Time Out
It's been quite a year. And it looks like the 2008 cycle is starting to heat up in a big way. So I'm taking this opportunity to sign off for a week, spend some time with my family, hopefully recharge my engines and generally clear my head. The tried and true and excellent TPM Team will be here to keep you up to date with the very latest news, commentary and revelations.
And one small request. We've already gotten a number of great nominations for this year's first annual Golden Duke awards. So take a look at the rules and directions for the contest and then send in nominations for who you think are the most deserving crooks, scofflaws and evildoers in the various categories.
I'll see you in a week.
--Josh Marshall
House Intel Joins Torture Tape Fray
The House intelligence committee will also be investigating the CIA torture tapes, according to a just-released statement from committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes:
"While I welcome this preliminary inquiry, this Administration cannot be trusted to police itself. For that reason, the House Intelligence Committee will begin its own inquiry this week. We will follow the facts wherever they may lead, and we will use every tool at our disposal to conduct a fair and complete review on behalf of the House of Representatives and the American people."In these matters, there is often a temptation to find a single scapegoat and not address broader issues. We must resist that temptation. Our review will therefore not only focus on the decision regarding the tapes. We must also review what was depicted on the tapes -- the interrogation practices that were authorized at the highest levels of government and that, if released, had the potential to do such grave damage to the United States of America."
Not sure what to make of that last line. Is he suggesting that the damage done by such interrogation practices was avoided by the tapes being destroyed? In terms of damage to the U.S. from our pro-torture policies, that horse has long left the barn, so I suspect that's just a poorly constructed sentence.
In any event, let the investigations begin! As Larry Johnson notes, this is a holiday gift for D.C. lawyers that will keep on giving.
--David Kurtz
DOJ to Investigate CIA Torture Tapes
Will the Department of Justice and CIA "joint inquiry" into the Agency's destruction of the al Qaeda torture tapes be another Bush-era whitewash? Perhaps. The Department of Justice seems hopelessly conflicted in any such investigation. But this portion of Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein's letter to CIA Acting General Counsel, John Rizzo, may suggest some DOJ displeasure with CIA:
"I understand that your office has already reviewed the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the videotapes, as well as the existence of any pending relevant investigations or other preservation obligations at the time the destruction occurred. As a first step in our inquiry, I ask that you provide us the substance of that review at the meeting," Wainstein wrote.
I don't want to over-read that one paragraph, but "give us everything you got, pronto" makes the "joint" in joint inquiry seem little more than a face-saving fig leaf for CIA, especially as CIA Director Michael Hayden "welcomes" the inquiry. Do you really welcome your own inquiry, or is that the tell that DOJ has the lead on this one?
Keep in mind that CIA told DOJ years ago that no such tapes existed, a representation that DOJ in turn made--falsely, it now turns out-- to a U.S. District Court judge in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. Attorney General Michael Mukasey was himself a U.S. District Court judge for nearly two decades.* Outrage at that sort of misrepresentation is too woven into the DNA of a federal court judge for Mukasey not to bristle still at the prospect of such a thing having occurred.
I'd still wager on whitewash, but this is worth watching.
*This post originally misstated when Mukasey stepped down from the bench. I regret the error.
--David Kurtz
Huckabee believes strange things
It's probably fair to say that Mike Huckabee has had a strange week. On the one hand, he's been surging in the polls, picking up religious right endorsements, and is now considered the frontrunner in the Iowa caucuses. On the other hand, he's been caught lying about the Wayne Dumond scandal, he's proven that has no idea what the National Intelligence Estimate is, he's completed a dramatic flip-flop on immigration policy, and he's presented himself as literally God's own anointed presidential candidate.
It's created an odd political dynamic -- a folksy Baptist preacher who can charm radical Christian fundamentalists and DC media establishment types like David Broder and David Brooks with equal ease.
There's one detail, though, that the prior group appreciates and the latter group ignores: Mike Huckabee has some very odd beliefs. He rejects modern biology; he's argued publicly that Roe v. Wade may have created an immigration problem; and he's said that if a man and a woman live together outside of marriage, they're engaging in a "demeaning ... alternate lifestyle."
Today, the AP picks up on one of Huckabee's other more unusual social beliefs (which the fine folks at Right Wing Watch began publicizing a few days ago).
Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk."
As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.
"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague [from the general population]," Huckabee wrote.
In the same questionnaire, Huckabee added, "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."
It may be tempting to think Huckabee's comments were just a reflection of the ignorance of the times, but that's far too forgiving an explanation. The AP noted that in 1992, "it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact." Four years before Huckabee expressed support for a quarantine, C. Everett Koop and the Surgeon General's office explained to the nation that the disease could not be contracted through everyday contact.
Does Huckabee still believe any of this? At this point, he's not exactly rushing to dissociate himself with his previous comments -- the AP reported, "Huckabee did not return messages left with his campaign."
--Steve Benen
McCain discovers the Tax Fairy
In the president's first term, John McCain was unusually responsible when it came to taxes. When Bush's costly 2001 tax cuts went to the floor, McCain was one of two Senate Republicans to vote "no." He said at the time, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief." Two years later, another tax-cut bill came to the floor, and McCain again voted against it, citing a rising deficit.
