Right Wing Nut House

Question: Who would have the clout in the Clinton Administration to squelch an intelligence report that the military wanted to pass on to the FBI?

That’s got to be a pretty short list. First, it would have to be someone with the required security clearance. And second, it would have to be some kind of gatekeeper, someone who would liaise between both the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice.

Such an individual would almost have to work for the White House. Several bloggers are pointing to Jamie Gorelick as a possible culprit but I don’t think she would have had the authority to act on her own in such a sensitive matter. Her name may be on a memo somewhere but an interesting question is would the Justice Department have had the authority to act unilaterally in a matter of national security like this? I think not which brings us back to the White House and the possible involvement of Sandy Berger in preventing this intel from reaching the FBI.

Using timelines developed by AJ at The Strata-Sphere and Dr. Sanity two things jump out at you.

The first is the time that Berger was in the National Archives stealing documents compared to when staff members for the 9/11 Commission were interviewing Congressman Weldon’s source for Able Danger. Berger is accused of stealing the documents “during two visits to the National Archives in September and October 2003.” The 9/11 staff people visited the Afghan-Pakistan border in October of 2003 to interview the Able Danger team member.

Coincidence? Or Connection?

It would depend on what Berger knew about the Committee’s plans. Would Berger have known that they were going to interview the Able Danger team member? If so, who would have tipped him off? It would have to have been a partisan who was privy to the comings and goings of the investigative staff, many of whom were current and former Justice Department attorneys.

Curiouser and curiouser, no?

Try this on for size. Commission member Jamie Gorelick worked in the same high-powered Democratic party law firm as 9/11 Commission Staff General Counsel Daniel Marcus. The firm includes such luminaries as Lloyd Cutler, known as “the ultimate Washington power broker” who passed away in May. Gorelick joined the firm in 1997 while Marcus left in 1998. If Berger was tipped off by someone with specific knowledge of both the Able Danger operation and Commission staff travel plans to interview one of the AD team members, it would make sense for this someone to have had access to documents so that all traces that the Clinton administration knew of the operation’s warning but didn’t tell the FBI could be removed.

That someone could have been Berger himself.

Perhaps its time to reopen one of the really nagging questions surrounding the formation of the 9/11 Commission itself; why was Jamie Gorelick the only member of the Commission from either the former or current administration who had an axe to grind? In a March 5, 1995 memo to the FBI Director Louis Freeh, Gorelick reminded the director of the “wall” between foreign intelligence gathered and the FBI investigation into the first World Trade Center attack:

In the memo, Ms. Gorelick ordered Mr. Freeh and Ms. White to follow information-sharing procedures that “go beyond what is legally required,” in order to avoid “any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance” that the Justice Department was using Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, instead of ordinary criminal investigative procedures, in an effort to undermine the civil liberties of terrorism suspects.

Could one of the reasons Gorelick was placed on the Commission be that she would have been perfectly positioned to give a heads up to some of her friends in the Clinton Administration when troubling questions were coming up? Remember the context here. This was an election year. It was one of the major Democratic themes that 9/11 happened because the Bush Administration ignored warnings given by their predecessors. It would certainly be inconvenient if it came out that the Clinton White House had known of Mohammed Atta almost a year before the attacks.

The other curious thing that jumps out at you when looking at the timeline was that the second meeting with the Able Danger team member took place on July 12, 2004. Berger resigned from the Kerry campaign on July 21 after the document story came out. The Commission released its Final Report the very next day. Can’t say for sure if it means anything. After all, the FBI had been investigating Berger since February. It’s just curious that the information about the investigation would have come out when it did. It was remarked at the time that a probable culprit for leaking the Berger investigation was the Bush Administration trying to distract attention from the release of the 9/11 Commission report due the next day. That makes sense. But how about a little different take.

However, let me ask this — when would people prefer to have the information that the 9/11 Commission was denied access to highly classified material relating to the Clinton Administration’s response to terrorism — after the report came out, or before? For that matter, when would the commission itself prefer to find this out? I’d say it’s better to have this information in the public eye now, especially since the commission made such a show about public testimony, including that of Sandy Berger. If they publish a report based on incomplete evidence, I want to have that information in hand before assessing its credibility.

In this scenario, the Commission itself (who had been informed of the Berger matter) leaked news of the investigation to bolster its credibility. Possible, but let’s try a “wag the dog” scenario.

Suppose you had a PR problem with a former Clinton national security official who was being mentioned as the probable next Secretary of State in a Kerry Administration. You know that once the investigation comes to light that this officials dream of heading up the State Department is finished. But in order to minimize PR damage, you leak news of the investigation into this official’s conduct the day before some other news is absolutely going to swamp it; say, the release of a much anticipated bi-partisan report on the 9/11 attacks?

Just thinking out loud…

The Kossaks are declaring victory.

Jerome Armstrong wants Hackett to run for statewide office.

Chris Bowers calls Hackett’s loss “tidal.”

The moonbats at the Democratic Underground want (yes…you guessed it) A RECOUNT!

And I need an aspirin. Reading lefty blogs usually leaves me with indigestion. This morning, they’ve imparted so much spin to this insignificant race in Ohio that I’ve got a pounding headache. In fact, I haven’t seen this much spinning since the last time I got drunk back in ‘95 and nearly threw up at a hoity-toity New Years Eve party.

The combination of rich moonbats (it was a charity event at a country club in very Democratic Madison, Wisconsin) and unwashed, college age, post modern feminists who defined incongruity by trying to be elegant in their formal dresses despite the fact that armpit shaving was unknown to them, caused the 7 glasses of champagne I imbibed to rumble uncomfortably in my gut. I was saved from embarrassment by a kindly old widow who, seeing my discomfort, led me outdoors to the 18th green where I gratefully gulped the fresh, clean, Wisconsin night air. The bemused widow must have been the only other conservative in attendance and saw the look on my face when the MC introduced the dinner speaker as “a tireless fighter of the fascists who control our country.”

I get the same kind of nausea reading the desperate wishful thinking emanating from liberal websites who are crowing this morning that BushitlerMcChimpyHaliburton is finally…finally on the run:

” A New Wind is Blowing”

No spin - the GOP is on the run.

Tidal

Tonight’s results exceeded my wildest expectations. Don’t get me wrong - I would have been overjoyed had Hackett won. But I am still thrilled, and his tremendous showing in an incredibly red district should buoy the hopes of Democrats everywhere. Tomorrow, we can begin the important task of dissecting the Hackett campaign’s operations in fine detail, to figure out what contributed most to its success - to see what results this extraordinary lab experiment yielded.

OH-02: What a Ride

So the state GOP avoids a “devastating blow”, but only by the hair on their chinny chin chin. OH-02 saw the resurgance of the Democratic Party, the GOP had to spend $500K they hadn’t otherwise planned on spending, and a Democratic star is born (next stop for Hackett — statewide elected office). So much for “burying” Hackett…

Bleeechhh!

Perhaps the “Reality Based Community” should sip something whose effects would be a little less psychedelic and face some cold, hard facts.

First, the reason why the lefties had to start a blogswarm and the rationale for the admittedly excellent job done by liberal websites in raising money for their candidate was because the National Democratic Party couldn’t life a finger to help him. This from July 7, less than a month ago:

Meanwhile, Hackett’s campaign staff was at its office in Batavia, meeting with representatives of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, seeking help in what they know is an uphill campaign.

David Woodruff, a spokesman for the Hackett campaign, said Wednesday that Democratic officials said they would help the Hackett campaign recruit volunteers, but made no commitment to having paid staff in the 2nd District or helping raise money.

“We didn’t ask them to give us $3 million,” said Woodruff. “We talked about how we can win without spending $3 million.

“They said they’d do everything they can to get us volunteer help. I don’t know what other help they are going to be able to give.”

The Democratic committee, through spokeswoman Sarah Steinberg, won’t even confirm that its representatives met with the Hackett campaign

In the only congressional race taking place this summer, the National Democratic Party, thanks to the idiocy of one Howard Dean and his complete ineptness at raising money, was reduced to offering to help recruit volunteers.

