Deflecting Responsibility

washingtonpost.com
Deflecting Responsibility

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com

Ever since it started becoming clear that the war in Iraq was based on exaggerated and inaccurate assertions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the Bush White House has found itself, every once in a while, furiously trying to deflect the blame.

The effort has not been entirely successful. Polls show that a majority of Americans now believe the Bush administration intentionally misled the public about WMDs.

But then again, President Bush did win reelection.

One of the more furious bursts of blame-deflection, of course, came after former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV disclosed in July 2003 that U.S. intelligence officials had plenty of reason to know that there was no evidence to support allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger -- but that Bush chose to assert as much in his 2003 State of the Union speech anyway.

White House officials launched a dual attack -- both of which involved the CIA. On one front, they began assailing Wilson, a process that eventually led to press leaks outing his wife as a CIA agent. On the other front, they forced the CIA to take responsibility for not having insisted that Bush remove the famous "16 words" from his address.

No official body has thus far investigated the White House's use of intelligence in the run-up to war, or whether it was fair for the White House to blame the CIA and other agencies, instead of taking the blame itself. The Senate intelligence committee chose to put that issue off indefinitely and the Silberman-Robb "WMD Commission" was explicitly not authorized to do so.

But now comes today's news from Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei on the front page of The Washington Post: "The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case. . . .

"In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, an assertion that was later disputed."

So in addition to those we knew about before, who has talked to prosecutors? "[F]ormer CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street," Pincus and VandeHei write.

"Based on the questions they have been asked, people involved in the case believe that Fitzgerald looked into this bureaucratic fight because the effort to discredit Wilson was part of the larger campaign to distance Bush from the Niger controversy."

There's lot of new details there, including this one: "Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with [columnist Robert] Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed."


Novak Speaks, Says Nothing (Again)

You may remember that Novak gave an extended on-air no comment to his CNN colleagues last month. (See my June 30 column.)

CNN's Candy Crowley sweetly sought some scraps yesterday.

"CROWLEY: I wanted to talk to you about the CIA leak story, because a couple of things have come out that I wanted to see if I could get you to talk about. The first one is that there is a story out there that Karl Rove testified that you were the one that told him that Valerie Plame was at the CIA.

"NOVAK: Well I can't talk about anything that I have done. But I would say that it's, to me, very interesting that all these leaks on the grand jury are not coming from the grand jury, or, as far as I know, or from the special prosecutor, they are coming from lawyers for various people who are participating in it, or the participants themselves. Which is a little bit on the unusual side. . . .

"I noticed that this has revived the whole story which is the reason I haven't been on television very much lately. . . . [A]nd the Democrats are trying to make a lot of it. But I think this is a hard story to keep alive until the grand jury and special prosecutor came up with something.

"CROWLEY: Well outside whether you testify -- I assume you can't tell us whether you testified at the grand jury or still won't tell us. Outside of that, can you tell us whether you ever told Karl Rove about Valerie Plame's status?

"NOVAK: I can't tell anything I ever talked to Karl Rove about, because I don't think I ever talked to him about any subject, even the time of day, on the record."

But the liberal Think Progress blog notes what it calls an outright lie right off the bat: Novak never talked to Rove on the record? Then how come he quoted Rove at least twice?

And here are some questions that Novak should be asked, forcefully and directly because as the person who initially published the leak he has a unique obligaion to provide the public with his understaning of what's going on.

· Have you been notified that you are a target of the special prosecutor's investigation?

· It seems pretty obvious, from the fact that you are not currently in jail, that you have cooperated with investigators. Have you indeed met with prosecutors and/or testified before the grand jury? How many times? Under what circumstances?

· Have you disclosed your two sources to the prosecutors and/or grand jury?

· Did you get some sort of waiver from your sources before doing so?

· You have said your lawyer has told you not to comment about the case, even to say whether or not you have testified at all. What, specifically, is his concern? Can we talk to him to confirm that?

· Are you refusing to talk because you're afraid of putting yourself in legal jeopardy? Are you in legal jeopardy? Or is it because Fitzgerald has asked you not to comment? If so, why are you honoring that request?

· Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper felt free to describe his grand jury testimony in detail, including what sorts of questions he was asked. That was a boon to all journalists covering the case. Why won't you do the same?

That's just for starters. Back to you, Candy.
Live Online

I'll be Live Online today at 1 p.m. ET, taking your questions and comments .
Poll Watch

Gallup provides some more details on the poll I wrote about yesterday : "A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds that George W. Bush's personal honesty rating is the lowest of his term, but his ratings apparently have not suffered much, if at all, as a result of the probe into White House leaks of classified information. Only about half of Americans are following the controversy closely, but the prevailing sentiment is that Bush adviser Karl Rove did something unethical, if not illegal, when he revealed the identity of a CIA operative to reporters. . . .

"The July 22-24 poll finds 54% of Americans saying Bush is honest and trustworthy and 44% saying he is not. That is essentially unchanged from a 56% honesty rating found in April, long before the White House leak controversy erupted. In fact, Bush's image on this dimension has been quite stable since the beginning of 2004."

I asked yesterday whether the fact that half of Americans were following the Rove story closely was a lot or a little.

Reader Matthew S. Nelson pointed me to a recent Pew Research Center poll , which reached a similar finding about public interest in the case. Pew wrote: "The survey finds that attention to the Rove story is comparable to interest in past Washington controversies, including the 1997 ethics charges against House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's resignation in 2003 following remarks at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. . . . But the story has much greater resonance than the recent ethics complaints made against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay."

Pew has summarized news interest for different stories over the past 20 years here . That page tracks the number of people following a story "very closely" -- that's 23 percent for the Rove story. Consider this: Only 34 percent of American were very closely following the Clinton impeachment in late 1998, when the House was actually voting.
Rove the Headliner

Matthew Mosk writes in The Washington Post: "Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele hosted the first major fundraiser in his as-yet-undeclared bid for U.S. Senate last night, attracting presidential adviser Karl Rove to headline a $1,000-a-person cocktail party in Washington. . . .

"Democrats dispatched about 35 protesters to the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill to heckle Steele."
All About Ari

Anne E. Kornblut writes in the New York Times: "For the two years since he left the White House -- on the very day in July 2003 that Robert D. Novak printed the name of a Central Intelligence Agency operative in his syndicated newspaper column -- [Ari] Fleischer has been caught up in the investigation of who supplied that information to the columnist and whether it was a crime. . . .

"One person familiar with Mr. Fleischer's testimony said he told the grand jury that he was not Mr. Novak's source."

And Kornblut adds this about Fleischer's boss: "Dan Bartlett, the most senior communications strategist in the White House, has also told investigators that he did not know who Ms. Wilson was, according to a person who has been briefed on the case. . . .

"A background briefing during the trip in which Mr. Bartlett spoke with reporters on an airport tarmac and urged them to look into the C.I.A.'s role in sending Mr. Wilson to Niger has not drawn substantial interest from prosecutors recently."
Yesterday's Grilling

An excerpt from yesterday's briefing by spokesman Scott McClellan:

"Q Scott, in the wake of the Valerie Plame incident, on which you will not comment, intelligence officials have indicated there's a growing concern among operatives in the field, a fear that they might be the targets of political manipulation. And they have indicated that something must be done on the part of the White House to help allay these fears. And given that these people are in the forefront of the war on terror, isn't it necessary to do something more than simply stonewalling all discussion of the incident in order to restore confidence?

"MR. McCLELLAN: And I'll reject your characterization. What we're doing is helping to advance the investigation forward. And the President said he's not going to get into trying to draw conclusions based on reports in the media. Let's let the investigators complete their work."
The 12-Hour Gap

Democrats are calling for answers about the 12-hour lead time White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. got from then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, before Gonzales officially notified the White House staff that there was a criminal inquiry into the Plame matter and that all relevant records should be preserved. (See yesterday's column .)

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer wants answers from Card himself. Michigan Rep. John Conyers Jr. wants them from the Justice Department's inspector general.
Plame Likes Springsteen

Timothy J. Burger and Massimo Calabresi write in Time.com that "another minor wrinkle emerged that may further draw partisan lines. The Wilsons last year attended an anti-Bush fundraising concert featuring Bruce Springsteen last fall. Federal Election Commission records show the tab: $372 . . . to America Coming Together, a political committee that worked hard to oppose President Bush's re-election, for two floor seats. 'It was great,' Joe Wilson said, returning a call for his wife. 'Remember, this was a year and a half after the Administration compromised the identity of my wife, and it was no great secret that I was doing my bit to educate the American public as to the flaws in the Bush Administration's foreign policy.' "
Turd Blossom Troubles

David Twiddy writes for the Associated Press: "About a dozen newspapers have objected to use of toilet humor in Tuesday's and Wednesday's 'Doonesbury' comic strip, and some either pulled or edited the strip.

"Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes the strip to around 1,400 newspapers, said it had received some complaints from editors about a reference to presidential aide Karl Rove."

Here's Tuesday's strip , introducing Rove, AKA "Turd Blossom" -- which is, indeed, one of Bush's nicknames for him. (See the final item in my December 10 column for Rove's explanation. )

In today's strip , Turd Blossom gets a promotion.

Monday's strip was by comparison tame: A look at the newly assertive White House press corps.

Poll Watch

Susan Page writes in USA Today: "Most Americans don't believe the United States will succeed in winning the war in Iraq or establishing a stable democracy there, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll.

"But an ambivalent public also says sending troops to Iraq wasn't a mistake, a sign that most people aren't yet ready to give up on the war."

Among the other findings: "For the first time, a majority of Americans, 51%, say the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- the reason Bush emphasized in making the case for invading. The administration's credibility on the issue has been steadily eroding since 2003."

A new Quinnipiac University national poll finds Bush's approval rating at an all-time low of 41 percent.
Detainee Policy

Eric Lichtblau writes in the New York Times: "President Bush's nominee for the second-ranking spot at the Justice Department shed new light Tuesday on the 2002 development of the administration's positions on the treatment of terrorism detainees, but characterized some of the legal conclusions as 'sophomoric.'

