Alexander Litvinenko, on his deathbed, accused Vladimir Putin of orchestrating his murder.

Having ranted a few times on this blog about the current state of U.S.-Russia relations, I should say that I was pleased to see that Presidents Bush and Putin are planning to meet in early July.

The State Department is finally striking the right tone. It's about time, considering the Secretary of State is a Sovietologist by training.

"The Russians still remain a very important partner, despite the tensions that may arise over various issues," White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters after announcing the meeting yesterday. "We're going to make all our concerns known, but on the other hand, we're going to continue working to work ahead."

I'm glad the meeting is taking place in Kennebunkport, at the ol' Bush family homestead in Maine. The invitation is intended to reflect a desire for closer relations and intimacy.

Some in the Bush Administration have tried to push Russia to the fringes of the agenda and pretend Russia - its insecure nuclear arsenal and anti-democratic wave and all - is irrelevant. Others, like Sen. McCain, have suggested that the U.S. should push Russia out of the G8 and create some distance.

At this critical juncture, I'm hoping there's enough "Baker/Bush 41 realism" still in the Kennebunkport air to keep President Bush away from both of these dangerous detours. The right path is still careful engagement, holding our partner accountable, but emphasizing mutual respect, cooperation, and a common agenda.

Everyone interested in the subject should also have noted with interest two important developments recently. First, British prosecutors have accused Andrei Lugovoi of having murdered Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko, on his deathbed, accused Putin of ordering his murder.

Lugovoi is probably thinking two things right now:

1.) I really shouldn't have been so colossally dumb as to have chosen polonium-210, a rare, radioactive material, as my poison of choice. It makes it really easy to trace the murder back to me.

2.) I'd better figure out a convincing alternative theory and stick to it - not because I'm afraid of being extradited or convicted, mind you, but because I need to make abundantly clear that I'm not going to rat out my silovki bosses so they don't make me next on their list.

This second thought is apparently where Lugovoi's mind is currently, considering he told the press that Litvinenko was an MI6 agent and was killed by the British government. It's not a very good alternative story (even in the off chance that Litvinenko is in fact affiliated with MI6) and won't fly outside the Kremlin, but, as we've learned in other instances, it doesn't need to. It just needs to be good enough to help him avoid extradition to the UK or state-ordered murder in Russia, and it probably is.

The other important development is the posthumous release of Anna Politkovskaya's book, For What.

As headlines indicated, Mikhail Gorbachev spoke at the official release and called the book important (hidden in the final paragraphs of some stories is Gorbachev's ironic praise of Putin). Frankly, with respect to Mr. Gorbachev, have to question the wisdom of the invitation. To the surprise of most Americans, polls show that Gorbachev is among the most despised leaders in Russian history.

Gorbachev is badly misunderstood, both in the West and in Russia. In the West, Gorbachev mostly symbolizes reform, peace, and courage. In Russia, he's associated with long bread lines and declining influence. Much has been made of the book's publication in Politkovskaya's native Russian, but Gorbachev's role in the book launch makes me wonder if its intended audience was Western audiences instead of Russians.

Anyway, it seems there are a few small rays of hope in some very dark times.

--Scott Paul

After Zimbabwe won its election to Chair the Commission on Sustainable Development and Paul Wolfowitz held the World Bank hostage last month, international institutions were due for a boost.

The month wasn't all bad - after all, human rights groups did manage to help defeat Belarus in its bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. Still, more good news was badly needed.

Fortunately, this has been a week of good news.

Bob Zoellick will be the World Bank President. For the reasons Steve outlines, this is a great pick.

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is investigating mass rape in the Central African Republic. His record to this point has been careful, measured, lawyerly (in the best sense of the word), and steadfastly apolitical. The extremely counterproductive U.S. policy on the ICC is looking more and more ridiculous.

The U.N. Security Council approved the establishment of a tribunal to investigate the assasination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. This is precisely the kind of thing that the Security Council is supposed to be doing.