If the liberals consider this a victory…BRING IT ON!

Meanwhile, the Republicans barely broke a sweat in defeating Hackett. Despite a relatively unattractive candidate and a scandal in Ohio that is tarring Republicans with the malfeasance of an unpopular governor, the Republicans still won. If not a comfortable victory, a victory nonetheless.

A look at the numbers tells an even more significant story. Hackett received 54,500 votes while his opponent Jean Schmidt received about 59,000. The liberals are crowing at the “huge” turnout. That turnout represents about 20% of the electorate which isn’t even considered “average” for a special election of this nature. In other words, despite massive coverage by the MSM and lefty blogs, Hackett got a little more than 50% of the total vote achieved by retiring Congressman Portman’s opponent last November. In that race, more than 310,000 votes were cast with the Democrat receiving about 90,000 votes.

Clearly, the Democrats did a very good job at getting their people to the polls. The massive amount of money raised by liberal blogs in the last fortnight went to a typically well organized “Get out the Vote” campaign. In the end, the Democrats succeeded in getting twice the number of their people to the polls than Republicans did. Schmidt’s total vote was about 25% of Portman’s vote compared to last November’s results. Thus, the same percentage of Republicans voted for Schmidt as voted for Portman when comparing turnout with 2004. The Democrats simply did a better job of getting their people to the polls.

The closeness of the race will allow the liberals to delude themselves for a while. They’ll try to dissect Hackett’s campaign and attempt to glean whatever “secrets for success” they may think they find in it. This will be a worthless exercise because the reasons for Hackett’s close loss had much to do with the fact that the election did indeed take place in a vacuum. All the political hot air in the country was sucked into Ohio’s 2nd Congressional district for this special election. The blogswarm, the fundraising, the mutually reinforcing pats on the back during the entire process, all taking place under the glare of the MSM, eventually came to naught. In the end, the Republican emerged triumphant.

And let’s not forget the loons at the Democratic Underground. Like the drunk relative you hide in the broom closet at family gatherings, someone in the Democratic Party is going to have to stand up and say “either quit drinking the kool-ade or leave:”

I write this as it appears increasingly certain that this race will qualify for a free recount under Ohio law (0.5% margin). Even if it doesn’t the national party of the losing candidate (probably Hackett) should pay for one. Turns out I was wrong here. Margin was 52 to 48 but I still would investigate a recount.

Someone in the national Democratic Party better give these moonbats a civics lesson. When the votes are counted and your candidate loses it’s considered bad form to demand a recount regardless of what the margin your candidate loses by. It’s just not funny anymore. It’s psychotic. And if the Democrats don’t think that this kind of stupidity isn’t hurting them as a party then they’re sticking their heads in the sand. The American people don’t like sore losers. And that’s what the base of the Democratic party is being perceived as.

I haven’t seen any headlines yet or reaction from conservatives. I’ll be updating this post throughout the day.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has her usual excellent round-up of early postings on the election. Check back with her during the day as I’m sure she’ll be updating.

The Captian makes a similar point that I made:

In the end, it doesn’t matter much, because in 2006 this district simply won’t get the national attention it drew here. The Democrats will not have the resources to dedicate to this one single seat that they did in an off year special election. Without the overwhelming focus on this rock-solid conservative seat, it will revert to a fairly easy GOP race next year — especially if the Democrats foul the atmosphere with a slew of pointless lawsuits.

Polipundit has this:

Polipundit pointed out that “this is a one-time result because of freak circumstances” including that “Paul Hackett ran commercials in which President Bush seemed to endorse him.” It will be interesting to watch the media coverage of the election result and to see if ANYONE in the MSM presents the fact that Hackett ran one of the most misleading ads that I have ever seen, which did appear to show him aligning himself with the President and in support of the effort in Iraq.

I predict this is the way the Dems will run next year. Flag waving patriotism in TV ads extolling the bravery and unselfishness of our troops while trashing the war and the President on the stump. Should be fascinating to watch…

In a recent essay in the New York Times Book Review Alan Ehrenhalt, executive editor of Governing magazine and author of ”The United States of Ambition’,’ asked Why do people hate Bill Clinton?

Millions of Americans despise Bill Clinton. They have done so since he became a presence in national politics in the early 1990’s, and they continue to do so today, more than four years after his retirement from public office.

The passion of the Clinton haters is a phenomenon without equal in recent American politics. It is not based on any specific policies that Clinton promoted or implemented during his years in office. It is almost entirely personal. In its persistence and intensity, it goes far beyond anything that comparable numbers of people have felt about Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan or either of the presidents Bush. It surpasses even the liberals’ longstanding detestation of Richard Nixon. The only political obsession comparable to it in the past century is the hatred that a significant minority of Americans felt for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In this respect the phenomenon is all the more puzzling. Roosevelt made enormous and sometimes reckless changes in the American government and economy, and when his critics loathed him for it, he loathed them back. ”They are unanimous in their hate for me” he said of them in his 1936 re-election campaign, ”and I welcome their hatred.” Clinton, on the other hand, was a centrist who undertook no dramatic transformations of society or government and, what was more, showed himself to be an instinctive conciliator who believed in compromise almost to a fault.

Mr. Erhrenhalt needs to get a clue.

Anyone who thinks that Bill Clinton is hated more by the right than George Bush 43 is hated by the left has either been asleep since 2001 or is such a Bush hater himself that he’s lost all perspective in gauging the depth of feeling generated by the left against the President.

I don’t recall too many right wingers comparing Clinton to Hitler, or openly calling for his assassination, or accusing him falsely of being behind a plot to rig voting machines to steal an election, or any of a number of stupid, ignorant, hateful themes that have vomited forth from leftists for the last five years.

And Mr. Ehrenhalt calling Mr. Clinton a “centrist” is like me calling a my pet cat Snowball a rhinoceros - it sounds good but it simply isn’t so.

Be that as it may, Richard Jensen who runs Conservative net, a forum for conservative and libertarian scholars, asked a few of his contributors to respond to Mr. Ehrenhalt’s ludicrous description of Clinton as well as answering his question.

David Horowitz (Editor of Frontpage Magazine)

This is an interesting review, but I strongly demur from the view that Clinton hatred exceeds Bush hatred by any measure. Conservatives are more disgusted by Clinton; but they are not so blinded by their negative feelings that they don’t appreciate Clinton’s achievements, the centrism of his policy (when he wasn’t surrendering his better judgment to interest groups), his brilliance as a politician. By contrast so-called liberals and leftists have a hatred of Bush that is so intense it reduces their view of him to absurdities — he’s a moron, a liar and evil. None of these are remotely related to any truth of the man or his presidency and the passion of belief in them is so strong that obscures any appreciation for his achievements in the war on terror and foreign policy generally which far surpass anything Clinton was able to do.

Mr. Horwitz obviously never traversed the fever swamps of the right because Clinton indeed is thought of by many as a liar and evil. And my own belief is that Clinton’s “brilliance” as a politician is due to the total lack of anyone with charisma who opposed him on the right. Once Bush41 was out of the way, the Republicans had no one of any stature to oppose him. Newt Gingrich was too cerebral. Bob Dole was….well, a highly decorated war hero but a tired old warhorse by ‘96. In short, even a dim bulb casts some light compared to no bulb at all.

Larry Schweikart (Professor of History, Dayton University)

As one who despised Clinton for what he did to the office of the presidency—in my view, every bit as dangerous and abusive as Nixon—it was always clear that Clinton would, in the end, do what the public wanted. (That was not so clear about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named). I didn’t “hate” Clinton so much as pitied him—the product of an alcohol-abusive family that learned how to please everyone, that wanted everyone to like him, thus one who developed no core beliefs of his own (exactly what Stephanopolous, I think, said).

The notion of “getting” Clinton was less an opposition to his policies, which, as David points out, were at times “conservative” (balanced budgets, NAFTA), but more a dogmatic demand that the law be followed because not to follow it would invite further, more egregious violations from Clinton and his wife. Thankfully, the impeachment neutered him, killed Al Gore’s chances, and destroyed his “legacy.” Bush hatred, though, as I have said here on numerous occasions, is essentially religious in nature. Most of all, the Bush-haters fear Bush’s certainty of purpose which is given him by God. “No one can be that sure of himself,” they mourn. Well, yes, one can.

