Category: i. lewis libby

Everything But the Kitchen Cabinet - No Wait, That Too

WaPo has all but fingered Mr. Green, in the library, with the candlestick. Stay with me now: Rove is saying he first learned of Plame's identity from Libby, not from any classified dossier stuck conspicuously between the seat cushions on Air Force One. He also got the same dish from an anonymous second party in the White House. But before all this, Rove knew only that Wilson's wife (at the time her name was unrevealed) worked at the CIA, which information came to him -- or so he claims -- by way of the press. This means that the first few drops of this leak were dripped either by Libby himself, or by that anonymous second party in the White House. Or by someone else entirely. At this point, my money's on Margaret Spellings. That affably hip homeroom demeanor has always struck me as a little too perfect. And we now know she can't have been terribly busy leaving no child behind. Follow the schoolteacher.

But many unknowns remain. What role did Hannah play? What, if any, role was played by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer? Who was the second source for Robert D. Novak, the columnist who first disclosed Plame's name and role in July 2003? Who was the White House official who leaked word about Wilson's wife to The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, who has never publicly revealed his source?

More important, who the hell is refilling Fitzgerald's Ritalin prescription? --MICHAEL WEISS

Rove Told Jury Libby May Have Been His Source In Leak Case [WaPo]

READ MORE: dick cheney , i. lewis libby , jo wilson , john hannah , karl rove , margaret spellings , patrick fitzgerald , plamegate

The Paddy Wagon: Then and Now

At just 45 years-old, Patrick Fitzgerald may be only a hatchling of an independent prosecutor, but his deposition skills have been forced to mature rather quickly. This is because they haven't always been used for good; they were formerly used for even better. And once again, African intrigue related to occluded intelligence about Saddam's WMD program was at the heart of the matter.

Weekly Standard reporter Stephen Hayes makes a passing observation in his book The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America that no one can fault as controversial. On page 73, Hayes writes that it was Fitzgerald who was the U.S. attorney tasked with interrogating one Jamal Ahmed al Fadl shortly after the 1998 East African embassy bombings. The subject of the Q&A was bin Laden's ties to the Sudanese regime, which was also being veted for naughty purposes by you-know-who at around the same time. But so who's this al Fadl character?

The keywitness for the U.S. government... a founding member of al Qaeda who was for years one of bin Laden's most trusted deputies. Among the duties he listed were running al Qaeda's front companies; arranging assistance for al Qaeda affiliate groups from the Philippines, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere; making sure the Sudanese government repaid its debts to al Qaeda; planning assassination attempts on political opponents of the ruling Sudanese political party, the National Islamic Front; and attempting to obtain uranium for bin Laden.

From that degree of menace to the present one... Someone ought to ask Patrick, when this is all over, which case he found more exhilarating. Or lamentable. --MICHAEL WEISS

The Connection [The Weekly Standard]
The Prosecutor: The Mystery Man [Newsweek]

READ MORE: i. lewis libby , judith miller , karl rove , niger yellowcake , patrick fitzgerald , plamegate

*BREAKING* The Turn of The Lew

So either Libby's a moron or he's a Straussian genius of recondite literary sleuthing. Where else have the "aspens turned" before?
Using to the latest in forensic science -- Amazon's "Search Inside This Book" function -- WonkCentral has cracked the Da Scooter Code. Look no further. The winks, the nudges, the war-ravaged pillow talk: It's all in here.

This is an excerpt from a wondrously titled book, The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel, by Edward Abbey. Redlined for your eyebrow-raising enjoyment:

And this is from another fiction with the nice Khmer Rougey name Year Zero, by Jeff Long:

Backcover description of this apocalyptic potboiler reads:

In Jerusalem, an American archaeologist working on Project Year Zero -- the search for the historical Jesus -- crosses the line between science and theft when he helps plunder an old Roman landfill beneath the crucifixion grounds known as Golgotha. Nathan Lee Swift's crime will have devastating consequences. When an ancient relic is opened on the black market, a two-thousand-year-old plague is unleashed--and the dying begins.

As the pestilence threatens to wipe out humanity, he finds a chance for redemption--by finding the cure. Skirting the edges of civilization, Nathan Lee sets out to find his younger daughter and travels to Los Alamos, where a desperate tactic has been adopted: the use of human lab rats cloned from Project Year Zero remains. Now Nathan Lee will come face-to-face with one special cloned human who may hold the key to salvation--in more ways than one. Patient Zero claims to remember who he is...

[Wait for it... --ed]

And his name is Jesus Christ.

Prison seems very unfair. A better punishment would be the Nobel Prize. I mean, "Cheyenne Mountain" -- come the fuck on. Give it up, Pinter. --MICHAEL WEISS

Year Zero, page 378 [Amazon]
The Fool's Progress, page 364 [Amazon]

READ MORE: i. lewis libby , joseph wilson , judy miller , new york times , plamegate , valerie plame

---