B'nai B'rith International sponsored a "U.N. recruitment seminar" in Israel, a small, but notably positive step in the effort to diffuse Israel-U.N. tensions.

The U.N. told troop contributing nations that they would have to adhere to formal, strict disciplinary standards, which should hopefully go a long way toward improving the conduct of U.N. peacekeepers and the U.N.'s reputation, too.

The World Health Organization urged all countries to make indoor buildings smoke-free. If you've ever spent an afternoon in the Vienna Cafe at U.N. headquarters gasping for air, you can understand how big of a leap this is.

And that's just the big stuff. The security and humanitarian deliverables that international institutions provide for very little money goes under the radar all the time. Good on them for stealing the headlines in a positive way this week.

-- Scott Paul

p.s: It can't all be good news. President Bush's announcement on a new climate agreement today was a major slap in the face to the G8, the U.N. Framekwork Convention on Climate Change, and, well, pretty much everyone else. My colleague Rebecca Brown gets it right at the Citizens for Global Solutions blog.

Last week, McCain and Obama traded barbs over the Iraq war. McCain first derided Obama for voting against the war supplemental, then Obama called out McCain for his farcical pronouncement that Baghdad is secure, and McCain finally ended the exchange by smugly correcting the Obama team's spelling of "fla[c]k jacket."

Mitt Romney's campaign just sent out an e-mail comparing his agenda with Barack Obama's. The obvious question is, why? Does Obama really engender greater anger or fear with the Republican base than Hillary Clinton?

This would seem to be a big boost for Obama, who, as far as I can tell, has done nothing in the past two weeks to so suddenly become the Democratic foil of choice.

The easy answer is that Both Romney and Obama published articles in Foreign Affairs this month, but Romney could just have easily compared his article with the policy speeches of others had he wanted to.

And interestingly, most of the excerpts of Obama's article that the Romney campaign highlights in its e-mail aren't particularly controversial, except with a very small part of the Republican base. In fact, what Romney points out in Obama's piece seems moderate, sensible, and, to put it bluntly, not particularly far-reaching.

Needless to say, in the middle of the Democratic primary, the attention from Republicans bodes well for the Obama campaign.

I've copied the e-mail below. I do plan to read the articles and reflect on anything I see as notable in either one.

-- Scott Paul

Continue reading this article

Daniel Levy is one of a handful of people who really could move the Palestinians and Israelis (and Americans, and Europeans, and Russians, and UN bureaucrats, and Saudis, Syrians, and Jordanians) towards a negotiated comprehensive deal establishing a Palestinian state that doesn't undermine Israel's national security.

He is a great friend and colleague of mine at the New America Foundation and Century Foundation and has just launched his own personal blog, Prospects for Peace. The title isn't my style. I'm more of an edgy and dark Beyond War type and find that I'm at my most cynical when I hear flowery stuff -- but Levy is a visionary who does see in his head and politically a different Middle East arrangement that is more stable -- but he has strong currents of realism in him as well.

The new blog is a gusher when it comes to informed commentary on Israel/Palestine affairs, and I recommend it highly.

-- Steve Clemons

(Richard Vague and blogger Juan Cole speak at New America Foundation/American Strategy Program dinner for Zbigniew Brzezinski)

I have become a fan of a daily email and blog site, DelanceyPlace.com, that is published by businessman Richard Vague.

Vague is the founding Chairman and former CEO of First USA Bank which he sold before becoming the head of Barclays' American credit card operations at Juniper Financial. He has now moved on from that and is planning a new foray in the energy sector.

Vague wrote his own critique of Geoge Bush's so-called global war on terror in a set of collected essays titled "Terrorism: A Brief for Americans" which I have helped distribute. I think that it's a clear-headed, honest, and classically conservative take on America's deteriorating global position.

His essays are well worth reading. One of the fascinating things to see is the widespread interest in Richard Vague's brief at Rotary and Lion's Club groups across the U.S. And reaching small business owners and other general conservatives frustrated with our current national security course has been hard to do, but Vague has been doing it.

