plame investigation

Silly Fun With Leak Story Headlines

The big news of the day, which we blogged about earlier, is Scooter Libby’s testimony that President Bush himself authorized the leak of a classified NIE.

We’re too immature too resist the cheap-and-easy headline humor. Here’s the Times headline:

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Actually, didn’t Bush have to get permission from Condi?

And then there’s the Post headline:

washington%20post%20leak%20headline.JPG

Yeah, that’s right — the Posties threw in the word “data” before “leak.” Clearly they know that juvenile bloggers are watching their every move. Those guys are such killjoys! Why do they have to make our jobs so hard?

(Yes, we’re getting an early start on our Friday.)

Earlier: Scooter: “Bush Said I Wouldn’t Get In Trouble!”
Bad Pun Day at the Metro Section
Foreign Affairs: A Little Ditty About Condi and Jack

The Littlest Leaker

The interwebs are abuzz with the story of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame’s five year old son, who, in an adorable display of his lack of media savvy, gushed to a reporter, “My daddy’s famous, my mommy’s a secret spy,” as the Yellowcake clan headed out on vacation to an “undisclosed location.”

The article seems like a highly silly way to keep the Plame story alive, and, yes, if you think Drudge linking to it is another demonstration of his overheated tendency to read everything into anything, you are, of course, correct. Only time will tell if we get to see the little tyke bearing the pressure of Patrick Fitzgerald’s relentless Mametian interrogatives and longwinded sports metaphors.

And to think that it’s the adult defendant in the case that’s the one named Scooter. — DCEIVER

CIA couple outed by 5-year-old son [Reuters]

Woodward Gets Wood?

How could we have missed this in last night’s Larry King interview with Bob Woodward? Speaking of what happened after he realized he had a — ah — “piece” of something regarding the Plame case, he told Larry, “And all of the juices, my wife Elsa told me this is you could almost just almost hear it the reporting news juices running.”

We worry about the Post. First, Richard Cohen gets “sexually excited” about a possible change in Bush policy, now: Woodward juice. Bet Patrick Fitzgerald has to sleep on the wet spot.

Interview With Bob Woodward [CNN]
EARLIER: Laura Bush and the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations [Wonkette]

Inside the Bubble: Wayward Woodward

• “For the sake of a new book, Woodward has evidently been willing to protect the American public from various revelations about a government intent on destroying the republic. What a difference a few decades make.” [Mother Jones]
• Jeff Toobin says the only thing that can help the White House with PlameGate is if “the whole thing just goes away and people forget about it. That’s not going to happen.” [CNN]
• Gives a whole new meaning to “probes”: “If [reporters] keep going into the secret world they can come under the gravitational pull of another planet— the people in power, the secret-makers themselves. They’re still sending back their reports, but have ‘left’ our universe, so to speak.” Bob’s become an alien. [WashingtonPost.com]
• Walter Pincus’s refusal to back Woodward’s story makes Bob glum: “I did tell him; we have different memories,” Woodward said, his voice sounding sad and hurt. [VV]

Remainders: The Opera

• Plamegate, the opera: “Patrick Fitzgerald kicks things off with ‘Tell me a story,’ followed by the trio with Judith Miller and Matt Cooper ‘I’ve got a subpoena.’ Cooper then has his show stopping duet with Time editor Norman Pearlstine, ‘We’ve run out of options,’ followed by his aria ‘I have been released.’” [Living in a Media World]
• Says Maureen Dowd: “The New York Times is the most fun you can have for a dollar.” She’s even cheaper than we thought. [Daily Texan via Romenesko]
• Anonymity for me but not for thee: Posties bitch about leaks from within the paper. [FishbowlDC]
• Real life: “Free Speech Coalition Files Lawsuit Challenging Utah’s ‘Anti-Spam’ Registry;” the Onion: “Anti-Spam Legislation Opposed By Powerful Penis-Enlargement Lobby” [US Newswire, Onion]
• Red Cross president: “Some people would come home and have a martini. I do beading.” [WP]

Who Woodward’s Source Isn’t

AP reports that Dick Cheney was not the anonymous source who told Bob Woodward Valerie Plame’s identity, according to an anonymous source. Jeez, those guys sure can keep a secret. Now.

