The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Thursday, November 17, 2005
"Woodward, the Grinch who stole Fitzmas"
Aside from the fact that that headline in itself has to be the most entertaining of the day, the Decision 2008 story on the ramifications of Bob Woodward's revelation this week that he was "casually" told about Joe Wilson's wife being a CIA agent--well over a MONTH before Libby is accused of "leaking" this non-news--has blown the lid right off of Patrick Fitzgerald's case, especially the claim that the "chain of leaks" started with Libby. To get the most out of this excellent post, follow the links as well:
UPDATE 11/16/05 1:26 p.m.: This story’s too big for one post! Go to this one for the latest if you’re hungry for more…
The Washington Post has a blockbuster story for PlameGate junkies - Bob Woodward was told of Valarie Plame by an unamed official who was not Karl Rove, and not Lewis Libby, but who was, in fact, the first official to discuss Plame with a reporter:
Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.
In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.
Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 — one week after Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted in the investigation.
…Woodward’s testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official — not Libby — the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source.
The testimony, however, does not appear to shed new light on whether Libby is guilty of lying and obstructing justice in the nearly two-year-old probe or provide new insight into the role of senior Bush adviser Karl Rove, who remains under investigation.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove, said that Rove is not the unnamed official who told Woodward about Plame and that he did not discuss Plame with Woodward.
The complete statement by Woodward is here.
A longer quote is below the fold.
There’s more on the story, as always, at Memeorandum…
Just a random thought here: who gave Woodward the most access? Colin Powell’s State Department…second most: Rumsfeld’s team at Defense…
Kevin Drum: This is just bizarre…I can’t begin to make sense of this. The only thing that’s clear is that Mr. X must have had some reason to suddenly come clean, and that reason must have had something to do with Fitzgerald’s ongoing investigation. Perhaps Mr. X is a cooperating witness, or perhaps he’s someone who started to feel some heat and decided to come forward because he got scared. Who knows?
Captain Ed: “…[A] stunning new development in the Valerie Plame story, one that could unravel most of the investigation conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald.”
The despicable Armando from Kos is clearly worried, as he goes immediately on the attack: Sorry Bob, your credibility is shot. Walter Pincus gets the nod in a big way here. Question is why are you making that part up? The gossip angle?
UPDATE 11/16 6:45 a.m.: Betsy Newmark, guestblogging at Michelle Malkin’s: …[I]f Woodward and Pincus both testify to different memories of their conversations, how is that different from Libby and Russert both testifying to different memories of their conversations? If we can believe that the great Bob Woodward is misremembering when he told someone something, isn’t it possible that Tim Russert could misremember something, too? Or that Scooter Libby could? Why is one discrepancy worthy of indictment and the other one chalked up to “confusion about the timing”?
Thanks to the folks at Power Line for the link…
And the great Tom Maguire weighs in:
Fitzgerald blew it - he had White House phone logs, he had sign in sheets, he had Libby’s notes, he had testimony from many, many people, he had two years, and still, somehow, he did not include Bob Woodward on his contacts-of-interest list.
As to the specifics of the Libby indictment, a bold prosecutor might press ahead - arguably, Libby’s statement that he believed he was hearing about Plame for the first time when he spoke to Russert is still false, and arguably, Libby’s assertions that he sourced his knowledge to other reporters when he spoke to Miller and Cooper are also false.
But it will take a mighty straight-faced jury to focus exclusively on that if the defense can bring in a parade of reporters that may have, directly or indirectly, put the Wilson and wife story in Libby’s ear.
Macsmind: “Is There ANYBODY Who Didn’t Know About Plame?”
AJ Strata: “Libby’s lawyer is right - the Libby case took a massive broadside”…
The Left Coaster, repeating the mantra of those on the left:
What do Bob Woodward and Judy Miller have in common?
Both have been stooges for the administration.
Both have been complicit in the administration’s disinformation campaign against the American people.
Both are more concerned about being on the inside as Beltway Kool Kids than they are about being journalists.
Beltway Kos Kidz? Oh, Kool Kids, Kool Kids…
More from the Post story:
Downie said in an interview yesterday that Woodward told him about the contact to alert him to a possible story. He declined to say whether he was upset that Woodward withheld the information from him.