But separate from the heavy stuff, I also recommend if you have the patience for another email list the roster of his daily missives that derive from the extensive reading he does. Today's hit is a snippet of Robert Caro's Master of the Senate. There is always some fascinating tidbit that he sends out -- to a list of now more than 11,000 people.

And here is his important entry of May 17th on Israel's nuclear weapons program:

In today's encore excerpt -- in the 1950s, Israel becomes one of a now-growing list of countries that have made an unauthorized, clandestine entry into the world of nuclear armaments:

"The Israeli program is nearly as old as the state itself. [David] Ben-Gurion authorized it in 1952. . . . [Benjamin Netanyahu] told me that if the survival of the country was at stake, the Israelis would use it and worry about the consequences later. . .

"In the 1950s, with French assistance, the Israelis had begun to construct a large reactor in the Negev and a facility for processing the fuel rods needed to make plutonium. Then, in 1959, De Gaulle became president of France and said French assistance could continue only if Ben-Gurion gave public assurance that the reactor would be used solely for peaceful purposes.

This he did, while knowing full well that the reactor was going to be used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. The reactor was completed in 1963. During this time the Israelis and the Americans engaged in a kind of theater of the absurd. The Americans demanded inspections and the Israelis came up with one ingenious maneuver after another to avoid them. For example, the Americans were informed that the nuclear complex at Dimona was a textile factory. . .What brought an end to this farce was the testimony of an immigrant Moroccan Jew named Mordechai Vanunu.

"In 1977. . .Vanunu got a job as a manager in the graveyard shift at the nuclear plant. . .Vanunu's clearance gave him access to all levels of secure sites at the plant.. . . He went to London with his story of Israel's nuclear program and photographs to back it up.

These were published in the London Sunday Times and created a sensation. Vanunu was lured to Rome by a young woman, an Israeli agent, and kidnapped by the Mossad [Israel's intelligence agency]; he was taken back to Israel where he spent seventeen years in prison, partly in harsh solitary confinement. He is now living under tight security in Israel. It was clear from what he revealed. . .that Israel. . .has a very considerable and varied nuclear arsenal."

Jeremy Bernstein, "The Secrets of the Bomb", The New York Review of Books, May 25, 2006, pp. 42-3

I'm so busy reading a mound of other foreign policy and national security related materials that the remarkably diverse daily selections from Richard Vague keep me semi-balanced.

Off to New York today.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: For those with further interest, here is a short speech that Vague presented on May 24, 2007 to the Wilmington Rotary Club titled "A Solution to Terrorism."

-- Steve Clemons

There are only 10 cabins left -- and I am soooo tempted to go on this Alaska National Review cruise. I'd be civil, of course, but would hold my ground on my views and otherwise enjoy the scenery and the celebrity of being a token independent progressive on the ship.

John Bolton is one of the recently added headliners -- and I do wish him a good cruise.

A number of close friends of mine have interviewed Bolton lately, and apparently he did not read the high road, tip-of-the-hat commentary I offered him when the battle over his confirmation as US Ambassador to the UN came to a close.

I have chatted recently with one of his former staff and hear that he's still pretty hot at this blog. It would be good to move on though -- BUT a debate that pitted me making the case for enlightened American internationalism vs. John Bolton defending a more Jesse Helms-inspired pugnacious nationalism might just sell those last few cabins.

If not on the Alaska cruise -- then maybe we could do something like that at one of Margaret Carlson's galas for The Week. Just a thought. . .

-- Steve Clemons

Tonight on Charlie Rose will appear outgoing World Bank President and former Bush administration Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Should be a fascinating show. As a note to Charlie, some of the points of advice I have given publicly to incoming World Bank President Bob Zoellick may make interesting points for discussion with Wolfowitz.

And stay tuned for a great Charlie Rose discussion with Zbigniew Brzezinski on June 13th. That should be a quite stimulating exchange.

