Think you've heard every possible sordid development regarding the actions of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and the Bush White House. Think again, because this one may top everything that has been revealed to date. Murray Wass of the National Journal is reporting that last year, Attorney General Gonzalez advised President Bush to shutdown an internal Justice Department investigation into the warrentless wiretapping program. Most ethically and legally troubling was the fact that Gonzalez had been told that his actions as White House Counsel and Attorney General would be at the center of the investigation. The President's response:
Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.
It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry -- to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility -- would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general.
Sources familiar with the halted inquiry said that if the probe had been allowed to continue, it would have examined Gonzales's role in authorizing the eavesdropping program while he was White House counsel, as well as his subsequent oversight of the program as attorney general.
Both the White House and Gonzales declined comment on two issues -- whether Gonzales informed Bush that his own conduct was about to be scrutinized, and whether he urged the president to close down the investigation, which had been requested by Democratic members of Congress.
This investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility was not looking at the legality of the warrentless wiretapping program, just "allegations of misconduct involving department attorneys that relate to the exercise of their authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice." In other words, the investigation was honing in on potential misbehavior and ethical and legal violations by Gonzalez. He knew this and still went to the President to ask him to end the investigation, which he did using what amounted to extraordinary means.
Now there is one very important question Gonzalez and the President have to answer. Did Gonzalez tell the President that he was a target of the investigation? If he did not, he would be guilty of a serious, if not illegal deception. And if he did, then the President knowingly interfered in a Justice Department investigation to shield his Attorney General. Either way, somewhere Tricky Dick Nixon must be blushing.
At least that's what it felt like living next door to the Shoreham Omni Hotel this weekend, where CPAC held its annual conference and Republican Presidential candidate cattle call. Trust me, when 5,000 conservative activists descend on your quiet corner of Washington, DC, you feel like you're under attack. My advice to these unwelcome visitors was to be careful about sharing their political views with the wait staff at Open City. Thankfully, Max Blumenthal from The Nation had more meaningful engagement with the other side in this great short film on the conference. Beyond providing a look into the house of horrors that is the CPAC conference, it provides a crisp snapshot of the conservative psyche.
It's times like these when I have trouble respecting our political and ideological opponents. Bad peoples...
Sam Fox wrote a $50,000 check to the 527 organization that created and aired the noxious and patently false "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads. His reward was a cushy appointment to be our next Ambassador to Belgium. But Ambassadorships are Senate confirmable posts, which means Fox had to face Senator John Kerry and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. As this article from the WAPO reveals, he offered wishy-washy excuses for his involvement, clearing lacking confidence in his convictions:
The panel did not vote on Fox yesterday, but committee member Kerry got in his say. He walked in a bit late and explained that he did not intend "to play some sort of 'gotcha' game," but he wanted to know: How does the nominee feel about the level of "personal destruction" in politics these days?
Fox replied that he was "very concerned" that politics have become too "mean and destructive," especially with the participation of independent "527" groups such as Swift Boat Veterans. He tried not so subtly to redirect Kerry's line of questioning by saying, "Sir, you're a hero," adding that no 527 group "can take that away from you."
Why then, given Fox's dim views of 527s, did he give such a large chunk of money to help Swift Boat? Kerry asked.
Fox explained that he and his wife donate generously to GOP political causes. "When we're asked, we generally give," he said. He said he could not recall who asked for the Swift Boat donation but explained that he thought it was important to give to a 527 working on behalf of Republicans because a 527 "on the other side" was stooping to such low levels as comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler.
"So two wrongs make a right?" Kerry asked.
Fox said he thought the dirty work of 527 ads was "disgraceful," but "that's the world we live in."
It is when they feature neocon "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle making professional and often personal attacks on other Republicans. Take the words he had for the last two Secretaries of State:
Colin Powell was a disaster. He never liked the president's policies. He did almost nothing to get them implemented. Condi [former head of the National Security Council and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] was in way over her head from the beginning, and the president gave much too much weight to her views.
