Cheney Aide Named as Secret Source in CIA Leak Probe

[Wurm]

By JOHN SOLOMON

WASHINGTON (AP) - Finally agreeing to testify, New York Times reporter Judith Miller's grand jury appearance throws a damaging spotlight once again on a White House whose credibility has been undermined in the criminal probe into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.

Freed after 85 days in a federal detention center, Miller was to testify Friday for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation about her conversations in July 2003 with Vice President **** Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby.

Until a few months ago, the White House maintained for nearly two years that Libby and presidential aide Karl Rove were not involved in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, whose husband had publicly suggested that the Bush administration twisted intelligence in the runup to the war in Iraq.

The timing of the criticism by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was devastating for the White House, which was already on the defensive because no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. The president's claims of such weapons were the main justification for going to war.

Libby met with Miller just two days after Wilson blasted the Bush administration in a Times op-ed piece.


Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper has testified recently that Rove and Libby had spoken to him about Wilson's wife that same week in July 2003 when Miller spoke to Libby.


In October 2003, with the criminal investigation gaining speed, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of Rove and Libby: ``Those individuals assured me they were not involved in this'' leaking of Plame's identity.


Miller has been in custody in Alexandria, Va., since July 6. A federal judge ordered her jailed for civil contempt of court when she refused to testify.


The disclosure of Plame's identity by syndicated columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003, triggered a criminal investigation that could still result in criminal charges against government officials.


``My source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations relating to the Wilson-Plame matter,'' Miller said in a statement Thursday. Her newspaper identified Libby as the source, saying that Miller and Libby spoke in person on July 8, 2003, then talked by phone later that week.


Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said that ``as we have throughout this ordeal, we continue to support Judy Miller in the decision she has made. We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify.''


White House aides signed waivers earlier in the probe, but Miller wanted and received personal assurances that her source's waiver was voluntary. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, did not return a phone call seeking comment.


Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment.


President Bush has given varying accounts of the circumstances under which he would fire leakers in the Plame probe.


In September 2003, Bush said ``we'll take the appropriate action'' and his spokesman said ``they would no longer be in this administration.'' In June 2004, Bush reiterated the pledge, answering ``yes'' when asked if he would fire anyone in his administration who leaked Plame's name. In July, amid revelations that Rove and Libby had been involved in the leaks, Bush said that ``if someone committed a crime'' he would be fired.


The federal grand jury delving into the matter expires Oct. 28. Miller would have been freed at that time, but prosecutors could have pursued a criminal contempt of court charge against the reporter if she continued to defy Fitzgerald.


Of the reporters swept up in Fitzgerald's investigation, Miller is the only one to go to jail.


Novak apparently has cooperated with prosecutors, though neither he nor his lawyer has said so.


Novak's column in July 2003 said two senior administration officials told him Plame had suggested sending her husband to the African nation of ***** on behalf of the CIA to look into possible Iraqi purchases of uranium yellowcake.


Wilson's article in the Times, titled ``What I Didn't Find In Africa,'' had stated it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.


Miller is a veteran national security reporter. In the 1980s, she became the first woman to be named chief of the Times' Cairo bureau in Egypt. For her work on Osama bin Laden in 2001, she won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism as part of a small team of Times reporters.


Starting in 2002, her stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq helped bolster the Bush administration's case for toppling Saddam Hussein. The failure to find the weapons prompted heavy criticism of Miller and the Times as well as of the Bush administration.



09/30/05 03:50

Looks like Corruption, Inc. is willing to sacrifice Libby instead of Karl "Goebbels" Rove. Apparently, Turd Blossom is much more valuable to the Man-Ape than The ****'s Chief of Staff is.

 

[limerickman]

Lewis Libby has been named as the source by the NYT's lawyers in the Miller case.
Libby stated that Valerie Plame was a spy.
This is really really bizzare.

Why would a Bush official name the wife of a Bush-appointed diplomat (Joseph Wilson), as being a spy ?
Not only did Libby break the Official Secrets Act but has also put Valerie Plames life in dnager by publicly confirming that she was a spy.