"The nominee for deputy attorney general, Timothy E. Flanigan, was at the center of the administration's policies on torture as deputy White House counsel through late 2002.. . . .

"Mr. Flanigan said he was reluctant to state whether he considered several interrogation techniques, including mock executions and the simulated drowning of a prisoner, to be inappropriate or to constitute torture."

James Kuhnhenn writes for Knight Ridder: "The Senate's Republican leader Tuesday derailed a bipartisan effort to set rules for the treatment of enemy prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other military detention camps by abruptly stopping debate on a $491 billion defense bill."
Social Security Watch

Jackie Calmes writes in the Wall Street Journal: "Mr. Bush, in a pep talk for a few hundred college students and business backers, said he is 'more committed than ever' to creating personal accounts from Social Security and reducing future scheduled benefits so the program is permanently solvent, according to several attendees."
CAFTA Watch

Jim Abrams writes for the Associated Press: "In a rare piece of lobbying on Capitol Hill, President Bush appealed personally to fellow Republicans Wednesday to close ranks behind a free trade agreement with Central America that faces a very close floor vote."

Paul Blustein and Mike Allen write in The Washington Post: "Cajoling, deal-cutting and browbeating were always in the cards for CAFTA because it is by far the most controversial trade agreement in years. . . .

"A defeat would deal a major setback to President Bush's second-term agenda, exposing him as vulnerable to Republican defections at a time when his political clout has increasingly been called into question. It would also deepen doubts about the ability of DeLay, who has been hobbled by ethics charges, to keep his troops in line."

Christopher Lee writes in The Washington Post: "Andrew H. Card Jr. had some candid advice for 2,000 Washington interns who gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building on Monday evening to hear him speak at an event intended to recruit talented people into the federal civil service. Some of you should go corporate, the White House chief of staff told them."

Successor Worries

Susan Page writes in USA Today: "Add to President Bush's list of worries: the 2008 presidential race.

"That's not because he'll be running; he can't. Vice President Cheney insists he's not, either. But the administration has been forced to keep the next campaign in mind because numerous contenders, many of them in the Senate, have presidential bids on their minds as they debate everything from the Iraq war to the Supreme Court."
Line of Succession

The Associated Press reports that the Senate has passed a bill changing the order of those in line to assume the presidency if President Bush is unable to serve.
Rude?

CBS White House correspondent John Roberts takes questions online, including this one: "I am very happy to ask this question to a White House reporter: Why are some reporters so rude? Why don't the reporters wait for an answer before running ahead to the next question?"

Roberts's reply: "I guess it's all a matter of what you consider 'rude.' The job of any White House Correspondent worth his or her salt is to attempt to get to the truth. This White House is extraordinarily adept at sticking to the message and not imparting any information during the briefing that it doesn't want out there. The Press Secretary comes to the briefing with a set of talking points and sticks to them fastidiously. So the reporters try to knock him off point, usually to no avail."

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Judy Miller: Do We Want To Know Everything or Don't We?

huffingtonpost.com

Judy Miller: Do We Want To Know Everything or Don't We?
Arianna Huffington

Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.

But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

This is why Miller doesn't want to reveal her "source" at the White House -- because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)… but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it. This also explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal wasn't to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on Wilson's motives. Which Novak did.

This version of events has divided the Times into two camps: those who want to learn everything about this story, and those who want to learn everything as long as it doesn't downgrade the heroic status of their "colleague" Judy Miller. And then there are the schizophrenics. Frank Rich is spending his summer in the second camp, while at the same time writing some of the most powerful and brilliant stuff about the scandal: "This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit… is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped up grounds… That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war."


But this unmasking -- if it is to be complete -- has to include Judy Miller and the part she played in the mess in Iraq. Of course, the division over Miller is nothing new… it predates her transformation into media martyr by many months. For an early look at this riff, check out Howard Kurtz' May 2003 reporting on the way Miller ferociously fought to keep Ahmad Chalabi, her top source on WMD, to herself and the anger it caused at the paper. And also the paper's extraordinary mea culpa from May 2004, in which its editors admitted that the Times' reporting on Iraq "was not as rigorous as it should have been" -- yet steadfastly refused to even mention the less-than-rigorous reporter whose byline appeared on 4 of the 6 stories the editors singled out as being particularly egregious. "It looks," the Times' public admission concluded, "as if we, along with the administration, were taken in." And yet just two month earlier, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller called Miller, who was one of the main reporters "taken in" a "smart, well-sourced, industrious and fearless reporter." Nothing about her less than "rigorous" reporting. Nothing about her reliance on Chalabi being less than "well-sourced."

Any discussion of Miller's actions in the Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal must not leave out the key role she played in cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq and in hyping the WMD threat. Re-reading some of her pre-war reporting today, it's hard not to be disgusted by how inaccurate and pumped up it turned out to be. For chapter and verse, check out Slate's Jack Shafer. For the money quote on her mindset, look to her April 2003 appearance on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where, following up on her blockbuster front page story about an Iraqi scientist and his claims that Iraq had destroyed all its WMD just before the war started, Miller said the scientist was more than a "smoking gun," he was the "silver bullet" in the hunt for WMD. The "silver bullet" later turned out to be another blank -- and the scientist turned out to be a military intelligence official.

Amazingly, however, even as her reporting has been debunked -- and her sources discredited -- Miller has steadfastly refused to apologize for her role in misleading the public in the lead up to the war. Indeed, in an interview with the author of Bush's Brain, James Moore, she, in the words of Moore, "remained righteously indignant, unwilling to accept that she had goofed in the grandest of fashions", telling him: "I was proved fucking right."

As recently as March 2005, in an appearance at Berkeley, she stubbornly refused to express regret. Indeed, she showed that she shares a key attitude with the Bush administration: an unwillingness to admit mistakes when faced with new realities. She even compared herself to the president, saying that she was getting the same information he was getting… and suggested that since he hadn't apologized, why should she? Maybe she's angling for the Tenet treatment: promote faulty intel, get a Medal of Freedom. Miller also echoed the words of Don Rumsfeld ("You go to war with the Army you have") when she justified her flawed reporting on WMD by saying "You go with what you've got". Really? Wouldn't it be better to wait until what you've got is right?

It's nice that Bill Keller is visiting Judy in jail giving updates about how hard this is for her, having to be away from her family and friends. But it would be even nicer if we'd had some acknowledgement from Miller of her complicity in sending 138,000 American soldiers away from their family and friends. And, unlike Miller, they won't be returning home in October. Indeed, as of today, 1,785 of them won't be returning home at all.

This story gets deeper with every twist and revelation, including the reminder (via Podhoretz) that Fitzgerald had a previous run in with Miller over her actions in a national security case, and the speculation (via Jeralyn at Talk Left) that Fitzgerald is considering seeking to put Miller under criminal contempt, rather than the civil contempt she's now under.

But one thing is inescapable: Miller -- intentionally or unintentionally -- worked hand in glove in helping the White House propaganda machine (for a prime example, check out this Newsweek story on how the aluminum tubes tall tale went from a government source to Miller to page one of the New York Times to Cheney and Rice going on the Sunday shows to confirm the story to Bush pushing that same story at the UN).

So, once again, the question arises (and you can't have it both ways, Frank): when it comes to this scandal, do you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or do you want the truth -- except for what Judy Miller wants to keep to herself?

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Iraq Wants Quick Pullout of U.S. Troops

Iraq Wants Quick Pullout of U.S. Troops

By ROBERT BURNS

AP Military Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's prime minister said Wednesday he wants U.S. troops ``on their way out'' as soon as his government can protect its new democracy. The top American general in the country said he hopes to begin significant withdrawal by next spring.

At the same time, in an unannounced visit, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Iraqi security forces should take on more tasks now performed by U.S. troops.

American military commanders have repeatedly expressed hopes in recent months that they could begin major troop reductions next year, depending on the intensity of the insurgency. Even so, Wednesday's remarks seemed to signal a new willingness to discuss specific ways American troops might exit an increasingly unpopular war in which nearly 2,000 have died.

There was a subdued reaction in Congress. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, ``I remain concerned about establishing timetables and raising expectations. However, I have not seen the data that the general had before him.''

Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican on the committee, said he agreed with Gen. George Casey, the most senior commander of coalition forces in Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari that withdrawal will be possible only when conditions permit.

``I'm sure that the security situation at the time will dictate what they need to do,'' McCain said.

Al-Jaafari, speaking at a joint news conference with Rumsfeld, said, ``The great desire of the Iraqi people is to see the coalition forces on their way out.''

However, comments by Casey drew the most notice. He told reporters that a ``fairly substantial'' withdrawal of U.S. troops could go ahead in the spring and summer of 2006 if the Iraqi political process is not derailed and the insurgency does not grow.


Pentagon officials have provided little detail in discussing the possible withdrawal of forces from Iraq. The most specific estimate has come from Lt. Gen. John Vines, who runs day-to-day military operations in Iraq. He said in June that a reduction of ``four or five brigades'' - perhaps 20,000 troops out of the current 135,000 - was possible sometime next year.

More than 1,780 American troops have died since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. The Bush administration has refused to set deadlines for withdrawal, saying U.S. soldiers will remain as long as needed until Iraqi troops and police can defend the country on their own.

``The president wants to see our troops come home, but we've got an important mission that we need to complete,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday.

McClellan said Bush depends on his commanders to say how many troops they need, ``And they make decisions based on the conditions and the progress that's being made on the ground.''

Car bombings, roadside bomb attacks and other violence against U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians have increased in recent months, and al-Jaafari and his cabinet face constant threats. Rumsfeld's visit to Iraq was not announced ahead of time for fear of attack.

Still, the United States points to successful elections in Iraq in January and formation of a democratic government as evidence both that the Iraqis are on the path to independence and that the U.S.-led toppling of Saddam Hussein was worthwhile.