Downie said he could not explain why Woodward provided a tip about Wilson’s wife to Walter Pincus, a Post reporter writing about the subject, but did not pursue the matter when the CIA leak investigation began. He said Woodward has often worked under ground rules while doing research for his books that prevent him from naming sources or even using the information they provide until much later.
Woodward’s statement said he testified: “I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst.”
Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview,
Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.
“Are you kidding?” Pincus said. “I certainly would have remembered that.”
Pincus said Woodward may be confused about the timing and the exact nature of the conversation. He said he remembers Woodward making a vague mention to him in October 2003. That month, Pincus had written a story explaining how an administration source had contacted him about Wilson. He recalled Woodward telling him that Pincus was not the only person who had been contacted.
Woodward, who is preparing a third book on the Bush administration, has called Fitzgerald “a junkyard-dog prosecutor” who turns over every rock looking for evidence. The night before Fitzgerald announced Libby’s indictment, Woodward said he did not see evidence of criminal intent or of a substantial crime behind the leak.
“When the story comes out, I’m quite confident we’re going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter,” he told CNN’s Larry King.
Woodward also said in interviews this summer and fall that the damage done by Plame’s name being revealed in the media was “quite minimal.”
“When I think all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great,” he told National Public Radio this summer.
Hmmm...wonder if Harry Reid wants to close the Senate down again over this one...
UPDATE: Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus, who has never been accused of being a right-winger, was interviewed yesterday by Hugh Hewitt. Via Radio Blogger's excellent work, we have the transcript of this. Kaus comes out and says that he thinks that Colin Powell (left of center hero and constant thorn in Bush's side) was the original leaker. Check it out (I have added some emphasis):
HH: Joined now by Mickey Kaus, he of Slate and Kausfiles.com, one of the country's preeminent authorities on the mess known at Plamegate. Mickey, what was your reaction when you heard Bob Woodward's admission today?
MK: My reaction was this has so many ramifications, I can't possibly track them all down.
HH: Let's start, though, with the fact that he kept this from his editor. What do you, as a longtime Washington journalist, think about that?
MK: That doesn't bother me at all. It's the same charge that was made against Judith Miller, and I thought it was bogus with respect to her. I don't tell my editor everything. And if you want to keep it secret, you make a practice of not telling people, even people you trust. Why worry that they'll somehow accidentally leak it?
HH: Even when people are going to the grand jury, and being accused of committing crimes, and this investigation is far-ranging, and you know for a fact that a month before Bob's column came out, you already knew? Doesn't that endanger people of wrongful prosecution, Mickey Kaus?
MK: I don't think it was endangered. I mean, it would have been a crime for Scooter Libby or anybody to disclose Plame's status, even if Woodward already knew. Woodward hadn't published it. He was a dead end.
HH: Okay.
MK: So Fitzgerald's investigating crimes. So presumably we find out the truth, and indict people. And if somebody's wrongfully indicted, then you can step in.
HH: Well, that's what somebody did at this point. They consider this leak to be so significant. Who do you think talked to Woodward?
MK: Powell. That's who I think, if I had to bet.
HH: Oh, that's interesting.
MK: I mean, he's buddies with Powell. He's apparently hinted that it was an ex-official.
HH: Yes, he did.
MK: And Powell is the logical ex-official. Other speculation focuses on Cheney, just because he's the bogeyman of the hour. And also Bush himself. The only evidence of Bush himself would be that there was...remember there was that mysterious meeting between Fitzgerald and Bush's lawyer right before the indictment. You know, why was that going on? One explanation might be that they were talking about this.
HH: Now tell me a little bit more about the significance for the Rove, get Rove movement. This blows that up, doesn't it?
MK: The get Rove movement was sort of running out of steam anyway. The charges against Rove are focused entirely, as far as I can see, on perjury. Keep in mind the basic thing is disclosing this woman's identity does not appear to have been a crime, because there was a source for the Novak article that eventually made public her name. Fitzgerald knows who that source was. We don't know who the source was, but we know it wasn't Rove or Libby. And Fitzgerald has not indicted that person, so obviously, he feels that just merely leaking the name to a reporter was not a crime. So they're focusing on perjury, and did the people try to cover up this non-crime.
HH: Now Mickey Kaus, step back for a second. We are now way into the deep grass, and people are listening on the radio, and they're saying what is this all about.
