The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Big Sea Change Inside the White House
Thomas Lifson has some excellent commentary up on The American Thinker (one of my daily stops), about the changes that the White House is making--for example their excellent decision to name Tony Snow as press secretary--which are great signs for the fall election season...and for the country in general. I've highlighted some of the excerpts below in bold to emphasize certain points:
Gears are shifting at the White House. We are moving into election mode. Expect the national conversation to change.
The White House has a new spokesman, Tony Snow, whose appointment is being confirmed by his former employer, Fox News. He will be doing a very different task than his predecessor. Scott McClellan’s job was to absorb press abuse and communicate the message given him.
Tony Snow’s new job will be to grab hold of the narrative framework, and change it. His long service in the DC press corps and his inherent qualities of intelligence, articulateness, and sheer likability equip him superbly for this job.
And there is an entirely new subject likely to become a major topic of conversation, whether the media heavyweights want it or not. CIA officials who have violated their legal obligation to protect classified information and harmed the national interest are under investigation, and one of them has been let go.
The firing of Mary O. McCarthy has unleashed a torrent of data-gathering and speculation, some of it highly informed, on the existence and extent of ties among enemies of the President. The torrent of speculation exactly corresponds to the torrent of leaks which have bedeviled Bush presidency. Nothing is yet proven, but McCarthy served in the Clinton White House and then took a curious job in the Bush administration, in the Inspector General’s Office of the CIA.
Such a move is not explicable by careerism. This is an Internal Affairs dead-end sort of job, one that wins enemies not friends. But it is a job in which complaints about irregularities (justified or not) come across the desk with regularity.
Career suicide, but perfect for a would-be leaker intent on undermining a presidency and getting the opposition party candidate elected president. If there was planning to this, who was involved?
Many observers noticed at the time President Bush took office that a coterie of Clinton appointees remained in the bureaucracy. An unusually large number converted from political appointee status to bureaucratic status. Mary O. McCarthy was one of them.
Is there a ring of leakers infesting the national security apparatus? Hard evidence is lacking right now. As far as the public knows. We have been told that many other investigations within the CIA are underway. There are serious criminal penalties associated with leaking classified data, so once caught, there are incentives for leakers to implicate others who might be known by them to be engaging in violations of national security regulations.
We still don’t know if others will be charged, but meanwhile there is one aspect of McCarthy’s previous responsibilities well worth noting. Working in the CIA’s Inspector General’s office, she must have been involved in the bizarre referral of the Valerie Plame case to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation. Clarice Feldman has demonstrated that leaking of Plame’s name could not have been a criminal act.
Yet the CIA made the referral, after which there was no option but to proceed. To do otherwise would have caused howls of protest over a cover-up. Did McCarthy set-up the whole unnecessary investigation, resulting in the indictment of Scooter Libby?
The Libby case, which came from the referral, resulted in the jailing of a New York Times reporter, and the general approval by much of the press of the process of tracking down leaks, and getting aggressive with reporters. These tactics can and will be used to track down other leakers in the CIA and elsewhere – who may not be all be Republicans this time around.
Funny how that is working out. The press made a bad bet.
Other new appointees are joining the Bush team. They can be expected to help change the tone of politics as well. But change starts at the top. George W. Bush is shifting his own mode of politicking. He has done this before with great success.
There is much more; read it all here. There is new reason for optimism in Washington--the chickens may just be coming home to roost--and it's about time.
Gears are shifting at the White House. We are moving into election mode. Expect the national conversation to change.
The White House has a new spokesman, Tony Snow, whose appointment is being confirmed by his former employer, Fox News. He will be doing a very different task than his predecessor. Scott McClellan’s job was to absorb press abuse and communicate the message given him.
Tony Snow’s new job will be to grab hold of the narrative framework, and change it. His long service in the DC press corps and his inherent qualities of intelligence, articulateness, and sheer likability equip him superbly for this job.
And there is an entirely new subject likely to become a major topic of conversation, whether the media heavyweights want it or not. CIA officials who have violated their legal obligation to protect classified information and harmed the national interest are under investigation, and one of them has been let go.
The firing of Mary O. McCarthy has unleashed a torrent of data-gathering and speculation, some of it highly informed, on the existence and extent of ties among enemies of the President. The torrent of speculation exactly corresponds to the torrent of leaks which have bedeviled Bush presidency. Nothing is yet proven, but McCarthy served in the Clinton White House and then took a curious job in the Bush administration, in the Inspector General’s Office of the CIA.
Such a move is not explicable by careerism. This is an Internal Affairs dead-end sort of job, one that wins enemies not friends. But it is a job in which complaints about irregularities (justified or not) come across the desk with regularity.
Career suicide, but perfect for a would-be leaker intent on undermining a presidency and getting the opposition party candidate elected president. If there was planning to this, who was involved?
Many observers noticed at the time President Bush took office that a coterie of Clinton appointees remained in the bureaucracy. An unusually large number converted from political appointee status to bureaucratic status. Mary O. McCarthy was one of them.
Is there a ring of leakers infesting the national security apparatus? Hard evidence is lacking right now. As far as the public knows. We have been told that many other investigations within the CIA are underway. There are serious criminal penalties associated with leaking classified data, so once caught, there are incentives for leakers to implicate others who might be known by them to be engaging in violations of national security regulations.
We still don’t know if others will be charged, but meanwhile there is one aspect of McCarthy’s previous responsibilities well worth noting. Working in the CIA’s Inspector General’s office, she must have been involved in the bizarre referral of the Valerie Plame case to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation. Clarice Feldman has demonstrated that leaking of Plame’s name could not have been a criminal act.
Yet the CIA made the referral, after which there was no option but to proceed. To do otherwise would have caused howls of protest over a cover-up. Did McCarthy set-up the whole unnecessary investigation, resulting in the indictment of Scooter Libby?
The Libby case, which came from the referral, resulted in the jailing of a New York Times reporter, and the general approval by much of the press of the process of tracking down leaks, and getting aggressive with reporters. These tactics can and will be used to track down other leakers in the CIA and elsewhere – who may not be all be Republicans this time around.
Funny how that is working out. The press made a bad bet.
Other new appointees are joining the Bush team. They can be expected to help change the tone of politics as well. But change starts at the top. George W. Bush is shifting his own mode of politicking. He has done this before with great success.
There is much more; read it all here. There is new reason for optimism in Washington--the chickens may just be coming home to roost--and it's about time.
