|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By David Halberstam
$35.00
By T Cooper and Adam Mansbach
$11.64
$21
|
|
|
|
|
A look at the day’s political happenings, including a Republican congressman’s criticism of the Democratic war veteran he’s running against and Bill O’Reilly’s non-apology.
Posted on Jul 3, 2012
READ MORE 
|
|
By Joe Conason — Having demanded a federal investigation of intelligence leaks, Republicans on Capitol Hill now claim to be outraged because Attorney General Eric Holder has asked two United States attorneys to conduct that probe—and one of the two happens to be a Democrat.
Posted on Jun 20, 2012
READ MORE 
|
|
Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com —
Posted on Jun 13, 2011
READ MORE 
|
wikileaks.org
|
Acting as if we live in some sort of fantasy world, the Obama administration and the Pentagon have both forbid their hundreds of thousands of federal workers to view the WikiLeaks secret cables—unless those employees have the requisite security clearance.
|
wikileaks.org
|
U.S. officials are warning foreign governments that the WikiLeaks website is about to let fly with another batch of sensitive diplomatic documents that will be “harmful to the U.S. and our interests.”
|
|
The whistle-blower enabler tweeted the following Sunday night, along with a link to donate: “Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. intense pressure over it for months. Keep us strong.” If true, that’s seven times 391,832 reports—the largest ever release of classified material. ...
|
U.S. Army / Spc. Richard DelVecchio
|
The release of some 400,000 classified military documents on the Iraq War has led the U.N. to call on the Obama administration to investigate American troops’ human rights abuses. Leaked documents tying British forces to possible war crimes sparked a demand for a public inquiry in the U.K. as well.
|
AP / Evan Vucci
|
President Barack Obama finally might be digging in his executive heels over the Gulf oil blowout. The White House has announced the president will address the nation Tuesday night about the spill and is expected to outline a plan that would force BP to create a multibillion-dollar escrow account to compensate those affected.
|
house.gov
|
There’s hope on the Deepwater Horizon after a new containment cap was put into place and 6,000 barrels of oil was funneled to the surface in 24 hours.
|
AP / Eric Gay
|
Slight progress has been made in trying to remedy the ecological and corporate nightmare that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has become: On Wednesday, the company reported that repair workers were able to shut off one of the three leaks responsible for the catastrophic mess.
|
dodd.senate.gov
|
Plans to create an independent agency to provide consumer financial protection have probably been scrapped. According to a leaked document, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd is proposing that the protection office be within the Treasury Department instead of being independent, a clear capitulation to the Republicans.
|
Flickr/marcn
|
A source from within President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team said Thursday that Obama is “on track” to tap Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state after Thanksgiving, according to the Associated Press.
|
White House / Eric Draper
|
One of the benefits of saturating the American people with scandal is that folks eventually stop paying attention. That’s certainly the case with Plamegate, which is still being investigated despite the president’s best efforts to the contrary and a public that has generally moved on.
|
|
Scott McClellan appeared on the “Today” show Thursday to discuss his memoir, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” and the “two defining moments” that caused him to become “increasingly dismayed and disillusioned ... with the way things were going in Washington, D.C.”
|
White House / Eric Draper
|
Scott McClellan was one of George W. Bush’s most loyal aides, so it is surprising to learn that he savages the president and his administration in his new memoir. Among other bombshells, McClellan refers to the administration’s “propaganda campaign” to sell the war and accuses Karl Rove and Scooter Libby of meeting in secret during the Plamegate scandal in order to get their stories straight.
|
AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
|
Poor I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. First, he was tossed under the bus in the kerfuffle over Valerie Plame’s identity leak. Now, as a result of same, Libby’s been stripped of his legal license in Washington, D.C.
|
cnn.com
|
Turns out that the current White House press secretary, Dana Perino (pictured), has broached the uncomfortable topic (considering her position) of Scott McClellan’s upcoming book. Unsurprisingly, Perino reported in an off-camera moment during Monday’s White House press briefing that Bush never knowingly misinformed McClellan.
|
defectiveyeti.com
|
There has been no shortage of tell-all books from former Bushies (paging George Tenet), but the latest one, by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, is a real bombshell—primarily because McClellan alleges that the president, the vice president and three other high-ranking officials allowed him to pass “false information” about the Valerie Plame CIA identity leak case to the press.
|
MichaelMoore.com
|
A Blue Cross exec sent out a memo with talking points to help company employees handle the fallout resulting from filmmaker Michael Moore’s scathing take on the American healthcare system, “SiCKO”—and Moore got his hands on it. Oops! (H/t: Crooks and Liars)
|
|
Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer and contributors James Harris and Josh Scheer celebrate the dignity and tenacity of Truthdigger of the Week Valerie Plame Wilson.
|
starbulletin.com
|
U.S. Central Command has developed a plan for airstrikes against Iran that includes hitting not just nuclear facilities but most military targets throughout the country. According to the BBC, either confirmation that Iran is building a nuclear weapon or evidence linking Tehran to a high-casualty attack inside Iraq could set the plan in motion.
|
|
Testifying about his involvement with the “Scooter” Libby CIA leak case, Tim Russert was very different from his familiar image as a bombastic Sunday morning talk show host.