That was then. Now that he's running as a conservative presidential candidate, the Arizona senator who's been flip-flopping all over the place, has come to believe the worst of the Republicans' economic nonsense.
[When McCain] came to the [Boston] Globe Wednesday, McCain took refuge in a supply-side myth: the notion that President Bush's tax cuts have created a compelling revenue surge.
Queried about funding programs like expanded healthcare for children by letting some of the Bush tax cuts expire, McCain replied, "I would suggest that most economists agree that there was an increase in revenues . . . associated with the tax cuts." Letting those tax cuts expire might actually have the opposite effect on revenues, the Republican presidential candidate warned.
Asked specifically about the idea that tax cuts pay for themselves, McCain said that "a lot of economists" believe the Bush tax cuts had stimulated the economy and that without them, "the economy would not have boomed, and therefore you would not have seen these increases in revenues."
So, the tax cuts that McCain opposed weren't costly because they increased revenues. Or something.
"It is amazing to me that people have treated this as though it is a debatable point, because it is really not," says economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "It is one of the most extensively researched topics in economics, and virtually all the research has concluded that there is no way that any growth stimulated through an income tax cut can replace the revenue lost."
McCain knows this; he has to. And yet, he assumes, probably correctly, that the truth might cost him Republican primary votes, so he's stuck repeating economic gibberish in the hopes that conservative activists will be sated by nonsense.
How very sad.
--Steve Benen
Forget JFK, Romney aims higher
This week, it was hard to miss comparisons between Mitt Romney's speech on religion in America and JFK's historic 1960 speech on his support for church-state separation. Both speeches came from candidates facing discrimination, both were in Texas, and there was at least one picture of Romney striking a Kennedy-esque pose.
Apparently, though, the political world has been drawing on the wrong historical analogy, at least as far as Romney's wife is concerned.
Ann Romney believes her husband's speech on religion Thursday will go down in history, and in Las Vegas on Thursday night, she found many people who agreed with her.
"People were saying, 'It was like George Washington,' 'It was the Gettysburg Address,' " she said in an interview just after working a room of about 120 audience members, mostly women, at a restaurant in the JW Marriott in Summerlin.
"I mean, it was unbelievable, the response I heard from the people in there that heard it today. Almost everyone said they were moved to tears" by the speech, she said.
Really? Quick quiz: name one memorable line from the speech. I watched/listened to it intently, and 48 hours later, the only quote that stands out is the bizarre assertion that "freedom requires religion." This is a) wrong; and b) hardly the stuff of the Gettysburg Address.
Let's hope Ann Romney wasn't speaking on behalf of the campaign on this one.
--Steve Benen
It's still not the crime; it's the cover-up
It's as if politicians never learn. The old Watergate adage, "It's not the crime; it's the cover-up" became a cliche precisely because of its political salience. And yet, even now, leading Republican presidential candidates seem oblivious to the lesson.
In Rudy Giuliani's case, the Shag Fund scandal continues to dog the former mayor, not just because he used taxpayer money to subsidize his adultery, but also because he tried to hide the expenditures and continues to lie about what transpired. The "crime" is embarrassing, but the "cover-up" keeps the story alive.
In Mike Huckabee's case, the Wayne Dumond controversy is part of the same phenomenon. Huckabee, for apparently political reasons, pushed for the release of a convicted rapist, who had become a right-wing cause celebre. Free, Dumond went on to rape and kill again.
Given what transpired, Huckabee had one viable option: acknowledge the truth, express regret, and promise voters that he learned from the mistake. Instead, Huckabee not only pushed to let a violent criminal out of jail for political reasons, he's lying about it now. Huckabee's "crime" was a tragedy, but it's the "cover-up" that will likely undermine his presidential campaign.
First, Huckabee insisted that he had no way of knowing that Dumond was still dangerous when he pushed for his freedom. That wasn't true. Second, Huckabee insisted that he did not pressure Arkansas' parole board to release Dumond. As it turns out, that's demonstrably false, too.
Huckabee had a chance to tell the truth and get this painful ordeal behind him. Unfortunately for him, he made the wrong call. The cover-up may not be worse than the crime, but the political impact is likely to be far more damaging.
--Steve Benen
Compromising prosecutions?
In its story about the CIA destroying interrogation videos, the WSJ added this interesting tidbit:
The tape destruction also likely will become problematic at future terrorism trials, because it will permit defense lawyers to raise the specter of a CIA coverup to cast doubt on government evidence. In the case of al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, now serving a life sentence after pleading guilty, CIA lawyers told a federal-court hearing that interrogation videos did not exist.
This isn't the first time the Bush administration has made things harder on prosecutors by bringing government evidence into doubt.
When the White House politicized U.S. Attorneys' offices and corruption prosecutions, defense attorneys were able to argue with a straight face that prosecutions that might look political are political. (One former U.S. Attorney said, "It provides defendants an opportunity to make an argument that would not have been made two years ago.")