This stinks.

Joe Wilson (Valerie Plames husband) stated that what George Bush said in his State of the Union address about ***** supplying Uranium to Iraq was a lie.
Seems that the Bush administration on being shown to have lied about *****/Uranium sought to put Ms Plame and her work (and life) in jeporardy.

 

[darkboong]

Lewis Libby has been named as the source by the NYT's lawyers in the Miller case.
Libby stated that Valerie Plame was a spy.
This is really really bizzare.

It's rather strange seeing the Administration Apparatchiks knifing
their assassins in the back. When are they going to start knifing
No Such Agency people ? Or are Libby et al actually acting on
behalf of the NSA ?

It appears that the NSA are in the ascendancy at the moment.
They have scored significant successes in the UK and New Zealand
over the last 36 months.

 

[Wurm]

Why would a Bush official name the wife of a Bush-appointed diplomat (Joseph Wilson), as being a spy ?

Well, you named the exact reason they blew her cover: because her husband JW showed that Man-Ape was lying in his infamous "16 words" S.O.T.U. speech of Jan. 2003. These type of Gestapo tactics are no different than were used in 1930's-40's Germany.

Then you have the anthrax letters that were sent to Dem. Senators Daschle and Leahy, which have been traced back to a military base in Maryland, but where the FBI & authorities have been dragging their feet for a long time.

The "accidental" plane crash of Sen. Wellstone.

Cockroach Tom and his bullying tactics in the House of Reps. At least he finally got indicted.

Election fraud.

Lies about WMD's.

State-sponsored torture.

Katrina.

Billions missing from Iraq's coffers under Paul Bremer, and now again under the "new" puppet regime.

There are any number of similar examples from these bastards. Considering the evidence and who benefits most, it is not hard to see that the BushCo's pulled off 9/11 as well.

Or are all of the above mere coincidences?? I think not. What I wonder is: when are the American people going to wake up and connect the dots?

 

[Wurm]

It's rather strange seeing the Administration Apparatchiks knifing
their assassins in the back.

I think the fix is in. Libby wouldn't have "released" Miller to cooperate with special prosecutor Fitzgerald if the White House didn't have the probable consequences well thought out. You'll most likely see Scooter-Boy and maybe even Turd Blossom falling on their swords to protect their bosses, because the way Bush & Cheney are said to run things in the White House, it would be highly improbable that the blowing of Plame's cover was not known about and authorized by either the Lyin' King or The ****, or both.

I'm also taking bets that all of these perps will escape real and serious prosecution.

 

[davidmc]

Not only did Libby break the Official Secrets Act but has also put Valerie Plames life in dnager by publicly confirming that she was a spy.
This stinks.

Not only her life but EVERYONE'S LIVES WHOM SHE EVER CAME INTO CONTACT WITH. Nice going Bush Reich errr...I mean-administration The crime of TREASON comes to mind but these criminals are pulling the strings right now in all three branch's of gov't. It is fitting that DeLay was indicted for his, no doubt, felonies. Oh well, I guess thats what god wants is Dubya to have autocratic power much like-who's the guy I'm thinking of- hmmmm..... Oh yes, Saddam

 

[davidmc]

I'm also taking bets that all of these perps will escape real and serious prosecution.

I'm sure you are aware that the law doesn't apply to republican's when they are in power. Besides, god's on their side

 

[darkboong]

I'm sure you are aware that the law doesn't apply to republican's when they are in power. Besides, god's on their side

Which one, Mammon or Satan ?

 

[Wurm]

Which one, Mammon or Satan ?

LOL!

The devout BushCo "Christians" never read Matthew 6:24...they must have had the flu that Sunday.

 

[davidmc]

LOL!

The devout BushCo "Christians" never read Matthew 6:24...they must have had the flu that Sunday.

