Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Posts Tagged Dick Cheney

The Married Man Defense

Feb 23

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | 2 Comments

The jury is still out in the Scooter Libby case, but I’ve weighed the evidence and have to agree that community service of this sort would be appropriate.

OK, according to the offense, I mean the prosecutor, the case is about Mr. Libby lying when he claimed he had forgotten that he had earlier learned about Mrs. Wilson from VP Cheney and other official channels and it was as if he had heard it for the first time from Tim Russert. According to the defense, the case is did Mr. Libby hear about Mrs. Wilson from Tim Russert as Mr Libby testified.

I have to say the case is about how many married people there are on the jury. If I were the defense, I would have offered up the married man defense – if I had been allowed to mount a memory defense unlike the actual accused. I can’t tell you how many important things I have relearned over the years as if for the very first time despite hearing it from my wife earlier (or at least that’s what she claims). “I told you that” — what married man isn’t familiar with that refrain. How many a married man has forgotten an anniversary, a birthday, or some other significant event?

So as a married man, a man who looked over at his son at Night At The Museum and said “You wear glasses?” to the immediate scorn of both wife and son, I can believe that Scooter Libby forgot something, something that people telling him thought vital, something that even he thought vital. I have no idea if he did or not, but I can believe it.

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Questions Easy, Answers Hard

Feb 16

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

Is it just me, or does Larry O’Donnell sound like he had a few too many before going on the air with Hugh Hewitt? Actually, Larry always sounds like he’s had a few too many and isn’t a happy drunk.

What about the ambulence attendents? Would they be in on the cover up, too? Maybe an intrepid reporter can track them down and get their story.

Here is another example where reality will divurge between left and right; it will become an article of faith on the left that Cheney was drunk when he shot Mr. Wittington, and it will become an article of faith on the right that he wasn’t. And I’m not one of those people who like to split truth down the middle, either Cheney was or he wasn’t and so one group is quite simply wrong.

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Harry, Get Well Soon

Feb 15

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

Vice President Cheney accidentally shot a friend while quail hunting over the weekend and you’d think something of national import happened. I guess it was a slow weekend in the Natalie Holloway case. The VP’s tardiness in notifying the media — the 22 hour gap — is driving some people bonkers. What difference did the delay make? None has been offered, so I’m left with nothing but Ecclesiastes: Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity.

I realize that the best way for the VP to have handled the situation from a PR standpoint was to have immediately notified the press, made a tearful apology on camera, and in general treat it as more important than Iran getting nukes. But really, should I care that the VP accidentally shot a fellow hunter? And who should the VP apologize to besides Harry Whittington, the man he shot? He didn’t shoot the American people, so why does he owe us an apology? If all we want is to hear Cheney’s apology to Whittington, what do I make of all this outrage over the NSA listening to private conversations?

OK , I do think at least one important question has been raised by this “scandal”. Why is that preening doofus David Gregory on NBC’s payroll? I had no problem with quantum physics, but I’m completely stumped by that one.

Actually, the handling by Cheney may not be so bad as people are saying. For one thing, the press corps has predictably behaved so wretchedly that they are sharing the spotlight with him. And he’s built interest in the interview he’s going to do, so this way he only has to apologize on camera once. And thirdly, all of us who think of ourselves as laconic he-men admire the way he’s taken the laconic he-man approach to this. My inner laconic he-man has been stirred so much by the VP since since he and the President called New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a major league asshole (and of course the left was up in arms over that bit of truth telling) and Cheney alone told Senator Pat Leahy “‘intercourse’ you” when Pat was trying to play nice in private after blasting him in public. Laconic He-men are the same in private as in public, and expect other people to be the same.

I miss the Clinton presidency. Now there were real scandals and issues. Take eavesdropping on international calls. Every President since Alexander Graham Bell has done it, and every President, including Saint Jimmy, since FISA was inacted has said they still had the right to eavesdrop on international calls under the constitution. In other words, old news. But when Clinton was President, we got to see the claim resolved that per executive privelege Presidents should be immune to any non-Presidential lawsuits while President. Illegal wars? Heck, President Bush has congressional authorization. President Clinton had nothing when we pre-emtively attacked Serbia over Kosovo. Secrecy? Have you forgotten Hillary Care so soon? Maybe the VP should explain he grew up hunting with his father and all questions will cease. Hey, it worked when Hillary explained how she was able to make so much money in futures. I pity the Democrats who have so little to work with.

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Legal Authority?

Jun 18

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

The 9-11 Commission is faulting mainly the FAA — although no one escapes the finger pointing — for the inability of the Air Force to shoot down the hijacked aircraft that day. Charles Austin demonstrates his knowledge of government contracting (and sarcasm) by asking about the FAA’s failure to have proceedures in place to address a multi-plane suicide bombing hijacking scheme.

What makes me wonder, given the current preoccupation with the Bush administration’s accountability on torture or consignment of US citizens to Gitmo without formal trial, is the total lack of comment about the authority the Vice President had to order the destruction of American owned property, let alone the murder of American citizens. Am I the only one who wonders about the disconnect? The Vice President suddenly has the power of life and death in a crisis, but the Bush administration can’t determine the status of captured al Qaeda operatives? In that felicitous legal phrase, what was the legal controlling authority that allows Dick Cheney to call up the Air Force and order them to shoot down passenger jets owned and operated by American companies in American airspace that will certainly kill American citizens? I really am curious if there is any legal basis whatsoever for such an order.