Even before Monica, there was a sense that the Oval Office was an unclean place; that the White House was not only for sale to the highest campaign contributors but that the reverence that most President’s show toward the traditions of the office was simply missing from the Clinton mafia. The venality and malfeasance of his aides, his cabinet officials, his wife, and eventually himself was so pervasive that at times it seemed as if a criminal conspiracy had taken over the country.

It wasn’t a conspiracy of course. It was amorality of thought, word, and deed. When Senator Bob Kerry said in a January 1996 article in Esquire magazine that “”Clinton’s an unusually good liar. Unusually good. Do you realize that?” most conservatives shrugged their shoulders. Clinton wasn’t just a liar. He was a pathological fibber, the broncobuster of prevarication, the Muhamad Ali of equivocation. He lied so often, so consistently, and so well that the American people eventually threw up their hands and decided it was just something that all politicians did. That may be true to a certain extent, but the length and breadth of Clinton’s lies exceeded anything done by any other politician in recent memory.

And the good professor is spot on with his analysis of the Bush haters being livid at our President’s certitude. Having spent their entire lives trying to tear down the verities by which western civilization has thrived for nearly 500 years, it must really stick in their throat that they can’t discredit the simple faith of the man.

Paul Gottfried ( Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and author of, most recently, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt)

Republicans and movement conservatives disliked Clinton because they were genuinely turned off by his personal immorality and even more by the casuistry in which feminist groups engaged in order to justify his predatory sex life. I for one found Clinton to be a shabby clown and the embattled feminists who went to his aid seemed to have about as much credibility as the Communists who defended the Soviet-Nazi Pact.

But, unlike David and Larry, I’m not sure that the attacks on Bush are more personal and more biting than those that Republicans unleashed against Clinton. What bothers me is exactly the opposite, namely that the savaging of W is being done pro forma. It is the way the liberal media and academics and Democrats treat Republican presidents, even those who equivocate on affirmative action and become ultraliberals in dealing with illegal immigration.

The savaging of the President “pro-forma” is an excellent way to describe the put down of every Republican President by the left since the end of WW II. Michael Barone commented on this in a recent article:

But beneath the hubbub, we can see the playing out of another, less reported story: the collapse of the attempts by liberal Democrats and their sympathizers in the mainstream media–the New York Times, etc., etc.–to delegitimize yet another Republican administration.

This project has been ongoing for more than 30 years. Richard Nixon, by obstructing investigation of the Watergate burglary, unwittingly colluded in the successful attempt to besmirch his administration. Less than two years after carrying 49 states, he was compelled to resign. The attempt to delegitimize the Reagan administration seemed at the time reasonably successful. Reagan was widely dismissed as a lightweight ideologue, and the rejection of his nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 contributed to the impression that his years in office were, to take the title of a book by a first-rate journalist, “the Reagan detour.” As time went on, as the Berlin Wall fell and Bill Clinton proclaimed that the era of big government was over, it became clear that Reagan was a successful transformational president–something the mainstream media grudgingly admitted when he died in 2004 after a decade out of public view.

Barone didn’t mention Eisenhower whose Presidency heralded one of the most prosperous and innovative times in the history of human civilization. Portraying Ike as a grinning idiot was easy for the left because of the way the President mangled the English language. But he was decisive and forward looking in his administration - something the left never gave him credit for.

Yes, there was passionate hatred of Clinton. But it was Republicans and Republican ideas that gave him his greatest legislative victories in welfare reform, NAFTA, and balanced budgets. The fact that he shamelessly stole those ideas and embraced them as his own is what maddened those of us who could see that embrace for what it was; not born out of principal but out of opportunism. That too, is a form of dishonesty. And when you get right down to it, that’s why so many of us hate Clinton to this day; his inability to have an honest set of principals that when you look at the man, you know he believes in.

Bill Clinton would have been an afterthought in history if Ross Perot had not run in 1992. And if the Republicans had been able to field a more attractive candidate in 1996, Clinton would have gone down to a humiliating defeat (he got less than 50% of the vote in both elections).

I will always see him as an interlude President - a between the wars President. He was enabled by a populace who simply wanted to be left alone in the period between the end of the cold war and the start of the War on Terror. And he will be little more than a minor, curious footnote in history volumes discussing the end of the 20th century.

I received a comment on the originial post from someone purporting to be Larry Johnson:

Hey boneheads,
I actually spoke with Admiral Inman. He said he was misquoted (Gee, what a surprise, the NRO can’t get its story straight). He’s disgusted by the attacks on Valerie Plame. You guys only got one thing right, Admiral Inman is a class act.

After quickly looking behind me to make sure that I was still the only person blogging on this site, I accessed a technorati search on “Larry Johnson” that referenced both my post below and a post on Josh Marshall’s TCMP Cafe from guest blogger Larry Johnson that does indeed talk about a phonecon between Johnson and Inman:

Admiral Inman was quoted out of context. I spoke with him this afternoon after alerting him to the National Review online quote. He takes very seriously the compromise of Valerie’s cover. He was telling Mr. Spruiell that anyone in the intel community would not be in a position to intuitively know whether Valerie was or was not undercover at first glance. However, since they are in the intel community they have clearances and should not be out and about talking about people they do not know.

Um…no, that’s not what Admiral Inman was saying. Inman was specifically taking the CIA leakers to task for their dirty work during the campaign last fall.

For the record, Valerie Plame was not working as a CIA analyst, she was undercover, per press reports, as an Energy Analyst for Brewster Jennings. Inman did not misstate her position, and told me he has no firsthand knowledge of her cover status. This speaks very poorly about the journalistic standards of the NRO.

Is it bad journalism to print exactly what Admiral Inman said? Inman said he didn’t know Mrs. Wilson’s status. NRO had no comment on that. Where are journalistic standards violated?

Hey Larry! Can’t you take it when someone agrees with you?

Here, however is the meat of Mr. Johnson’s response to NRO and frankly, scares the wholly living beejeebees out of me.

To show how pathetically ignorant the National Review is on this matter, there have been CIA officers who started off as an analyst, who like me were undercover. They later switched-over to an operations officer career track and are now serving overseas in undercover positions.

What is so despicable about all of this is that the conservative movement, which was born in part from the efforts of Whittaker Chambers to expose communist treachery, is now serving as apologists for political operatives who have destroyed an intelligence network and at least one case officer’s distinguished career. The new standard for the Republican National Committee–Karl Rove didn’t commit a crime. Boy, there’s a slogan to run on, “At Least I Wasn’t Indicted”

Speaking of “pathetically ignorant,” it would come as pretty much a shock to most conservatives to learn that “the conservative movement… was born in part from the efforts of Whittaker Chambers to expose communist treachery…” I guess philosophers like F.A. Hayek, Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, Clinton Rossiter, and Leo Strauss not to mention Norman Podhoretz, Ben Wattenberg, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and other Neo Conservatives (you know, the real “neocons,” not everybody that falls under the rubric of the left’s lazy habit of calling anyone who disagrees with them a “necon”) don’t carry as much influence as the nearly 60 year old case involving Whittaker Chambers.

What the heck was this guy doing working for the CIA? My 16 year old cousin knows more about the history of conservatism than Larry Johnson. And this was someone who served as Deputy Director in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism as well as working in the Operations Directorate at the CIA.

That statement - so ignorant of history and blatantly partisan in its intent - along with Mr. Johnson’s pre-9/11 statement about terrorism not being a big problem, causes me to question the sanity of whoever is doing the hiring and promoting at our intelligence services.

Chambers you may recall, was a former Communist who outed Alger Hiss as a communist spy working for the state department. The Congressional hearings on the matter as well as Hiss’ trial became left wing shorthand for the dangers of modern conservatism. The liberals held the Hiss case against Richard Nixon till the day he died and to this day (as Ann Coulter has noted in her book Treason) the left insists that Hiss was an innocent victim of a smear campaign by Chambers and Nixon.