Rumsfeld did not comment on al-Jaafari's remarks, but later told reporters that the country's political leaders need to do more to relieve the burden on American forces. He said Iraqis need to start taking responsibility for guarding the estimated 15,000 U.S.-held prisoners, and should meet the Aug. 15 deadline for completing a draft constitution.

``It would be very harmful to the momentum that's necessary'' if the constitution is not finished on time, he said. ``We have troops on the ground there. People get killed.''

More than half of Americans, 55 percent, who were polled in early July for The Associated Press by Ipsos, said they disapprove of the U.S. government's handling of Iraq. Thirty-seven percent said in AP-Ipsos polling in June that they thought the United States should bring its troops home immediately.

The presence of U.S. troops is increasingly unpopular in Iraq as well. Forty-six percent of Iraqis polled in a survey conducted in March and April said the U.S.-led war had done more harm than good. At the same time, 61 percent said Saddam's ouster was worth the price.

Forty-seven percent of respondents in that CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq are unjustified, while 52 percent said those attacks could be justified some or all of the time.

``We desire speed in that regard,'' al-Jaafari said of a U.S. pullout, but added that no specific timetable exists for a handover.

``We do not want to be surprised by a withdrawal that is not in connection with our Iraqi timing,'' he said, speaking through a translator.

At the Pentagon, officials say they have prepared a range of scenarios, from increasing the size of the force to reducing it substantially. Drawdowns could be accomplished by bringing home troops ahead of schedule, or rotating in fewer replacements when a unit returns to its home base.

Casey and other officials mention spring or summer as possibilities because the U.S. military will need time to assess the effects of the December elections on the insurgency, defense officials said. Iraq's security forces are also expected to be in better shape by then.

^---

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

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Subcontractor's Story Details Post-9/11 Chaos

washingtonpost.com
Subcontractor's Story Details Post-9/11 Chaos
New Company Had Little Oversight

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers

Three years ago, Sunnye L. Sims lived in a two-bedroom apartment north of San Diego, paying $1,025 in monthly rent. Then she landed a dream job, with $5.4 million in pay for nine months of work.

Now she owns a $1.9 million stucco mansion with lofty ceilings on a hilltop, featuring sun-splashed palm trees and a circular driveway.

"She really went uphill," said Jerry Collins, a maintenance man at her former apartment complex who recalled Sims talking about her ambitions.

Sims is not a Hollywood starlet. She is a meeting-and-events planner who built her fortune on a U.S. government contract. In 2002, her tiny company secured a no-bid subcontract to manage logistics on an urgent federal project to protect the nation's airports in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Sims, now 42, recruited hundreds of people to help hire a government force of 60,000 airline passenger screeners on a tight deadline. With little experience, her tiny company was asked to help set up and run screener-assessment centers in a hurry at more than 150 hotels and other facilities. Her company eventually billed $24 million.

The company, Eclipse Events Inc., was among the most important of the 168 subcontractors hired by prime contractor NCS Pearson Inc. The cost of the overall contract rose in less than a year to $741 million from $104 million, and federal auditors concluded that $303 million of that spending was unsubstantiated.


Spurred by that audit, federal agents are examining the entire contract and focusing on Eclipse, according to government officials and Pearson. Investigators at the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General are trying to determine how and why Eclipse obtained the work and whether the company overcharged the government or submitted false claims.

The story of how Sims vaulted from relative obscurity into a key role overseeing tens of millions of dollars in government spending is still unfolding. A deeper examination of the Eclipse subcontract illustrates the chaos that accompanied homeland security initiatives after the terrorist attacks and shows how contractors were allowed to operate with little government oversight.

Eclipse came out of nowhere, starting as a one-woman operation based in Sims's apartment. She was hired in a hurry, through word of mouth, recommended by someone who did not review her background in detail. She had worked for more than a decade as an event planner for the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. But her company, Eclipse, did not exist as a corporation until Sims got the Pearson subcontract; two weeks later, she filed incorporation papers. Over the next several months, Sims hired hundreds of freelance meeting planners, many of them sight unseen.

As the number of hotel assessment sites expanded -- the Transportation Security Administration doubled the number of screeners to be hired -- Eclipse's subcontract grew to $24 million from $1.1 million. The company's authority to spend money on behalf of Pearson and the government also expanded -- in addition to its direct billings, Eclipse approved millions of dollars more in hotel charges by Eclipse employees and spending by other subcontractors, the audit shows.

"Eclipse did not have any other work, before, during, or after the completion of this subcontract," according to the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which was hired by the TSA to examine spending under the contract. A copy of the audit was obtained by The Washington Post.

Eclipse was hired as a field manager to coordinate with hotels for meeting spaces, conference rooms and food, as well as to act as the go-between with hotels and other vendors and subcontractors, such as local security companies. Eclipse employees later said they did the best they could under the most difficult of circumstances. But they also said Sims and her colleagues seemed overwhelmed.

"Did I think money was being spent wisely?" asked Christopher Bryson, an aspiring filmmaker who worked as an Eclipse logistics coordinator. "My answer is no. It just wasn't well managed."

The auditors said $15 million in expenses submitted by Eclipse could not be substantiated. For example, auditors were able to find supporting documents for only $326,873 of the $5.8 million that Eclipse spent directly on accounting, administration, consulting, management and contract labor.

The auditors noted that Sims not only paid herself $5.4 million in compensation as "President/Owner" but also that she gave herself a $270,000 pension.

In addition to focusing on the direct Eclipse expenses, auditors raised concerns about expenses Eclipse employees charged to separate accounts at the hotels chosen by Pearson. Auditors highlighted scores of other expenses run up or approved by Eclipse: hundreds of thousands of dollars for valet parking, unexplained cash advances, dry cleaning and other spending at the hotels, many of which were high-end or resort-style establishments.

Sims and her business associate, Eclipse Vice President Nita Sullivan, declined repeated requests for interviews. A Washington lawyer hired to help the women respond to questions from federal auditors said they have cooperated with authorities and have nothing to hide. The lawyer, Pamela J. Mazza, declined to discuss the contract or the current investigation.

"Eclipse Events completed its work on time and to the satisfaction of the prime contractor at the fixed price negotiated between Eclipse Events and NCS Pearson," Mazza said in a statement.

Pearson officials said they "believed that Eclipse's rates were reasonable" and "that Eclipse did a good job." In response to the audit, Pearson said, "However, TSA's frequent changes and revised requirements greatly impacted [Pearson] and its subcontractors as they both struggled to meet TSA's ever-changing demands and schedule changes."

But Pearson officials also had concerns about the Eclipse bills. Pearson officials negotiated a $1.5 million discount from Eclipse after a Pearson contracting official questioned Eclipse's expenses. Pearson officials pointed out to The Post that $6 million in Eclipse expenses were "recognized or reimbursed by the government." The Pearson officials also said that the $15 million in expenses highlighted by the auditors was factored into negotiations with the government that resulted in a reduction of Pearson's final contract amount to $741 million.

On the specific point of Sims's $5.4 million compensation, the company said that it did not have access to Eclipse's records and that it "cannot validate how much Eclipse paid to its principal. If [the $5.4 million] is accurate, the personal enrichment is outrageous."

Former Eclipse associates interviewed by The Post in recent weeks described Sims as bright, charming and capable. Her friends dismissed the possibility of impropriety, saying she and Sullivan are both devout Christians who would never take advantage of the government for personal gain.

Sullivan, who lives near Orlando, and Sims have known each other for years. Corporate records show that they have operated at least six related companies in Florida and California in the past five years, all of them registered at their home addresses or post office boxes.

When Sims got the Pearson subcontract, she turned to Sullivan and made her vice president of Eclipse, the audit said. Midway through the work, Sullivan created a new company, WJS Consulting Inc., out of her Florida home. WJS received $5.2 million in consulting fees from Eclipse, the audit said. Sullivan said she used the money to hire labor for the project.

Kathy Artandi worked with Sullivan on the passenger-screener contract out of Sullivan's Florida home. She said Sullivan now works as a youth mentor at a church and lives with her ailing mother.

"It's not like she went out and bought a million-dollar place," said Artandi, who called Sullivan one of her best friends. "That's not Nita. She's very old-fashioned."

Today, Sims helps run a program for recovering alcoholics and drug abusers at Seacoast Community Church, an Evangelical Free church by a freeway in Encinitas, Calif. Pastor Dave Simonson credits Sims with changing the lives of some church members.

"She's an extremely competent, caring and compassionate person," Simonson said. "She's very good at what she does: organizing, handling things, following through. She's very gifted. People like her. She's humble. I would characterize her as a servant-leader."

'Two or Three Names'

Sims grew up in Texas and graduated from Texas State University in San Marcos in 1988 with a degree in interior design and architecture. For more than a decade, she worked for the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, starting as an assistant lounge manager in Austin.

In the early 1990s, she went to work for the Four Seasons in Hawaii. She then transferred to the Four Seasons Aviara resort north of San Diego. In 1998, she moved into a two-bedroom apartment at a complex in northern San Diego County, not far from where she worked, apartment records show.

"I found California by way of Texas then Hawaii," Sims said in a biographical sketch posted on the Seacoast Community Church Web site. "My whole family still lives in Texas and they visit as often as they can. Seems there is never a shortage of visitors when you live in Southern California. I have lived in Carlsbad for 8 years and in that time God has blessed me with a special 'California family' that I have come to love as my own."

"I feel so fortunate to live so close to the Pacific Ocean and spend as much time as possible enjoying the beach and the year round sunshine!" she wrote in the sketch. "I love hiking, skiing, concerts and travel."

Sims left the Four Seasons and in 2000 began doing business as a meeting planner under the name Eclipse Events.

In early 2002, Sims was contacted by Pearson, an educational-testing division of Pearson PLC, a media and publishing company based in England.