Makes me want to give them a piece of my mind

 

[Hypnospin]

that and the high level morals of no nookie in the oval office, which you may remember, was the time-wasting soapbox issue of the day during the impeachment of clinton.

certainly this was the top issue of concern for many a middle american puritanical voter...

i still remember how all these lawmakers took their big shot at fame by making longwinded speeches on the taxpayer's dime about this.

where are they now? it is almost like bushco has something on them to keep 'em in line. it has been mentioned in an interview by an ex-bush campaign finance manager this is the case, as to what is being held over their heads, she stated it is child ****.

"if you are not outraged, you are not paying attention"

I'm sure you are aware that the law doesn't apply to republican's when they are in power. Besides, god's on their side

 

[Wurm]

where are they now? it is almost like bushco has something on them to keep 'em in line. it has been mentioned in an interview by an ex-bush campaign finance manager this is the case, as to what is being held over their heads, she stated it is child ****.

Of course...blackmail. I would bet that there are more than a few Dems in similar straights, hence their silence on so many issues with the Chimpsters.

But why is it that with the Repigs, it seems most often to be some weird sexual proclivity? Apparently, too much repression when they were young.

 

[darkboong]

But why is it that with the Repigs, it seems most often to be some weird sexual proclivity? Apparently, too much repression when they were young.

Same with the Conservatives here in the UK. Right wingers are born and bred perverts. Moralizing from the top of the dungheap is a defining characteristic of Perverts, and funnily enough it's something that Conservatives and Republicans do a lot of. I am over generalizing though, because Tony Blair does a lot of that too, but then again his policies are right wing through and through.

 

[limerickman]

Not only her life but EVERYONE'S LIVES WHOM SHE EVER CAME INTO CONTACT WITH. Nice going Bush Reich errr...I mean-administration The crime of TREASON comes to mind but these criminals are pulling the strings right now in all three branch's of gov't. It is fitting that DeLay was indicted for his, no doubt, felonies. Oh well, I guess thats what god wants is Dubya to have autocratic power much like-who's the guy I'm thinking of- hmmmm..... Oh yes, Saddam

Of course, you're correct - everyone Plame ever came in to contact with are, by definition, also compromised too. Perhaps fatally so.

I believe that the Plame case is Treasonable.
It is one thing to be a spy for the other side and endanger life (Rick Ames case within the CIA comes to mind) but to have the political masters of these agencies exposing their own people is completely irresponsible and reckless.
And worse.

 

[limerickman]

that and the high level morals of no nookie in the oval office, which you may remember, was the time-wasting soapbox issue of the day during the impeachment of clinton.

certainly this was the top issue of concern for many a middle american puritanical voter...

i still remember how all these lawmakers took their big shot at fame by making longwinded speeches on the taxpayer's dime about this.

where are they now? it is almost like bushco has something on them to keep 'em in line. it has been mentioned in an interview by an ex-bush campaign finance manager this is the case, as to what is being held over their heads, she stated it is child ****.

"if you are not outraged, you are not paying attention"

It is one of the contradictions of the USA which I really cannot fathom.
The insistance that somehow sexual promiscuity (Clinton and Lewinsky) is deemed to be more reprehensible than unilaterally invading another country on a tissue of lies, deceit and falsehoods.

If Clinton and Lewinsky were banging away on the desk in the Oval Office,
so what ?
They're consenting adults.

OK : I don't advocate married people fooling round but if they do, they do.
However, their foolacting never had a bearing on public policy.
Unlike the decision taken by Bush to go to war.

It is amusing how certain sections of middle America seem to get so uptight
about sexuality and who's banging who.

 

[Wurm]

Update to this case, (emphasis mine):

[size=+2]Role of Rove, Libby in CIA Leak Case Clearer[/size]
Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement
[size=-1]By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 2, 2005; A05
[/size]



As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.

With New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president's main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.

His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.

Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame's CIA job became public.

In October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he personally asked Libby and Rove whether they were involved, "so I could come back to you and say they were not involved." Asked if that was a categorical denial of their involvement, he said, "That is correct."

