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Murray Waas on Staff Battles Inside White House: Novak-Rove Call About Fran Townsend, Only Peripherally about Plame
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Friday, Dec 16, 05, 9:57AM
Murray Waas has just published a long, in-depth piece in National Journal on new dimensions in the all important conversation between Bob Novak and Karl Rove in which Valerie Plame's CIA identity was discussed.
But Waas makes a solid case that Rove was prepared to talk to Novak about the president's intention to make Fran Townsend Deputy National Security advisor for Combating Terrorism, not necessarily a campaign to out Plame. The Plame discussion followed a long-ish exchange about Fran Townsend, whom Novak planned to savage as a Janet Reno-admiring "enemy within."
Rove's charge that day had been to defend Townsend. What is really fascinating is Waas's depiction of Scooter Libby's and David Addington's campaign AGAINST Townsend. Waas shows that the Vice President's henchmen and Karl Rove were working at cross-purposes on Fran Townsend -- but then seeming working in sync regarding the vengeful outing of Valerie Plame as a way to get back at Joe Wilson.
This does not alter the prospect that Rove was potentially fabricating answers or giving deceptive statements to Patrick Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury in this case, but it does add much more detail -- nuts and bolts style -- to what these retainers to Bush and Cheney were doing, and why they were doing it.
It's a long, long article -- but well worth reading. In my view, Murray Waas is quickly emerging as the kind of investigative reporter Bob Woodward used to be.
-- Steve Clemons
Steve, Are you doing any work on the story that is breaking right now about Bush authorizing the NSA to spy on citizens without warrants?
I'm beginning to see the phrase "used to be" used with Bob Woodward's name a lot.
Sad, that...
Steve,
Have you had a chance to see that new movie, Syriana?
Matt -- I did see an early, not completely finished screening of Syriana which the distributors invited me to, along with Rand Beers,...so it went through a few more edits for commercial release after I saw it. But I wasn't impressed with the film.
It had its moments, but I found the story lines, the four that they were developing, frustrating in that so much was left hanging by the end of the film. I have been surprised that it is getting such excellent reviews.
What did you think of it?
To Steambomb -- I am looking into the story, but frankly, not sure what I can offer. The NY Times did a deal with the White House to keep the story buried for a year. That's a failure of civil society in my view -- and I'll probably comment on it, but don't think I'll add more to the story than that the practice really harms our country.
best,
Steve Clemons
If Bush was going to be impeached, the process would have already started.
But the "business party" (of which the democrats and republicans are just "two different factions of the same thing") isn't about to do that.
Nor does anyone in Congress have the spine to bring criminal war charges against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and a host of others.
It's "business as usual" in Congress.
Saw movie the other night.
Too confusing.
When asked about it I said
1. No good guys in movie
2. We (the people) are fucked and lied to and have no chance at changing that.
Steve, if you're still checking this thread...
Are there two Frances Townsends? I seem to remember reading about one a year or so ago who was in the Doug Feith/Richard Perle/Ahmed Chalabi neo-con orbit who was in some degree of hot water for something, related to Iraq perhaps. If I didn't read it here, I think I read it at Laura Rozen's site. Can't find it either place though.
From the profiles of her that I've read, it doesn't SOUND like the person I'm thinking of, and I can't imagine why the person I'm thinking of would not be Cheney-approved...
Steve,
I enjoyed the movie a lot. I thought it was really honest, and didn't mind the irresolution too much. I guess I don't think it's possible to make the Middle East more peaceful without wealth being more equitably spread around. One of the movie's main themes--that America is working in opposition to this purpose--did sort of ring true.
Greetings Steve and all; the article seems to leave open the door for obstruction and making false statements by B. Novak. It also gives us another picture of the perfect witness for Mr. Fitzgerald. Maybe Novak turned first, to save himself the indignity of indictment for making false statements to the prosecutor when Rove told a different story after Novak's first appearance. As a reporter, he could get away with one, "I am maintaining the confidentiality of my source", but not this many. This would explain his silence (but not do a lot for his new job at faux)
But would this make sense unless the prosecutor has other charges beyond what many "think" are pending against the traveling dog? Novak's comments at potus about the leaker were direct, angry and specific. Looks like he "used" to be their boy. WoodMiller appear to still be. Does this mark the trail that leads to a conspiracy involving the vpotus and his circus of the obscene, the potus hisself, the new style of "journalist" popular to these three toads and the "news" organizations that employ them? NYT confirmed today they are complicit in potus's impeachable actions.
Is it possible that Novak confirmed to Fitzgerald that he "became aware of" what the prosecutor might consider a criminal conspiracy to reveal the CIA agent as revenge from the first? Better yet, after contradicting the lies that the adminicosanostra had been spreading to the prosecutor after he was burned by Fitzgerald for his first statements parroting what they had instructed him to say? He sure seemed like the vpotus' man the way he tells the traveling dog he has good news and bad news about what he is writing in the one passage. Woodfigure is still potus's tattler, Miller, a vpotus chearleader, (perhaps whoever is diddling her at the time). They may be free of charges, but their credibility is now gone because they can't even tell the public what they know. And with today's admission in public by potus to what is being called "an impeachable offense". Have they gone so far as to turn on one another, en masse?
I know I can't follow this drama without a program. I like the fact that you are working so hard on printing the program. It seems like hundreds of people are involved in criminal acts right now, and they are high officials. They seem to be committing high crimes. thanks for working so hard on this!
Frances Townsend is expendable.
The first time I saw Frances Townsend, she was the next fresh-faced spokesman for the Bush administration, pushed in front of the cameras because the preceding spokes-folks had just been utterly discredited -- along with their completely exhausted series of PR-lies, also disproven in great detail.
So Townsend, asked about the same uncomfortable set of facts that had sent previous Admin faces packing, could only repeat "People just have to learn to trust in the institutions of governance." The howler here was that those institutions were fresh out of any sort of authority, moral or otherwise, at the moment Townsend took the stage.
It was a new face, repeating the same husks for words and phrases -- mere moments after the entire foundation of the institutional edifice she was standing on/for had been washed away as though it were stand.
Frances Townsend failed the moment she opened her mouth on national TV.
L.B. Jefferies:
That was Francis Brooke that you were referring to and that case is still a mystery. A highly religious neocon working as a close aide to Chalabi in Baghdad, when Chalabi compound was raided by the U.S. Army.
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