to paraphrase TRex, Attack, Attack, Attack!!! With the gifts that keep on giving . . . your efforts are not for naught here, and we’ll keep spreading the news.