What remains a central mystery in the case is whether special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has accumulated evidence during his two-year investigation that any crime was committed. His investigation has White House aides and congressional Republicans on edge as they await Fitzgerald's announcement of an indictment or the conclusion of the probe with no charges. The grand jury is scheduled to expire Oct. 28, and lawyers in the case expect Fitzgerald to signal his intentions as early as this week.

Fitzgerald is investigating whether anyone illegally disclosed Plame's name or undercover CIA job in retaliation against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. In the summer of 2003, Wilson, a former diplomat, accused the White House of using "twisted" intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

He claimed firsthand evidence: At the behest of the CIA, he had flown to ***** in February 2002 to investigate the administration's assertion that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium in the African nation for use in its nuclear weapons program. Wilson returned unconvinced the assertion was true. However, Bush himself made the charge in his 2003 State of the Union address, prompting Wilson to spread word throughout the government and eventually make public his rebuttal.

Many lawyers in the case have been skeptical that Fitzgerald has the evidence to prove a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which is the complicated crime he first set out to investigate, and which requires showing that government officials knew an operative had covert status and intentionally leaked the operative's identity.

But a new theory about Fitzgerald's aim has emerged in recent weeks from two lawyers who have had extensive conversations with the prosecutor while representing witnesses in the case. They surmise that Fitzgerald is considering whether he can bring charges of a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by a group of senior Bush administration officials. Under this legal tactic, Fitzgerald would attempt to establish that at least two or more officials agreed to take affirmative steps to discredit and retaliate against Wilson and leak sensitive government information about his wife. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose.

Lawyers involved in the case interviewed for this report agreed to talk only if their names were not used, citing Fitzgerald's request for secrecy.

One source briefed on Miller's account of conversations with Libby said it is doubtful her testimony would on its own lead to charges against any government officials. But, the source said, her account could establish a piece of a web of actions taken by officials that had an underlying criminal purpose.

Conspiracy cases are viewed by criminal prosecutors as simpler to bring than more straightforward criminal charges, but also trickier to sell to juries. "That would arguably be a close call for a prosecutor, but it could be tried," a veteran Washington criminal attorney with longtime experience in national security cases said yesterday.

Other lawyers in the case surmise Fitzgerald does not have evidence of any crime at all and put Miller in jail simply to get her testimony and finalize the investigation. "Even assuming . . . that somebody decided to answer back a critic, that is politics, not criminal behavior," said one lawyer in the case. This lawyer said the most benign outcome would be Fitzgerald announcing that he completed a thorough investigation, concluded no crime was committed and would not issue a report.

The campaign to discredit Wilson's accusations came at a critical moment in the Bush presidency. It occurred a few months after the United States invaded Iraq and at a time when Bush, Cheney and the entire administration were under extraordinary pressure to back up their prewar allegations that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and was working on a nuclear weapons program.

The ***** claim was central to the White House's rationale for war, and Wilson was on a one-man crusade to disprove it. Early on, his actions caught the eye of the vice president's office, which was often the emotional and intellectual force pushing the United States to war based on fears of potential weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Cheney and Libby were intimately involved in building the case for the war, which included warnings that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons.

Cheney's staff was looking into Wilson as early as May 2003, nearly two months before columnist Robert D. Novak identified Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, according to administration sources familiar with the effort. What stirred the interest of the vice president's office was a May 6 New York Times column by Nicholas D. Kristof in which the mission to ***** was described without using Wilson's name. Kristof's column said Cheney had authorized the trip.

According to former senior CIA officials, the vice president's office pressed the CIA to find out how the trip was arranged, because Cheney did not know that a query he made much earlier to a CIA briefer about a report alleging Iraq was seeking ***** uranium had triggered Wilson's trip. "They were very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way," a former senior CIA official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. "They asked questions that set [off] a chain of inquiries."

By early June, several weeks before Libby is said to have known Plame's name, the State Department had prepared a memo on the ***** case that contained information on Plame in a section marked "(S)" for secret. Around that time, Libby knew about the trip's origins, though in an interview with The Washington Post at the time, he did not mention any role played by Wilson's wife.