MK: There's a lot more grass to go.
HH: I know, but what is it all about? It's not Watergate.
MK: It's all about that in the course of discrediting, quite understandably discrediting an administration critic, it came out that the critic's wife worked for the CIA, and it turns out that she was a semi-undercover agent. So all the CIA people are rightly annoyed that this leak occurred. The left has accused the Bush administration of maliciously leaking her name to punish the critic. And there is a law against leaking the names of covert CIA agents. And so, a special prosecutor was called in to see if anybody in the administration violated the law by leaking her name.
HH: And that's all blown to sky high at this point.
MK: Not blown sky high, but it's been pretty much discredited. Certainly the idea that they maliciously outed her, in order to punish Wilson, doesn't seem to be true. And it does seem to be true that they were treating the information very gingerly, and yet Libby decided to go ahead and leak it to Judith Miller. So, he had some consciousness that it wasn't just like harmless information.
HH: But it was out there in the ether. I mean, it was out there for thirty days, and if Woodward, who else? Now let me ask you, if Powell is a possible, does that tell us something about why Larry Wilkinson, his former chief of staff, has been out blasting at the cabal in the White House?
MK: Explain that to me. I mean, a preemptive offensive?
HH: Yes, yes. Going out there and just throwing more dust in the air, and talking about the cabal in the White House, and trying to get a thousand knives unsheathed in ten different directions.
MK: There's so many other explanations for that. This was time for the realists to come out of the woodwork and trash the Iraq war. That's why we had Brent Scowcroft come out in the New Yorker and trash the war. And you know, if you're somewhat cowardly, you would wait until the war was unpopular before you trashed it definitively. So now Scowcroft, to his credit, did write an op-ed before the war started. So he's much less pusillanimous than...
HH: Yes, he's been against it...he's been a realist since 1991. Now Woodward is quoted today by Howard Kurtz. Have you read the Howard Kurtz piece yet?
MK: I haven't, no.
HH: Let me tell you what he told Howard. "I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed." You know, that could be a direct quote from Richard Nixon in 1974. It's Woodward is Nixon. And now, Rather and Woodward have both become their prey from thirty years ago. It's just odd.
MK: Well, yeah, except I would do the same thing. And I would venture to say that you would, too. The problem with Nixon is that if you listen to the tapes, he was running an incredibly corrupt, sleazy administration. Woodward isn't doing that.
HH: Well, I don't know. I have to disagree with you about that. You know, I let you off the first time, but let's come back around. Woodward is sitting there aware that Bob Novak is not the source for this, that someone else has put that out there. And he lets Fitzgerald go down...
MK: By Bob Novak, you mean Libby?
HH: Novak's column comes out, and it starts this witch hunt for who leaked to Novak...
MK: Right.
HH: But Woodward knew thirty days before Novak printed his column from a source other than Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, and he sat there and did nothing. I think that's profoundly indifferent to justice.
MK: It is, if Woodward knows that...maybe if Woodward knows that his source is also Novak's source. But I think that Woodward doesn't know that. I don't think Woodward knows who Novak's source is. I think somebody told him something and he didn't do anything with it. And it doesn't affect the prosecution one way or the other.
HH: Oh, but it has to affect the prosecution, otherwise Fitzgerald would not have talked to him today, or on Monday. It has to matter a great deal, or why put him under oath and take his deposition?
MK: I don't know. I have a little bit of evidence that it's relevant to the case, Hugh. And I'm not shouting...I haven't put it on my blog that I have this evidence.
HH: Uh-oh. Let's call Fitzgerald...
MK: Hey, prosecutor. Subpoena me.
HH: I think we should. I think we should get word to him and the transcript of this conversation.
MK: I mean, that's a ten thousand dollar lawyer bill right off the...
HH: Well, that is true, but would you let someone go to jail, or get tried. I mean, it's ruined Libby already.
MK: That would explain why Woodward has been so against the prosecution.
HH: Yes.
MK: And he has had some residual guilt that he let it go forward, so he was trying to speak out against it.
HH: But he wasn't telling the truth as he spoke out, because he wasn't revealing his motive. I mean, I think it deeply tarnishes him.
MK: I think he had both motives. I think he genuinely thinks it's a misguided prosecution, as I assume you do also.