For that matter, when the White House started its warrantless-search program, and took the law into its own hands while tapping phones, it handed defense attorneys another gift. ("If I'm a defense attorney," one prosecutor said, "the first thing I'm going to say in court is, 'This was an illegal wiretap.' ")
When the White House isn't torturing detainees and destroying evidence, they're inadvertently helping keep bad guys out of jail. Heckuva job.
--Steve Benen
Hamilton sees obstruction
The CIA withheld information about its interrogation videos from quite a few people, but we can include the 9/11 Commission among those who are annoyed about having been misled.
[I]n separate interviews on Friday, the co-chairmen, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, said they had made clear in hours of negotiations and discussions with the C.I.A., as well as in written requests, that they wanted all material connected to the interrogations of Qaeda operatives in the agency's custody in order to get a complete understanding of the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks for their 2004 report. [...]
"The C.I.A. certainly knew of our interest in getting all the information we could on the detainees, and they never indicated to us there were any videotapes," Mr. Hamilton said. "Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge."
Mr. Kean said, "I'm upset that they didn't tell us the truth."
And speaking of not telling the truth, the White House emphasized yesterday that Bush has "no recollection" of being made aware of the tapes' destruction before Thursday, when CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden briefed the president.
Given the quality and reliability of White House denials of late, I'm inclined to assume this means the president keeps a DVD copy of the video in his desk drawer and has held multiple screenings of the interrogations in the White House screening room.
Or maybe I'm just cynical.
--Steve Benen
CIA ignored warnings about interrogation videos
Yesterday we learned that the CIA had videos of its "enhanced interrogation techniques," which it hid from lawmakers, federal investigators, a federal court, and the 9/11 Commission -- and then intentionally destroyed to cover up its culpability.
The agency treated the elimination of incriminating evidence as a rather routine decision, but the NYT reports today that the CIA destroyed the videos over the objections of, well, practically everyone.
White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.
The chief of the agency's clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.'s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.
And what might have been on the destroyed evidence? Kevin Drum has a very good post on the subject, but summarizes:
So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and law enforcement personnel.
Nice trifecta there. And just think: there's an entire political party in this country that still thinks this is OK.
To paraphrase Homer Simpson, "Republicans, I think he's talking to you."
--Steve Benen
If he ignores it, maybe it'll go away
Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush have more in common than just mendacious, authoritarian streaks; they also employ the same strategy when facing a scandal: ignore it and hope it goes away.
Yesterday, for example, we learned about the latest in a series of lies regarding the Shag Fund controversy. In response to the revelations, the former mayor has decided he doesn't want to talk about it.
Rudy Giuliani tried to ride out new questions Friday over taxpayer-funded chauffeur services that witnesses and sources said were provided to Judith Nathan before her affair to the former mayor was revealed in 2000.
The Republican presidential candidate, asked by a Daily News reporter after a campaign event in Chicago about Nathan's city-funded wheels, nonanswered "Thank you," and later "Have a good night."
Moreover, the Daily News also emphasized today that when it came to providing a taxpayer-financed security detail to Giuliani's then-mistress, the timeline doesn't ad up. Giuliani and Bernie Kerik said Judith Nathan needed NYPD protection starting in early 2000, because of unspecified "threats," which may or may not have actually happened. As the article points out, "How Nathan could have become the target of a threat before she became a public figure has not been explained."
The Daily News added a provocative quote from Dick Dadey of Citizens Union, an NYC public-interest watchdog group: "If Nathan was provided police protection prior to their being a security-threat assessment, it probably was an illegal use of city resources." (emphasis added)
To be sure, if Giuliani did break the law here, the statute of limitations has probably run out. In the context of a presidential campaign, though, it's probably not an effective pitch: "Vote Giuliani: Because He Can No Longer Be Prosecuted."
--Steve Benen
Roll The Tape
Larry Johnson tells us what the bottom line is on the CIA torture tapes.
--Josh Marshall
Latest Newsweek poll shows Huckabee with commanding lead in Iowa, and Obama and Clinton neck and neck.
--David Kurtz
New Edwards internal poll, obtained by TPM Election Central, finds statistical tie in Iowa.
--David Kurtz
Did someone mention CIA videotapes? Dana Perino is pressed on the new revelation, in today's White House press briefing:
--David Kurtz
Dukey for Cookie?
Apropos of the just announced resignation of State Dept. IG Howard "Cookie" Krongard, he already seems to be a pretty strong contender for the Best Testimonial Meltdown in this year's Golden Dukes Awards based on this incident ...
--Josh Marshall
Editorial Dispute over Shag Fund
As you know, at TPM we put a high premium on transparency as using TPM Readers as a resource in our reporting and analysis of the news. So here's a minor controversy that's just broken out at TPM HQ. We're about to post our TPM Shag Fund timeline. And in the process of compiling the document it turns out there's some controversy over the specific meaning of the reports that then-Giuliani mistress Judi Nathan's NYPD valet and security escort also helped walked Nathan's dog.
Now, the original report, or at least the most recent one came in this December 1st article in the New York Daily News which detailed how the NYPD was dragooned into being Nathan's personal limo service when they ferried her on trips to her parents house 130 miles away in Pennsylvania.
The key passage comes midway through the article ...