Pearson was in a jam. It had just received a contract to test, fingerprint and medically evaluate candidates for jobs as federal airport passenger screeners. Originally, Pearson had planned to use hundreds of its own testing facilities to screen the candidates. But within weeks, TSA officials decided to change the contract and told Pearson to create assessment centers from scratch at hotels and other facilities close to airports, according to Pearson company documents and federal auditors.

Pearson suddenly needed help to carry the huge logistical load.

Sims and Eclipse were among "two or three names" passed on to Pearson by David Gallagher, an executive at HelmsBriscoe Inc., which was helping Pearson book hotel space. Gallagher said in a recent interview that he had heard Sims was sharp and that she had access to a large database with names of meeting planners around the country.

The database was the core element of a business the two women ran called the International Travel Directors Association. For a $100 fee, the association's Web site said, travel and event planners could sign up to be listed in the association's directory of member profiles.

"Established to unite Travel Directors & Meeting Planners -- worldwide!" said the Web site.

The site said the association was located in Suite 147 at 10151 University Blvd. in Orlando. The actual address was at P.O. Box 147 in the UPS Store at 10151 University Blvd. State incorporation records show the company's address at Sullivan's home outside Orlando.

Because he was pressed for time, Gallagher said, he did not thoroughly check Sims's credentials before passing her name along to Pearson officials. At the time, in March 2002, Pearson and HelmsBriscoe had to open passenger-screener assessment centers in Los Angeles, Chicago and Memphis on tight deadlines.

"I honestly don't remember who recommended her," Gallagher said.

Pearson said it tried out both Eclipse and one other recommended company at a few sites and selected Eclipse based on cost and performance. Pearson officials said they did not hire Eclipse to meet any obligation to include businesses owned by women.

Auditors describe Eclipse's subcontract as a no-bid arrangement.

On March 13, 2002, Pearson struck a deal with Sims estimated at the time to be worth $1.1 million.

According to the government audit, the assignment was to "provide on-site logistical support for each assessment location," including "managing arrangements with hotel staff, ground suppliers and other vendors" and "services for security, communications, and supplies."

It was a tall order. Eclipse did not yet exist as a corporation. Sims formally incorporated the company as Eclipse Events Inc. on March 28 -- two weeks after she had the subcontract in hand. On state incorporation papers, she used her apartment north of San Diego as the company's address.
'The Pressure Was On'

Over the course of the nine-month project, as the work expanded beyond the first three assessment-center cities, Eclipse hired more than 700 freelance event and meeting planners to help manage more than 150 centers where 328,051 passenger-screener candidates were assessed and 63,681 were hired.

Several Eclipse employees said in interviews that Sims seemed polite, caring and attentive. When someone needed to go home, Sims made sure he got a ticket and had a job upon return, they said.

Patrick Murray, a meeting planner in San Francisco, said he was impressed with Sims, though he never met her face to face. Murray said Sims dealt with extraordinary demands with aplomb and was always available to talk on the phone about logistical troubles.

"The pressure was on," said Murray, who oversaw logistics at 40 assessment centers. "She was asked to get all these staff, and she got them. I have nothing but the highest respect for her."

Others described the project as chaotic and lacking in oversight and accountability. Some of the workers had years of experience, but others had little or none. One former employee, Andrea Schulte, said the circumstances created opportunities for waste and abuse. Schulte worked in Ohio, Kansas and Michigan. She said some of the hotels took advantage of the situation.

"There's a lot of blame to go around," Schulte said. "There was too much pressure, and there was a lot of money flying around."

Bryson, the aspiring film director and former Eclipse employee, was among those who said Sims hired him over the phone. Although he was happy with the money he made working seven-day weeks, Bryson said he was not impressed by Eclipse's management.

He also said the hotels added charges at every turn: for setting up banquet rooms, for sodas that had not been ordered, for unnecessary podium rentals and cleaning crews. One hotel tried to charge Eclipse $800 in rental fees for a slide projector, a charge Bryson said he refused to accept.

"It was crazy," Bryson said.

Others said they were uncomfortable with Sims's tendency to approve first-class tickets and other apparent extravagances, such as the valet parking and dry cleaning bills, cited in the audit report.

"It was like Roosevelt's New Deal," said Roger Manson, an Eclipse contract employee from California. "The tech bubble burst. 9/11 happened. No one was flying. Hotels were empty. This was a way to put a lot of people back to work. It wasn't really done in the best possible way, but it sure was good to be working again."

For Manson, the passenger-screener contract couldn't have come at a better time. He had been laid off by an information technology company and received a call from a friend about a logistics firm that was hiring hundreds of people.

Manson had experience in the customer service field, so he called an Eclipse representative and sent over his résumé. "He called me back and said, 'When can I put you on a plane?' There was no background check. No formal interview. The next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Birmingham, Alabama."

Manson said some Eclipse workers would fly home for weekends and keep their hotel rooms, billing the company, and ultimately the government, for unused rooms. He said Eclipse workers were permitted to take out cash advances from the hotels.Eclipse workers charged the advances against a government account and used the cash as tip money for hotel staffers and others.

Some former Eclipse workers said that the practice is commonplace in the events-planning business and that they were careful to account for the cash. But Manson and others said they were not sure that others were as vigilant with the advances because there were so few financial controls.

Midway through the Pearson contract, Sims, Sullivan and several of their colleagues decided to leverage their new contacts and experience to create a more ambitious meeting-and-planning company. Called Eclipse Partners Inc., the new company was registered in January 2003, listing the company address as a post office box north of San Diego.

Richard Weaver, who listed himself as "chief inspiration officer" of his own company, was hired as a consultant to help guide Eclipse Partners into the future. Weaver said in a recent interview that he arranged for the founders of Eclipse Partners to meet at a "dreams and vision" session in San Diego in 2003, months after the work on the passenger-screener contract had been completed.

But he said that Sims seemed to lose interest and that the new company never got off the ground.

"She wanted to go in another direction," Weaver said. "I had heard she wanted to focus on her life in her church."

Researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

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'Millennium bomber' gets 22 years

BBC NEWS
'Millennium bomber' gets 22 years

Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian man convicted of plotting to blow up Los Angeles airport five years ago, has been sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Ressam was arrested as he crossed the US-Canadian border with explosives on the eve of the new millennium.

He was convicted in 2001 of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act and smuggling explosives, but was not sentenced because he was helping the authorities.

He stopped co-operating in 2003 after being placed in solitary confinement.

Information

Ressam was arrested by US customs in December 1999 as he crossed by ferry from British Columbia on Canada's west coast into the US.

Officers found bomb-making materials in the boot of his car.


After his arrest, Mr Ressam reportedly helped the US authorities identify more than 100 people with alleged links to al-Qaeda.

He also provided information about the network's training camps in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors had hoped he could help in the extradition of two suspected al-Qaeda members, one of whom is currently in Britain, the other in Canada, says the BBC's David Willis in Los Angeles.

But he withdrew his co-operation after being placed in solitary confinement and the efforts to extradite the two men foundered, our correspondent says.

Ressam had been denied asylum by Canada, but had nevertheless managed to continue to live in Montreal for seven years.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4722409.stm

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Democrat accuses DeLay of adding fund to bill

Reuters

Democrat accuses DeLay of adding fund to bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay quietly slipped into the energy bill a $1.5 billion fund for oil and natural gas drilling research that will benefit an energy consortium based in his home district, a California Democrat said on Wednesday.

The measure was criticized as a "giveaway to one of the most profitable industries in America," by Rep. Henry Waxman, who demanded that the fund be dropped from the legislation before a House vote on the energy bill on Thursday.


The House is expected to approve the wide-ranging energy bill, which includes some $14.5 billion in tax breaks and incentives mostly for oil, natural gas, coal and electricity companies.

A vote in the Senate is tentatively set for Friday.

Waxman said the $1.5 billion fund for ultra-deepwater drilling was added to the final energy bill this week after House and Senate negotiators called a halt to any more amendments. The 30-page measure appeared in the text of the energy bill after Texas Rep. Joe Barton had officially ended the House and Senate conference committee to combine legislation passed by each chamber, he said.

"Obviously, it would be a serious abuse to secretly slip such a costly and controversial provision into the energy legislation," Waxman said in a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

A spokesman for DeLay defended the fund, saying it was in the energy bill approved by the House in April.

"The project is only new to Mr. Waxman if he failed to read the House bill he had voted on," the spokesman said, adding he could not explain how the item was added to the final version of legislation prepared by the Senate and House negotiators.

Waxman said the fund would steer most of the money to a private consortium based in Sugar Land, DeLay's home district, by directing the Energy Department to "contract with a corporation that is constructed as a consortium."

Members of the consortium, Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, include Halliburton Co., Marathon Oil Corp. and several universities, according to the group's web site.

The non-profit group conducts research into designing better technology to explore and produce natural gas in deep water, the web site said.

Waxman said that the measure added to the energy bill provides that members of the consortium -- including Halliburton and Marathon -- can receive money from the fund administered by the consortium.

* Text of final energy bill at http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/0205_Energy/conference/Ener gyConf_report.pdf

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Majority of Americans say Bush lied about WMDs

USA TODAY

Poll: Most believe U.S. won't win war
By Susan Page, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Most Americans don't believe the United States will succeed in winning the war in Iraq or establishing a stable democracy there, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll.

But an ambivalent public also says sending troops to Iraq wasn't a mistake, a sign that most people aren't yet ready to give up on the war.

"There's a lot of conflicting impulses here," says Andrew Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. A Pew poll last week also showed crosscurrents in attitudes toward the Iraq war. "People are giving bleak assessments on the one hand, and on the other hand (they're) saying maybe it was still the right thing to do."

The bombings in London this month also have roiled public opinion, intensifying a not-yet-settled debate among Americans about whether the Iraq war has made the United States safer from terrorism.

Strong fears that a family member might become a victim of terrorism spiked in the USA TODAY poll to its highest level since October 2001, just after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Also in the survey:

•For the first time, a majority of Americans, 51%, say the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — the central justification given for invading. The administration's credibility on the issue has been steadily eroding since 2003 after stores of the weapons weren't found.