Posted on Feb 8, 2007
READ MORE
|
Left: mosnews.com / Right: turkishpress.com
|
The New York Times has obtained a secret memo by National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley that offers a frank assessment of the Iraqi prime minister: “... The reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests [Nouri al-Maliki] is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”
|
Media Matters
|
An ABC Radio Networks internal memo lists almost 100 companies, including FedEx, McDonald’s and Microsoft, that refuse to have their ads run during Air America programming. (h/t: Think Progress)
|
From the Washington Post
|
Columnist Robert Novak and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage can’t agree on what Armitage’s intentions were when he told Novak about Valerie Plame’s employment by the CIA. Novak claims it was a deliberate leak; Armitage says it was much more casual.
As a DailyKos poster points out, however, this is the fourth time that Novak has changed his tune on this.
|
From MSN
|
The woman at the center of the CIA leak case “was no analyst or paper-pusher;” rather, she was chief of operations on the CIA’s clandestine Joint Task Force on Iraq, which was heading up the CIA’s intelligence hunt for Saddam’s WMD. Thus, her outing by Bush administration officials was a serious breach of national security—not to mention a career-killer.
The Nation’s David Corn has the scoop in his new book, “Hubris.”
|
|
Richard Armitage, Bush’s former deputy secretary of state, has confirmed through a lawyer that he was the original source in the CIA leak case. But he says he had no malicious intent. He was just gossiping with reporters.
How does this fit in with the theory that the Bush White House leaked Valerie Plame’s name as a revenge ploy against her husband? (Jump to find out.)
|
|
Columnist Robert Novak revealed for the first time, in a column to be released Wednesday, that both Karl Rove and former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow had confirmed Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA agent. He said that this occurred only after another administration official first supplied him with the info.
This is not a huge deal, relatively speaking, but certainly of interest to Plamegate junkies….
Posted on Jul 11, 2006
READ MORE
|
AP / J. Scott Applewhite
|
The president told federal investigators that he ordered Vice President Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter the allegations made by former Ambassador Joe Wilson that the White House had misrepresented intelligence to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with Bush’s statement, as quoted by Murray Waas of the National Journal.
If this story is correct, this not only links Bush with the CIA leak case, it puts him squarely at its helm.
|
|
That’s the word from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Rove’s lawyer. This comes after months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between the two sides. Bush called Fitzgerald’s conduct throughout the proceeding “dignified.”
|
alt-f4.org
|
Muckraking journalist extraordinaire Murray Waas reports that investigators suspect that columnist Robert Novak called Karl Rove to concoct a cover story that would protect Rove in the Valerie Plame leak investigation.
|
|
A “senior law enforcement official” has told ABC News that the government, in trying to root out confidential sources, is tracking the phone numbers the news organization calls.
Maybe we should just start calling him George “Big Brother” Bush.
Update: An official acknowledges its “backtracking” of journalists’ phone records.
|
From talkingpointsmemo.com
|
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has disclosed handwritten notes by the vice president that ask whether former Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent to Niger on a “junket” by his wife. The notes appear on a copy of Wilson’s N.Y. Times Op-Ed piece that kicked off the controversy. (via Huff Po)
|
From USA Today
|
Top Bush aide Karl Rove has told the president that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will resign upon the public announcement of the charges, according to Truthout.
Rove may be charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.
|
From crooksandliars.com
|
The CIA has fired an agent who allegedly leaked information about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe to The Washington Post, reports MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Fox News has more.
Posted on Apr 21, 2006
READ MORE
|
Rove: politicalnews.org / Fitzgerald: bareknucklepolitics.com
|
It’s the first time this year that Fitzgerald has told jurors that he would soon present them with a list of criminal charges he intends to file against the White House operative, according to Truthout’s Jason Leopold.
|
|
We know: “Duh!” right? Well, here’s what’s new: The author of this article, using newly surfaced Libby testimony, all but accuses Cheney of outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent—which has been widely suspected but never confirmed. The National Journal’s Murray Waas (the country’s leading news-breaker on this story) has the scoop.
Posted on Apr 14, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
Patrick Fitzgerald writes in a legal briefing, “It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish Wilson.’ ”
Also, Bush formally admits to declassifying the intelligence later leaked by Libby to reporters.
|
|
In 1977, Nixon said, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”?
Well, Bush’s lawyers allegedly said this about the leak of classified intelligence: “Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to declassification of the document.”
Got it? When the president leaks it, that means it is not illegal.
UPDATE: the White House tries to quell the furor over the leak.
|
|
How convenient: Scooter’s day in court gets pushed off until after the midterm congressional elections because one of his lawyers has a “scheduling conflict.” | story
UPDATE: New documents shed more light on Libby’s perfidies. | report
|
White House photo by David Bohrer
|
By Andy Borowitz — Jack Abramoff? Sorry, never knew the guy…. Oh yeah, and while we’re on the topic of bad guys, I don’t know that Bush character either. Photos? What photos?
|
|
By Jon Wiener — Bush rolled out an old canard about Bin Laden and the media rolled over. An inside look at the sticking power of a falsehood.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Lock Up Washington
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