I have a hard time accepting the normative judgments of a mastermind of the Iraq War. His stronger point may be the inherent unfairness that the people who made foreign policy in the Bush Administration - Perle, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Cheney, etc - were considered unfit (read: crazy wingnuts) for public consumption. That left comparative "moderates" like Powell, Rice, the President and, hell, Laura Bush in 2004 to go out and sell a dangerous foreign policy based on the neoconservative world view. Perle may finally be fed up with having been the man behind the curtain, destined to be ignored. It appears that in addition to being a terrible wonk, Perle also wanted to be the hack who sold the ideas and received attention and praise attention and praise from the President and the American people in exchange.And it wouldn't be an interview with a bitter, neocon if he didn't brazenly lie about WMD:
Saddam is gone, and I think that is a good thing. He was a menace. It is very popular now to suggest that because we didn't find WMD, he wasn't the threat. What we didn't find in truth was stockpiles of WMDs. He certainly had the capacity to produce chemical and biological weapons again when he wanted to do so, and so I believe he was a threat, and I think we had the right to respond to that threat.You can't operate on the basis of what you know later. You've got to operate on the basis of what you know then.
Reading that, it's almost impossible to believe that Perle, and his illogical defense of the war, have fallen out of favor.
“The president [elected in 2008] will look back and recall a distinct Internet moment that gave the campaign that winning momentum. One or more of the candidates will have a distinct ‘macaca’ or YouTube moment,” Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic strategist, predicted, referring to the gaffe that derailed then-Sen. George Allen’s (R-Va.) reelection campaign...
“’07 will be a year of massive experimentation. Much more of the advertising is going to be outside the campaigns,” Simon Rosenberg, the president of NDN, a progressive think tank, said...
With so many voters gathering political information online, campaigns will have to be vigilant about shaping their candidate’s Internet image, argued Louis Ubinas, an NDN fellow and a director in the media group at McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm. That includes trolling blogs and aggressively managing what pops up on Google searches for their own candidate’s and their opponents’ names.
“If you’re not buying keywords or managing search optimization, you’re not doing a thing,” he said...
“Anyone can fake it for a 30-second TV ad, but no one can fake it 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Trippi said. “We’re going to see authentic candidates, warts and all. But even with the warts, we like ’em.”
This is a topic NDN has worked on before, through our Campaign to Get Condi to Come Clean. And while I recognize that Secretary Rice's problems with the truth are neither new, nor surprising, I wanted to share two recent, remarkable examples.
First, on Fox News Sunday,Secretary Rice shared this gem with Chris Wallace:
"…It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."
Chris Wallace, of Clinton-baiting fame didn't press her on it, of course. Luckily, Keith Olbermann did, in some of his best work to date.
And just a week ago, former Bush Administration National Security Council Member Flynt Leverett called out Secretary Rice on her inconsistencies regarding Iran's 2003 offer of negotiations towards a "Grand Bargain" on WMD, Israel and support for terrorist groups. From The Raw Story:
Former Bush National Security Council official Flynt Leverett, speaking on Wednesday at a forum held by the New America Foundation, told a crowd in a Senate office building that in 2003 then-Secretary of State Colin Powell received a “grand bargain” offer from Iran and was rebuffed by the White House, RAW STORY can reveal.
“The document went over to the NSC” and “it is unthinkable” that it wouldn’t have gone to then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Leverett asserted. “She owes Congress an apology for saying she had not seen the document.”
"The statements she is making before Congress are not true," Leverett added, noting that Rice almost certainly "knows" they aren't true.
“If you go to the west coast the big issue is not Iraq – as it is in Washington – but global warming,” said Simon Rosenberg, the head of the New Democratic Network, in Washington. “The Oscar ceremonies offered the spectacle of an exuberant repudiation of the Bush years. It is hard to think of a better platform for Mr Gore’s public profile.”
Our own Joe Garcia, a longtime political leader in Florida, has been elected Chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. While this new gig is completely independent of Joe's work at NDN, we're still very excited for him, and wish him all the best in this new endeavor.
Having already made a name for herself for her flirtatious behavior at the State of the Union, Congresswoman Michele Bachman (R-MN) is now claiming that there is a secret agreement to partition Iraq. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has more:
“Iran is the trouble maker, trying to tip over apple carts all over Baghdad right now because they want America to pull out. And do you know why? It’s because they’ve already decided that they’re going to partition Iraq.
And half of Iraq, the western, northern portion of Iraq, is going to be called…. the Iraq State of Islam, something like that. And I’m sorry, I don’t have the official name, but it’s meant to be the training ground for the terrorists. There’s already an agreement made.
They are going to get half of Iraq and that is going to be a terrorist safe haven zone where they can go ahead and bring about more terrorist attacks in the Middle East region and then to come against the United States because we are their avowed enemy.”
Bachmann did not say how she knew about this plan,nor with whom Iran has made this deal.
The interview, with St. Cloud Times reporter Lawrence Schumacher, is available in its entirety as a podcast.
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