•By 58%-37%, a majority say the United States won't be able to establish a stable democratic government in Iraq, similar to the results when the question was asked in April 2004.

•About one-third, 32%, say the United States can't win the war in Iraq. Another 21% say the United States could win the war, but they don't think it will. Just 43% predict a victory.

Still, on the question designed to test fundamental attitudes toward the war — was it a mistake to send U.S. troops? — the public's view has rebounded. By 53%-46%, those surveyed say it wasn't a mistake, the strongest support for the war since just after the Iraqi elections in January.

Majority views on that question have fluctuated for the past year in response to good news and bad from Baghdad.

Richard Stoll, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston who has studied public opinion and the Iraq war, says support for President Bush's policies in Iraq has been gradually declining as the U.S. death toll has climbed and violence has continued.

"If there's no dramatic event like Osama bin Laden being captured, which is not predictable, I think we will continue to see American public feelings about Iraq slide downward," he says. "I don't think there's anything (the White House) can do that would all of a sudden cause that to reverse."

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-07-26-poll-us-not-winning-iraq_x.htm?csp=34

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Senate Dems: Weaker by the Moment

huffingtonpost.com
Senate Dems: Weaker by the Moment
Doug Heller

Given the opportunity to take on President Bush's (and big business's) nominee to head the Securities & Exchange Commission, at today's confirmation hearing, Senate Dems decided to take a pass. The nominee, Rep. Chris Cox, is about as anti-investor as they get, but for some reason, the Democrats don't seem to have the stomach for this fight. Is there no one on the Hill willing to put Bush's laissez-faire ideologue nominee on the spot, even if the calculation is that Cox will get the appointment? How can you live to fight another day, if you don't fight in the first place?

To get a comedic take on this nomination, watch the video with Greg Germann (Ally McBeal) giving a corporate crook's praise for Cox at stopcox.org.

When President Bush nominated Congressman Chris Cox to head the SEC, he gave Democrats the opportunity to hit one out of the park. We're talking about putting Americans' nest eggs in the hands of a guy whose anti-regulatory credentials should have made him an impossible choice in the wake of Enron, WorldCom and the like. Pensions, 401Ks, college funds: these are things that matter, right?

But instead the Dems struck out today, or, rather, hardly came up to the plate.

Senators Schumer and Feinstein fawned over this "colleague on the Hill," whose bottom of the barrel record on investor and consumer issues and top of the heap fundraising from businesses he would regulate at the SEC make him a nominee who could and should be blocked. And none of it compares to his work as a private attorney when he misled regulators about an investment scheme that was used by William Cooper to swindle seniors and other small investors out of $130 million (see the LA Times reporting on this).

But apparently these things don't matter to the Senators interviewing a guy set to become the regulator of the world's largest stock markets.

The truth is, this is bread and butter material -- and the average American is getting toasted.

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Senate takes up bill to protect gun industry

Reuters

Senate takes up bill to protect gun industry

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate on Tuesday opened debate on a measure to give the U.S. gun industry broad protection from civil lawsuits, a top priority of the gun lobby and an anathema to gun control groups.

The legislation, which would grant gun makers immunity from most civil liability lawsuits, is likely to pass with support from most Senate Republicans and a number of Democrats from rural or southern states. But gun control advocates hope to attach amendments, possibly including a measure that would impose tighter regulation of sales at gun shows.

The Republican-led Senate brought up the gun legislation as the Senate stalled on a war-time defense bill, prompting Democratic complaints about national priorities.

"I support the gun liability legislation," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "But for heaven's sakes, what is more important to this country (than) taking care of our troops, our veterans, their dependents?"

"Should the gun liability legislation trump this? The obvious answer is no, but it did," he added.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, decided to take up guns as Congress moved toward its month-long August recess and an effort to cut off debate on the defense bill came up short of the votes needed to pass.

The White House announced its support of the legislation earlier in the day. The gun industry has sought protection from what it considers frivolous and politically motivated lawsuits.

"The president believes that the manufacturer of a legal product should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of that product by others, and what this bill would do is it would help prevent lawsuit abuse, and help curb the problem of frivolous lawsuits," said press secretary Scott McClellan.


Last year Republicans killed their own bill, meant to shield gunmakers, gun distributors and gun sellers against many liability suits after gun opponents attached amendments to it, including an extension of the 1994 ban on assault rifles.

But the November elections resulted in a bigger Republican majority and the Senate is now more conservative and more in favor of gun rights. Several Democrats, particularly from rural states, back the immunity measure.

Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig, lead backer of the bill, has voiced confidence that the measure will win Senate approval with few, if any, amendments unpalatable to its supporters.

Even if mostly Democratic gun control advocates do attach some amendments, Craig said earlier this month that the strategy would be to strip them out in a conference with the House of Representatives.

The House has not taken up the liability bill yet this year but it has voted for it strongly in the past.

Gun control groups say the bill would wipe out legal rights of victims of gun violence, including police injured in the line of duty or families harmed by attacks like those of the Washington-area sniper in 2002.

But the bill is a top priority for the National Rifle Association, the main U.S. gun rights lobby, which says it is needed to protect firearms manufacturers, distributors and sellers from politically motivated and frivolous lawsuits.

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Payola Redux

First, some history for those of you who may not remember or may not be old enough to remember.

From
http://www.history-of-rock.com/payola.htm

Payola - The paying of cash or gifts in exchange for airplay.

"Payola" is a contraction of the words "pay" and"Victrola" (LP record player), and entered the English language via the record business. The first court case involving payola was in 1960. On May 9, Alan Freed was indicted for accepting $2,500 which he claimed was a token of gratitude and did not affect airplay. He paid a small fine and was released. His career faltered and in 1965 he drank himself to death.

Before Alan Freed's indictment, payola was not illegal, however, but commercial bribery was. After the trial, the anti-payola statute was passed under which payola became a misdemeanor, penalty by up to $10,000 in fines and one year in prison.

===

latimes.com
Paying a Price
Sony BMG reaches a $10-million settlement of allegations it bribed stations to get its songs on the air

By Charles Duhigg and Walter Hamilton
Times Staff Writers

When executives at Sony BMG needed to drum up support in 2002 for Jennifer Lopez's album "This Is Me … Then," they called the program director of a San Diego radio station and offered her a 32-inch plasma TV in exchange for adding the artist's songs to her play list.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment knew such payola, or "pay-for-play," was improper. Nonetheless, the company asked the programmer to provide a fictitious contest winner's name and Social Security number to cover up her involvement.

The station executive got her TV, and J-Lo got her spins.

The alleged exchange was disclosed in a treasure trove of e-mails, BlackBerry messages and other documents made public Monday by New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer. That electronic paper trail led the second-largest music company to a $10-million settlement.

Spitzer said Sony BMG executives offered "outright bribes" to radio programmers to make sure the company's artists got heard. Among the goodies Sony BMG gave employees of stations owned by Infinity Broadcasting Corp., Clear Channel Communications Inc. and others: airplane tickets, cash, vacation packages, PlayStation video game systems, DVD players and laptop computers.

In one e-mail that Spitzer released, a station manager who allegedly accepted gifts joked to Sony BMG executives: "I'm a whore this week. What can I say?"

Sony BMG, home to such artists as Tony Bennett and the Dixie Chicks, promised Monday not to pay radio stations in exchange for airplay. The company issued a formal statement acknowledging that "various employees pursued some radio promotion practices on behalf of the company that were wrong and improper." The company also fired an executive vice president of promotions at one of its labels.

Radio airplay is considered the most powerful promotional tool for record companies. Payola has plagued the music industry since the 1930s, with disc jockeys at times accepting cash, drugs or prostitutes in exchange for airplay.

At the news conference in his Lower Manhattan office, Spitzer said payola today was as widespread and "corrosive" as it was in the 1950s.


"It is omnipresent," Spitzer said. "It is driving the industry. And it is wrong. It reaches to the very top of the industry on the radio side and on the label side."

In 1960, Congress passed an anti-payola law banning broadcasters from taking cash or anything of value in exchange for playing specific songs unless they disclosed the transaction to listeners. Spitzer launched his investigation based on a similar law passed by the New York Legislature.

Spitzer's investigation continues at the other three major record companies — Universal Music Group, EMI Group and Warner Music Group — as well as at the country's largest radio corporations. Many industry insiders say the Sony BMG settlement could provide a template for agreements with other companies. Each company said it was cooperating with Spitzer but declined to comment further.

Documents released as part of the Sony BMG settlement depicted the seamier side of the music business, in which under-the-table payments and nudge-and-wink deals were so common that no one even tried to hide them.

"What do I have to do to get Audioslave on WKSS this week?!!?" a Sony BMG employee promoting the Audioslave song "Like a Stone" wrote to a Clear Channel programmer in 2003. "Whatever you can dream up, I can make it happen!!!"

Documents show that through its labels, which include Epic Records, Columbia Records and Sony Urban, Sony BMG routinely financed on-air contests in which stations gave away vacation packages, concert tickets and other items. In exchange, the company — whose involvement was not revealed to listeners — demanded not just spins of particular songs but airplay during the hours when the most people were listening. If they didn't get it, executives didn't mince words.

"OK, here it is in black and white," one frustrated Epic promotion executive wrote to a colleague after giving Las Vegas "flyaways" — or airplane travel packages — to radio station employees in exchange for playing Celine Dion's "I Drove All Night." If the stations played the song only late at night, the employee wrote, "they are not getting the flyaway." The e-mail also warned that programmers risked forfeiting the opportunity to play blackjack with Dion, who is based in Las Vegas.

According to Spitzer's office, Sony BMG also expended "significant resources" to manipulate call-in request lines, paying interns and others to repeatedly phone stations posing as listeners. To make sure the callers sounded authentic, Sony BMG employees issued specific guidelines.

