As Debt Collectors Multiply, So Do Consumer Complaints
By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 28, 2005; A01
Embarrassing calls at work. Threats of jail and even violence. Improper withdrawals from bank accounts. An increasing number of consumers are complaining of abusive techniques from some companies that are part of a new breed of debt collectors.
They are debt buyers, outfits that acquire unpaid bills from credit card firms and other credit providers for pennies on the dollar and then try to collect. Some of these companies go after bills so old that consumers can no longer be sued for them in court or punished for them on their credit reports.
As the amount of consumer debt has risen over the years, so too has the number of these firms, growing from about a dozen firms in 1996 to more than 500 today. Industry officials say the firms provide a real benefit to indebted consumers, letting them pay off their bills at steep discounts. But industry critics -- plaintiff attorneys, consumer advocates and regulators -- say that for some firms, the demand to make a profit on the debts they purchase has resulted in the increasing use of heavy-handed, and sometimes illegal, tactics.
Year in, year out, the Federal Trade Commission receives more complaints about debt collectors than any other industry. But in recent years, these complaints have skyrocketed -- from 13,950 in 2000 to 58,687 last year. Complaints about third-party debt collectors accounted for close to one in six of all FTC complaints last year, up from 9.5 percent in 2000.
Francis Buselli of Amherst, N.H., told the FTC that a debt collector called him repeatedly about a debt the company said his daughter owed -- even though she had moved out 15 years before. On Nov. 26, 2004, the company called about six times in 15 minutes. On the final call, the debt collector recited Buselli's Social Security number, mentioned his wife by name and threatened to send thugs to get him, according to Buselli's FTC complaint.
"They knew too much about me. That really scared me," he said in an interview.
Last year, the agency sued the collector, Capital Acquisitions and Management Corp. (CAMCO), a large nationwide collection agency that the FTC said bought old debt lists, often ones that may have been sold several times before. The commission alleged that CAMCO pursued consumers who were not the actual debtors, just people with similar or identical names living in the same area. The firm subsequently shut down.
A lawyer for former CAMCO executives did not return calls seeking comment.
Collection industry officials attribute the steep rise in complaints to the growing volume of consumer debt, which now totals more than $10 trillion, and to the Internet, which has made it easier for consumers to file reports with the government. CAMCO, they add, went far beyond the typical collection tactics practiced by the rest of the industry.
"In every sector, there are bad apples, but 95 percent of all debt buyers are good, nice business people," said Warren Dedrick, chairman of Marlin Integrated Capital Holding Corp., a large buyer of medical and utility debt. "I believe hardly any debt buyers break the law, but on the other hand, if you're talking to a consumer once a week for six weeks, it's going to do nothing but alienate the consumer base."
Dedrick has expressed concern that as the industry becomes more competitive, tough tactics would draw the attention of law-enforcement officials.
"I think we'll see more shutdowns from the FTC because debt buyers who purchase paper at higher prices will have to push consumers harder and harder to get their desired return on investment," Dedrick told Kaulkin Ginsberg, an advisory firm for the accounts-receivable industry, according to a recent report.
Harassment by some collectors "is definitely getting worse," said Sonya Smith-Valentine, a Greenbelt lawyer who has represented Maryland and District consumers in lawsuits against debt collectors for three years.
Particularly troubling, Smith-Valentine said, are the growing number of cases in which collectors persuade a consumer to pay just a little -- and then use the bank information from that payment to improperly withdraw more funds from the consumer's account.
That was the experience of Sheilah R. Henderson of Lanham, as detailed in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for Maryland. According to the suit, a collector threatened to sue her for a bill for a home-security system that had been incurred by Henderson's deceased mother. Although Henderson was not responsible for the debt, she agreed to have money automatically debited from her bank account on the 15th of every month. According to the complaint, the next thing she knew, the collector tried to withdraw money five times in three weeks, with Henderson incurring a returned check charge each time.
Henderson ordered a stop to the wire transfers, but then the collector started calling her at work, threatening to garnish her wages if she didn't pay. Henderson asked the collector to stop calling her at work, her right under federal law, but the collector told her he'd continue to call her there "until she lost her job," the lawsuit said. The lawsuit was settled under a confidentiality agreement.
The consumer debt-buying industry began in earnest in the early 1990s, when the federal government began selling off assets from failed savings and loans. Before then, credit card firms and other creditors rarely sold unpaid debt, instead hiring third-party firms or lawyers to collect the bills -- usually on a commission basis.
Between 1995 and 2004, the industry grew from purchasing $12 billion worth of consumer debt to $77.2 billion, according to the Nilson Report, a newsletter that monitors the credit industry. The report said that last year debt buyers paid an average of 5.4 cents for every dollar of unpaid debt.
For some firms, returns can run as high as five times the amount they paid for the debt, according to the report by Bethesda-based Kaulkin Ginsberg.
There are five publicly traded debt buyers, including Portfolio Recovery Associates, a nine-year-old Norfolk firm that went public in November 2002. Since its inception, the company -- whose motto is "giving debt collection a good name" -- has bought more than 6.2 million customer accounts with a face value of $11.1 billion for $265.8 million, or 2.39 percent. To date, it has collected debts at a rate of 2.5 to 3 times the purchase price, enabling the firm's revenue to grow from $6.8 million in 1998 to $113.4 million in 2004. In that same time period, profits increased to $27.5 million from $402,000.
"If you run it right, it can be a good business," said Portfolio Recovery's chairman, Steven Fredrickson, who added that collectors are a vital part of America's credit-driven economy. "Without collectors, you couldn't have much of a lending environment. There has to be people like us to help enforce original contracts made" in which consumers promise to pay their debts.
Frederickson said the company runs a six-week training program aimed at avoiding consumer complaints: "We think compliance is a big deal. . . . Nobody loves a debt collector, so you really need to mind your p's and q's."
Manny Newburger, a Texas attorney who represents many collection firms, estimates that the average collector makes between 40,000 and 50,000 calls a year. Multiply that by the 100,000 collectors that ACA International, the trade association for debt collectors, says are in the business and that comes to 4 billion phone calls a year. By comparison, the 58,687 complaints filed at the FTC are quite small, Newburger said.
The rise of the debt-buying industry has also led to an increase in complaints about attempts to collect what plaintiff attorneys often call "zombie debt," those unpaid bills that are so old the statute of limitations in which a creditor can sue to recover the debt has expired.
It's not illegal to try to collect this debt -- and collection industry officials say there are a lot of consumers who want to pay, even if they are no longer legally obligated to. However, federal rules make it illegal to sue or even threaten to sue to collect it.
That's one of the chief reasons the Federal Trade Commission sued CAMCO. In its court filing, the agency, which had received more than 2,000 consumer complaints about CAMCO, called the Rockford, Ill., firm "a debt collection company gone wild."
It alleged that CAMCO harassed thousands of consumers to pay old, unenforceable debts or even debts they didn't owe. CAMCO sometimes tried to find people with the same name in the same geographic area and tried to collect the debt from them, the agency alleged. Even if the consumer was not the actual debtor, CAMCO threatened jail, seizure of property or garnishment of wages unless they paid, the FTC said. CAMCO collected millions every year "and perhaps as much as 80 percent of the money" came from consumers who never owed the original debt, the agency said in its complaint.