The only problem with that is that Hiss was guilty as sin.

Revelations contained in the Venona Files prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hiss was not loyal to the United States government, was a member of the Communist Party USA, and that he gave Stalin a preview of our negotiating position at the Yalta Conference that ended up dividing Europe into “spheres of influence” between the west and the Soviet Union, thus condemning millions of people to living lives under a barbarous tyranny.

To replay the entire Chambers-Hiss-Nixon drama would take up more bandwidth than Mr. Johnson is worth . For the barebones facts of the case, Wikpedia has a good summary. Hiss was only convicted of perjury even though the US government was aware of his perfidy. Not wanting to take a chance on losing their ability to intercept Soviet cables, (the Venona files) an ability that would have been revealed if the government put on the table everything it had on him, Hiss got away with his treason. He was even re-admitted to the bar in 1975 after it was revealed that there was a considerable amount of government misconduct in his perjury trial. Of course, the misconduct did not obviate the perjury itself nor did it negate the fact that Hiss was a traitor to his country.

Hiss was considered a martyr until the Venona files became public. Even then, many liberals refused to believe the evidence of their own eyes and prefer to think Alger Hiss is innocent. After all, they’re part of the “Reality Based Community” which these days actually means “Never let reality stand in the way of obfuscating the truth.”

The fact that Mr. Johnson attempts to raise the specter of Chambers is revealing in that this “registered Republican” is more of a partisan hack and less the heroic defender of Maiden Wilson’s honor than he lets on.

UPDATE

NRO’s Stephen Spruiell responds to Larry Johnson’s inaccurate post at TCMP Cafe referenced above. The happless Mr. Johnson is gonna need some rectal surgery to repair the damage done by Mr. Spruiell’s scathing comeback:

So let’s review: I removed an inaccurate statement that reflected well on Rove and the administration, and Larry Johnson accuses me of taking Inman out of context in order to make his statements reflect well on Rove and the administration. It’s this kind of analytical prowess that led Larry Johnson to get the pre-9/11 terrorist threat so unbelievably wrong.

It sucks that I have to interrupt my wedding to rebut this clueless publicity hound, but I’m not going to let him get away with claiming a monopoly on the capital-T Truth. For someone who has publicly demonstrated such faulty perception regarding the greatest threat of our time, I’m surprised Johnson is so arrogant.

The only surprise is that Johnson can walk and chew gum at the same time. He’s not arrogant…he’s blissfully ignorant.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Admiral Bobby Inman is known as one of the most brilliant men who ever worked in the intelligence game. His service as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence under William Casey as well as his stint as Director of the National Security Administration was legendary for the breadth of intellect and experience he brought to the job. Here’s how one writer put it:

One doesn’t have to be around Bob Inman long to realize that one is dealing with a different type of brain, a type not shared by many. He is the intersection of micro and macro, at once displaying an insane head for details, and in the next sentence, an awe-inspiring grasp of the big picture, seeming to see the dominoes and dynamics of world events at a glance. Omni called him “simply one of the smartest people ever to come out of Washington or anywhere,” and Newsweek dubbed him “a superstar in the intelligence community [and] a tough-minded administrator.”

He is also a recipient of the DIA’s Defense Superior Service Medal for “achievements unparalleled in the history of intelligence.”

Kinda makes Valerie Plame’s #1 defender Larry Johnson look like a fool. Of course, Johnson doesn’t need to be compared to Inman for that to happen. Admiral Inman didn’t say that ” terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way,” 60 days before 9/11. Johnson did.

Also unlike Larry Johnson, Admiral Inman is truly non-partisan. He was named to replace that fumbling bumble of a Defense Secretary under President Clinton Les Aspin in January of 1994. But then less than a week before his confirmation hearings started, he withdrew his name. At the time, Inman claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy hatched by Bill Safire of the New York Times and Senator Robert Dole. That charge was widely derided in the mainstream press as a fantasy. This didn’t stop many of those same pundits and reporters from starting a whispering campaign about his sexuality. Inman said enough is enough and left Washington for good.

And while the conspiracy charges against Safire and Dole were never proven, Safire did in fact have a long standing grudge against Inman:

In early 1981, Israel suddenly bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Puzzled, Inman, then deputy head of the CIA, realized that Israel could only have known where the nuclear reactor was located by having gotten access to U.S. satellite photographs. But Israel’s access was supposed to be limited to photographs of direct threats to Israel, which would not include Baghdad. On looking into the matter, furthermore, Inman found that Israel was habitually obtaining unwarranted access to photographs of regions even farther removed, including Libya and Pakistan. In the absence of Reagan’s head of the CIA, Bill Casey, Inman ordered Israel’s access to U.S. satellite photographs limited to 250 miles of its border. When Casey returned from a South Pacific trip, his favorite journalist and former campaign manager, Bill Safire, urged Casey to reverse the decision, a pressure that coincided with complaints from Israeli Defense Minister General Ariel Sharon, who had rushed to Washington to try to change the new policy.

Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, however held firm, supported Inman, and overruled Casey, and from then on Safire pursued a vendetta against Bobby Ray Inman.

I bring all this up only to shine a light on the difference between an honorable, non-partisan intelligence professional like Inman and the partisan hacks and leakers who have crawled out of the woodwork not so much to support Valerie Wilson but rather to attempt to politically harm the President of the United States.

In an interview with Stephen Spruiell of the Media Blog at NRO, Inman had this to say about the Rove-Plame-Wilson Affair:

I was utterly appalled during the 2004 election cycle at the number of clearly politically motivated leaks from intelligence organizations — mostly if not all from CIA — that appeared to me to be the most crass thing I had ever seen to influence the outcome of an election. I never saw it quite as harsh as it was. And clearing books to be published anonymously — there was no precedent for it. I started getting telephone calls from CIA retirees when Bush appointed Negroponte, talking about how vindictive the administration was in trying to punish CIA, and I was again sort of dismayed by the effort to play politics including with information that was classified. What is the impact on younger workers who see the higher-ups engaged in this kind of leaking?

(HT: The New Editor)

Inman was not saying that revealing Valerie Wilson’s name was right:

[The leaking of Plame's identity] is still one I would rather not see, but she was working in an analytical organization, and there’s nothing that precludes anyone from identifying analytical officers. I watch all the hand-wringing over the ruining of careers… there are a lot of operatives whose covers are blown. It doesn’t mean the end of their careers. Many move to the analytical world, which is where she already was. It meant she couldn’t deploy back off to Africa, but nothing I’ve seen indicated that was possible in the first place.

Spruiell asks an excellent question: “Where was all the liberal outrage over the leaking of classfied information when the leaks were designed to hurt the Bush administration?”

This is where the scandal’s focus should be; the deliberate and selective leaking of classified information by unelected bureaucrats in the months leading up to the election for the purpose of swinging the contest against the President. And this is the context in which the White House had begun to “push back” as Tom Maguire puts it against this cabal of CIA officials both in and out of government who for a wide variety of reasons were trying to sabotage the Administration. The push back by the White House may have included Rove and Libby having a role in writing Director Tenet’s statement of July 11 in which the CIA took responsibility for the questionable use of the Iraq-Niger yellow cake story in the President’s state of the union address as well as the attempt to discredit Wilson’s trip by trying to highlight his wife’s role in getting the Counter Proliferation Department at CIA to send him to Africa in the first place.

The point is that the leak that outed Valerie Wilson did not take place in a vacuum. The White House was under attack by our own CIA.

Inman points to disatisfied former agents who were accusing the Administration of “punishing” the agency by the selection of John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence. The DNI was created in response to recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission and was vigorously opposed by the CIA. And if the appointment of Negroponte wasn’t bad enough, the President then chose Porter Goss to succeed George Tenet as DCIA and within weeks Goss had begun to clean house. He quickly forced out the Chief of Operations as well as his Deputy and sent out a memo (leaked to the New York Times the next day) informing agency personnel that further leaks would not be tolerated. Both the press and agents whined that this would destroy their “independence.” What Goss was trying to do was get a handle on what Senator McCain had called a “rougue agency.”