-- Steve Clemons

In just about 90 minutes, President Bush is going to speak to the "international development agenda" of his administration and announce his support for Robert Zoellick as President of the World Bank.

Both Bob Zoellick and current Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt were at the top of my list to succeed the embattled and self-destructive Paul Wolfowitz as CEO of one of the world's most important financial institutions.

We were all very lucky that the thin-skinned former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist withdrew from contention. I have liked Frist from time to time -- mostly because he believes in science and rationality -- but recently had an odd personal battle with him that exemplified why the former Tennessee senator would have been a personnel disaster at the Bank.

Zoellick -- who has served as US Trade Representative and as Deputy Secretary of State in this Bush administration -- is a walking hyper-synthesis of geostrategic and geoeconomic thinking. He is one of the few people I know -- beyond Bob Kimmitt and a few others -- who understands the economic dimensions of national interest as well as the classic military realities of national security and pulls them together brilliantly and articulately.

He also is a coalition-builder who can work beyond the parochial dimensions of America's needs and wants and help meld collaborative international efforts to handle big challenges. He has done this sort of international bridge-building many times, though his perch at the World Bank will now give him his largest platform.

Getting the "developing nation problem right" is important to Zoellick -- and more importantly, the Europeans trust him in large part because of his famous friendship with former EU Trade Commissioner and World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy. But to be fair, former US Ambassador to Germany Robert Kimmitt has similar levels of trust -- which is important in healing a bank that has lost confidence in itself, its mission, and leadership.

Many in the Bank do not trust Zoellick like I do. I have known and observed Bob Zoellick for a very long time and nearly worked closely with him at CSIS in a role in which he was trying to make a large organization more dynamic and more -- well, "21st century." I didn't join Bob there, though I nearly did -- and instead helped set up and build the New America Foundation.

But here is some friendly advice to Bob Zoellick from a blogger who considers himself a friend of the new nominee:

1. Quickly establish and communicate a plan for international economic development efforts that has benchmarks, clear strategic goals, and that highlights pilot efforts as part of a continual R&D effort that is empirical and not tethered to ideological assumptions.

Wolfowitz never established a plan -- and everything from his African anti-poverty projects anti-corruption efforts seemed ad hoc, reactive, and part of a constantly changing calculus on his part that few understood. Even his friend and one of Wolfowitz's political appointees at the Bank, Karl Jackson, kept saying about Wolfowitz, "he has no plan."

2. "Listen, listen, listen" to your senior World Bank staff. You may disagree with them, but listen to their views and counsel.

Wolfowitz failed to listen and thus at the end of his painful struggle at the Bank meekly offered "listening sessions." Get this right up front. Make sure that your staff know that you value excellence (which I know you do) and while you will want to put your own mark on the direction of the bank and its interests, try your best to make them stakeholders in your decisions.

3. Break out of the ideological game. Ignore those who will want to pitch your efforts one way or the other as promoting free trade or protectionism. You are doing neither. You are building capacity and trying to get large multiplier effects from Bank programs.

Former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Affairs Grant Aldonas is writing a book now on global economic development and posed the question recently at an economic forum I helped organize, "If we gave a damn about international economic development, what would we negotiate for?! Not what we are negotiating for now." Aldonas has a point. Meet with him. Figure out how to benchmark World Bank project decisions and constituency building around a theme -- like "building a global middle class" for example.

4. Curb the tendency to tell the "Zoellick story" through the prism of your role in the George W. Bush administration. You have many facets. You helped orchestrate the reunification of Germany. You are known as one of James Baker's leading acolytes. You kept providing Bush the younger with platforms to discuss trade and international economic policy during a war -- when most of the Cabinet disparaged trade and didn't believe in economic policy. The Zoellick story is one that is far larger and more impressive than the George W. Bush administration roles you have played.

For some reason, Wolfowitz focused all too much on his links to and allies within the Bush administration than either his credentials as a policy intellectual or his former service as Ambassador in Indonesia and the Philippines.