CAMCO closed last December after the FTC filed suit. Its $1.75 billion portfolio of consumer receivables was auctioned off for $6.8 million -- to another debt buyer.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Thursday, July 28, 2005
The Iraq truth hits home hard
uly 28, 2005
Oil and Blood
By BOB HERBERT
It is now generally understood that the U.S.-led war in Iraq has become a debacle. Nevertheless, Iraqis are supposed to have their constitution ratified and a permanent government elected by the end of the year. It's a logical escape hatch for George W. Bush. He could declare victory, as a senator once suggested to Lyndon Johnson in the early years of Vietnam, and bring the troops home as quickly as possible.
His mantra would be: There's a government in place. We won. We're out of there.
But don't count on it. The Bush administration has no plans to bring the troops home from this misguided war, which has taken a fearful toll in lives and injuries while at the same time weakening the military, damaging the international reputation of the United States, serving as a world-class recruiting tool for terrorist groups and blowing a hole the size of Baghdad in Washington's budget.
A wiser leader would begin to cut some of these losses. But the whole point of this war, it seems, was to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq to ensure American domination of the Middle East and its precious oil reserves, which have been described, the author Daniel Yergin tells us, as "the greatest single prize in all history."
You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and one of President Bush's favorites, the need to fight the terrorists "over there" so we won't have to fight them here at home.
All the rationales have to genuflect before "The Prize," which was the title of Mr. Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.
It's the oil, stupid.
What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the late 1990's.
Iraq was supposed to be a first step. Iran was also in the neoconservatives' sights. The neocons envisaged U.S. control of the region (and its oil), to be followed inevitably by the realization of their ultimate dream, a global American empire. Of course it sounds like madness, which is why we should have been paying closer attention from the beginning.
The madness took a Dr. Strangelovian turn in the summer of 2002, before the war with Iraq was launched. As The Washington Post first reported, an influential Pentagon advisory board was given a briefing prepared by a Rand Corporation analyst who said the U.S. should consider seizing the oil fields and financial assets of Saudi Arabia if it did not stop its support of terrorism.
Mercifully the briefing went nowhere. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it did not represent the "dominant opinion" within the administration.
The point here is that the invasion of Iraq was part of a much larger, long-term policy that had to do with the U.S. imposing its will, militarily when necessary, throughout the Middle East and beyond. The war has gone badly, and the viciousness of the Iraq insurgency has put the torch to the idea of further pre-emptive adventures by the Bush administration.
But dreams of empire die hard. American G.I.'s are dug into Iraq, and the bases have been built for a long stay. The war may be going badly, but the primary consideration is that there is still a tremendous amount of oil at stake, the second-largest reserves on the planet. And neocon fantasies aside, the global competition for the planet's finite oil reserves intensifies by the hour.
Lyndon Johnson ignored the unsolicited advice of Senator George Aiken of Vermont - to declare victory in Vietnam in 1966. The war continued for nearly a decade. Many high-level government figures believe that U.S. troops will be in Iraq for a minimum of 5 more years, and perhaps 10.
That should be understood by the people who think that the formation of a permanent Iraqi government will lead to the withdrawal of American troops. There is no real withdrawal plan. The fighting and the dying will continue indefinitely.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
David Brooks is on vacation.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Oil and Blood
By BOB HERBERT
It is now generally understood that the U.S.-led war in Iraq has become a debacle. Nevertheless, Iraqis are supposed to have their constitution ratified and a permanent government elected by the end of the year. It's a logical escape hatch for George W. Bush. He could declare victory, as a senator once suggested to Lyndon Johnson in the early years of Vietnam, and bring the troops home as quickly as possible.
His mantra would be: There's a government in place. We won. We're out of there.
But don't count on it. The Bush administration has no plans to bring the troops home from this misguided war, which has taken a fearful toll in lives and injuries while at the same time weakening the military, damaging the international reputation of the United States, serving as a world-class recruiting tool for terrorist groups and blowing a hole the size of Baghdad in Washington's budget.
A wiser leader would begin to cut some of these losses. But the whole point of this war, it seems, was to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq to ensure American domination of the Middle East and its precious oil reserves, which have been described, the author Daniel Yergin tells us, as "the greatest single prize in all history."
You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and one of President Bush's favorites, the need to fight the terrorists "over there" so we won't have to fight them here at home.
All the rationales have to genuflect before "The Prize," which was the title of Mr. Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.
It's the oil, stupid.
What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the late 1990's.
Iraq was supposed to be a first step. Iran was also in the neoconservatives' sights. The neocons envisaged U.S. control of the region (and its oil), to be followed inevitably by the realization of their ultimate dream, a global American empire. Of course it sounds like madness, which is why we should have been paying closer attention from the beginning.
The madness took a Dr. Strangelovian turn in the summer of 2002, before the war with Iraq was launched. As The Washington Post first reported, an influential Pentagon advisory board was given a briefing prepared by a Rand Corporation analyst who said the U.S. should consider seizing the oil fields and financial assets of Saudi Arabia if it did not stop its support of terrorism.
Mercifully the briefing went nowhere. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it did not represent the "dominant opinion" within the administration.
The point here is that the invasion of Iraq was part of a much larger, long-term policy that had to do with the U.S. imposing its will, militarily when necessary, throughout the Middle East and beyond. The war has gone badly, and the viciousness of the Iraq insurgency has put the torch to the idea of further pre-emptive adventures by the Bush administration.
But dreams of empire die hard. American G.I.'s are dug into Iraq, and the bases have been built for a long stay. The war may be going badly, but the primary consideration is that there is still a tremendous amount of oil at stake, the second-largest reserves on the planet. And neocon fantasies aside, the global competition for the planet's finite oil reserves intensifies by the hour.
Lyndon Johnson ignored the unsolicited advice of Senator George Aiken of Vermont - to declare victory in Vietnam in 1966. The war continued for nearly a decade. Many high-level government figures believe that U.S. troops will be in Iraq for a minimum of 5 more years, and perhaps 10.
That should be understood by the people who think that the formation of a permanent Iraqi government will lead to the withdrawal of American troops. There is no real withdrawal plan. The fighting and the dying will continue indefinitely.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
David Brooks is on vacation.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Monday, July 25, 2005
Take Cheney's advice & do the opposite; practical advice
Arianna Huffington: Dick Cheney: The Magic 8 Ball of American Politics
Arianna Huffington Mon Jul 25, 2:04 PM ET
Is it just me or is Vice President Dick Cheney starting to become more and more like the comically malevolent Mr. Burns on The Simpsons? Except in the Vice President's case, the unpleasantness is not so comical.
It's certainly true that he has uncanny political radar. In fact, he exercises it with amazing consistency: you can count on him to do the wrong thing time after time after time.
Take his latest endeavor: a behind-the-scenes effort to kill legislation being drafted by Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner that would, among other things, "bar the military from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross; prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees; and use only interrogation techniques authorized in a new Army field manual."
The Senators are merely attempting to codify practices the White House says it's already following... and prohibiting the abuse of those held in U.S. custody seems like a tough goal to find fault with. But Cheney has, warning the three GOP stalwarts during a private meeting on Capitol Hill last week that their bill would undermine the president’s ability to wage the war on terror.