HH: Yes, yes. I think it's...
MK: So why can't he go on national television and say that?
HH: Because he could have ended it. He could have put a knife in it a long time ago. Mickey Kaus, I will read your analysis at Kausfiles.com later tonight. Thank you, Mickey.
UPDATE 11/16/05 1:26 p.m.: This story’s too big for one post! Go to this one for the latest if you’re hungry for more…
The Washington Post has a blockbuster story for PlameGate junkies - Bob Woodward was told of Valarie Plame by an unamed official who was not Karl Rove, and not Lewis Libby, but who was, in fact, the first official to discuss Plame with a reporter:
Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.
In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.
Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 — one week after Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted in the investigation.
…Woodward’s testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official — not Libby — the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source.
The testimony, however, does not appear to shed new light on whether Libby is guilty of lying and obstructing justice in the nearly two-year-old probe or provide new insight into the role of senior Bush adviser Karl Rove, who remains under investigation.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove, said that Rove is not the unnamed official who told Woodward about Plame and that he did not discuss Plame with Woodward.
The complete statement by Woodward is here.
A longer quote is below the fold.
There’s more on the story, as always, at Memeorandum…
Just a random thought here: who gave Woodward the most access? Colin Powell’s State Department…second most: Rumsfeld’s team at Defense…
Kevin Drum: This is just bizarre…I can’t begin to make sense of this. The only thing that’s clear is that Mr. X must have had some reason to suddenly come clean, and that reason must have had something to do with Fitzgerald’s ongoing investigation. Perhaps Mr. X is a cooperating witness, or perhaps he’s someone who started to feel some heat and decided to come forward because he got scared. Who knows?
Captain Ed: “…[A] stunning new development in the Valerie Plame story, one that could unravel most of the investigation conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald.”
The despicable Armando from Kos is clearly worried, as he goes immediately on the attack: Sorry Bob, your credibility is shot. Walter Pincus gets the nod in a big way here. Question is why are you making that part up? The gossip angle?
UPDATE 11/16 6:45 a.m.: Betsy Newmark, guestblogging at Michelle Malkin’s: …[I]f Woodward and Pincus both testify to different memories of their conversations, how is that different from Libby and Russert both testifying to different memories of their conversations? If we can believe that the great Bob Woodward is misremembering when he told someone something, isn’t it possible that Tim Russert could misremember something, too? Or that Scooter Libby could? Why is one discrepancy worthy of indictment and the other one chalked up to “confusion about the timing”?
Thanks to the folks at Power Line for the link…
And the great Tom Maguire weighs in:
Fitzgerald blew it - he had White House phone logs, he had sign in sheets, he had Libby’s notes, he had testimony from many, many people, he had two years, and still, somehow, he did not include Bob Woodward on his contacts-of-interest list.
As to the specifics of the Libby indictment, a bold prosecutor might press ahead - arguably, Libby’s statement that he believed he was hearing about Plame for the first time when he spoke to Russert is still false, and arguably, Libby’s assertions that he sourced his knowledge to other reporters when he spoke to Miller and Cooper are also false.
But it will take a mighty straight-faced jury to focus exclusively on that if the defense can bring in a parade of reporters that may have, directly or indirectly, put the Wilson and wife story in Libby’s ear.
Macsmind: “Is There ANYBODY Who Didn’t Know About Plame?”
AJ Strata: “Libby’s lawyer is right - the Libby case took a massive broadside”…
The Left Coaster, repeating the mantra of those on the left:
What do Bob Woodward and Judy Miller have in common?
Both have been stooges for the administration.
Both have been complicit in the administration’s disinformation campaign against the American people.
Both are more concerned about being on the inside as Beltway Kool Kids than they are about being journalists.
Beltway Kos Kidz? Oh, Kool Kids, Kool Kids…
More from the Post story:
Downie said in an interview yesterday that Woodward told him about the contact to alert him to a possible story. He declined to say whether he was upset that Woodward withheld the information from him.
Downie said he could not explain why Woodward provided a tip about Wilson’s wife to Walter Pincus, a Post reporter writing about the subject, but did not pursue the matter when the CIA leak investigation began. He said Woodward has often worked under ground rules while doing research for his books that prevent him from naming sources or even using the information they provide until much later.