By July 12, however, both Rove and Libby and perhaps other senior White House officials knew about Wilson's wife's position at the CIA and, according to lawyers familiar with testimony in the probe, used that information with reporters to undermine the significance of Wilson's trip.

Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

 

[Wurm]

...and there is this, (emphasis mine):

As CIA leak probe passes Rove, Cheney is eyed, lawyer says RAW STORY

Print This | Email This Excerpted to highlight Cheney's role from an article Saturday in the New York Times. The Times' reporters remark: "Ms. Miller's grand jury appearance increased anxiety in the White House and throughout Republican circles about how the investigation might end."

A lawyer who knows Mr. Libby's account said the administration efforts to limit the damage from Mr. Wilson's criticism extended as high as Mr. Cheney. This lawyer and others who spoke about the case asked that they not be identified because of grand jury secrecy rules.

On July 12, 2003, four days after his initial conversation with Ms. Miller, Mr. Libby consulted with Mr. Cheney about how to handle inquiries from journalists about the vice president's role in sending Mr. Wilson to Africa in early 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq was trying acquire nuclear material there for its weapons program, the person said.

In that account, Mr. Cheney told Mr. Libby to direct reporters to a statement released the previous day by George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence. His statement said Mr. Wilson had been sent on the mission by C.I.A. counter-proliferation officers "on their own initiative."

Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, saying that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat," and that his mission to Africa had been set in motion because of questions that Mr. Cheney's office had put to the C.I.A. The account, which Mr. Libby has provided to the grand jury, portrays his conversations with journalists as intended not to leak Ms. Wilson's name or to smear Mr. Wilson, but to distance the vice president from the criticism raised by Mr. Wilson.

A spokesman for Mr. Cheney, Stephen E. Schmidt, said he could not comment because of the inquiry.

The investigation has found that at least two senior White House officials, Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush's political strategist, spoke with reporters about Mr. Wilson's wife and her employment at the intelligence agency in the week after the publication of the Op-Ed article. People who have been briefed on their accounts have said the officials did not know of Ms. Wilson's status and did not supply journalists her name.

 

[davidmc]

It is one of the contradictions of the USA which I really cannot fathom.
The insistance that somehow sexual promiscuity (Clinton and Lewinsky) is deemed to be more reprehensible than unilaterally invading another country on a tissue of lies, deceit and falsehoods.

Kenneth Starr got to the bottom of it alright. $250,000,000 of taxpayer money (see why your taxes are going up Weisse,CR, & Zap ) to prove that President Clinton was a hetrosexual. Very important buisiness, that It's your "boys" who are spending all of the gov't revenue-Iraq-@250,000,000,000+ [roughly $2,000,000,000/day], Estate tax give-away, another round of tax-cuts at the WORST POSSIBLE TIME (the new slogan for compassionate conservatives should be-"vote for us, short term gain, long term loss" ), ect... You wonder why the gov't is broke. Ask Bush

If Clinton and Lewinsky were banging away on the desk in the Oval Office,
so what ?
They're consenting adults.

It most certainly had overtones of jealously & obvious repressed sexuality.

OK : I don't advocate married people fooling round but if they do, they do.
However, their foolacting never had a bearing on public policy.
Unlike the decision taken by Bush to go to war.

"Compassionate Conservatives" (wing of the republican party) apparently aren't accountable for their actions. See-Bushco policy.

It is amusing how certain sections of middle America seem to get so uptight
about sexuality and who's banging who.