Sure it'd be nice if we could trust the Bush administration to do the right thing as it seeks to protect us from terrorist attacks -- but it’s proven that we can’t. And even if the White House had a shred of credibility left, we shouldn't. This nation was founded on skepticism and distrust of those in power. Our founding fathers didn't even trust themselves to do the right thing, creating specific rules for what a president should -- and shouldn’t -- be allowed to do, and giving the legislative branch oversight over how the executive branch fulfilled its duties. Remember "trust but verify?" It's just another way of saying oversight.
It's amazing the extent to which Congress has ceded that responsibility. This negligence of its constitutional duties is what allowed us to get so deeply into the disastrous war in Iraq in the first place.
If we could trust the executive branch, you wouldn't have to read sickening things like this story about the Defense Department defying a federal judge’s order to release secret photos and videos from Abu Ghraib.
The cluelessness of this administration about how to build and nurture a democracy clearly isn't confined to the Middle East.
My suggestion is that after he leaves office, we keep Mr. Burns Vice President Cheney around in an advisory capacity, a sort of political Magic 8 Ball. For every issue that comes up, we ask him what he would do. And then we do the opposite.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com. All rights reserved. The information contained in Huffington Post commentary may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without prior written authority of huffingtonpost.com.
Arianna Huffington Mon Jul 25, 2:04 PM ET
Is it just me or is Vice President Dick Cheney starting to become more and more like the comically malevolent Mr. Burns on The Simpsons? Except in the Vice President's case, the unpleasantness is not so comical.
It's certainly true that he has uncanny political radar. In fact, he exercises it with amazing consistency: you can count on him to do the wrong thing time after time after time.
Take his latest endeavor: a behind-the-scenes effort to kill legislation being drafted by Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner that would, among other things, "bar the military from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross; prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees; and use only interrogation techniques authorized in a new Army field manual."
The Senators are merely attempting to codify practices the White House says it's already following... and prohibiting the abuse of those held in U.S. custody seems like a tough goal to find fault with. But Cheney has, warning the three GOP stalwarts during a private meeting on Capitol Hill last week that their bill would undermine the president’s ability to wage the war on terror.
Sure it'd be nice if we could trust the Bush administration to do the right thing as it seeks to protect us from terrorist attacks -- but it’s proven that we can’t. And even if the White House had a shred of credibility left, we shouldn't. This nation was founded on skepticism and distrust of those in power. Our founding fathers didn't even trust themselves to do the right thing, creating specific rules for what a president should -- and shouldn’t -- be allowed to do, and giving the legislative branch oversight over how the executive branch fulfilled its duties. Remember "trust but verify?" It's just another way of saying oversight.
It's amazing the extent to which Congress has ceded that responsibility. This negligence of its constitutional duties is what allowed us to get so deeply into the disastrous war in Iraq in the first place.
If we could trust the executive branch, you wouldn't have to read sickening things like this story about the Defense Department defying a federal judge’s order to release secret photos and videos from Abu Ghraib.
The cluelessness of this administration about how to build and nurture a democracy clearly isn't confined to the Middle East.
My suggestion is that after he leaves office, we keep Mr. Burns Vice President Cheney around in an advisory capacity, a sort of political Magic 8 Ball. For every issue that comes up, we ask him what he would do. And then we do the opposite.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com. All rights reserved. The information contained in Huffington Post commentary may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without prior written authority of huffingtonpost.com.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Bush & CO. drowning in Plame flood water
The Plame Floodgates Open
by Hunter
Daily Kos
Fri Jul 22nd, 2005 at 13:24:15 PDT
It's only been a few days since the Supreme Court nominee was hurriedly announced in an attempt to get Karl Rove off the front pages. Since then, all hell has broken loose.
Bloomberg is reporting that Rove and Libby both gave testimony to the grand jury that flatly conflicts with the testimony given by those they said they talked to.
We now know that the Top Secret memo most consistent with the talking points that Rove and Libby told reporters was seen in the hands of Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in the days before the leak occurred. And that Fleischer told the grand jury he never saw it.
Update [2005-7-22 16:38:29 by Hunter]: [And Steve Clemons has verified that John Bolton was one of Judith Miller's regular sources on WMD issues, and that MSNBC stands by its story that Bolton gave testimony to the grand jury about the State Department memo in question. Bolton, you may recall, has previously been identified to have been involved in the Niger uranium claims that Wilson's trip helped disprove -- just to add even more gunpowder to this mix.]
This is, to use the most calm and soothing phrase possible in such circumstances, extremely f---ing bad for the administration. It shows the broad outlines not just of multiple perjury charges, but indeed of linked conspiracy charges against a number of administration officials.
We know that there are members of the administration familiar with the attack against Plame/Wilson who have been talking to prosecutors. At least, we can assume they've been telling prosecutors at least as much as they've been telling the press, or we'd have a whole passel of reporters likely joining Judith Miller in her Fortress of Suddenly Discovered Integrity. The fact that other administration officials have been giving their side of the story perhaps poses the most serious risk of all for Rove and others -- because it wouldn't be very difficult, for people in the right places, to shatter what little plausible deniability Rove, Libby, Fleischer, and others have been clinging to.
That branch may already be broken, in fact. I don't think it's possible to exaggerate the amount of legal danger here for Rove in particular, and Fleischer and Libby as well. The special counsel is likely trying to solidify how, exactly, Rove learned the information in the memo, since it's looking increasingly implausible that reporters told him, and looking more probable that Rove and Novak "agreed" on a storyline after the fact (reports are now saying that Rove's and Novak's stories don't quite match, too, further raising the stakes.) Note, however, that it may not matter whether the grand jury can fully identify how he came by the information. Rove has now been identified as confirming the classified info to both Novak and Cooper; that in and of itself represents a likely crime under the Espionage Act.
::
While we've been treated before to a series of fairly pointless leaks transparently by Luskin, Rove's attorney, since then we've been treated to far more significant leaks coming from the special counsel's office, the grand jury, and/or fellow witnesses unfriendly to Rove. Regardless of whether the leaks are intentional or not, it likely moves up Fitzgerald's timetable for any possible indictments -- once the information is public, and the defendants know what you're working on, it rapidly closes down avenues for further investigation, and it's time to put the cards on the table.
And in the middle, the President of the United States is wading in hipboots through the worst of it. As more leaks come out, Bush continues to embrace those figures now known to have played pivotal roles in the outing of a CIA NOC agent, even as the investigation becomes more encompassing and the questions, more pointed. Towards what end was Press Secretary Ari Fleischer -- who had already announced his imminent retirement from the administration, and was hardly a member of the Bush intelligence circle -- given access to classified Wilson information seemingly intended specifically, on Air Force One, for Powell and Bush? How is it that so many administration figures could be simultaneously involved, and the campaign against Wilson be orchestrated according to such specific classified talking points? What did the president and vice president know of the involvement of their immediate staff in the outing -- and, critically, when did they learn it, and what did they do about it?