Woodward’s statement said he testified: “I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst.”
Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview,
Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.
“Are you kidding?” Pincus said. “I certainly would have remembered that.”
Pincus said Woodward may be confused about the timing and the exact nature of the conversation. He said he remembers Woodward making a vague mention to him in October 2003. That month, Pincus had written a story explaining how an administration source had contacted him about Wilson. He recalled Woodward telling him that Pincus was not the only person who had been contacted.
Woodward, who is preparing a third book on the Bush administration, has called Fitzgerald “a junkyard-dog prosecutor” who turns over every rock looking for evidence. The night before Fitzgerald announced Libby’s indictment, Woodward said he did not see evidence of criminal intent or of a substantial crime behind the leak.
“When the story comes out, I’m quite confident we’re going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter,” he told CNN’s Larry King.
Woodward also said in interviews this summer and fall that the damage done by Plame’s name being revealed in the media was “quite minimal.”
“When I think all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great,” he told National Public Radio this summer.
Hmmm...wonder if Harry Reid wants to close the Senate down again over this one...
UPDATE: Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus, who has never been accused of being a right-winger, was interviewed yesterday by Hugh Hewitt. Via Radio Blogger's excellent work, we have the transcript of this. Kaus comes out and says that he thinks that Colin Powell (left of center hero and constant thorn in Bush's side) was the original leaker. Check it out (I have added some emphasis):
HH: Joined now by Mickey Kaus, he of Slate and Kausfiles.com, one of the country's preeminent authorities on the mess known at Plamegate. Mickey, what was your reaction when you heard Bob Woodward's admission today?
MK: My reaction was this has so many ramifications, I can't possibly track them all down.
HH: Let's start, though, with the fact that he kept this from his editor. What do you, as a longtime Washington journalist, think about that?
MK: That doesn't bother me at all. It's the same charge that was made against Judith Miller, and I thought it was bogus with respect to her. I don't tell my editor everything. And if you want to keep it secret, you make a practice of not telling people, even people you trust. Why worry that they'll somehow accidentally leak it?
HH: Even when people are going to the grand jury, and being accused of committing crimes, and this investigation is far-ranging, and you know for a fact that a month before Bob's column came out, you already knew? Doesn't that endanger people of wrongful prosecution, Mickey Kaus?
MK: I don't think it was endangered. I mean, it would have been a crime for Scooter Libby or anybody to disclose Plame's status, even if Woodward already knew. Woodward hadn't published it. He was a dead end.
HH: Okay.
MK: So Fitzgerald's investigating crimes. So presumably we find out the truth, and indict people. And if somebody's wrongfully indicted, then you can step in.
HH: Well, that's what somebody did at this point. They consider this leak to be so significant. Who do you think talked to Woodward?
MK: Powell. That's who I think, if I had to bet.
HH: Oh, that's interesting.
MK: I mean, he's buddies with Powell. He's apparently hinted that it was an ex-official.
HH: Yes, he did.
MK: And Powell is the logical ex-official. Other speculation focuses on Cheney, just because he's the bogeyman of the hour. And also Bush himself. The only evidence of Bush himself would be that there was...remember there was that mysterious meeting between Fitzgerald and Bush's lawyer right before the indictment. You know, why was that going on? One explanation might be that they were talking about this.
HH: Now tell me a little bit more about the significance for the Rove, get Rove movement. This blows that up, doesn't it?
MK: The get Rove movement was sort of running out of steam anyway. The charges against Rove are focused entirely, as far as I can see, on perjury. Keep in mind the basic thing is disclosing this woman's identity does not appear to have been a crime, because there was a source for the Novak article that eventually made public her name. Fitzgerald knows who that source was. We don't know who the source was, but we know it wasn't Rove or Libby. And Fitzgerald has not indicted that person, so obviously, he feels that just merely leaking the name to a reporter was not a crime. So they're focusing on perjury, and did the people try to cover up this non-crime.
HH: Now Mickey Kaus, step back for a second. We are now way into the deep grass, and people are listening on the radio, and they're saying what is this all about.
MK: There's a lot more grass to go.
HH: I know, but what is it all about? It's not Watergate.