All of the events I’ve described overlap to form something of a confused muddle. Christopher Hitchens clears things up a bit with regard to the intentions of the leakers:

The CIA in general is institutionally committed against the policy of regime change in Iraq. It has also catastrophically failed the country in respect of defense against suicidal attack. (”I wonder,” Tenet told former Sen. David Boren on the very first news of 9/11, “if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training.” Wow, what a good guess, if a touch late. The CIA had failed entirely to act after the FBI detained Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota in August.)

Could it be that there is an element of politicization in all this? That there is more to Mr. Wilson’s perfunctory “no problem” report from Niger than first appears? I would describe this as a fit, if not indeed urgent, subject for public debate. But the CIA has a reserve strength. It can and does leak against the Defense Department. But if anyone leaks back at it, there is a nutty little law, passed back in 1982, that can criminalize the leaker. Karl Rove is of course obliged to observe this law and every other one. And it appears that he did, in that he did not, and did not intend to, expose Valerie Plame in any way.

But who is endangering national security here? The man who calls attention to a covert CIA hand in the argument, or the man who blithely says that uranium deals with psychopathic regimes are not in train when they probably are? And we cannot even debate this without the risk that those who are seeking the true story will end up before a grand jury, or behind bars!

Despite all the speculation, no one really knows what Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating at this point. But one thing is clear; the least understood aspect of this scandal - the war between the White House and the CIA - is also the least covered by the press. Whether the reason is it’s too complicated or whether it’s because the issues between the Administration and the CIA are too arcane to pique the interest of news consumers, it doesn’t matter. The result is the same; ignorance.

It may be up to those of us in the new media to push this aspect of the story to the front so that it gets the recognition it deserves.

UPDATE

Baseball Crank links to the NRO piece and has this to say:

It’s actually amazing - at least if you’re not familiar with how politics works - how much heat has been expended on the issues of who can be prosecuted and what regulations require and what the president said he should or should not do, as opposed to the central question of what is bad enough conduct to justify firing someone in the first place. And to me, if somebody was just negligent with the identity of a non-covert agent and accidentally revealed that she’d been covert in the past, that’s a blunder, but it’s not something you organize a lynch mob over.

Crank, of course, is correct. The problem is the lynch mob has had a rope in its hands for 5 years just waiting to use it.

Joshua Sharf:

The Post, in trying to hold journalists to be above the law, has systematically ignored facts, reprinted lies, drawn false dichotomies, sought to deny others due process, and misunderstood the intelligence world to a degree even they should find embarassing.

Yep…I think that just about covers all the bases.

Tom Maguire makes an interesting point. If the CIA knew that Novak was going to print Mrs. Wilson’s name in connection with the agency, why didn’t they try to stop him?

I know some fans of spy fiction are under the impression that if the CIA press flack had told Novak not to publish because Ms. Plame was covert, the CIA would then have been obliged to send a hit squad into the night, tires squealing, to silence Novak.

So, as of July 8, Wilson knew that Novak was telling strangers on street corners that his wife was covert, news that would, per Wilson, endanger her networks, her life, her friendships, her kids - and he figured the CIA would handle it? Do tell. Did he tell his wife? Did she notify her superiors? Presumably Fitzgerald knows.

We can only hope Fitzgerald knows. Or that he’s even concentrating on that end of the investigation; what did the CIA know and when did they know it regarding Novak’s column?

Patrick Ruffini has been conducting a poll of possible Republican Presidential candidates over the last few days and the results so far are, to me, more than a little surprising.

The leader as of today is Senator George Allen, Jr. of Virginia with 37.7% followed closely by Rudy Guiliani with 34.4% with Romney, Frist, and McCain trailing far behind.

Ruffini has gone further and broken down the results by blog links so that it’s possible to get a grasp of what types of conservatives support the frontrunners. For instance, Allen enjoys a 17 point edge from readers referred by Hugh Hewitt but trails Guiliani by more than 20 points among Instapundit’s referred readership. And readers who voted at Pat’s site give Allen a slight 8 point advantage.

What does it mean and does it really matter?

Of course, it doesn’t matter a whit. And trying to glean too much meaning from this kind of an on-line poll is a pretty useless exercise. But beyond the lack of utility in such polling, I found this kind of support for George Allen more than a little surprising.

I knew that Allen was head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee which under his leadership the party picked up 4 seats in this last election cycle. But as far as leadership in the Senate, he seemed to be pretty much in the background on most of the big issues, although I did see him on Hardball giving a spirited defense of the President’s energy policies.

In short, Senator Allen was something of a cipher to me. So, I decided to do a little research and try and judge what kind of a candidate he’d be in 2008 if he decided to run for President.

DOWN AND DIRTY BIO

Birth date: 03/08/1952
Birthplace: Whittier, CA
Home City: Mt. Vernon, VA
Religion: Presbyterian

Education:
J.D., University of Virginia Law School, 1977
B.A., History, University of Virginia, 1974.

Political Experience:
Member, United States Senate, 2000-present
Governor, Commonwealth of Virginia, 1994-1998
Member, United States House of Representatives, District 7, 1991-1993
Member, Virginia House of Delegates 1982-1991

POLITICAL SKILLS

Allen defeated two term incumbent Chuck Robb in 2000, no small feat but running behind President Bush considerably. Also, it can fairly be said that Virginia is now pretty much a reliable state for the GOP in federal elections with both Senators and 8 out of 11 Congressmen being Republican. That said, Allen may have a tough re-election fight on his hands if popular Democratic governor Mark Warner decides to run. Warner however, may have bigger fish to fry as he’s been mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2008 himself.

A breakdown of Allen’s 2000 support by county reveals some interesting tidbits. Virginia is pretty much divided into three major battlegrounds; northern Virginia which encompasses the Washington, D.C. suburbs, the coastal and river cities of Richmond, Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth, and Roanoke, and the rural interior that includes the Shenendoah Valley and a slice of Appalachia.

Allen did extremely well in the interior running up double digit margins of victory in the Valley as well as Appalachia in the southeast. He lost big to Robb in the liberal D.C. suburbs of Alexandria and Arlington, as well as getting slaughtered in Falls Church. What piqued my interest was how strong Robb ran in two Virginia counties that previously voted for Bill Clinton. Allen narrowly lost Fairfax county that borders liberal Arlington County and carried nearby Stafford County. Whether these results represent a general Republican trend in the state or whether Allen appeals to a certain kind of Clinton Democrat is unknown. But it is interesting.

In his two races for governor, he proved that he can both raise money run a campaign efficiently. His style, according to this article in Richmond.Com appears to be low key but effective.

I’ve seen a few of his floor speeches and he always impressed me as earnest but bland. Perhaps that’s why his present popularity surprises me a little.

ISSUES

This is where Senator Allen surprised me and where he might raise a few eyebrows on the Christian right if he runs.

I would characterize Senator Allen as a moderate conservative on social issues, a mainstream conservative on economic issues, and a hawk on foreign policy. In short, he’s no ideologue. Recently, he’s shown he can be a good partisan as he was one of the few Senators from either party to openly criticize Dick Durbin’s idiotic remarks comparing our servicemen to Pol Pot’s henchmen. And he’s emerged as a strong supporter of the President’s choice for UN Envoy John Bolton.

Whether he’s just now starting to feel comfortable in the Senate or whether he realizes he’s got to throw some red meat to the party faithful if he wants the nomination is hard to say. His interest group ratings reveal a mainstream Republican with some surprising positions on social issues.

For instance, on abortion, the Senator does not favor an outright ban on all abortions but would allow abortion to save the life or health of the mother, in cases of rape or incest, and in cases involving fetal deformity. This flies in the face of most of the Christian right groups who oppose abortion in all instances. It could be why he received only a grade of 67 with Dr. Dobbs Family Research Council. He did, however, receive a perfect 100% from Pat Robertson’s Christan Coalition.