What poses perhaps the greatest threat of all for the Bush administration is that, as each news agency puts the story in the hands of some of the best investigative reporters, the various threads of the story are being woven into a compelling -- and disastrous -- storyline. A Bush administration crime, carried out by Watergate-era and Iran-Contra figures that this administration has embraced wholeheartedly, done in the service of shoring up "fixed" evidence used to justify a preemptive war. And news services are tying the Plame outing to the "fixed" nuclear intelligence cited by Bush in his pre-war declarations to the nation. Those links are, finally, being made, and it's beginning to make the Nixon White House look like a Norman Rockwell painting in comparison.
There is very little time left for the White House to come up with some path -- any path -- by which to distance themselves from the wider allegations against not just Rove, but against the president and vice president themselves. Instead, they are stonewalling reporters asking them to clarify their involvement. In fact, both Bush and Press Secretary Scott McClellan haven't even backed off their previous public statements that Rove, by name, wasn't involved -- they've just refused to discuss it.
That's not going to cut it. The President needs to answer for his subordinates, who at this point are looking like they have given up any credible pretenses of innocence, and are now simply shopping for the weakest possible charges against them.
by Hunter
Daily Kos
Fri Jul 22nd, 2005 at 13:24:15 PDT
It's only been a few days since the Supreme Court nominee was hurriedly announced in an attempt to get Karl Rove off the front pages. Since then, all hell has broken loose.
Bloomberg is reporting that Rove and Libby both gave testimony to the grand jury that flatly conflicts with the testimony given by those they said they talked to.
We now know that the Top Secret memo most consistent with the talking points that Rove and Libby told reporters was seen in the hands of Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in the days before the leak occurred. And that Fleischer told the grand jury he never saw it.
Update [2005-7-22 16:38:29 by Hunter]: [And Steve Clemons has verified that John Bolton was one of Judith Miller's regular sources on WMD issues, and that MSNBC stands by its story that Bolton gave testimony to the grand jury about the State Department memo in question. Bolton, you may recall, has previously been identified to have been involved in the Niger uranium claims that Wilson's trip helped disprove -- just to add even more gunpowder to this mix.]
This is, to use the most calm and soothing phrase possible in such circumstances, extremely f---ing bad for the administration. It shows the broad outlines not just of multiple perjury charges, but indeed of linked conspiracy charges against a number of administration officials.
We know that there are members of the administration familiar with the attack against Plame/Wilson who have been talking to prosecutors. At least, we can assume they've been telling prosecutors at least as much as they've been telling the press, or we'd have a whole passel of reporters likely joining Judith Miller in her Fortress of Suddenly Discovered Integrity. The fact that other administration officials have been giving their side of the story perhaps poses the most serious risk of all for Rove and others -- because it wouldn't be very difficult, for people in the right places, to shatter what little plausible deniability Rove, Libby, Fleischer, and others have been clinging to.
That branch may already be broken, in fact. I don't think it's possible to exaggerate the amount of legal danger here for Rove in particular, and Fleischer and Libby as well. The special counsel is likely trying to solidify how, exactly, Rove learned the information in the memo, since it's looking increasingly implausible that reporters told him, and looking more probable that Rove and Novak "agreed" on a storyline after the fact (reports are now saying that Rove's and Novak's stories don't quite match, too, further raising the stakes.) Note, however, that it may not matter whether the grand jury can fully identify how he came by the information. Rove has now been identified as confirming the classified info to both Novak and Cooper; that in and of itself represents a likely crime under the Espionage Act.
::
While we've been treated before to a series of fairly pointless leaks transparently by Luskin, Rove's attorney, since then we've been treated to far more significant leaks coming from the special counsel's office, the grand jury, and/or fellow witnesses unfriendly to Rove. Regardless of whether the leaks are intentional or not, it likely moves up Fitzgerald's timetable for any possible indictments -- once the information is public, and the defendants know what you're working on, it rapidly closes down avenues for further investigation, and it's time to put the cards on the table.
And in the middle, the President of the United States is wading in hipboots through the worst of it. As more leaks come out, Bush continues to embrace those figures now known to have played pivotal roles in the outing of a CIA NOC agent, even as the investigation becomes more encompassing and the questions, more pointed. Towards what end was Press Secretary Ari Fleischer -- who had already announced his imminent retirement from the administration, and was hardly a member of the Bush intelligence circle -- given access to classified Wilson information seemingly intended specifically, on Air Force One, for Powell and Bush? How is it that so many administration figures could be simultaneously involved, and the campaign against Wilson be orchestrated according to such specific classified talking points? What did the president and vice president know of the involvement of their immediate staff in the outing -- and, critically, when did they learn it, and what did they do about it?
What poses perhaps the greatest threat of all for the Bush administration is that, as each news agency puts the story in the hands of some of the best investigative reporters, the various threads of the story are being woven into a compelling -- and disastrous -- storyline. A Bush administration crime, carried out by Watergate-era and Iran-Contra figures that this administration has embraced wholeheartedly, done in the service of shoring up "fixed" evidence used to justify a preemptive war. And news services are tying the Plame outing to the "fixed" nuclear intelligence cited by Bush in his pre-war declarations to the nation. Those links are, finally, being made, and it's beginning to make the Nixon White House look like a Norman Rockwell painting in comparison.
There is very little time left for the White House to come up with some path -- any path -- by which to distance themselves from the wider allegations against not just Rove, but against the president and vice president themselves. Instead, they are stonewalling reporters asking them to clarify their involvement. In fact, both Bush and Press Secretary Scott McClellan haven't even backed off their previous public statements that Rove, by name, wasn't involved -- they've just refused to discuss it.
That's not going to cut it. The President needs to answer for his subordinates, who at this point are looking like they have given up any credible pretenses of innocence, and are now simply shopping for the weakest possible charges against them.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Bush true to his campaign promise to appoint a conservative to the Supreme Court
Another Activist Judge
The Nation
John NicholsWed Jul 20, 1:05 AM ET
The Nation -- In 1999, when he was trying to appeal to the conservative base that would eventually deliver the Republican presidential nomination to him, Candidate George W. Bush said the Supreme Court justices he most admired were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The clear intimation was that, given the opportunity, Bush would nominate someone like Scalia and Thomas -- a conservative judicial activist bent on upsetting established law -- to the high court.
More recently, as he has finally been faced with the task of naming a nominee to the court, President George W. Bush has attempted to sound more moderate and thoughtful, suggesting that "a nominee to that court must be a person of superb credentials and the highest integrity, a person who will faithfully apply the Constitution and keep our founding promise of equal justice under law." President Bush has said that he prefers nominees who display "respect for the rule of law and for the liberties guaranteed to every citizen" and who "will strictly apply the Constitution and laws, not legislate from the bench."
So which George W. Bush named federal appeals judge John G. Roberts Jr. to fill the opening on the Supreme Court created by the decision of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to retire? Is Roberts the Scalia/Thomas clone that Candidate Bush promised or is he the mainstreamer President Bush suggested he was looking for?
Chalk Roberts up as Candidate Bush's pick.
For more than a decade, Scalia and Thomas have campaigned without success to reverse the Court's 1973 Roe-v-Wade decision, which removed barriers to a woman's right to choose. This is the hottest of the hot-botton issues facing the court. And, on it, all indications are that Roberts will be the clone Scalia and Thomas need to complete their machinations.