At the time, it was not uncommon to see Nathan being chauffeured around the city in an undercover Dodge with two detectives, who sometimes even helped to walk her dog.
Now, since the article was published, I've taken this to mean that the NYPD officers detailed to take care of Nathan sometimes walked her dog for her.
But Paul Kiel disagrees. He interprets the statement as meaning that the cops escorted Nathan while she walked her dog.
To me, Paul's reading is redundant. A security detail escorts you everywhere you go in public. So saying they were helping her walk her dog if they were only escorting her while she did it would be misleading.
In other words, I read this as implying direct cop to dog contact, that they were walking her dog.
Meanwhile, TPM Editor-at-Large David Kurtz basically takes my position but does a little bit of annoying hedging. From our work chat area, I quote David writing, "I imagine them holding leash while she talks on phone, that kind of thing."
In the end we compromised and included the exact quote from the NYDN in the Shag Fund timeline. But we'd like to put this to our readers for a more precise adjudication. And of course if you're one of the reporters on the story, by all means send us a note helping us resolve the controversy.
--Josh Marshall
Advanced Comparative Muck Studies
Interesting battle shaping up for the Golden Dukey award for Best Scandal, General Interest category (instructions and contest and prize details here). After I discussed nominations we've gotten so far yesterday and the strong candidacy of corrupt Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), something of a Alaska Muck Battle Royale has broken out. And it's over whether Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) or Alaska Rep. Don Young (R) has the best claim to the big prize.
It basically breaks down like this. Stevens, in addition to being a legendary porkmeister, has used his power corruptly for his own personal enrichment and that of his family. The freebie home renovation he received from now-convicted briber Bill Allen of the VECO corporation is a good example of Stevens' MO. And yet for all Stevens sweetheart deals, personal enrichment and apparent bribe-taking, his methods are fairly conventional and the pork he shovels seems to pretty much all go back to his home state of Alaska.
Then on the other hand you have Rep. Young. Like Stevens, he's at the center of a major criminal probe into his activities. And yet his methods are highly, highly innovative. Unlike Stevens, quite a lot of Young's pork goes to people and places other than his constituents -- in various states around the country -- usually in pretty direct return for cash payments into his campaign coffers. Indeed, earlier this year, it came out that Young had taken the apparently unprecedented and clearly unconstitutional step of adding pork to an appropriations bill after Congress had passed it.
And yet, for all this innovative work, our general sense from doing a fair amount of reporting on Young, is that little of his corruption is tied to enriching himself personally.
So there you have it -- Stevens' generally unimaginative venal corruption versus Don Young's highly innovative pay-for-play schemes directed mainly at getting campaign contributions in exchange for giving away taxpayer money to contributors.
Your thoughts? And be sure to get in your nominations. Remember we'll choose the best nominations -- that is, the submitted Golden Duke nomination which best makes the case for the particular wrongdoer's qualifications to be the winner. So get your nominations in today!
--Josh Marshall
From TPM Reader CR:
I don't know about you, but if I had the choice between being charged with Obstruction of Justice, or having documentary evidence that I participated in, facilitated, or ordered violations of the Geneva Conventions, amounting to war crimes, I know what I'd choose.
--David Kurtz
Obstruction of Justice?
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) calls on Justice Department to launch criminal investigation of the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes.
--David Kurtz
The Story Yet To Be Told
A TPM reader theorizes on the events leading up to the new Iran NIE:
There are, oversimplifying, two threads going around, one that the 'Iran doesn't have an active program' preliminary finding was circulating in the Administration in late '06 (Hersh, etc), and the other that Bush was told about the upcoming finding in August by McConnell, after which he changed his characterization so as not to be so obviously lying about the nature of the threat (all the while still intentionally leaving a grossly misleading impression).The two threads can be reconciled. The basis for the findings had, indeed, been circulating beginning in late 2006, and ever since. One has to assume that Cheney and his forces marshaled full fire on those findings, and successfully suppressed them, preventing their release. That effort, however, eventually failed, probably due to intelligence and Pentagon unwillingness to take the fall for another war.
What happened in early August was not that Bush learned of the findings, but that McConnell informed him that the NIE containing the findings would be released. Those on the side of releasing them (which had to have included Gates) simply won the battle, and either faced down Cheney, threatened to resign if they lost or utilized whatever other strategy required. It was not the discovery of the underlying truth of the findings that caused the change in rhetoric (becoming more vague on Iran's nuclear status, but more bellicose on Iran generally). It was the realization that the NIE would become public.
Fixating on what the President was told in August, while important, misses the larger power play almost certainly underway for many months before then.
Late Update: The Horse's Mouth has more on the big questions yet to be answered about the run-up to the release of the new NIE.
--David Kurtz
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on U.S. casualties in Iraq: "Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers."
--David Kurtz
Heads Up
We've got our Official TPM Shag Fund Timeline (aka ShagLine) coming up a little later today.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
The day's blockbuster is the NYT scoop on the existence and destruction of videotapes of the interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects. Spencer Ackerman analyzes the implications of this revelation.
--David Kurtz
Air Out of the Balloon
Rudy Giuliani's poll numbers are slipping nationally and in the key primary states. So this weekend he's heading to Russert's show to try to stop the decline before he tumbles into free-fall.