"You need to rotate your people," an Epic promotion employee wrote last year in an e-mail to a call-in campaign leader. "My guys on the inside say that it's the same couple of girls calling in every week and that they are not inspired enough to be put on the air. They've got to be excited. They need to be going out, or getting drunk, or going in the hot [tub], or going clubbing…. You get the idea."

Spitzer took his sharpest aim at radio stations, saying they "are the ones most fundamentally who are violating the public trust."

According to e-mails released by Spitzer's office, senior staff members at Sony BMG's Columbia Records worried in 2001 that radio giant Clear Channel would boycott Columbia's releases unless the label paid more for airplay.

The e-mails suggest that employees of both Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting, the second-largest radio company, may have taken payments from Sony BMG in return for airplay. Spitzer has subpoenaed documents from both radio companies.

An Infinity spokesman declined to comment on the investigation. A Clear Channel representative said the nation's largest radio group was cooperating fully and that "allegations made today will be fully investigated and any wrongdoing will be met by swift and appropriate disciplinary action."

Spitzer's inquiry may also prompt an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, which is responsible for enforcing payola laws. In an interview, Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein said he was calling for his agency to launch an inquiry, which could lead to revocation of radio licenses if illegal payments were substantiated.

"If it turns out there is massive and widespread violation of the rules, I don't see how we can't take extreme actions against the guilty licensees," Adelstein said.

The agency has extended limited oversight into payola issues and has imposed only one fine, for $8,000, in a payola case in the last decade.

Under the settlement, Sony BMG will work only with third-party promoters who promise to not offer inducements to radio employees. The company also agreed not to manipulate radio airplay charts by purchasing advertisements that include snippets of songs. That practice can drive up the "spin counts" used to measure a song's popularity.

The settlement won't ban all gifts. Sony BMG may pay for listener giveaways and give station employees concert tickets, modest personal gifts and meals costing as much as $150 per person.

The settlement also permits the company's artists to perform at radio-sponsored events, a practice some critics describe as "play-ola," because radio stations can sponsor huge concerts without having to pay the performing bands.

It was unclear how much the settlement would affect the culture of Sony BMG, a partnership between Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp. and German media company Bertelsmann.

On Monday, the company fired Joel Klaiman, executive vice president of promotion at Epic Records, for activities related to Spitzer's investigation. Company insiders said other employees were disciplined but expected no further firings as a result of the probe.

"Paying for songs has been almost standard operating procedure for years and years," said a Sony BMG executive who requested anonymity because he feared antagonizing Spitzer's office. "From this day forward, heads will roll. But, in terms of corporate scandals, we're talking about TV sets and trips to Florida. It's not Wall Street scandals."

Donnie Michaels of Miami's WHYI, one of the programmers identified in the e-mails, said he did nothing wrong.

According to the e-mails, Sony BMG employees knew Michaels so well that when making a hotel reservation one specified: "Make sure Donnie is not staying in a room too high, he has a fear of heights."

Said Michaels: "I was just doing what everyone else was doing."

*

To see e-mail files Spitzer's office released, see the article at latimes.com.

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AG: High Court Not Bound by Roe V. Wade

Yahoo! News
AG: High Court Not Bound by Roe V. Wade

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

The legal right to abortion is settled for lower courts, but the Supreme Court "is not obliged to follow" the Roe v. Wade precedent, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday as the Senate prepared to consider John Roberts' appointment that would put a new vote on the high court.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Gonzales said a justice does not have to follow a previous ruling "if you believe it's wrong," a comment suggesting Roberts would not be bound by his past statement that the 1973 decision settled the issue.

On other subjects in a wide-ranging interview with AP editors and reporters, Gonzales:

• Declined to answer questions about his decision while White House counsel to delay notifying most White House staff about a Justice Department investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.

• Defended indefinite detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as "absolutely the right decision" in the war against terrorism.

• Said the administration opposes federal legislation to shield reporters from having to reveal confidential sources, but also said the government has been "very very careful," issuing only a dozen subpoenas since 1991 seeking reporters' confidential sources.


Roberts was nominated by President Bush to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who favors abortion rights. Though Roberts has not expressed his personal views on the issue, groups on both sides are attempting to discern his leanings from his statements and writings.

Gonzales said circumstances had changed since Roberts commented on Roe v. Wade during his 2003 confirmation hearing for the seat he now holds on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

"If you're asking a circuit court judge, like Judge Roberts was asked, yes, it is settled law because you're bound by the precedent," Gonzales said.

"If you're a Supreme Court justice, that's a different question because a Supreme Court justice is not obliged to follow precedent if you believe it's wrong," Gonzales said.

While abortion foes fret about Roberts' statement two years ago, abortion rights groups are concerned by a legal brief Roberts helped write for a Supreme Court case while serving as deputy solicitor general in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

The brief argued that the landmark abortion decision "was wrongly decided and should be overruled." Bush officials have said the brief reflected administration policy and Roberts was one of nine lawyers who signed it.

Gonzales said deciding when to overturn an earlier ruling "is one of the most difficult questions any Supreme Court justice has to answer." Among the factors to consider is how old is the precedent, he said.

Gonzales said he has a "preliminary judgment" about whether the Constitution affords the right to an abortion, but he declined to reveal it.

Gonzales has been thought to be a candidate for the Supreme Court because of his close relationship with Bush and his Hispanic heritage. Conservative groups mounted a strong campaign against his selection, based mainly on questions about his abortion stance.

Asked about that opposition, Gonzales sighed before responding, "This is the big decision. People have waited for over 11 years. There was a lot of pent-up anticipation and a lot vested in this decision."

He would not say whether Bush interviewed him for the job.

The attorney general also would not discuss the 12-hour delay between telling White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card that prosecutors were investigating who revealed CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the media and informing the rest of the White House staff.

The White House did not respond to questions Sunday about whether Card passed that information to Bush aide Karl Rove or anyone else, giving them advance notice to prepare for the investigation. Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper recently said he first learned of Plame's position during a discussion with Rove in July 2003.

Attorney General John Ashcroft eventually recused himself from the case under pressure from Democrats who complained about his ties to Rove. Gonzales, who succeeded Ashcroft in February, also stepped aside from the investigation because of his involvement as White House counsel.

In other areas Tuesday, Gonzales said:

• The Guantanamo facility keeps terrorist suspects from resuming their fight and affords them humane treatment. "I take issue with folks who say people are being mistreated in Guantanamo," he said, adding, "I don't know what I say to Mom and Dad if their son or daughter is killed by someone we once held at Guantanamo."

• He would reconsider Ashcroft's guidance that has restricted public access to government information since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

___

On the Net:

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov

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Senate Changes Line of Succession

crescent-news.com
Senate Changes Line of Succession

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate approved a bill Tuesday to raise the homeland security secretary from last to eighth place in the presidential line of succession, just after the attorney general.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, passed without objection just before the chamber adjourned. The companion House bill, sponsored by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., is pending before the Judiciary and Government Reform committees.

If the bill also passes the House, the order of those in line to assume the presidency if President Bush is unable to serve would be:


-Vice President Dick Cheney

-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld

-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff

-Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton

-Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns

-Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez

-Labor Secretary Elaine Chao

-Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt

-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson

-Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta

-Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman

-Education Secretary Margaret Spellings

-Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson

The Constitution, however, requires that the president be a natural-born citizen, so Gutierrez, born in Cuba, and Chao, born in Taiwan, would be ineligible.

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The bills are S. 442 and H.R. 1455.

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On the Net:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov

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Panel OKs Karen Hughes for State Dept.

rrstar.com
Panel OKs Karen Hughes for State Dept.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved the nomination of Karen Hughes, a former political adviser to President Bush, as the State Department's top public relations official.

The Senate is expected to complete the confirmation process this week before leaving for its August recess.

Hughes' main assignment as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is to reverse anti-American sentiment around the world.

She said at a committee hearing last week that the challenge was "the urgent need to foster greater understanding, more respect and a sense of common ideals among Americans and people of different countries, cultures and faiths around the world."

Also approved by the committee on Tuesday were five new ambassadors as well as:


-Henry A. Crompton as coordinator for counterterrorism

-Henrietta Holsman Fore as undersecretary of state for management

-Josette S. Shiner as undersecretary of state for economics

-Kristen Silverberg as assistant secretary of state for international organizations

-Jendayi E. Frazer as assistant secretary of state for Africa.

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On the Net:

State Department: http://www.state.gov

Senate Foreign Relations Committee: http://foreign.senate.gov/

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White House says won't hand over some Roberts papers

Reuters

W.House says won't hand over some Roberts papers

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday it will refuse to hand over to the Senate some documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' government legal work, a sign of a possible battle ahead with Senate Democrats.

Senate Democrats, who have demanded access to relevant information as the confirmation process gets under way, expressed disappointment and said the documents being held back could contain information necessary to evaluate Roberts.

"A blanket statement that entire groups of documents are off limits is both premature and ill advised," said a letter to Bush from eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.


White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration would make public 62,000 to 65,000 pages of documents concerning Roberts' work during the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan.

But he said the Justice Department would withhold internal memos generated from 1989 to 1993, during Roberts' work as deputy solicitor general during the presidency of George Bush, father of the current president and a fellow Republican.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he has "serious concerns" about the release of these kinds of documents.

"We're talking about the lawyers for the United States of America and it's very, very important that the lawyers be comfortable being very candid and open about their views on very sensitive issues affecting the United States," Gonzales said on the PBS program "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

As a debate over documents raged on, Roberts spent a fifth day visiting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, after a meeting with Roberts, said: "I'd like to be able to vote for him. My test is he an ideologue. He said to me, 'I am not an ideologue."'

Schumer said he is not yet ready to pronounce judgment on Roberts, who he vows to question closely on a host of issues during his confirmation hearing to help determine if he is within the mainstream of legal thinking.