When he served as Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States from 1989 to 1993 -- under Solicitor General Ken Starr -- Roberts filed a 1990 brief with the Supreme Court that declared: "Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled."[T]he Court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion," argued Roberts, "finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."
Never mind that Supreme Court justices selected by presidents of both parties had consistently concluded otherwise, Roberts had a different opinion and he did not hestitate to advance it. As the deputy solicitor general, he argued for a "gag rule" that prevented physicians working with family planning programs that were recipients of federal funding from discussion abortion with their patients. He even went so far as to appear before the court to argue in support of Operation Rescue during the period when the group's members were aggressively, sometimes violently, blocking access to health-care clinics that provided abortions.
Roberts was so feverish in his attempts to find a way to overturn Roe that Supreme Court justices openly joked about his over-the-top antics. Once, during an oral argument before the high court, one of the justices asked the deputy solicitor general: "Mr. Roberts, in this case are you asking that Roe v. Wade be overruled?"
Roberts replied, "No, your honor, the issue doesn't even come up."
"Well," the justice responded, "that hasn't prevented the Solicitor General from taking that position in prior cases."
The NARAL Pro-Choice America brief on Roberts, which reviews his aggressively advocacy for anti-choice positions, is blunt. "If Roberts is confirmed to a lifetime appointment, there is little doubt that he will work to overturn Roe v. Wade."
On this point, NARAL Pro-Choice America is in full agreement with Roberts' old pals at Operation Rescue.
The militant anti-choice group was among the first to hail Bush's selection of Roberts to fill the seat being vacated by O'Connor, who was generally a supporter of reproductive rights. "We pray that Roberts will be swiftly confirmed," announced Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
Now, it is said that a president ought to have a great deal of latitude when it comes to making judicial nominations.
But all indications are that Roberts is not the nominee of President Bush, the man who condemns judges who would "legislate from the bench" and undermine "equal justice for all."
Rather, he is the political pick of Candidate Bush, who promised right-wing Republicans that he would give them another Scalia or Thomas. Indeed, Candidate Bush has found a nominee exteme enough to satisfy even Operation Rescue.
Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.
Copyright © 2005 The Nation
The Nation
John NicholsWed Jul 20, 1:05 AM ET
The Nation -- In 1999, when he was trying to appeal to the conservative base that would eventually deliver the Republican presidential nomination to him, Candidate George W. Bush said the Supreme Court justices he most admired were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The clear intimation was that, given the opportunity, Bush would nominate someone like Scalia and Thomas -- a conservative judicial activist bent on upsetting established law -- to the high court.
More recently, as he has finally been faced with the task of naming a nominee to the court, President George W. Bush has attempted to sound more moderate and thoughtful, suggesting that "a nominee to that court must be a person of superb credentials and the highest integrity, a person who will faithfully apply the Constitution and keep our founding promise of equal justice under law." President Bush has said that he prefers nominees who display "respect for the rule of law and for the liberties guaranteed to every citizen" and who "will strictly apply the Constitution and laws, not legislate from the bench."
So which George W. Bush named federal appeals judge John G. Roberts Jr. to fill the opening on the Supreme Court created by the decision of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to retire? Is Roberts the Scalia/Thomas clone that Candidate Bush promised or is he the mainstreamer President Bush suggested he was looking for?
Chalk Roberts up as Candidate Bush's pick.
For more than a decade, Scalia and Thomas have campaigned without success to reverse the Court's 1973 Roe-v-Wade decision, which removed barriers to a woman's right to choose. This is the hottest of the hot-botton issues facing the court. And, on it, all indications are that Roberts will be the clone Scalia and Thomas need to complete their machinations.
When he served as Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States from 1989 to 1993 -- under Solicitor General Ken Starr -- Roberts filed a 1990 brief with the Supreme Court that declared: "Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled."[T]he Court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion," argued Roberts, "finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."
Never mind that Supreme Court justices selected by presidents of both parties had consistently concluded otherwise, Roberts had a different opinion and he did not hestitate to advance it. As the deputy solicitor general, he argued for a "gag rule" that prevented physicians working with family planning programs that were recipients of federal funding from discussion abortion with their patients. He even went so far as to appear before the court to argue in support of Operation Rescue during the period when the group's members were aggressively, sometimes violently, blocking access to health-care clinics that provided abortions.
Roberts was so feverish in his attempts to find a way to overturn Roe that Supreme Court justices openly joked about his over-the-top antics. Once, during an oral argument before the high court, one of the justices asked the deputy solicitor general: "Mr. Roberts, in this case are you asking that Roe v. Wade be overruled?"
Roberts replied, "No, your honor, the issue doesn't even come up."
"Well," the justice responded, "that hasn't prevented the Solicitor General from taking that position in prior cases."
The NARAL Pro-Choice America brief on Roberts, which reviews his aggressively advocacy for anti-choice positions, is blunt. "If Roberts is confirmed to a lifetime appointment, there is little doubt that he will work to overturn Roe v. Wade."
On this point, NARAL Pro-Choice America is in full agreement with Roberts' old pals at Operation Rescue.
The militant anti-choice group was among the first to hail Bush's selection of Roberts to fill the seat being vacated by O'Connor, who was generally a supporter of reproductive rights. "We pray that Roberts will be swiftly confirmed," announced Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
Now, it is said that a president ought to have a great deal of latitude when it comes to making judicial nominations.
But all indications are that Roberts is not the nominee of President Bush, the man who condemns judges who would "legislate from the bench" and undermine "equal justice for all."
Rather, he is the political pick of Candidate Bush, who promised right-wing Republicans that he would give them another Scalia or Thomas. Indeed, Candidate Bush has found a nominee exteme enough to satisfy even Operation Rescue.
Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.
Copyright © 2005 The Nation
Monday, July 18, 2005
hmmm, Exxon, may need to be on the do not support list
Gene Karpinski: ExxposeExxon.com: Staging an Intervention
Gene KarpinskiMon Jul 18, 2:40 PM ET
The Huffington Post
One would expect ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, to be preoccupied with oil. Unlike some of its competitors, however, ExxonMobil seems to be an oil addict—working to drill to the last drop—and an oil pusher, eager to keep America hooked as well.
It’s easy to understand the high ExxonMobil gets from drilling for oil. ExxonMobil earned a record high $25.3 billion in net income in 2004. During the first quarter of 2005, ExxonMobil posted another record quarter with $7.86 billion in net income. But maintaining this high comes at a price.
Any mental health professional will tell you that addiction is almost always accompanied by “denial.” If someone tries to discuss the addict’s problem, he or she often simply refuses to talk about it or dismisses it and its consequences as not a real problem. In ExxonMobil’s case, the company is one of the only oil companies still denying that the burning of its products is having an effect on the climate—despite broad international scientific consensus to the contrary. CEO Lee Raymond stated recently that the company’s view is “it’s yet to be shown how much of [global warming] is really related to the activities of man.”