5. Get Japan back on board with the Bank -- and with you personally. While you were U.S. Trade Representative, to say that your relationship with Japan was "rocky" is a bit of an understatement -- where you took relations with Europe to new highs despite the broader pugnaciousness towards Europe in the Bush administration. But you need Japan and its strong involvement in the Bank.

6. Continue to cultivate China and Chinese collaboration with Bank efforts -- even if informal. You were the conceptualizer of the "stakeholder" notion regarding Chinese international engagement and were the ONLY person in the Bush administration when you were there thinking strategically about China and its importance. That is a strong suit here because Chinese economic activity in the developing world -- while mostly mercantile -- is generating a larger footprint than either American or European activity.

7. This is the time to become a soft Republican, a more pragmatic Republican -- veering toward an "independent." Your tenure at the Bank needs to survive political transition in the country -- and won't work if you play a hand one way or another in the upcoming presidential race. Keep your eye on the international economic agenda.

These may be self-evident, but it's important that the U.S. get the World Bank in better shape. I have confidence in Bob Zoellick to do the job, but many inside the Bank do not and are emailing me mountains of email expressing doubts and uncertainty.

But he is a smart, capable guy whose ego is large enough for this massive responsibility but not so large that he can't welcome critique, introspection, and robust collaboration with other smart, effective people.

-- Steve Clemons

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has noted that convicted former Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby has shown no remorse for his role in obstructing the investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert responsibilities for the CIA and has asked for a 30 to 37 month jail sentence for Libby.

Here is the 18 page sentencing document (a pdf) filed by Fitzgerald.

We also ought not to forget former Senator and potential presidential candidate Fred Thompson's significant enthusiasm for Scooter Libby's legal defense and ask him whether Libby-like obstruction of justice would be tolerated in his potential administration.

This is from the front page of the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Fund homepage:

Former Senator Fred Thompson, a member of the Advisory Committee for the Libby Legal Defense Trust has graciously offered to host another fundraiser for the Libby Legal Defense Trust.

Well, as one wealthy conservative political donor just told me by phone, knowing Fred Thompson's role in this "just saved me a whole heck of a lot of money." (i.e., he ain't giving. . .)

-- Steve Clemons

In case you're wondering why I've taken issue with so many officials who rail against dependence on imports of foreign oil, wonder no more.

The NY Times published a story today on the fight over coal-to-liquid fuels in Congress. Advocates of "energy independence" and "reducing dependence on foreign oil" say ramping up coal-to-liquid production will get us closer to our energy goals.

Edmund Andrews writes in the NYT:

"[The conflict over coal-to-liquid] reflects a tension, which many lawmakers gloss over, between slowing global warming and reducing dependence on foreign oil."

Of the two, slowing global warming is clearly the right policy goal. The ultimate goal should be even more broad and ambitious: shifting the global energy economy to reliance on abundant sources of clean and sustainable energy that are climate-neutral, pro-development, and cannot be used as geopolitical leverage. I'm still working on the bumper sticker, I guess.

With sequestration and coal burning technologies being where they are, the climate impacts of coal-to-liquid fuels would be at least as detrimental as those of oil. Plus, subsidizing these fuels in the U.S. would do nothing to address the oil addiction from we're suffering from, which is global. No matter where the U.S. gets its energy, the global energy market - and U.S. energy prices - will continue to ebb and flow with the price of oil.

Calling out politicians who casually mention "reliance on foreign oil" and "energy independence" because they're catchy and politically popular may seem nitpicky to some. But these terms are handcuffing a critically important policy debate.

-- Scott Paul

While I was camping over the weekend I missed the release by Greenpeace of a leaked U.S. memo to Germany regarding the G8 text on climate change.

In past years, when I've returned from meetings of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) or the Conference of Parties (COP) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, I have done my best to explain how out of step with its allies the U.S. is on climate change and the great lengths U.S. negotiators will go to obstruct international progress on the issue. To my great frustration, I usually feel unable to capture it.

The leaked memo shows illustrates precisely how the U.S. approaches these meetings.