--Josh Marshall
Shag-ier and Shag-ier
Imagine that. Rudy's caught in another lie about the tax-payer funded valet service he had New York City provide for Judi Nathan while she was still his mistress. Up until yesterday Team Rudy had claimed that the NYPD only started providing Nathan with an around-the-clock security detail after December 2000, after their adulterous relationship became public. This was in response to a never-disclosed "threat" Nathan received on a street corner near her home. There's never been any details or evidence that the threat existed. But then-Police commissioner Bernie Kerik said it checked out. So please stop asking any more questions.
Here's Rudy, shortly after the security/valet story broke back in 2001 telling reporters that anyone who asked about it should be "ashamed of themselves."
Kerik and Giuliani have previously insisted that there was no security detail or valet service prior to December 2000.
But now it turns out that that's not true. Yesterday Giuliani aides conceded that in fact Nathan had been received the valet service and security detail "sporadically" from early 2000 in response to yet more undisclosed, undetailed and unconfirmed "threats".
"Sporadically" is Team Rudy's word. Witnesses and a law enforcement source now say she got a full-time NYPD valet service for months before the affair went public.
Bear in mind, this is now well before anyone knew anyone knew the two were having an affair and thus before anyone knew who Judi Nathan was. So why would she be receiving 'threats' at all?
--Josh Marshall
In Case You Missed It
Let's be honest. You don't want to suffer through all the bamboozling ads the GOP presidential candidates are pasting the airwaves with. But you still want to be up on the latest bamboozlement and schmalz. So here, prepared specially for you the TPM Reader, is the whole GOP field boiled to a tight, licketysplit and almost tolerable 3:30.
Watch, if you're man person enough to face the bamboozlement!
--Josh Marshall
Read the Book
If you're curious why Mike Huckabee even got on the topic of pardoning, commuting the sentence of, paroling -- whatever -- serial rapist and murderer Wayne Dumond, you have to understand that during the 90s the right-wing whackjobosphere had managed to convince themselves that DuMond was some sort of Ozarks Ruben Carter -- a victim of Bill Clinton and the corrupt regime he ran in Arkansas in the 1980s.
Most of our staff at TPM are in their twenties. And we had a moment today when it occurred to me that if you weren't politically aware in the 1990s, it's difficult to get a sense of how much a series of seriously deranged conspiracy theories became almost mainstream.
In any case, there's actually a book, Unequal Justice, that seems to be the bible of DuMond lionization and hagiography. What's so damning about Huckabee is that whatever version of events you believe, it seems undisputed that Huckabee either bought into this craziness or pushed for the release of a serial rapist to pander to those who did.
--Josh Marshall
State's Golden Boy
McClatchy's Warren Strobel reports:
A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday.James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department's top management official.
--David Kurtz
Dana Perino takes a beating on the new Iran NIE in today's White House press briefing:
--David Kurtz
Fringe Party
Here are the first two grafs of an article in today's Los Angeles Times ...
One-third of Americans want to deny social services, including public schooling and emergency room healthcare, to illegal immigrants, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.Still, in a sign of ambivalence among voters about the emotionally charged issue, a strong bipartisan majority -- 60% -- favors allowing illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes to become citizens if they pay fines, learn English and meet other requirements.
That second number is a pretty striking statistic when you think of all the media we see about how everybody's fed up with illegals, wants them all marched back out of the country and then have the whole place surrounded by a hundred foot fence.
What I think says pretty clearly is that the kind of rabid hostility to illegal immigration and illegal immigrants -- which is in most cases, I believe, just a fig leaf for hostility to all immigrants in generall -- just isn't a majority position in this country.
It's definitely an issue which creates tensions and conflicts within the Democratic coalition. But fundamentally the anti-immigrant rage of the GOP is a minority position. And it's one that I suspect will do the GOP vast damage over the coming years as hispanics swing heavily back toward the Democratic party.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: GOP Adstravaganza!
Let's be honest. You don't want to suffer through all the bamboozling ads the GOP presidential candidates are pasting the airwaves with. But you still want to be up on the latest bamboozlement and schmalz. So here, prepared specially for you the TPM Reader, is the whole GOP field boiled to a tight, licketysplit and almost tolerable 3:30.
Watch, if you're man person enough to face the bamboozlement!
--Josh Marshall
What ever happened to the Krongard v. Krongard showdown that was supposed to happen in front of Henry Waxman's committee?
--David Kurtz
Golden Dukeys
I've noticed that in the nominations readers are sending in for the Golden Duke awards (nomination instructions and details here) not a lot of people are stepping up to make nominations for the signature prize -- Best Scandal -- General Interest. Lots of good nominations for best sex scandal, best local scandal, best testimonial trainwreck, etc. But it seems there's a little reluctance to try to climb this one mountain.
To some I guess the US Attorney scandal is too much of a shoo-in for the Best Scandal Dukey. But remember, the Dukey in each category has to be awarded to an individual person. And there were so many crooks and bamboozlers in the US Attorney scandal that a lot of honor gets spread around.