Of course, some are saying that the anonymous source ruling out Cheney is Woodward himself. He didn’t want to be named as the source because then the information wouldn’t be credible.

Cheney Didn’t Inform Woodward, Source Says [AP]

The Mixed-Up Files of Mr. Bob Woodward

Bloggers are beside themselves over Bob Woodward’s revelation that he was told by a “senior administration official” who Valerie Plame was nearly a month before Bob Novak first identified her in his column. There are many theories as to why Woodward would come forth with this information at this time. Kevin Drum theorizes that the blockbuster article comes only because the SAO tipped his hand to Patrick Fitzgerald: “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.” We have another theory: Bob Woodward had not been on television in the last week or so.

On a related note: “Are you kidding?” is the new “double super-secret background”:

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.”

Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago [WP]
PLAME UPDATE [The Political Animal]

Help Wanted: Government Seeks Reporter-Lackey. Experience a Plus

Judith Miller “said that in the few hours since her departure had been made public, she had received several offers ‘of all kinds’ for future employment, which she declined to specify.” — NYT, 11/10/05

We got a sneak peak at some possibilities:

• Aspen inspector
• Maitre’d at St. Regis
• Webmaster, AhmadChalabi.com
• Finding Nicole Simpson’s real killer
• Snipe hunter
• Tracking down this “Valerie Flame” woman who seems to be the source of the trouble

Also, we understand they’re still looking for WMDs.

Times Reporter Agrees to Leave the Paper [NYT]

Bush’s Butterstick

There’s been a lot talk lately about whether or not Bush should fire Karl Rove in an effort to stop his precipitous slide down into approval rating hell. (Also it would be what he promised to do.) Say he does — what then? How do you get people to fall back in love with a White House that’s grown distant, cold and ugly?

We think we know:

Remainders: Redemption Is Next to Godliness

• “Is redemption available to everyone in Washington today? Absolutely yes,” said Joe Lockhart. Whew. [NYT]
• Stephen Hadley on Scooter: “I will miss him as a colleague and as a friend.” We know, we know… his laugh, his little habit of straightening my tie, his adorable ability to smear administration enemies… [Fox]
• Is that a handkerchief in the President’s pocket or is he just not happy to see me? [AP]
• Arianna goes all weak in the knees for Chris Matthews’s Hardball. [HuffPo]
• Anthony Williams to sign change in DC “zero tolerance” DUI law! Now: .05 tolerance! Have another round, kids. [NBC4]
• Hey, ya think John McCain’s running for President in ‘08? [StraightTalkAmerica.com]

Scooter Libby’s Reign of Fire

From this afternoon’s Los Angeles Times (click for full page):

The rioting, of course, comes after the pardon.

Scott McClellan, POLITICAL GENIUS

He's About To Cry Silly John Podhoretz: Don’t you read the Note? You’re not supposed to actually identify who the source was for today’s blistering Rove’s-future-in-doubt story in the Washington Post. You’re just supposed to say,“‘It’s SO obvious who those quotes are from,’ with a small shake of the head and a knowing half smile.” (And here we thought all of DC’s journalists had just developed palsy.) Granted, the shake of the head is hard to pull off online, but maybe you should have invented an emoticon for it or something, instead of posting this brilliant thesis: WH press puppy “Scott McClellan’s messy fingerprints are all over the WaPo story, as even Bush will be able to see.”

OMG! Of course! Scott McClellan, media manipulation mastermind. We can picture him now, cackling gleefully at his latest stroke of genius! “Muahahahaha! Mr. Rove, revenge is a dish best served cold. Muahahaha! Muuuahahahaha!” etc.

Seriously though, does Scotty even have fingerprints? Hasn’t he blurred them off by all the thumb-sucking and rocking back-and-forth in the corner he does between briefings?

Rove’s Future Role Is Debated [WP]
MCCLELLAN GOES AFTER ROVE [NRO’s The Corner]