He appears to be something of a federalist with regards to transferring welfare responsibilities to the states in the form of block grants. He has a mainstream Republican view of tax policy, opposing a flat tax while supporting elimination of the marriage penalty. He’s a free trader supporting NAFTA, GATT, and CAFTA. One thing that should please Glenn Reynolds is that he has a seat on the Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus. He opposes internet taxation and would seem to have a healthy interest in high tech issues of all kinds.

On immigration, he’s still something of a cipher. He gets a zero from both the liberal American Immigration Lawyers Association as well as the non-partisan Americans for Better Immigration. Since immigration could be the hot domestic issue of 2008, it should be interesting to see where he comes down on protecting our borders.

Interesting tidbit: He was an original co-sponsor with Mary Landrieu of the resolution apologizing for the government not doing anything about lynching for 100 years.

PLUSES AND MINUSES

On the plus side he’s young, attractive, from a southern state, not a fire eater, popular with his fellow Senators, appears to be capable of raising lots of money, and projects a moderately conservative image.

The biggest minus is that he’s an unknown quantity for both conservatives and the rest of the country. I’m also not enamored with his speaking style which at this point is conversational rather than inspiring. And he just hasn’t done enough to separate himself from the crowd. Also, he’s a sitting Senator which as we’ve seen, has historically been a detriment to running for President. In other words, he just hasn’t made a big impression on even a political junkie like me.

Since I think that the GOP’s best hope for ‘08 lies in nominating a southern or western conservative, Allen bears watching.

Several former CIA officers - many of whom worked in counterintelligence - have recently come out and lambasted the White House for outing Valerie Wilson as an employee of the CIA. And while it’s undeniable that taking Mrs. Wilson’s identity from the routine gossip of Washington cocktail parties and publicizing it in the pages of America’s newspapers is a despicable act deserving of censure and punishment, it may be well to examine the motives of the CIA officers who are the most vociferous in their outrage at the scandal.

These three former agents signed a letter “begging” Congress not to play politics with the identities of intelligence agents. The letter fairly reeks of hypocrisy and hyperbole. Not only are the agents profiled below playing partisan politics as much as the Bush Administration is in this matter, it’s apparent from what these individuals have said in the past that their agenda goes far beyond “protecting” little Mrs. Wilson’s good name and in fact, goes to the heart of the bureaucratic war going on between the unelected government employees who worked or are working for the CIA and the White House.

MELVIN GOODMAN

On the surface, Mr. Goodman has an impressive resume. He was a senior analyst in Soviet affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he worked for two decades (1966-1986). He later served as a Soviet analyst at the State Department, and he currently is professor of international studies at the National War College and a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of three books on Soviet and Russian Affairs.

But dig a little deeper and what you find is someone who worked in a section of the CIA - Soviet Affairs - that got it more wrong, more often, with the subsequent effect on policy that was nearly ruinous. When some intelligence reports from that era were declassified in 2001, it was discovered in a 8 year period between 1978 and 1985 the CIA consistently overestimated the nuclear threat the Soviets posed. From 1982 until 1987 CIA estimates regarding Soviet economic strength were also grossly exaggerated. And in the area of Soviet intentions, we were virtually blind thanks to this attitude Mr. Goodman describes in an interview with CNN:

I think, in looking back at the work of the CIA, we’ve seen the exaggeration of the value of clandestine reporting. … I think the Cold War would have evolved no differently whether we were doing clandestine reporting or not — that there were no overwhelming successes with regard to clandestine reporting. You can’t say that about satellite photography, and you can’t say that about signals intelligence. Satellite photography and signals intelligence really gave us a means of understanding what the Soviets were doing with very scarce resources in the way of military deployment.

Mr. Goodman’s love affair with satellites and signals intel is admirable except for one small detail. Both the Senate Intelligence Report on Pre-War Iraq Intelligence and the 9/11 Commission excoriated the CIA for their lack of human intel. These two intelligence failures - arguably the biggest failures since Pearl Harbor - along with missing the fall of the Soviet Union, would be puzzling except for this statement by Mr. Goodman that reveals a mindset prevelant at the time in the Soviet Affairs section at CIA about being able to glean Soviet capabilities from satellite and signals intel:

This was extremely valuable material to all American negotiators and policymakers who had any interest in arms control whatsoever. … [I think this] worked to lessen tensions, because it’s given the United States a very good idea, at the highest levels, of what is actually in the Soviet inventory.

This was the basis for the “war” the CIA waged against the Reagan Administration. To be fair, it was a war that raged across the entire national security establishment; arms control or military build up? There was a suspicion among the William Casey faction at the CIA that people like Mr. Goodman were overstating Soviet nuclear capabilities to push the Administration towards arms control. As we now know, Casey shared President Reagan’s belief that the whole rotten edifice would come crashing down if pushed hard enough.

Guess who was right.

Curiously, Goodman also seems to have joined the tin foil hat brigade on 9/11. Appearing at Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s hearing on Friday that featured panelists who posited theories on 9/11 ranging from the Twin Towers coming down as a result of a “controlled demolition” to the Pentagon being blown up deliberately and not partially destroyed by a hijacked aircraft, Goodman was quoted as saying about McKinney that… “I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom.”

LARRY JOHNSON

Claiming to be a “registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000,” Johnson has emerged as Valerie Wilson’s #1 defender. His bio is also impressive; CIA, State Department, teacher, analyst, and businessman.

But it appears Mr. Johnson is living proof that brains doesn’t always equal judgement. Here’s what he wrote in July, 2001:

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

None of these beliefs are based in fact.

I hope for a world where facts, not fiction, determine our policy. While terrorism is not vanquished, in a world where thousands of nuclear warheads are still aimed across the continents, terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way.

This was written 60 days before 9/11. Is it any wonder that committee after committee and commission after commission have called our intelligence gathering capabilities dysfunctional?

It’s almost as if our policy makers would be better off without these analysts and pontificators. What’s at work here is institutional blindness brought about by the bureaucrat’s preconcieved notions that when challenged, cause a retreat into a shell of platitudes and conventional wisdom. The fact is that if you hold contrary views to those in ascendancy at the CIA you are punished. People like Johnson represent why the United States government has been surprised so many times in so many parts of the world over the last 50 years.

RAY MCGOVERN

To put it bluntly, Ray McGovern is a moonbat.

A 30 year man at CIA, McGovern has gone off the deep end on the Iraq war. Despite not being in the CIA for nearly 15 years, he has taken the hard left talking points on the reasons for going to war with Iraq and run with them.

In an interview with the Atlanta -Journal, McGovern had this to say about the lead up to the war:

A: We’re trying to spread a little truth around. I’ve just been watching very, very closely how intelligence has been abused in the lead up to the Iraq war and, now, after the war. I fear for what this will mean for a very crucial part of our government. If the president can’t turn to the CIA for straight answers, whether he knows it or not, he’s in bad shape. He has nowhere to turn for a straight answer. He can’t expect [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz or [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld to tell him, “Sorry boss, we didn’t think of A or B or C. We thought it would be a cakewalk.” He’s getting slanted advice from the people running the policy toward Iraq.

Sounds like he’s concerned for the President. Guess again:

Q: Do the American people care that they were misled on Iraq? Does Congress? The press?

A: There’s still a lot of torpor, but there are two new elements now. No. 1: The men and women who are being killed every day in Iraq. No. 2: The fact that no one — not even the press — likes to be lied to. I’m an American, and I never thought the president would lie so often and so demonstrably.

Which is it? Is the President being ill served or is he lying through his teeth?

Mr. McGovern also has this to say about Iraq and al Qaeda:

The other main thing, of course, was the alleged tie between Iraq and al-Qaida. CIA analysts spent a year and a half poring through each and every report and found none to be persuasive or reliable. Then [Secretary of State] Colin Powell made his speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, where he produced some cockamamie evidence suggesting that al-Qaida types were roaming around Iraq with Saddam Hussein. In the period leading up to the war, the president would say that we have to go after Iraq because of 9/11. That is the way that the president played on the trauma of 9/11 to persuade the American people that we couldn’t take a chance on Saddam Hussein.