On the other hand you've got solo scandals like Sen. Ted Stevens, the senate's maestro of pork getting caught with miscellaneous sweetheart bribes, freebie home renovation and the like. So, just speaking for myself, I think Sen. Stevens is a strong contender?
Who else do you think should be in the running?
--Josh Marshall
By George, I Think He's ...
As I set forth below, as a practical matter, I think Huckabee's defense on DuMond is so damning as to be almost indistinguishable from the charges leveled by his critics. But TPM Reader MR has a speculative but fairly convincing explanation of what may actually have happened ...
In your “Glass Half Full! No, Half Empty!” post I think you have missed what is likely the real story of what happened at the parole board meeting in question. I believe what went down is that Gov. Huckabee told the parole board that if they didn’t grant parole to Dumond, then he would commute his sentence. That is how he forced their hand on the parole, and it explains the statement that you included from “Team Huck.” This statement is a typical case of careful parsing, it is technically true, but misses the real point of what the meeting was about. I have no doubt that Mr. Chastain tried to talk Huck out of granting clemency, but he almost certainly didn’t want to grant parole to Dumond. He did it because they thought it better to have this man on parole and monitored then to have him released as a free man.
--Josh Marshall
Too Much Freud From a Guy Named Dick
From Vice President Cheney's interview with The Politico:
Most striking were his virtually taunting remarks of two men he described as friends from his own days in the House: Democratic Reps. John Dingell (Mich.) and John P. Murtha (Pa.).In a 40-minute interview with Politico, he scoffed at the idea of two men who spent years accruing power showing so much deference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the big spending and energy debates of the year.
Murtha “and the other senior leaders … march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous speaker,” Cheney said. “I’m trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion, but [in] the Congress I served in, that wouldn’t have happened.”
But his implication was clear: When asked if these men had lost their spines, he responded, “They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected.”
--David Kurtz
Most of the MSM (but to its credit, not CNN) punts on Bush's Iran intel lie.
--David Kurtz
Glass Half Full! No, Half Empty!
I've been digging into this controversy over Huckabee and the rapist Dumond. And when you break it down, what they seem to be arguing over amounts to an almost ridiculous distinction -- one that doesn't put Huckabee in a very good light.
If I'm understanding this right, Huckabee's accusers are saying that he met with the parole board and tried to persuade them to parole Dumond. To which, the Huckabee people respond, no, they were trying to persuade Huckabee not to commute Dumond's sentence.
I must confess that what I'm saying here sounds so ridiculous that many of you are probably wondering whether the Huckabee camp could actually have said this or whether I'm just kidding around. But I'm not. Here's the passage from Team Huck's new memo ...
It is this October ’96 meeting which is now the focus of attention. One of the Board members, Charles Chastain, is now alleging publicly that the Governor used that meeting to pressure the Board to grant DuMond parole.In fact, just the opposite is true: Mr. Chastain attempted to dissuade Governor Huckabee from his intent to grant clemency to DuMond.
“They are saying that the Governor was trying to persuade them to grant parole,” said Reeves, “it was the other way around, they were trying to persuade him not to grant clemency.”
Just the opposite is true!
Now, commutation to time served and parole wouldn't have been exactly the same thing -- in the later case he'd still be under parole supervision. But it's a pretty fine distinction for a serial rapist. And just from a common sense point of view the difference between the two descriptions of the conversation seems so minor that I could easily imagine both sides honestly recollecting the same conversation in these two different ways.
What seems not to be in dispute is that Huckabee went in to the meeting having bought into the anti-Clinton whackjob theory that serial rapist Dumond was a victim of Clinton justice and was unjustly imprisoned. The parole board apparently thought otherwise.
Again, everyone seems to agree to that. Now why the parole board did eventually parole Dumond I can't say. Pressure from Huckabee seems the likeliest explanation. But I'd think the parole board members still bear a lot of responsibility.
But again, to the extent this is a political issue today about Huckabee's judgment, their defense seems pretty hard to distinguish from the charge.
--Josh Marshall
Inquiring Minds Want to Know
Majority Leader Harry Reid wants answers from the White House on what the President and Vice President knew about the new Iran NIE and when.
Part of a statement released by Reid this morning:
“I am growing increasingly concerned about the White House’s inconsistent explanations of when the President was told about important new intelligence information regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. It appears the President and Vice President were briefed in August on this information, before both the President and Vice President began to ratchet up their increasingly-heated rhetoric on the threat of Iran.“I urge the White House to fully and accurately explain what the President and Vice President knew and when they knew it, and why the Administration’s rhetoric was not adjusted when presented with new data this summer.
--David Kurtz
Oops, We Invaded The Wrong Country
The Administration's most persistent spin of the new Iran NIE is that it vindicates their position because it shows that Iran did in fact have an active nuclear weapons program in 2003. That's quite some vindication.
What it really means is that faced with two neighbors in the spring of 2003 who both harbored nuclear ambitions, we invaded the country without an active WMD program while ignoring the one that did. I'm not suggesting we should have invaded Iran instead, but by the Administration's own reckoning, we should have.
It puts an exclamation point on the colossal folly of our Iraq adventure.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
Congress is prepared to pass yet another ban on CIA torture techniques. Will it really have any effect?