An addict develops a support system of family and friends who enable him or her to continue in denial, allowing the addiction to progress, the symptoms to intensify and the consequences to become worse for all concerned. For its part, ExxonMobil has spent millions developing that support system by funding organizations that either question mainstream scientific findings on global warming or have affiliated with a small group of climate “naysayers” who continue to do so. Moreover, ExxonMobil has worked intimately with the Bush administration to craft its global warming policies from the beginning—although it is difficult to judge who is enabling whom in this case.
At the same time, ExxonMobil has been acting as a pusher, working to keep oil as America’s drug of choice. In fact, the company’s president, Rex Tillerson, has said we “need to accept the reality” of America’s dependence on oil “rather than undertake expensive and risky steps trying to avoid it.” Tillerson’s solution is just to feed America’s oil addiction by drilling for oil in new locations, including places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, rather than dramatically reducing our oil consumption by making cars and SUVs go farther on a gallon of gasoline.
ExxonMobil has the power to wreak significant damage on the world’s environment, but the company also has the power to direct the oil industry and American decision-makers toward a new energy future. That’s why 12 environmental and public interest groups joined together to form the Exxpose Exxon campaign (www.ExxposeExxon.com) to pressure the company to shed its past as an irresponsible oil company and move forward as a responsible energy company—one committed to more than drilling to the last drop.
Call it an intervention.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com. All rights reserved.
Gene KarpinskiMon Jul 18, 2:40 PM ET
The Huffington Post
One would expect ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, to be preoccupied with oil. Unlike some of its competitors, however, ExxonMobil seems to be an oil addict—working to drill to the last drop—and an oil pusher, eager to keep America hooked as well.
It’s easy to understand the high ExxonMobil gets from drilling for oil. ExxonMobil earned a record high $25.3 billion in net income in 2004. During the first quarter of 2005, ExxonMobil posted another record quarter with $7.86 billion in net income. But maintaining this high comes at a price.
Any mental health professional will tell you that addiction is almost always accompanied by “denial.” If someone tries to discuss the addict’s problem, he or she often simply refuses to talk about it or dismisses it and its consequences as not a real problem. In ExxonMobil’s case, the company is one of the only oil companies still denying that the burning of its products is having an effect on the climate—despite broad international scientific consensus to the contrary. CEO Lee Raymond stated recently that the company’s view is “it’s yet to be shown how much of [global warming] is really related to the activities of man.”
An addict develops a support system of family and friends who enable him or her to continue in denial, allowing the addiction to progress, the symptoms to intensify and the consequences to become worse for all concerned. For its part, ExxonMobil has spent millions developing that support system by funding organizations that either question mainstream scientific findings on global warming or have affiliated with a small group of climate “naysayers” who continue to do so. Moreover, ExxonMobil has worked intimately with the Bush administration to craft its global warming policies from the beginning—although it is difficult to judge who is enabling whom in this case.
At the same time, ExxonMobil has been acting as a pusher, working to keep oil as America’s drug of choice. In fact, the company’s president, Rex Tillerson, has said we “need to accept the reality” of America’s dependence on oil “rather than undertake expensive and risky steps trying to avoid it.” Tillerson’s solution is just to feed America’s oil addiction by drilling for oil in new locations, including places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, rather than dramatically reducing our oil consumption by making cars and SUVs go farther on a gallon of gasoline.
ExxonMobil has the power to wreak significant damage on the world’s environment, but the company also has the power to direct the oil industry and American decision-makers toward a new energy future. That’s why 12 environmental and public interest groups joined together to form the Exxpose Exxon campaign (www.ExxposeExxon.com) to pressure the company to shed its past as an irresponsible oil company and move forward as a responsible energy company—one committed to more than drilling to the last drop.
Call it an intervention.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com. All rights reserved.
This I like, the Republican Dictionary
Debunking the Spin About Framing
Katrina vanden HeuvelMon Jul 18,11:52 AM ET
The Nation --
"Whenever the other side has you talking their language, they've got you. That, to me, is what it's about in a nutshell and it's almost that simple." George Carlin in an interview with Tim Russert, when asked why he thought the Democratic Party and John Kerry failed to connect with the voters. (November 23, 2004)
*******
Matt Bai had a cover story in Sunday's New York Times magazine. ("The Framing Wars," July 17, 2005) It's spin about spin. On one level, it's an article about how Democrats now understand the value of "framing"--that language and narrative matter in politics.
It's also a tale about what Dems are doing to contest the well-funded Republican spin machine which has twisted America's political language for decades to deceive the public for its own base purposes. (Over the past few decades, the radical right has engaged in a well-funded program of Orwellian doublespeak, transforming American political discourse to suit its political ends. Think "death tax" or "tax relief" or "personal accounts" or "partial birth abortion.").
On another level, Bai's essay is also a profile of "the father of framing"--George Lakoff. (Others who've toiled long in the "framing" fields sent out e-mails on Sunday, ticked off that Bai made Lakoff out to be the guru of the field, ignoring the serious work of other "framers.")
Bai's piece will be familiar to progressives who've been arguing for years that individual issues must be tied together by some larger (preferably moral) frame that articulates a vision and speaks to the kind of country we want to live in. But Bai does raise some legitimate questions: Is the Dems' problem bigger than a battle of language? Maybe the focus needs to be on the battle of ideas?
My problem is with the article's snarky reductionism; in the end, Bai suggests, the Dem's framing is really all about spin, or weird and wonky linguistic theories. But what about the fact that there is a a real science involved in framing? And isn't there a very real connection between language and ideas. Why not make the point that many Republican ideas are slogans without substance or, as Mark Schmitt points out on Josh Marshall's new site, TPMCafe, "substance that contradicts the slogans, while liberal ideas are more likely to be serious, substantive, meaningful, but lack a slogan." And as Jonathan Chait argues in his New Republic cover story of last week, not only do progressives have plenty of ideas but what the right calls "ideas" is really something very different.
I believe we need a campaign to debunk the Right's language--with conviction and, most important, humor. A few months ago, sick and tired of the Right's verbal gymnastics (spin and deceptions), I set out to do another kind of "framing.": I asked Nation.com readers to suggest satirical definitions of Republican slogans. Believing lies melt away in the face of mockery, I wanted to skewer the GOP with the fine tipped sword of satire. And I wanted to find a way to combine Lakoff with, well, one of the most effective political communicators in America today--Jon Stewart.
The result was a grassroots groundswell of hilarious and illuminating submissions from Americans who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. I've collected the sharpest, funniest, most hard-hitting in The Dictionary of Republicanisms--coming to your local bookstore in late October. (We'll also be featuring selections of the book at TheNation.com.)
Some examples:
Clarify, v. To repeat the same lie over and over again.
Compassionate Conservatism, n. Though shalt not exploit thy neighbor for thyself.
Faith, n. The stubborn belief that God approves of Republican moral values despite the preponderance of textual evidence to the contrary.
Fiscal Conservative, n. A vanishing subspecies of the Republican party
Fox News, n. We distort, you comply.
God, n. The Republican-in-Chief.
Moral Values, n. Do as we say, not as we do.
No Child Left Behind, riff. There are always jobs in the military.
Pro-life, adj. Valuing human life up until birth.
Simplify, v. To cut the taxes of Republican donors.
Voter fraud, n. A significant minority turnout.