But the G8 is different than the CSD and the COP, for one simple reason: people notice the G8. The G8 guarantees at least two and as many as four days of front-page news coverage. Being isolated diplomatically at the CSD or the COP can go under the radar screen, but not at the G8 Summit.

Angela Merkel and Co. will be under great pressure to cave in to U.S. objections and approve a weak document that the U.S. can agree to. She shouldn't.

That's what Tony Blair did during his presidency of the G8 in 2005, which was focused on poverty and climate change. Blair thought that after his loyalty and message discipline on Iraq that he could exact concessions from President Bush on other issues.

But Bush didn't give an inch. Blair wanted the Gleneagles Summit to be the moment where he reclaimed his status as an equal in the so-called "special relationship." Instead, Gleneagles serves to highlight Blair's seeming acceptance of a lesser role for his country compared to the United States.

There's a lesson to draw from Blair's experience, and Merkel should see it clearly: the Bush Administration does not reward its friends for compromise.

If the U.S. insists on staking out a position that so clearly opposes sound science and the views of its G8 colleagues, Merkel should keep the document strong and force the U.S. to dissociate from the G8 position.

There's nothing to be gained from compromise here, and given the spotlight that will be on the G8 Summit, there is much to be gained from exposing the Bush administration's intransigence.

-- Scott Paul

For those of you in the neighborhood, I will be hanging around Chestertown, Maryland and enjoying the annual "Chestertown Tea Party" festivities. The boat race (see pic above) across the Chester River at 2:30 pm today is worth hanging out for.

For the rest, I'll be talking about Vice President Cheney, Iran, and "end run" strategies at 2 pm EST on "Ian Masters' Background Briefing" and then at 5 pm EST on the new "Sam Seder Show."

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

(Lawrence Wilkerson and his regular Thursday students. These are not the ones in the audience referred to below.)

Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly has a great recap of what former Pentagon spy-master Pat Lang and former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson had to say at a University of District of Columbia forum on May 7th.

Here's some Feith fun from Pat Lang:

Patrick Lang told a hilarious story the other night, for example, about a job interview he had with Douglas Feith, a key architect of the invasion of Iraq.

It was at the beginning of the first Bush term. Lang had been in charge of the Middle East, South Asia and terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1990s. Later he ran the Pentagon's worldwide spying operations.

In early 2001, his name was put forward as somebody who would be good at running the Pentagon's office of special operations and low-intensity warfare, i.e., counterinsurgency. Lang had also been a Green Beret, with three tours in South Vietnam.

One of the people he had to impress was Feith, the Defense Department's number three official and a leading player in the clique of neoconservatives who had taken over the government's national security apparatus.

Lang went to see him, he recalled during a May 7 panel discussion at the University of the District of Columbia.

"He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me," Lang recalled, "which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers -- they always had briefing papers, you know -- about me.

"He's looking at this stuff, and he says, 'I've heard of you. I heard of you.'

"He says, 'Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?'

"And I said, 'Yeah, that's really true.'

"That's too bad," Feith said.

The audience howled.

"That was the end of the interview," Lang said. "I'm not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out."

Feith, of course, like the administration's other Israel-connected hawks, didn't want "Arabists" like Lang muddying the road to Baghdad, from where -- according to the Bush administration theory -- overthrowing Saddam Hussein would ignite mass demands for Western-style, pro-U.S. democracies across the entire Middle East.

And some Lang on Wolfowitz:

"I remember talking to [Paul] Wolfowitz, in his office, in the Pentagon, and telling him -- this was after the propaganda build up had started, before the war. I said, 'You know, these guys are not going to welcome you.'

"He said, 'Why?' I said, 'For one thing, these guys detest foreigners, and the few who really like you are the least representative of the various breeds of people there. They're going to fight you, then, if you occupy the place there's going to be a massive insurgency.'"

"He said, 'No, no, they'll be glad to see us,'" Lang continued. "This will start the process of revolution around the Middle East that will transform everything.'