Thats exactly what their party wants. They want their base to be preoccupied w/ trivial pursuits (gay marriage, "under god" fiasco, interferring in states rights (case in point-Schiavo), flag burning (1st amendment right although the repubs claim questionable party contributions are also 1st amendment right ), while they loot the treasury resulting in massive debt, financed by the chinese/japanese for generations to come

 

[davidmc]

This one is well worth reading

October 2, 2005

In the Beginning, There Was Abramoff By FRANK RICH

"Terri Schiavo is not brain-dead; she talks and she laughs, and she Expresses happiness and discomfort. Terri Schiavo is not on life Support." - Tom DeLay, March 20, 2005 IF you believed Tom DeLay then, you no doubt believe now that the Deposed House majority leader is only on "temporary" leave from his Powerful perch in Washington and that he'll soon bounce back, laughing All the way, from a partisan witch hunt that unjustly requires his Brief discomfort in a Texas courtroom. Those who still live in the reality-based community, however, may Sense they're watching the beginning of the end of something big. It's Not just Mr. DeLay, a k a the Hammer, who is on life support, but a Washington establishment whose infatuation with power and money has Contaminated nearly every limb of government and turned off a public That by two to one finds the country on the wrong track. But don't take my word for it. And don't listen to the canned talking Points of the Democrats, who are still so busy trying to explain why They were for the war in Iraq before they were against it that it's Hard to trust their logic on anything else. Listen instead to Andrew Ferguson, of the conservative Rupert Murdoch magazine, The Weekly Standard. As far back as last December in a cover article on the Sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Mr. Ferguson was already declaring "the End of the Republican Revolution." He painted the big picture of the Abramoff ethos in vibrant strokes: The ill-gotten Indian gambling moolah snaking through the bank Accounts of a network of DeLay cronies and former aides; the "fact-finding" Congressional golfing trips to further the cause of Sweatshop garment factories in the Marianas islands; the bogus "think Tank" in Rehoboth Beach, Del., where the two scholars in residence Were a yoga instructor and a lifeguard (albeit a "lifeguard of the Year"). Certain names kept recurring in Mr. Ferguson's epic narrative, Most prominently Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, Republican Money-changers who are as tightly tied to President Bush and Karl Rove As they are to Mr. Abramoff and Mr. DeLay, if not more so. The bottom line, Mr. Ferguson wrote, was a culture antithetical to Everything conservatives had stood for in the Gingrich revolution of 1994. Slaying a corrupt, bloated Democratic establishment was out, Gluttony for the G.O.P. And its fat cats was in. Mr. Abramoff and his Gang embodied the very enemy the "Contract With America" Congress had Supposedly come to Washington to smite: " 'Beltway Bandits,' Profiteers who manipulate the power of big government on behalf of Well-heeled people who pay them tons of money to do so." Those tons of Republican money were deposited in the favors bank of K Street, where, As The Washington Post reported this year, the number of lobbyists has More than doubled (to some 35,000) since the Bush era began in 2000. Conservatives who once aspired to cut government "down to the size Where we can drown it in the bathtub" - as a famous Norquist maxim had It - merely outsourced government instead to the highest bidder. Mr. DeLay's latest plight is only a tiny detail within this vast Boschian canvas of depravity. If this were Watergate - and Watergate Itself increasingly looks like a relatively contained epidemic of Corruption - the Texas grand jury's indictment of the congressman and His associates would be a sideshow tantamount to the initial 1973 California grand jury indictment of the Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and His pals in the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office; Watergate's real legal fireworks were still in the wings. So forget About all those details down in Texas that make your teeth hurt; don't Bother to learn the difference between Trmpac and Armpac. Fasten your Seat belt instead for the roller coaster of other revelations and Possible indictments that's about to roar through the Beltway. The most important plot development of the past two weeks, in fact, Has nothing to do with Mr. DeLay (as far as we know). It was instead The arrest of the administration's top procurement officer, David Safavian, on charges of lying and obstructing the investigation of Mr. Abramoff. And what an investigation it is: The F.B.I., the I.R.S., the Treasury Department and the Interior Department have all been Involved. The popular theory of the case has it that Mr. Safavian, a Former lobbying colleague of both Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Norquist, is Being muscled by the feds to rat on the big guys in Washington - much As another