Thousands of definitions were entered from all over the country, 44 states in all, along with Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. As would be expected, entries from blue states predominated, especially New York, Massachusetts, and California. But there were some surprises. The state with the most submissions? Texas.
Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.
Copyright © 2005 The Nation
Katrina vanden HeuvelMon Jul 18,11:52 AM ET
The Nation --
"Whenever the other side has you talking their language, they've got you. That, to me, is what it's about in a nutshell and it's almost that simple." George Carlin in an interview with Tim Russert, when asked why he thought the Democratic Party and John Kerry failed to connect with the voters. (November 23, 2004)
*******
Matt Bai had a cover story in Sunday's New York Times magazine. ("The Framing Wars," July 17, 2005) It's spin about spin. On one level, it's an article about how Democrats now understand the value of "framing"--that language and narrative matter in politics.
It's also a tale about what Dems are doing to contest the well-funded Republican spin machine which has twisted America's political language for decades to deceive the public for its own base purposes. (Over the past few decades, the radical right has engaged in a well-funded program of Orwellian doublespeak, transforming American political discourse to suit its political ends. Think "death tax" or "tax relief" or "personal accounts" or "partial birth abortion.").
On another level, Bai's essay is also a profile of "the father of framing"--George Lakoff. (Others who've toiled long in the "framing" fields sent out e-mails on Sunday, ticked off that Bai made Lakoff out to be the guru of the field, ignoring the serious work of other "framers.")
Bai's piece will be familiar to progressives who've been arguing for years that individual issues must be tied together by some larger (preferably moral) frame that articulates a vision and speaks to the kind of country we want to live in. But Bai does raise some legitimate questions: Is the Dems' problem bigger than a battle of language? Maybe the focus needs to be on the battle of ideas?
My problem is with the article's snarky reductionism; in the end, Bai suggests, the Dem's framing is really all about spin, or weird and wonky linguistic theories. But what about the fact that there is a a real science involved in framing? And isn't there a very real connection between language and ideas. Why not make the point that many Republican ideas are slogans without substance or, as Mark Schmitt points out on Josh Marshall's new site, TPMCafe, "substance that contradicts the slogans, while liberal ideas are more likely to be serious, substantive, meaningful, but lack a slogan." And as Jonathan Chait argues in his New Republic cover story of last week, not only do progressives have plenty of ideas but what the right calls "ideas" is really something very different.
I believe we need a campaign to debunk the Right's language--with conviction and, most important, humor. A few months ago, sick and tired of the Right's verbal gymnastics (spin and deceptions), I set out to do another kind of "framing.": I asked Nation.com readers to suggest satirical definitions of Republican slogans. Believing lies melt away in the face of mockery, I wanted to skewer the GOP with the fine tipped sword of satire. And I wanted to find a way to combine Lakoff with, well, one of the most effective political communicators in America today--Jon Stewart.
The result was a grassroots groundswell of hilarious and illuminating submissions from Americans who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. I've collected the sharpest, funniest, most hard-hitting in The Dictionary of Republicanisms--coming to your local bookstore in late October. (We'll also be featuring selections of the book at TheNation.com.)
Some examples:
Clarify, v. To repeat the same lie over and over again.
Compassionate Conservatism, n. Though shalt not exploit thy neighbor for thyself.
Faith, n. The stubborn belief that God approves of Republican moral values despite the preponderance of textual evidence to the contrary.
Fiscal Conservative, n. A vanishing subspecies of the Republican party
Fox News, n. We distort, you comply.
God, n. The Republican-in-Chief.
Moral Values, n. Do as we say, not as we do.
No Child Left Behind, riff. There are always jobs in the military.
Pro-life, adj. Valuing human life up until birth.
Simplify, v. To cut the taxes of Republican donors.
Voter fraud, n. A significant minority turnout.
Thousands of definitions were entered from all over the country, 44 states in all, along with Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. As would be expected, entries from blue states predominated, especially New York, Massachusetts, and California. But there were some surprises. The state with the most submissions? Texas.
Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.
Copyright © 2005 The Nation
Monday, July 11, 2005
Rove in hot seat over Plame disclosure, finally!
Matt Cooper's Source
What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.
Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute "personal consent" from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court. Another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, refused to identify her source and chose to go to jail instead.
For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.
The controversy arose when Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying that he had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson said he had found no evidence to support the claim. Wilson's column was an early attack on the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify going to war in Iraq. The White House wished to discredit Wilson and his attacks. The question for the prosecutor is whether someone in the administration, in an effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, intentionally revealed the covert identity of his wife.
In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "
Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.
A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa.
Fitzgerald is known as a tenacious, thorough prosecutor. He refused to comment, and it is not clear whether he is pursuing evidence that will result in indictments, or just tying up loose ends in a messy case. But the Cooper e-mail offers one new clue to the mystery of what Fitzgerald is probing—and provides a glimpse of what was unfolding at the highest levels as the administration defended a part of its case for going to war in Iraq.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.
Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute "personal consent" from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court. Another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, refused to identify her source and chose to go to jail instead.
For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.
The controversy arose when Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying that he had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson said he had found no evidence to support the claim. Wilson's column was an early attack on the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify going to war in Iraq. The White House wished to discredit Wilson and his attacks. The question for the prosecutor is whether someone in the administration, in an effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, intentionally revealed the covert identity of his wife.
In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "
Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.
A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa.
Fitzgerald is known as a tenacious, thorough prosecutor. He refused to comment, and it is not clear whether he is pursuing evidence that will result in indictments, or just tying up loose ends in a messy case. But the Cooper e-mail offers one new clue to the mystery of what Fitzgerald is probing—and provides a glimpse of what was unfolding at the highest levels as the administration defended a part of its case for going to war in Iraq.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
Sunday, July 10, 2005
David Corn weighs in on the Rove/Plame disclosure
David Corn: Explosive New Rove Revelation Coming Soon? UPDATE: It's Here
David CornSun Jul 10, 1:28 PM ET
The Huffington Post
UPDATE: The Newsweek story I described below is out. Reporter Michael Isikoff has obtained a copy of an email that Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper sent his bureau chief, Michael Duffy, on July 11, 2003--three days before conservative columnist Bob Novak first published the leak that outed CIA officer Valerie Wilson/Plame. In that email, Cooper wrote that he had spoken to Rove on "double super secret background" and that Rove had told him that Joseph Wilson's "wife...apparently works at the agency on wmd issues." "Agency" means CIA. Read the full Newsweek piece here, and read the item below for why it is so important.
Time to get ready for the Karl Rove frog-march?
I don't usually blog on Saturday evenings. But I've received information too good not to share immediately. It was only yesterday that I was bemoaning the probability that -- after a week of apparent Rove-related revelations--it might be a while before any more news emerged about the Plame/CIA leak. Yet tonight I received this as-solid-as-it-gets tip: on Sunday Newsweek is posting a story that nails Rove. The newsmagazine has obtained documentary evidence that Rove was indeed a key source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper and that Rove--prior to the publication of the Bob Novak column that first publicly disclosed Valerie Wilson/Plame as a CIA official -- told Cooper that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife apparently worked at the CIA and was involved in Joseph Wilson's now-controversial trip to Niger.