No, Lang told Wolfowitz, "that's not gonna happen. It's just an impossibility. They're not like that. They don't want to be us."

Not everyone agrees with all of Lang's views about the Arab world, but on this issue he was prescient, of course, as were almost all experts on the region outside of the neocon faithful.

How come we learned so much of this dispute only after the war?

And Lawrence Wilkerson on Tenet and "Curveball":

Wilkerson provides a damning clue.

In February 2003, Powell's top aide relates, he "spent five of the most intimate days of my life, and five nights, without sleeping, as did my team, staring into . . . the face" of George Tenet, Tenet's deputy John McLaughlin, and other top CIA officials working on Iraq, at the agency's headquarters at Langley.

It was the eve of Powell's now infamous speech at the United Nations detailing Iraq's alleged biological, chemical and nuclear programs.

"One of the things Secretary Powell and I told Mr. Tenet and Mr. McLaughlin at the outset of our frenetic five or six days, trying to get ready for the U.N., was 'multiple sources.' We will not take anything and put it in this presentation, unless there are multiple, independently corroborated sources for the items we're putting in the testimony," Wilkerson said.

"That was the going-in position."

Subsequently, he learned that there was but "a single source for the mobile biological laboratories; that his code name was Curveball; and that there were several very key dissents as to this individual's testimony, during or before the preparation of the secretary of State."

Curveball, an Iraqi refugee, turned out to be a liar.

"None of that, ladies and gentlemen, none of that was revealed to the secretary of State, or to me, or to any member of my team, by either John McLaughlin or George Tenet," Wilkerson said.

Tenet says in his memoir that he never heard of any serious questions about Curveball.

As readers of this column know , however, Tenet's chief of European operations, Tyler Drumheller, insists he sent a flurry of warnings about Curveball to Tenet's deputies.

Both can't be right.

"Either George Tenet is lying through his teeth, or Tyler Drumheller is lying through his teeth," Wilkerson says, "with regard to one of the most important pillars of Secretary Powell's presentation at the United Nations: the mobile biological laboratories."

We're waiting now for a third CIA official to come forth with an answer.

Lots of people are dying because of the errors and idiocy perpetrated by Feith, Wolfowitz and yes, Tenet too.

-- Steve Clemons

(Joe Klein; photo credit: Online News Hour with Jim Lehrer)

Joe Klein adds some important contextual material to the question of what Cheney may be cooking up on Iran on Time's Swampland blog.

Klein links to my post and writes in "Cheney's Iran Fantasy":

I can confirm, through military and intelligence sources, part of Steve Clemons' account of Cheney's crazed bellicosity regarding Iran. In fact, having just received a second-source confirmation of the following story, I was intending to post it today:

Last December, as Rumsfeld was leaving, President Bush met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in "The Tank," the secure room in the Pentagon where the Joint Chiefs discuss classified matters of national security. Bush asked the Chiefs about the wisdom of a troop "surge" in Iraq. They were unanimously opposed. Then Bush asked about the possibility of a successful attack on Iran's nuclear capability.

He was told that the U.S. could launch a devastating air attack on Iran's government and military, wiping out the Iranian air force, the command and control structure and some of the more obvious nuclear facilities. But the Chiefs were -- once again -- unanimously opposed to taking that course of action.

Why? Because our intelligence inside Iran is very sketchy. There was no way to be sure that we could take out all of Iran's nuclear facilities. Furthermore, the Chiefs warned, the Iranian response in Iraq and, quite possibly, in terrorist attacks on the U.S. could be devastating. Bush apparently took this advice to heart and went to Plan B - - a covert destabilization campaign reported earlier this week by ABC News.

If Clemons is right, and I'm pretty sure he is, Cheney is still pushing Plan A.

On the blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, Col. Pat Lang shares his thoughts on Cheney's team and the games underway.