As deputy solicitor general, Roberts wrote a legal brief on the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing a woman's right to abortion, in which he said "we continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the White House had decided to hold back some documents and that Ed Gillespie, President Bush's point man on the nomination, informed him of it on Monday.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, which will hold confirmation hearings, said he hoped the White House move was not intended to hinder the Senate's consideration of Roberts' nomination.

"There will be additional documents we ask for," he said.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy said in his 42 years on the Judiciary committee, "we have received many internal Justice Department documents as least at sensitive as these, even for confirmation proceedings that don't come close to the importance of a Supreme Court appointment."

Specter said it was premature to talk about documents but noted, "I'd have to be an ostrich not to be concerned."

LINE OF ATTACK?

McClellan accused Democrats of demanding documents as part of a line of attack prepared even before Roberts' nomination.

The White House cited an agreement in 2002 by seven former solicitor generals in declaring the internal memos protected by attorney-client privilege. The solicitor general argues cases on behalf of the U.S. government before the Supreme Court.

Releasing the documents, McClellan said, "would have a chilling effect on the ability of the solicitor generals to receive candid, honest, and thorough advice from their attorneys during the decision-making process."

He said he did not know how many documents might be in question.

Partisan bickering also broke out over the timing of the confirmation hearings.

Specter said he and Leahy, despite numerous talks, have yet to agree on when to start. Some Democrats favor mid-September; some Republicans are pushing to have committee members end their summer recess early and start in late August.

Specter, who has scheduling power as chairman, said he wants the full Senate to vote on Roberts no later than Sept. 29, so he could be seated before the Supreme Court begins its new term on Oct. 3.

McClellan said all documents from Roberts' 1981-1982 tenure as special assistant to the attorney general during the Reagan administration would be sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

They were also being made available to the media in a special reading room outside Washington later on Tuesday.

The administration also agreed to work with the Reagan presidential library in California to release documents relating to Roberts' work in the White House counsel's office from 1982 to 1986.

Roberts, a federal appeals court judge for the past two years, has received a generally upbeat reception on Capitol Hill since being nominated last Tuesday to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

(Additional reporting by Tom Ferraro)

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The Wilson-Plame-Novak-Rove Blame Game

factcheck.org

The Wilson-Plame-Novak-Rove Blame Game

Both sides twist and hype the case of a CIA agent’s leaked identity. We document what’s known so far.

Summary

The disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Wilson’s identity has triggered a partisan blame game complete with distortions and misstatements by both sides. Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said the agent’s husband Joe Wilson falsely claimed Vice President Cheney authorized his trip to Africa – a claim Wilson never actually made. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the leak “put this agent’s life in jeopardy,” a claim for which no evidence has surfaced.

Here we won’t attempt to debunk every false or misleading claim. We thought our readers would be better served by a timeline documenting what is publicly known so far. Complete citations for each fact and links to original sources are available in the full article (see link at the end of this article).

We have no idea whether Karl Rove or anybody else has broken the law, something that can only be decided by a judge and jury should any charges ever be brought. Some information remains classified, and we can't know what facts the special prosecutor may have turned up, as they are protected by grand-jury secrecy. New bits and pieces seem to surface almost daily. Here is what we know so far:

Analysis

The Timeline

1988-1991 – Joseph Wilson serves as Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad, Iraq. In July 1990, he takes over as acting ambassador to Iraq. (Joseph Wilson, The Politics of Truth 451, 2004).

1992-1995 – Nominated by President George H.W. Bush, Wilson serves as Ambassador to the African nations of Gabon, as well as the smaller island country of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe. (Wilson, Politics 451).

1995-1997 – Joseph Wilson serves as political adviser to the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe, stationed in Germany. On a trip to Washington DC, Wilson meets Valerie Plame who at the time says she is an “energy executive living in Brussels.” (Wilson, Politics 239-242).

June 1997 – Joseph Wilson returns to Washington DC as Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council. At about the same time, Plame also moves back to the United States (Wilson, Politics 240), in part because the CIA suspects her name was leaked to the Russians in 1994. (Vanity Fair, Jan. ‘04).

April 3, 1998 – Wilson and Plame marry. (Wilson, Politics 276).


July 1998 – Joseph Wilson leaves government service to open a consulting firm specializing in assisting international investment in Africa. (Wilson, Politics 275).

1999 – Joseph Wilson takes a trip to Niger at the behest of the CIA to investigate “uranium-related matters” separate from Iraq (Wilson, Politics lv-lvi). According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on pre-war intelligence, Wilson “was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region.” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Report on Prewar Assessment of Iraq Intelligence, 39, July 2004).

April 22, 1999 – Valerie Wilson lists “Brewster-Jennings & Assoc." - later revealed to be a CIA front company—as her employer when making a donation to the Gore campaign. (Gore FEC filing).

June 1999 – Niger’s former prime minister Ibrahim Mayaki meets with an Iraqi delegation wanting to discuss “expanding commercial relations.” Mayaki interprets this as an interest in uranium, Niger’s main export, and later tells Wilson that he did not discuss it because Iraq remained under UN trade sanctions. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 43-44, July 2004).

October 15, 2001 – US intelligence agencies become aware of reports from the Italian intelligence service of a supposed agreement between Iraq and Niger for the sale of uranium yellowcake. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research considers the report “highly suspect” because the French control Niger’s uranium industry. The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Energy consider a uranium deal “possible.” (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 36, July 2004).

October 18, 2001 – The CIA writes a report titled, Iraq: Nuclear-Related Procurement Efforts. It quotes many of the Italian report’s claims, but adds that the report of a completed deal is not corroborated by any other sources. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 36- 37, July 2004).

February 5, 2002 – The CIA’s Directorate of Operations – the clandestine branch that employed Valerie Wilson – issues a second report including “verbatim text” of an agreement, supposedly signed July 5-6, 2000 for the sale of 500 tons of uranium yellowcake per year. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 37, July ‘04).

February 12, 2002 – The Defense Intelligence Agency writes a report concluding “Iraq is probably searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program.” Vice President Cheney reads this report and asks for the CIA’s analysis. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 38-39, July ‘04).

Responding to inquiries from Cheney’s office, the State Department, and the Defense Department, the CIA’s Directorate of Operations’ Counterproliferation Division (CPD) look for more information. They consider having Wilson return to Niger to investigate. In the process, Valerie Wilson writes a memo to a superior saying, “My husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” One of Valerie Wilson’s colleagues later tells Senate investigators she “offered up his name” for the trip. Wilson says that her agency made the decision and she only later approached her husband on the CIA’s behalf. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 39, July 2004).

February 19, 2002 – Joseph Wilson meets with officials from CIA and the State Department. According to a State Department intelligence analyst’s notes, the meeting was convened by Valerie Wilson. She later testifies that she left the meeting after introducing her husband. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 40, July ‘04).

February 26, 2002 – Wilson arrives in Niger. He concludes, after a few days of interviews, that “it was highly unlikely that anything was going on.” (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 42, July 2004).

March 5, 2002 – Wilson reports back to two CIA officers at his home. Valerie Wilson is present but does not participate. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 43, July 2004).

March 8-9, 2002 – An intelligence report of Wilson’s trip is sent through routine channels, identifying Wilson only as “a contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record.” (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 43-44, July ‘04). The CIA grades Wilson’s information as “good,” the middle of five possible grades. Cheney is not directly briefed about the report. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 46).

September 24, 2002 – The British government issues a public dossier saying, “[T]here is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” (British Govt. Report 25, Sept. ‘02). The Washington Post reports later that the CIA tried unsuccessfully to get the British to omit these claims. (“Bush, Rice blame CIA,” July 2003).

October 1, 2002 – The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) – a summary of intelligence assessments for policymakers – says “a foreign government service” reported that Niger planned to send several tons of "pure uranium" to Iraq, possibly up to 500 tons a year. “We do not know the status of this arrangement,” the NIE says, according to a later declassified version released by the White House. In the NIE, State Department intelligence officials caution that African uranium claims are “highly dubious.” (Background WMD Briefing by Senior Administration Official).

January 28, 2003 – Bush’s State of the Union Address includes this 16-word sentence: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” (Transcript of “State of the Union”).

March 7, 2003 – The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the international body that monitors nuclear proliferation – tells the UN Security Council that, after a “thorough analysis” with “concurrence of outside experts,” that the Italian documents— “which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger—are in fact not authentic.” (Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq, March 2003).

March 19, 2003 – President Bush announces the start of the Iraq war in a televised address, saying it is “to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” (Bush, “Addresses the Nation”).

Spring 2003 –Valerie Wilson is in the process of moving from non-official to official, State Department cover, according to a later Vanity Fair article based on interviews with the Wilsons. (Vanity Fair, Jan. 2004).

May 2003 – Joseph Wilson begins advising the Kerry campaign on foreign policy issues. (“White House expects calls,” USA Today, Oct. 2003).

May 6, 2003 – A New York Times columnist writes the first account of Wilson’s trip, but not naming him: “I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong.” (“Missing In Action: Truth,” New York Times, Op-ed, May 2003).

June 2003 – State Department intelligence officials reportedly prepare a memo on the Niger affair mentioning Wilson’s trip to Niger and Valerie Wilson’s role in selecting her husband for the mission. The exact date is uncertain. The memo doesn’t identify Valerie Wilson or her status as a covert agent. According to one account, the memo was classified and the paragraph containing information about Valerie Wilson was marked with “(S)” to indicate that the information was classified at the “secret” level. The CIA applies this level of classification to the identities of covert officers, according to the Washington Post. (“State Dept. memo gets scrutiny,” New York Times, July 16, 2005; “Probe Centers on Rove, Memo, Phone Calls,” Bloomberg.com, July 18, 2005; “Plame’s Identity Marked as Secret,” Washington Post, July 21, 2005).

June 12, 2003 – A Washington Post article quotes an “envoy” (Wilson) as saying that the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong” on the Italian document determined to be forged by the IAEA. (“CIA Did Not Share Doubt,” Washington Post, June 2003). Wilson later tells the Senate Intelligence Committee that he may have “misspoken” to reporters, thinking he had seen the documents himself, rather than reading about them secondhand. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 44).