To be clear, this new evidence does not necessarily mean slammer-time for Rove. Under the relevant law, it's only a crime for a government official to identify a covert intelligence official if the government official knows the intelligence officer is under cover, and this documentary evidence, I'm told, does not address this particular point. But this new evidence does show that Rove -- despite his lawyers claim that Rove "did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA" -- did reveal to Cooper in a deep-background conversation that Wilson's wife was in the CIA. No wonder special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pursued Cooper so fiercely. And Fitzgerald must have been delighted when Time magazine -- over Cooper's objection--surrendered Cooper's emails and notes, which, according to a previous Newsweek posting by Michael Isikoff, named Rove as Cooper's source. In court on Wednesday, Fitzgerald said that following his receipt of Cooper's emails and notes "it is clear to us we need [Cooper's] testimony perhaps more so than in the past." This was a clue that Fitzgerald had scored big when he obtained the Cooper material.
This new evidence could place Rove in serious political, if not legal, jeopardy (or, at least it should). If what I am told is true, this is proof that the Bush White House was using any information it could gather on Joseph Wilson -- even classified information related to national security -- to pursue a vendetta against Wilson, a White House critic. Even if it turns out Rove did not break the law regarding the naming of intelligence officials, this new disclosure could prove Rove guilty of leaking a national security secret to a reporter for political ends. What would George W. Bush do about that?
On September 27, 2003 -- after the news broke that the Justice Department, responding to a request from the CIA, was investigating the Plame/CIA leak -- White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of the Plame/CIA leak, "That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing." He also declared that the allegation that Rove was involved in this leak was "a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true." Days later, Bush issued a straightforward statement about the Plame/CIA leak:
There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there's leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.
Perhaps Bush won't have to "take care of" Rove if this new evidence does not lead to a prosecutable violation of the law. But Bush also called on any government official with knowledge of the leak to "come forward and speak out." Has Rove done so? No. So it seems he violated a presidential command. Would Bush be obliged to fire him for insubordination? And there's another key point to consider: whether Rove told the truth when he testified to Fitzgerald's grand jury. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, has acknowledged that Rove appeared before the grand jury, and Luskin has said that Rove did speak to Cooper prior to the publication of the Novak column. But what did Rove tell Fitzgerald and the grand jury about this conversation with Cooper? And -- here's the big question -- does Rove's account jibe with the new documentary evidence that Newsweek is scheduled to disclose? If it does not, Fitzgerald would have a good start on a perjury charge against Rove.
At a public meeting in the summer of 2003, Joseph Wilson, responding to a question about the leak, quipped that it would be interesting "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." He then had to pull back from that comment and concede he had no evidence to support his hunch that Rove was one of the leakers. (By the way, Novak cited two unnamed Bush administration officials when he published the Plame/CIA leak.) With Newsweek's latest article, we may be getting closer to frog-marching time.
******
By the way, for other recent pieces I've written on the Plame/CIA leak case, please check out my own blog at www.davidcorn.com.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com.
David CornSun Jul 10, 1:28 PM ET
The Huffington Post
UPDATE: The Newsweek story I described below is out. Reporter Michael Isikoff has obtained a copy of an email that Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper sent his bureau chief, Michael Duffy, on July 11, 2003--three days before conservative columnist Bob Novak first published the leak that outed CIA officer Valerie Wilson/Plame. In that email, Cooper wrote that he had spoken to Rove on "double super secret background" and that Rove had told him that Joseph Wilson's "wife...apparently works at the agency on wmd issues." "Agency" means CIA. Read the full Newsweek piece here, and read the item below for why it is so important.
Time to get ready for the Karl Rove frog-march?
I don't usually blog on Saturday evenings. But I've received information too good not to share immediately. It was only yesterday that I was bemoaning the probability that -- after a week of apparent Rove-related revelations--it might be a while before any more news emerged about the Plame/CIA leak. Yet tonight I received this as-solid-as-it-gets tip: on Sunday Newsweek is posting a story that nails Rove. The newsmagazine has obtained documentary evidence that Rove was indeed a key source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper and that Rove--prior to the publication of the Bob Novak column that first publicly disclosed Valerie Wilson/Plame as a CIA official -- told Cooper that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife apparently worked at the CIA and was involved in Joseph Wilson's now-controversial trip to Niger.
To be clear, this new evidence does not necessarily mean slammer-time for Rove. Under the relevant law, it's only a crime for a government official to identify a covert intelligence official if the government official knows the intelligence officer is under cover, and this documentary evidence, I'm told, does not address this particular point. But this new evidence does show that Rove -- despite his lawyers claim that Rove "did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA" -- did reveal to Cooper in a deep-background conversation that Wilson's wife was in the CIA. No wonder special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pursued Cooper so fiercely. And Fitzgerald must have been delighted when Time magazine -- over Cooper's objection--surrendered Cooper's emails and notes, which, according to a previous Newsweek posting by Michael Isikoff, named Rove as Cooper's source. In court on Wednesday, Fitzgerald said that following his receipt of Cooper's emails and notes "it is clear to us we need [Cooper's] testimony perhaps more so than in the past." This was a clue that Fitzgerald had scored big when he obtained the Cooper material.
This new evidence could place Rove in serious political, if not legal, jeopardy (or, at least it should). If what I am told is true, this is proof that the Bush White House was using any information it could gather on Joseph Wilson -- even classified information related to national security -- to pursue a vendetta against Wilson, a White House critic. Even if it turns out Rove did not break the law regarding the naming of intelligence officials, this new disclosure could prove Rove guilty of leaking a national security secret to a reporter for political ends. What would George W. Bush do about that?
On September 27, 2003 -- after the news broke that the Justice Department, responding to a request from the CIA, was investigating the Plame/CIA leak -- White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of the Plame/CIA leak, "That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing." He also declared that the allegation that Rove was involved in this leak was "a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true." Days later, Bush issued a straightforward statement about the Plame/CIA leak:
There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there's leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.
Perhaps Bush won't have to "take care of" Rove if this new evidence does not lead to a prosecutable violation of the law. But Bush also called on any government official with knowledge of the leak to "come forward and speak out." Has Rove done so? No. So it seems he violated a presidential command. Would Bush be obliged to fire him for insubordination? And there's another key point to consider: whether Rove told the truth when he testified to Fitzgerald's grand jury. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, has acknowledged that Rove appeared before the grand jury, and Luskin has said that Rove did speak to Cooper prior to the publication of the Novak column. But what did Rove tell Fitzgerald and the grand jury about this conversation with Cooper? And -- here's the big question -- does Rove's account jibe with the new documentary evidence that Newsweek is scheduled to disclose? If it does not, Fitzgerald would have a good start on a perjury charge against Rove.
At a public meeting in the summer of 2003, Joseph Wilson, responding to a question about the leak, quipped that it would be interesting "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." He then had to pull back from that comment and concede he had no evidence to support his hunch that Rove was one of the leakers. (By the way, Novak cited two unnamed Bush administration officials when he published the Plame/CIA leak.) With Newsweek's latest article, we may be getting closer to frog-marching time.
******
By the way, for other recent pieces I've written on the Plame/CIA leak case, please check out my own blog at www.davidcorn.com.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com.
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