Stephen Hayes has done the best work on this subject and gives the lie to McGovern’s ridiculous assertion there was no Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

McGovern also gave an interview to Alexander Cockburn’s moonbat rag Counterpunch in which he talked about the forged document that outlined the Iraq-Niger yellowcake connection:

In retrospect, the train of thought in the White House at the time is clear: How long can we keep the forged documents from the public? A few months? In that case we can use the documents to get Congress to endorse war with Iraq and then wage it and win it before anyone discovers that the “evidence” was bogus.

The problem for Mr. McGovern is that the Butler Review discovered that the forged memo was not the entire basis for the intelligence estimate regarding Iraq and Niger. In fact, that body found that the President of Niger admitted that representatives from Iraq met with Niger government officials to seek access to yellowcake supplies. And of course, Bush never said that Iraq had purchased yellowcake, only that they “sought” the mineral. This was 100% true as confirmed by both the British and Niger governments.

In recent years, McGovern has worked for a radical left Christain group known as the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. Here’s a recent bio:

Ray McGovern’s 27-year career as a CIA analyst spanned administrations from John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush. Ray is now co-director of the Servant Leadership School, which provides training and other support for those seeking ways to be in relationship with the marginalized poor. The School is one of ten Jubilee Ministries, not-for-profit organizations inspired by the ecumenical Church of the Saviour and established in an inner-city neighborhood in Washington, DC.

The department Ray heads at the School deals with the biblical injunction to “speak truth to power,” and this, together with his experience in intelligence analysis, accounts for his various writings and media appearances over the past year. His focus dovetails nicely with the passage carved into the marble entrance to CIA Headquarters: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”—the ethic mandating that CIA analysts were to “tell it like it is” without fear or favor.

McGovern is also a founder of the radical group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIP) whose Op-Ed’s, articles, and interviews have been featured in every far left magazine imaginable and who demanded in a “Memorandum to the President” that Bush fire VP Cheney.

These are just three of the former intelligence agents who are agitating against the Administration with regards to the Plame leak. These are not non-partisan casual observers; they are people with an agenda. And that agenda includes not just principled opposition to the Iraq war but unprincipled political opposition to the President. They are part of a group of agents both in and out of government who are at war with the Administration for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is the effort by the new DCIA to “clean house.” A good analysis of that effort by Porter Goss can be found here.

It is terribly unfair for the MSM not to give a little background on these agents while lionizing them. But, in this case, it appears that perspective is the last thing the MSM wishes to give to the motives of the opponents who flog the Administration on a daily basis.

UPDATE

Q & O also takes note of the Goodman-McKinney connection as well as his being a signatory of the Plame letter. They also have an interesting unrelated story on what Ted Turner has been up to lately.

UPDATE II

Pat Curley at Brainsters sent me this link to an LA Times article detailing Larry Johnson’s radio address on Saturday.

Oh…did I mention it was the Democrat’s response to the President’s address? Ach! So much for “non-partisan” critique of the Administration’s actions on Nadagate.

THE GOOD

Jeff Goldstein has a few words of wisdom for the left: Specifically, Atrios and his constant poison pen posts against conservatives. In this case, Atrios is blaming the right and George Bush for the accidental killing of the young Brazilian at the Underground in London by police who mistook him for a terrorist.

As I noted in the comments at Cole’s place, if, as one of his supporters insists he is doing, Atrios is simply saying that “the Right fosters an atmosphere that makes it difficult to evaluate these situations because the very act of questioning what happened is portrayed as disloyalty,” then the easy rejoinder is that when your “evaluation” consistently begins from the premise that “BUSH LIED! ROVE MANIPULATED! CHENEY EATS BABIES WITH SHARON AND PISSES OIL!”, it signals to your interlocutor that the “questioning” you’re interesting in engaging in springs from a well already so polluted by partisan hyperbole that any subsequent discussion is bound to be rancid.
So Atrios’ contention that it is the “Right” that is fostering the poisonous atmosphere is at best dubious, and at worst willfully blind.

And Goldstein expands on that thought in a comment published by Glenn Reynolds:

I am not blaming ‘the Left’ en masse. But I am blaming those who are actively out to make political hay out of whatever the latest manufactured, ginned up outrage. And I think it’s time we started to forcefully push back against a political and media culture that is at least tangentially responsible for creating terrorists and their sympathizers based on false premises.”

I would say more than “tangentially responsible” for creating terrorists. It brings to mind the opposition Lincoln faced during the Civil War.

As Bruce Catton put it, the Democrats were proceeding with politics as usual, using the standard “grips and handholds” of political warfare. The problem arises when opposition in war time goes beyond the political and enters the realm of the strategic. As the war ground on, Lincoln was forced to fall back on the most radical elements of his party for support because the logical result of the Democrats policies would have bee separation! They could bleat till the ram came home about supporting the troops but when it came right down to it, the only alternative they could offer was peace.

We have something similar today. Democrats say constantly that they want us to succeed in Iraq and that they support the troops. But the logical conclusion to be reached regarding “timetables” for withdrawals and the various side shows with detention centers is that they oppose the war in Iraq. So here’s Bush, forced to fall back on the support of the hard core 45% of the country that will probably stick this thing out till the end. The Democrats are playing the game but the rules have changed and they don’t realize it.

Great stuff from Goldstein lately. Go here and here also. Get educated.

THE BAD

Maybe I’m just imagining it but has anyone else been thinking that Jeff Jarvis has been smirking a lot lately when he’s be on TV?

In fact, he’s becoming downright insufferable at times. Case in point, his ambush of Bernie Goldberg on Ronnie Deutsch’s show on CNBC. Mr. Goldberg has written a book entitled 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America : (and Al Franken Is #37). After the obligatory back and forth between Goldberg and Duetsch, the producer of the show asked Goldberg to stick around for a discussion on “culture.”

What he stuck around for was a mugging by 5 panelists, including Mr. Jarvis, who, according to those watching the show, hardly let Mr. Goldberg get a word in edgewise. I’m not surprised. With 5 camera hogs along with Duetsch, you’d need a 57″ screen just to get all their mugs on at once.

At any rate, Bernie got mad. Jarvis got dismissive. And in the end, everything worked out fine. Bernie got publicity for his book and Jarvis cemented his reputation as a new media wizard, the Gandolph of the blogosphere.

All this wouldn’t have gotten me upset except Mr. Jarvis has a post on his new look blog in which he tries to tell conservatives that we should stop whining now, we’ve got all the power we need:

Bernie — and Bill and Rush — still try to play the victims, the underdogs, the little guys fighting them big, bad ol’ liberals. What’s amazing is that they can still pull it off. Look at Bernie’s own list and you see a bunch of losers: Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky haven’t gotten us out of Iraq; Al Franken and Janeane Garolao are nowhere next to Rush and Bill; Dan Rather’s all but unemployed (and Mary Mapes is); Howard Stern has been forced off the air; Phil Donahue defines has-been…. The conservatives are in power, solidly in power, and yet they still hold to the M.O. that got them into power: playing outsider, victim, paranoid.

But it still works. It sells books.

Michael Moore a loser? Moore has done worse than try to get us out of Iraq. In fact, I’d say that his agitation against the war is the least of his sins. Michael Moore makes films seen by millions of people that are passed off as documentaries but in reality are so full of lies and distortions that it does a disservice to even call them “propaganda” films.

As for conservatives being “solidly in power” perhaps if Mr. Jarvis believes the government is the end all and be all of American society he is correct. But the rest of America is still firmly in control of the left.

Consider the entire educational system. From top to bottom, from the primary grades to post graduate studies, the entire rotten structure of education is under the direct control not of the left, but of the hard, far left. This post is too short to cite chapter and verse but if you’re interested see David Horwitz here. Even if you are a centrist or a center left ideologue like Mr. Jarvis, that book will open your eyes as to not only what is being taught, but the theory and practice of the way it’s taught and why.

As for the rest of America society, anyone who thinks the press has suddenly morphed into some kind of bastion of conservatism should have their head examined.