July 6, 2003 – Wilson publishes “What I didn’t find in Africa” in The New York Times, identifying himself for the first time as the unnamed “envoy.” He writes, “I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” Wilson does not mention that he learned there was a possibility Iraq had sought uranium during a 1999 trade meeting with Niger’s former Prime Minister.

Contrary to later statements by White House officials, Wilson does not claim that Cheney sent him on the Niger trip, only that he was sent to answer questions from Cheney’s “office.” He also doesn’t claim that Cheney was told of his findings, only that it would be “standard operating procedure” for the CIA to brief Cheney’s office on the results of his mission (Wilson, “What I didn’t find," New York Times July 6, 2003).

July 7, 2003 –Secretary of State Colin Powell, aboard Air Force One, reportedly receives a copy of the State Department memo prepared in June about the purported Niger-Iraq uranium deal, which mentions Valerie Wilson’s role in her husband’s trip, according to later media reports. (“State Dept. memo gets scrutiny" New York Times, July 2005; “Shielding Plame’s Identity,” Wall Street Journal, July 2005; “Memo Eyed in CIA Leak Probe,” AP, July 2005).

July 7, 2003 – White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer retracts the 16-word yellowcake claim from the State of the Union address, calling the President's statement “incorrect.” (White House Press Gaggle, July 7 2003).

July 8, 2003 – Columnist Robert Novak calls senior White House adviser Karl Rove, according to subsequent media accounts. Novak tells Rove he had heard that Joseph Wilson’s wife, who worked for the CIA, played a role in Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger. Rove confirms the story to Novak without mentioning Valerie Wilson’s name or covert status, saying “I heard that, too.” ("Rove Talk on C.I.A. Officer," NY Times, July 2003). Novak will later write that he originally acquired the information from an official who is “no partisan gunslinger.” Novak says, “When I called another official for confirmation, he said: ‘Oh, you know about it.’” (Novak, “CIA Leak” Chicago Sun- Times, Oct 2003).

July 11, 2003 –Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper calls Rove, who cautions him to be careful of Wilson’s story, “‘Don't get too far out on Wilson,’ he told me,” Cooper later writes. Rove tells Cooper that Wilson’s wife works for the CIA on “WMD” (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and that it was she, not Cheney or the CIA’s director, who was “responsible” for sending Wilson to Africa. “Rove never used her name and...indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week,” Cooper later recalls adding, “Rove never once indicated to me that she had any kind of covert status." Cooper says Rove ends the call saying “I've already said too much.”

Cooper also says he talked to Cheney’s Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, about the story. “I asked Libby if he had heard anything about Wilson's wife sending her husband to Niger. Libby replied, ‘Yeah, I've heard that too,’ or words to that effect. Like Rove, Libby never used Valerie Plame's name or indicated that her status was covert.” (Matthew Cooper, “What I told the Grand Jury,” Time, July 2005).

July 11, 2003 – Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet concedes in a statement that the State of the Union claims about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa were a mistake and that the “16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President.” (Tenet Statement, July 2003).

July 12, 2003 – Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus is told by an administration official that that White House had ignored Joseph Wilson’s 2002 trip to Niger because it was a “boondoggle” set up by his wife. (“Anonymous Sources,” Nieman Reports 27, Summer 2004). Pincus did not report his conversation because, as he would later describe, “Plame's name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson's report.” (“Probe Focuses on Month Before Leak,” Washington Post, October 2003).

July 14, 2003 – Robert Novak’s “Mission to Niger” column is published. This is the first published mention of Joseph Wilson’s wife’s name, her employment at the CIA, and her role in his trip to Niger. In the sixth of ten paragraphs, Novak writes, “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.” The column does not describe her as a covert agent, then, but it does name her as “Valerie Plame” - her maiden and cover name. Novak gives conflicting accounts of whether Mrs. Wilson instigated her husband’s trip or was asked by others to do so. (Novak, “The Mission to Niger,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 2003).

July 14-17, 2003 – Newsday’s Washington bureau chief, Timothy Phelps, tells Joseph Wilson “that he had heard from the CIA that what Novak reported vis- à-vis Valerie’s employment was not incorrect,” according to Wilson’s memoir. “I declined to be drawn into a confirmation even then,” Wilson would later recall. (Wilson, Politics 348).

July 16, 2003 – Wilson speaks about Novak's column with David Corn, Washington bureau chief for the liberal magazine The Nation. According to what Corn writes on his blog at thenation.com, Wilson says, “Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career.” Corn says Wilson is still “known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm.” (“A White House Smear,” The Nation, July 2003; Wilson, Politics 349). Corn's entry is the first instance where someone alleges publicly that the release of Valerie Plame’s name disclosed the identity of a covert agent.

July 17, 2003 – Time publishes online “A War on Wilson?” by Cooper and others, the first time Time names Mrs. Wilson. Cooper quotes, “government officials” as saying “that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger [sic] to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore.” (Matt Cooper, “A War on Wilson?,” Time, July 2003).

July 22, 2003 – In an article headlined “Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover,” Newsday publishes a story as saying, based in part on Wilson’s assertions, that senior administration officials “violated the law and may have endangered her (Mrs. Wilson’s) career and possibly the lives of her contacts in foreign countries.” The newspaper says Wilson wouldn’t confirm that his wife was a covert agent. (“Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover,” Newsday, July 2003).

July 30, 2003 – The CIA sends a letter to the Criminal Division of the Justice Department noting “a possible violation of criminal law concerning the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” according to a letter from the CIA’s Director of Congressional Affairs. (CIA, Letter to Rep. John Conyers).

August 21, 2003 – Wilson, speaking at a public panel discussion, said he was interested in seeing Karl Rove “frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs” after hearing from reporters that Rove had called his wife “fair game.” (Wilson, Politics 372- 4; 351).

September 16, 2003 – The CIA sends another letter to Justice requesting that the FBI undertake a criminal investigation. (Wilson, Politics 359).

September 16, 2003 – White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan dismisses the idea that Karl Rove was Novak’s anonymous source as “totally ridiculous.” (White House Press Briefing, Sept. 16, 2003).

September 29, 2003 – McClellan says he has spoken to Rove, denies that Rove was involved in the leak, and says, “If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the leak], they would no longer be in this administration.” (White House Press Briefing, Sept. 29, 2003). In a letter sent to Representative John Conyers on January 30, 2004, the CIA will confirm that its Counterespionage Section has asked the FBI to initiate an investigation. (Letter to Rep. John Conyers from the CIA).

September 30, 2003 – The Justice department publicly announces an official criminal investigation. Commenting, Bush says, “And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of” (“President discusses job creation,” U. of Chicago, Sept. 30, 2003).

September 30, 2003 – Wilson endorses Senator John Kerry for president. (“Man With an Independent Streak,” Washington Post, October 1, 2003).

December 30, 2003 – Facing allegations of bias, Attorney General Ashcroft recuses himself from the investigation and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald takes over the investigation as a special prosecutor. (“Ashcroft Recuses Self" Washington Post, 31 December 2003).

May 21, 2004 – Time's Cooper is subpoenaed for the grand jury investigation. Time says it will fight the subpoenas. (“Reporters Subpoenaed" Wash. Post, May 2004).

June 10, 2004 – Bush is asked by a reporter, “[D] o you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have [who leaked the agent's name]?” Bush replies, “Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.” (President Bush Press Conference Following G-8 Summit, Savannah, GA, June 10, 2004).

June 24, 2004 – Prosecutors question President Bush, who is not under oath, in the Oval Office for over an hour. (“Bush Interviewed" Washington Post, June 25, 2004).

August 12, 2004 – New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who did not write a story identifying Valerie Wilson, is subpoenaed by the grand jury. (“NY Times reporter subpoenaed” AP, Aug. 2004).

October 15, 2004 – Rove testifies before a federal grand jury for two hours. Fitzgerald assures Rove that he is not a target of the probe. (“Rove Testifies” Washington Post, Oct. 2004).

November 2, 2004 - Bush wins re-election.

June 27, 2005 – The Supreme Court declines to hear the appeal of Judith Miller of The New York Times and Cooper of Time, leaving standing a lower court’s ruling that they must testify to a federal grand jury. (“Reporters Lose” Washington Post, June 28, 2005).

July 1, 2005 – Over Cooper’s objections, Time Inc. turns over subpoenaed material. Time managing editor Norm Pearlstine tells CNN that journalists “regularly point a finger at people who think they're above the law,” and “I'm not comfortable being one of them myself.” (“Time Magazine” CNN.com, June 30, 2005).

July 6, 2005 – Miller, still refusing to testify before the grand jury, is jailed for contempt of court. (“’Time’ Reporter to Testify" USAToday.com, July 6, 2005). Cooper says he receives last-minute permission from his confidential source, Karl Rove, to testify. (Matthew Cooper, “What I told the Grand Jury,” Time, July 2005).

July 18, 2005 – Bush – easing off his earlier promise to fire anyone who leaked – says “if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.” (Bush Press Conference with Prime Minister of India, July 18, 2005). His press secretary Scott McClellan declines to say whether a firing would be triggered by an indictment or would require a conviction. (White House Press Briefing, July 18, 2005).

--by Kevin Collins with Jordan Grossman, Jennifer L. Ernst, Matthew Barge, Brooks Jackson

(Note: To view this article with any associated graphics, sidebars, supporting documents, video or audio files, see
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=dp4eqnbab.0.98uydnbab.l89skabab.2338&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.factcheck.org%2Fdefault336.html )

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Not Likely

Not Likely

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I'll fire anyone "If"

I'll fire anyone "If"

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Patriot Act

Patriot Act

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Protecting Sources

Protecting Sources

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Bin Laden Must Be Around Here Somewhere

Bin Laden Must Be Around Here Somewhere

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