--David Kurtz
Bitter Irony Alert
John Bolton, writing in today's WaPo on the new Iran NIE:
[T]he NIE suffers from a common problem in government: the overvaluation of the most recent piece of data. In the bureaucracy, where access to information is a source of rank and prestige, ramming home policy changes with the latest hot tidbit is commonplace, and very deleterious. It is a rare piece of intelligence that is so important it can conclusively or even significantly alter the body of already known information. Yet the bias toward the new appears to have exerted a disproportionate effect on intelligence analysis.
It recalls such "hot tidbits" as those aluminum tubes, Curveball, and Niger yellowcake.
--David Kurtz
No Comparison
TPM Reader CR on Huckabee and Dumond ...
I've seen the Wayne Dumond affair referred to as Huckabee's "Willie Horton" problem a number of times, including on this blog this afternoon in a post by David Kurtz linking to Murry Waas' excellent piece. But this case is only superficially like Willie Horton. As I recall, Michael Dukakis did not advocate the release of Willie Horton specifically, whereas Mike Huckabee *did* advocate specifically for the release of Wayne Dumond. Of course, Dukakis as governor *did* move to continue the program of furloughs for prisoners serving life without parole as a measure he believed would effectively rehabilitate prisoners, and in my opinion that was both dangerous as a matter of public policy and stupid at a purely political level. But the equivalency developing between the Willie Horton story and the Wayne Dumond story is ridiculous.The bottom line is simple. Mike Huckabee championed the release of a specific convicted rapist who, once release, raped and killed a woman in Missouri. The furlough policy advocated by Mike Dukakis led to the furlough of Willie Horton, who raped a woman in Maryland and stabbed her fiancee. But Mike Dukakis had never heard of Willie Horton, whereas Mike Huckabee was well aware of the crimes and dangers posed by Wayne Dumond. Anyone who doesn't see the substantive difference between the two cases just isn't looking.
--Josh Marshall
Catnip for Josh
Okay, now that we're getting into the thick of things I thought I'd take a look at the consensus views of those willing to put some money on the line with their predictions. Here's a graph of the latest results, not including today, from the Iowa Political Markets GOP nomination market.
Now, the graph's small. But Blue is Rudy, Green is Romney, and Red is some other candidate than the ones they're currently taking bids on. Today I think they started trading in Huckabee. But this was yesterday. So you could only buy Rudy, Romney, McCain and Thompson. And you can see the basic trend. Until about two weeks ago it was basically Rudy and Romney, with Rudy consistently ahead.
First Romney starts to fall; then Rudy. By yesterday "some other candidate" was trading five points ahead of Romney and five points behind Rudy.
--Josh Marshall
White House Iran Intel Story 2.0
Guess it wasn't his final answer.
Dana Perino takes another crack at explaining what Mike McConnell told the president about Iran back in August ...
"In August, DNI Director McConnell advised President Bush that the intelligence community would not be able to meet a congressionally imposed deadline requiring a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran because new information had been obtained just as they were about to finalize the report.He said that if the new information turns out to be true, what we thought we knew for sure is right. Iran does in fact have a covert nuclear weapons program, but it may be suspended. The Director advised that there were many streams of information that had the potential to be in conflict, and it would take more time to vet it all to determine validity, and that’s why they were not able to meet the deadline.
Director McConnell said that the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran’s covert nuclear program, but the intelligence community was not prepared to draw any conclusions at that point in time, and it wouldn’t be right to speculate until they had time to examine and analyze the new data."
Dripping with credibility, no?
--Josh Marshall
I will say this: I'm extremely impressed at how prepared the Huckabee campaign seems to be to deal with this ten year old story.
--Josh Marshall
That Your Final Answer, Mr. Bush?
Since the release of the new Iran NIE on Monday, we've been debating just when the president and his key advisors know the basic gist of what the new report would show. Take them at their own word and they really didn't know anything until just this last week. As soon as they knew, we knew, they would say.
Sure Mike McConnell mentioned something to the president back in August. But he had no way of knowing that this "new information" would dramatically undermine the claim that Iran was on the brink of going nuclear. And as the president said yesterday, "He didn't tell me what the information was."
Yet I'm hearing from a lot of directions that the basic gist of the report -- that the Iranians aren't nearly as close to going nuclear as we'd been led to believe -- has been circulating at least in intelligence circles for some time. In other words, this NIE has been sitting either literally or figuratively on the president's desk for months.
Now, along those lines look at this September 22nd post from a site called Swoop, which I hear is put together by some pretty knowledgeable DC insiders.
In our last key judgment on Iran, we noted that the main driver of possible military action has switched from Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program to Iranian activities in Iraq. This conclusion is hardening. Intelligence Community (IC) sources tell us that a new National Intelligence Estimate about Iran is near completion. This concludes that Iran remains many years – as much as 10 – away from a weapon. Thus, the WMD argument will not gain traction from the IC. Iraq, however, is a different story. Pentagon officials have told us that the stress on the Iranian threat to Iraqi stability in the Petraeus and Crocker testimony is entirely deliberate. These officials say that the Sunni elements with whom the US military has been cutting deals in Anbar province are violently “anti-Persian” and have convinced US commanders to see Iranian meddling as the source of destabilization. With Anbar representing the one clear success of the “surge”, the US military is highly motivated to protect it against the perceived Iranian threat. This was the source of Petraeus’ allegation that Iran is trying to build a “Hezbollah-like” anti-US militia in Iraq. A new US base is under construction near the Iranian border and checkpoints are being erected along roads leading from Iran. For immediate purposes, this does not change our assessment that military force against Iran remains unlikely in the short-term. But it does add a new source of tension alongside the WMD factor.