Many have asked me if I think that Israel is that easy for Cheney and his team to animate. If one reads the Winograd report carefully on the Lebanon-Israel war, my answer would be "no." It's clear that Israeli Foreign Minister Livni and Prime Minister Olmert told Bush NSC official Elliott Abrams a firm "no" when he suggested that the theater of operations be expanded to include Syria.

But that doesn't mean that one can shrug off Cheney's aide's commentary. In tense times, only a small match or trigger is needed to get a dangerous escalation going.

But the bigger issue remains Cheney's alleged effort to constrain his boss, George W. Bush. if Cheney's aide is lying to the people he is speaking to -- then he should be dismissed or sidelined. If Cheney is animating his spear-carrier's views and comments, then Bush should and must clip Cheney's wings.

-- Steve Clemons

There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.

On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy.

The Pentagon and the intelligence establishment are providing support to add muscle and nuance to the diplomatic effort led by Condi Rice, her deputy John Negroponte, Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, and Legal Adviser John Bellinger. The support that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and CIA Director Michael Hayden are providing Rice's efforts are a complete, 180 degree contrast to the dysfunction that characterized relations between these institutions before the recent reshuffle of top personnel.

However, the Department of Defense and national intelligence sector are also preparing for hot conflict. They believe that they need to in order to convince Iran's various power centers that the military option does exist.

But this is worrisome. The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well -- as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.

There are many other components of the complex game plan that this Cheney official has been kicking around Washington. The official has offered this commentary to senior staff at AEI and in lunch and dinner gatherings which were to be considered strictly off-the-record, but there can be little doubt that the official actually hopes that hawkish conservatives and neoconservatives share this information and then rally to this point of view. This official is beating the brush and doing what Joshua Muravchik has previously suggested -- which is to help establish the policy and political pathway to bombing Iran.

The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.

According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.

On Tuesday evening, i spoke with a former top national intelligence official in this Bush administration who told me that what I was investigating and planned to report on regarding Cheney and the commentary of his aide was "potentially criminal insubordination" against the President. I don't believe that the White House would take official action against Cheney for this agenda-mongering around Washington -- but I do believe that the White House must either shut Cheney and his team down and give them all garden view offices so that they can spend their days staring out their windows with not much to do or expect some to begin to think that Bush has no control over his Vice President.

It is not that Cheney wants to bomb Iran and Bush doesn't, it is that Cheney is saying that Bush is making a mistake and thus needs to have the choices before him narrowed.

-- Steve Clemons

(Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and China Vice Premier Wu Yi perform the US-China hit, Strained Smiles.)

Wow. Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson just about did everything wrong but spit on Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi today at the premature wrap-up of the Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) meeting in Washington.

Chris Nelson's Nelson Report -- which I've attached in full below -- has a scathing critique of the Treasury Secretary's performance today.

Now maybe Paulson had a reasonable beef with what was happening behind closed doors in the sessions attempting to coordinate broad strategic economic policy -- particularly currencies -- between the rapidly rising China and the U.S. But Paulson should know that you don't just let the world know that you can barely stand being in the same room with your negotiating partner.

Before all this, Paulson wanted to be "Mr. China" in the Bush administration and take over the responsibility for serious management of the China portfolio from the only other person in the administration who gave much attention to US-China affairs, former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. He got the game -- but today, he seems not to have played well.

After more than 70 trips to China during his life, Paulson can't really get away with an "I was tired" or "I didn't understand that anyone would be upset that I began my formal statement when Wu Yi hadn't even walked in the room yet." He knows China too well. He understands the importance of nuance.

But again -- maybe Paulson was just pissed off by something really, really big.

But HELLLLOOOOOO -- was it as big as our brewing trouble with Iranian and North Korean nuclear pretensions?

In an arena that truly does matter, Iran's and North Korea's nuclear gaming, we desperately need China and Russia to maintain their collaboration with us. And to engage in gratuitous tit-for-tat rudeness is exactly the kind of posture that loses America the support it needs when it really has important priorities.

Chris Nelson's Nelson Report has a
great treatment of this meeting. Others have already confirmed his take:

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