MK: It's all about that in the course of discrediting, quite understandably discrediting an administration critic, it came out that the critic's wife worked for the CIA, and it turns out that she was a semi-undercover agent. So all the CIA people are rightly annoyed that this leak occurred. The left has accused the Bush administration of maliciously leaking her name to punish the critic. And there is a law against leaking the names of covert CIA agents. And so, a special prosecutor was called in to see if anybody in the administration violated the law by leaking her name.
HH: And that's all blown to sky high at this point.
MK: Not blown sky high, but it's been pretty much discredited. Certainly the idea that they maliciously outed her, in order to punish Wilson, doesn't seem to be true. And it does seem to be true that they were treating the information very gingerly, and yet Libby decided to go ahead and leak it to Judith Miller. So, he had some consciousness that it wasn't just like harmless information.
HH: But it was out there in the ether. I mean, it was out there for thirty days, and if Woodward, who else? Now let me ask you, if Powell is a possible, does that tell us something about why Larry Wilkinson, his former chief of staff, has been out blasting at the cabal in the White House?
MK: Explain that to me. I mean, a preemptive offensive?
HH: Yes, yes. Going out there and just throwing more dust in the air, and talking about the cabal in the White House, and trying to get a thousand knives unsheathed in ten different directions.
MK: There's so many other explanations for that. This was time for the realists to come out of the woodwork and trash the Iraq war. That's why we had Brent Scowcroft come out in the New Yorker and trash the war. And you know, if you're somewhat cowardly, you would wait until the war was unpopular before you trashed it definitively. So now Scowcroft, to his credit, did write an op-ed before the war started. So he's much less pusillanimous than...
HH: Yes, he's been against it...he's been a realist since 1991. Now Woodward is quoted today by Howard Kurtz. Have you read the Howard Kurtz piece yet?
MK: I haven't, no.
HH: Let me tell you what he told Howard. "I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed." You know, that could be a direct quote from Richard Nixon in 1974. It's Woodward is Nixon. And now, Rather and Woodward have both become their prey from thirty years ago. It's just odd.
MK: Well, yeah, except I would do the same thing. And I would venture to say that you would, too. The problem with Nixon is that if you listen to the tapes, he was running an incredibly corrupt, sleazy administration. Woodward isn't doing that.
HH: Well, I don't know. I have to disagree with you about that. You know, I let you off the first time, but let's come back around. Woodward is sitting there aware that Bob Novak is not the source for this, that someone else has put that out there. And he lets Fitzgerald go down...
MK: By Bob Novak, you mean Libby?
HH: Novak's column comes out, and it starts this witch hunt for who leaked to Novak...
MK: Right.
HH: But Woodward knew thirty days before Novak printed his column from a source other than Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, and he sat there and did nothing. I think that's profoundly indifferent to justice.
MK: It is, if Woodward knows that...maybe if Woodward knows that his source is also Novak's source. But I think that Woodward doesn't know that. I don't think Woodward knows who Novak's source is. I think somebody told him something and he didn't do anything with it. And it doesn't affect the prosecution one way or the other.
HH: Oh, but it has to affect the prosecution, otherwise Fitzgerald would not have talked to him today, or on Monday. It has to matter a great deal, or why put him under oath and take his deposition?
MK: I don't know. I have a little bit of evidence that it's relevant to the case, Hugh. And I'm not shouting...I haven't put it on my blog that I have this evidence.
HH: Uh-oh. Let's call Fitzgerald...
MK: Hey, prosecutor. Subpoena me.
HH: I think we should. I think we should get word to him and the transcript of this conversation.
MK: I mean, that's a ten thousand dollar lawyer bill right off the...
HH: Well, that is true, but would you let someone go to jail, or get tried. I mean, it's ruined Libby already.
MK: That would explain why Woodward has been so against the prosecution.
HH: Yes.
MK: And he has had some residual guilt that he let it go forward, so he was trying to speak out against it.
HH: But he wasn't telling the truth as he spoke out, because he wasn't revealing his motive. I mean, I think it deeply tarnishes him.
MK: I think he had both motives. I think he genuinely thinks it's a misguided prosecution, as I assume you do also.
HH: Yes, yes. I think it's...
MK: So why can't he go on national television and say that?
HH: Because he could have ended it. He could have put a knife in it a long time ago. Mickey Kaus, I will read your analysis at Kausfiles.com later tonight. Thank you, Mickey.