THE UGLY

Catherine Baker Knoll is the Leiutenant Governor of Pennyslvania. She’s also a moonbat of the first magnitude:

The family of a Marine who was killed in Iraq is furious with Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll for showing up uninvited at his funeral this week, handing out her business card and then saying “our government” is against the war.

Rhonda Goodrich of Indiana, Pa., said yesterday that a funeral was held Tuesday at a church in Carnegie for her brother-in-law, Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich, 32.

She said he “died bravely and courageously in Iraq on July 10, serving his country.”

In a phone interview, Goodrich said the funeral service was packed with people “who wanted to tell his family how Joe had impacted their lives.”

Then, suddenly, “one uninvited guest made an appearance, Catherine Baker Knoll.”

She sat down next to a Goodrich family member and, during the distribution of communion, said, “Who are you?” Then she handed the family member one of her business cards, which Goodrich said she still has.

“Our family deserves an apology,” Rhonda Goodrich said. “Here you have a soldier who was killed—dying for his country—in a church full of grieving family members and she shows up uninvited. It made a mockery of Joey’s death.”

What really upset the family, Goodrich said, is that Knoll said, ‘I want you to know our government is against this war,’ ” Goodrich said.

Looks like the People’s Republic of Pennsylvania needs to either secede from the Union or get itself a foreign policy more in line with like, you know, Washington, D.C.

Considering Ed Rendell, I’m not optimistic about either.

The anti-American left has for the time being, at least, been denied a brand new dog and pony show featuring close up pictures and graphic videos of detainees being abused at Abu Ghraib. In a move sure to bring wails of anguish from the moonbats, the Pentagon has refused to turn over the materials to the plaintiffs in the FOIA case on the Abu Ghraib investigation. Plaintiffs in the suit include the ACLU, Veterans for Peace, Veterans for Common Sense, and Physicians for Human Rights - you know, organizations whose job it is to keep the American public “informed.” Curiously, the organizations who really do have the responsibility to keep Americans informed - the press - did not join in the ACLU suit.

Also participating in the suit are international entities that just have to know every single detail of abuse so they can incorporate the information in their anti-American propaganda. These International organizations include:

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

UN Human Rights Committee

Convention Against Torture

Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War

It’s nice to know so many of our friends overseas are eager to see the American people “informed” of something they already know -bad things happened at Abu Ghraib. This begs the question; why then release more pictures and videos?

The government has turned over more than 60,000 pages of documents on the treatment of detainees, some containing graphic descriptions of mistreatment. But the material that the judge ordered released - the A.C.L.U. says there are 87 photographs and 4 videos - would be the first images released in the suit. The judge said they would be the “best evidence” in the debate about the treatment of Abu Ghraib prisoners.

“There is another dimension to a picture that is of much greater moment and immediacy” than a document, Judge Hellerstein said in court.

“Best evidence in the debate?” What debate? Why a political debate of course! In other words, the judge in this case has decided that its up to the courts to help out the anti-American left in their efforts to score points in the political debate over the war in Iraq.

Anyone who doesn’t think that the ACLU hasn’t morphed into a highly partisan, far left advocacy group should examine some of the recent cases the ACLU has taken on. For that, I recommend you go here and browse through some of the eye opening issues the ACLU has decided to advocate recently. It’s very sad to see an organization I once admired for its championing of human liberty degenerate into partisan hackery of the worst kind.

The Pentagon was supposed to turn those pictures and tapes over to the moonbats yesterday. The fact that they filed a “secret brief” detailing the reasons why they haven’t complied will probably not sit well with the judge in this case. Judge Alvin Hellerstein is the same judge that ruled back in 2003 that since the attack on America was “forseeable,” plaintiffs had a right to sue the government. He also ruled that the plaintiffs had the right to sue the Trade Center owners for negligence because they had an inadequate evacuation plan (for a plane flying into the building?) as well as opening the door to sue Boeing, the manufacturer of the airplanes for - get this - negligence due to the inadequate locks on the door to the cockpit.

My guess is that the judge will deny the Pentagon’s motion and once again order them to turn over the graphic material on abuse at Abu Ghraib. At which point, we’ll be treated to a full blown press conference with the ACLU gleefully smacking the Administration around and calling for an “independent” investigation of abuse at all US detention facilities that would include an international component. In other words, representatives from countries where torture is endemic will be sitting in judgment on Americans. The fact that the military itself and the Pentagon has now carried out three separate investigations on abuse of prisoners, including the independent Schlessinger Commission that faulted both the Administration and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for unclear policies on interrogation as well as a lack of responsibility in the chain of command, will be ignored.

The FOIA suit was politics pure and simple. Evidently, the release of 60,000 documents isn’t enough for the moonbats. In order to really skewer the Administration, we absolutely have to be treated to more pictures of activities at Abu Ghraib. I would guess that the reason the ACLU et. al. want the graphical material above anything else is that nothing will put America in a worse light than videos of the abuse. Still pictures are one thing. Videos will really hammer their points home.

Their points are political ones. It doesn’t have anything to do with our “right to know.” It will do nothing to advance the real debate over Iraq. The only thing it will do is inflame the passions of people worldwide against America and lower the morale of the American people.

All in a day’s work for the ACLU.

From our “This is News?” department comes the revelation that, in response to Joe Wilson’s attack on the President’s credibility, Bush’s top aide Karl Rove and VP Cheney’s top aide Scooter Libby collaborated on a response to Wilson’s charges of shaping intelligence on the Iraq-Niger uranium connection.

The NY Times story is interesting in that it says absolutely nothing. They don’t have one iota of news to impart to their readers. They do, however, have plenty of juicy speculation that they can disguise as news which for the New York Times, is pretty much the same thing.

The response they were working on was given by CIA Director George Tenet on July 12, 2003 in which Tenet insisted that the shaky Niger uranium story was the fault of bad analysis at the CIA. Rove and Libby were drawing up a statement in response to a request by Tenet himself who wanted to set the record straight.

A former government official, though, added another element to how the statement was prepared, saying that no one directed Mr. Tenet to issue it and that Mr. Tenet himself felt it was needed. The statement said that the “C.I.A.’s counterproliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region to make a visit to see what he could learn.”

According to the Times, there may have been other more sinister reasons for the Rove-Libby collaboration:

It is not clear what information Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby might have collected about Ms. Wilson as they worked on the Tenet statement. Mr. Rove has said he learned her name from Mr. Novak. Mr. Libby has declined to discuss the matter.

The effort was striking because to an unusual degree, the circle of officials involved included those from the White House’s political and national security operations, which are often separately run. Both arms were drawn into the effort to defend the administration during the period.

“It is not clear what information Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby might have collected…”

What an extraordinarily biased statement! The reason it’s “not clear” what the two “might” have collected could very well be that they weren’t collecting anything! ABP makes the same point:

And what did they say between themselves about Valerie Plame. Nothing at all. But that doesn’t stop this “news” article from wondering, stating that It is not clear what information Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby might have collected about Ms. Wilson as they worked on the Tenet statement. Why not just say “There is nothing to suggest Rove and Libby ever discussed Valerie Plame”. Because it’s The New York Times of course.

The Times is a master at this form of attack. This not very subtle indictment uses pure speculation without any evidence to back it up. They’re just throwing crap against the wall to see if anything sticks.

It’s disgusting.

UPDATE

Tom Maguire links to the Times piece and highlights the possible role of Ari Fleisher in the scandal pointing out a discrepancy in Fleisher’s reported grand jury testimony about not seeing the State Department memo and an eyewitness who claims he did:

Well. I am sure he is a great American, but this is not good. And, as with Karl, since Ari was involved with the Wilson push-back, why would he *not* have seen the memo, or been apprised of it?

And yes, if Ari is The One, since he left the Administration on July 14, 2003, we are back to an Incredible Shrinking Scandal.

Possibly…but then there are still all of those statements by the White House denying Rove’s involvement which is, of course, a political not a legal problem. And by listening to the WH press corps, I doubt whether those questions are going to stop anytime soon.