smaller fish may have helped reel in Mr. DeLay in Texas. The DeLay and Abramoff investigations are not to be confused with the many others percolating in the capital, including, most famously of late, the Justice Department and S.E.C. inquiries into the pious Bill Frist's divine stock-sale windfall and the homeland security inspector general's promised inquiry into possible fraud in the no-bid contracts doled out by FEMA for Hurricane Katrina. The mother of all investigations, of course, remains the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's pursuit of whoever outed the C.I.A. agent Valerie Wilson to Robert Novak and whoever may have lied to cover it up. The denouement is on its way. But whatever the resolution of any of these individual dramas, they will not be the end of the story. Like the continuing revelations of detainee abuse emerging from Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo, this is a crisis in the governing culture, not the tale of a few bad apples. Every time you turn over a rock, you find more vermin. We've only just learned from The Los Angeles Times that Joseph Schmitz, until last month the inspector general in charge of policing waste, fraud and abuse at the Pentagon, is himself the focus of a Congressional inquiry. He is accused of blocking the investigation of another Bush appointee who is suspected of siphoning Iraq reconstruction contracts to business cronies. At the Justice Department, the F.B.I. is looking into why a career prosecutor was demoted after he started probing alleged Abramoff illegality in Guam. According to The Los Angeles Times, the demoted prosecutor was then replaced by a Rove-approved Republican pol who just happened to be a cousin of a major target of another corruption investigation in Guam. We have to hope that the law will get to the bottom of these cases and start to connect the recurring dots. But while everyone is innocent until proved guilty, the overall pattern stinks and has for a long time. It's so filthy that the Republican caucus couldn't even find someone clean to name as Mr. DeLay's "temporary" stand-in as House majority leader last week. As The Washington Post reported in 2003, Roy Blunt, the Missouri congressman who got the job, was found trying to alter a homeland security bill with a last-minute provision that would have benefited Philip Morris-brand cigarettes. Not only had the tobacco giant contributed royally to Mr. Blunt's various campaign coffers, but both the congressman's girlfriend (now wife) and his son were Philip Morris lobbyists at the time. This is the culture that has given us the government we have. It's a government that has spent more of the taxpayers' money than any since L.B.J.'s (as calculated by the Cato Institute, a libertarian research institution), even as it rewards its benefactors with tax breaks and corporate pork. It's a government so used to lying that Mr. DeLay could say with a straight face that the cost of Katrina relief could not be offset by budget cuts because there was no governmental fat left to cut. It's the government that fostered the wholesale loss of American lives in both Iraq and on the Gulf Coast by putting cronyism above patriotism. The courts can punish crooks, but they can't reform democracy from the ground up, and the voters can't get into the game until 2006. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the key players both in the White House and in the leadership of both houses of Congress are either under investigation or joined at the hip to Messrs Rove, DeLay, Abramoff, Reed or Norquist. They seem to be hoping that some magical event - a sudden outbreak of peace and democracy in Iraq, the capture of Osama bin Laden, a hurricane affording better presidential photo ops than Rita - will turn things around. Dream on. The one notable anomaly is John McCain, who retains a genuine hunger for reform, a rage at the corruption around him and the compelling motive of his presidential ambitions to push him forward; it's his Indian Affairs Committee, after all, that exposed the hideous Abramoff cesspool to public view last year. The Democrats, bereft of leadership and ideas (though not of their own Beltway bandits), also harbor a number of would-be presidents, but they are busier positioning themselves politically than they are articulating actual positions that might indicate what a new governmental order would look like. While the Republican revolution is dead, it says everything about the power vacuum left in its wake that Geena Davis's fictional commander in chief has more traction, as measured in Nielsen ratings and press, than any of the real-life contenders for that job in D.C.

 

[darkboong]

It is amusing how certain sections of middle America seem to get so uptight about sexuality and who's banging who.

Well, we're the same in the UK. We don't like the idea of Tony Blair's smiling away as he bangs us up the ****, so we look elsewhere for our fix of morality. Eg: those poor bints from "Cuddles" in Birmingham. I lived in a house just down the road from there in years gone by. I can't recall anyone giving a **** back then. :S