Just one blog post, definitely. But the key point is right there: word was out that the NIE deliver the goods for the Iranian bomb enthusiasts, that the "WMD argument" for war would not "gain traction from the IC (i.e., Intelligence Community)."
What it all comes down to is what the president says he didn't know about until the beginning of December was already being chatted about on insider national security blogs back in September. Does anybody still believe he hasn't known this for months?
--Josh Marshall
A Rare Moment of Candor
Dan Bartlett, on the White House's use of right wing blogs:
I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.
--David Kurtz
The Airwave Assault
A couple of new campaign TV ads just out that are worth a look. Rudy Giuliani's latest is a paean to Reagan that mangles the history of the Iran hostage crisis. Not too many years ago, Tom Tancredo's newest anti-immigration screed would have passed for a spoof of a GOP campaign ad.
--David Kurtz
"To Me, A Rumor Is Not True"
The editor of the Washington Post's Obama Muslim rumor article defends his handling of the piece.
Late Update: The Horse's Mouth has the latest, um, breaking news.
--David Kurtz
Huckabee's Willie Horton Problem
Despite what you might have heard--or thought you heard--about the convicted Arkansas rapist freed while Mike Huckabee was governor who went on to kill two Missouri women, you ought to take a look at Murray Waas' piece today on the case.
There's more to this than first meets the eye, not the least of which is that the case became something of a rallying cry for the anti-Clinton brigades because the perpetrator, Wayne Dumond, was convicted while Clinton was governor and one of Dumond's victims was a distant Clinton cousin. So the political pressures that were brought to bear on Huckabee were different than the usual law and order variety.
--David Kurtz
A Slippery Slope to a Bomb?
Fred Thompson provides his take (warning: could cause drowsiness ) on the Iran NIE over at RedState. I can't really make out what his point is. It's a hawkish point of view with some attempts at statesmanlike "perspective." But in his rambling style he hits on one argument that I suspect we'll see a lot more of from the Iran hawks:
Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium for allegedly peaceful purposes, but which would allow them to easily transition to a nuclear weapons program at any point in the future. Maybe even now--now that so many seem willing to forget Iran's past deceptions and ongoing intransigence. After all, a nuclear weapons program is simply an extension of the process by why uranium is enriched for civilian nuclear fuel.
This notion that a civilian nuclear program opens up the whole pandora's box of nuclear weaponry is the last leg the bomb-Iran-now crowd has left to stand on. I won't pretend to be a nuclear weapons expert, but my layman's understanding of nukes is that Thompson and his ilk are just dead wrong. The physics may be the same at some very basic level (the atomic level, I suppose), but weaponization, not to mention delivery systems, is a whole different ballgame from civilian nuclear power production. I'd be interested in hearing more from readers who have expertise in the field.
--David Kurtz
Spam Alert
Hillary campaign acknowledges that one of its Iowa county chairs passed along an Obama Muslim smear email.
Greg Sargent has the latest.
Late Update: Greg talks with a recipient of the email.
Later Update: Check out the villainous email itself.
--David Kurtz
Long Live the Iran Bamboozle!
The President switches gears and plows ahead, unrestrained by facts, no matter how inconvenient they may be:
--David Kurtz
What Did the President Know and When?
You saw from today's TPMtv episode below that the White House has had a hard time explaining what exactly the President was told about the new intelligence assessments of Iran's nuclear program and when exactly he was told it.
Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto was confronted by reporters on this issue in this morning's press gaggle aboard Air Force One:
Q Just to clarify one point from the press conference yesterday, the President was -- said that he was told by Mr. McConnell, just generally, that there had been some new intelligence and that people were taking another look at it. Did the President at that point ask any follow-up? Did Mr. McConnell offer any comments that, in fact, there might have to be a serious reevaluation of the whole intelligence?MR. FRATTO: What Director McConnell said is that we're going to go back and do rigorous analysis of this intelligence, and when we can be certain of it, we're going to come back and talk to you -- and that's what they did. I've seen some criticism of, number one, of the international -- I mean, of the intelligence community in the last couple days, which I think is just incredibly misguided. The intelligence community is out there doing very difficult, courageous work to try to get the intelligence right. They're doing it in some of the most hardened places to try to acquire this intelligence, and they're doing an astounding job of it, under Director McConnell's leadership.
And then I've seen some criticism of the leadership of the intelligence community for not being more forthcoming, and I think this is also unfounded. It is important, if you're going to tell the Congress and the American people and the President of the United States an important piece of intelligence information, that it be rigorously analyzed, that you have the highest degree of confidence. And that's what they went back and did and they took the extra time to do