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Fitzgerald, Plame, Wilson, Rove, Libby, Cheney

Oct 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

The web’s aflame with rumor and speculation over Fitzgerald’s investigation into the Plame kerfuffle. Of course, I get all my Plame news from Tom Maguire, who never grows tired of the fact that we know so little. Consider that Fitzgerald and his people are famously closed lipped. Who do all these leaks come from? Even if they came from Fitzgerald (gigantic if there), let me remind you of the most important point about leaks involving politics (OK, any leak for that matter) – they are always self serving for the leaker. Always. The fact that the leaker can provide only partial truth allows the leaker to control and manipulate the story.

And isn’t leaking grand jury testimony a crime as well? I understand a witness can come out and talk about the questioning, even lie about it like good old Sid Blumenthal, but other than that the testimony is legally protected. So the only way for it not to be a crime is if the leaker about a particular witnesses testimony ultimately derived their leak from the particular witness? Which leads us right back to the self serving nature of any leak. Sigh.

So what’s really going on here. Is the most important part of the whole sodden mess the fact that Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA employee? Is it that CIA is a rogue organization that is trying to undermine the elected President of the United States? Or does it’s import derive as proxy for the Iraq war itself?

Personally, what I care about most is the unauthorized discloure of classified information. If Fitzgerald can return indictments about that, even perjury indictements, I’ll consider it a successful investigation. But I want the perjury to be perjury, not just how good Karl Rove’s memory is. So if he deliberately lied to conceal unauthorized disclosure, then good. If he forgot a particular conversation of several that occured with one or more people, then bad. And by that I mean if he were tardy in disclosing a conversation with Matt Cooper, someone who Rove had no reason to believe wouldn’t disclose, then an indictment is just butt covering.

But if it turns out that the Valerie Plame wasn’t covert and the CIA persued this case while it has let plenty of other equally or more serious dislosures go in the past, then I think the CIA becomes the big story. Why should it be OK for a disgruntled current or ex-CIA employee to disclose classified information to the press, but not the White House?

Here are the unanswered questions for me. Was Valerie Plame a covert agent at the time her name was leaked? If so, it raised for me another important question then – how did her name leave the CIA? What does that say about their security proceedures? If not, what is the CIA trying to pull here?

Which reporter broke the sacred confidentiality to tell Joe Wilson who the sources were? I mean, how else was he able to finger Karl Rove and Scooter Libby way back at the start of the kerfuffle? It was only a month after Novak’s article that Wilson said he wanted to see Karl Rove “frogmarched” out of the White House in handcuffs. Libby’s name followed soon after, and then Joe Wilson backtracked and shut up about it. Odd how the press isn’t interested in Joe Wilson’s source, which he admitted to, and how that source named the two people that have been most prominently featured as people who talked to the press.

Speaking of Joe, why isn’t he being investigated as the man who clearly did the most to out his own wife? For those who like convoluted conspiracies (I’m not one), why not think the Valerie was tired of living the covert life, have Joe out you, and bam you’re out, in the clear, the darlings of the media, book deals, Vanity Fair articles. Hey, it’s more plausible than Flight Plan.

What about the role of the State Department? Plame was “moving to State Department cover”, there are reports of a State Department memo with her name in it, State opposed the war in Iraq just like the CIA. Has the institutional opposition at these two power centers overstepped the bounds of good government? And will we ever see that probed?

Most of all, what does Fitzgerald really have?

OK, that last one is a repeat of how we know so little. And what amazes me is how there are some who don’t seem to realize that. We don’t even know if Valerie Plame was covert. Did the neighbors know she worked for the CIA? I have no idea, but Mark Kleiman is convinced by an article in the LAT which relies on two neighbors. Did the LAT contact “all” the neighbors but only inlcuded quotes from two? Cliff May said lots of people in Washington knew a long time ago – but Cliff wasn’t a neighbor. Was he just talking trash, or was he telling the truth? Beats me, I don’t live in Washington. We have to rely on these leaked reports to the press, which clearly has lower standards about such leaks than, say, allegations by a victim that she was raped by Bill Clinton.

Some people don’t even know what we do know – namely that Joe Wilson is a liar who came forward not courageously before the war, but after when the status of the Iraq WMD was known. If Ambassador Wilson was so upset by President Bush’s so called manipulation of intellegence before the war (you know, when CIA head Tenet was claiming that Iraqi WMD was a “slam dunk”), why didn’t he come forward then, when it could have done some good?

One last final thoughts (not for the subject, just the post) – whatever you may think of Fitzgerald’s integrity, it seems as if people are treating the indictments as the final word on the subject. They aren’t, they are just accusations. I know that depending on whose ox is being gored, people will ignore that fact or ignore every other fact.

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Novak, Wilson, and Plame

Oct 2

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | 1 Comment

The latest Washington scandal sounds like an old rock group, but it is serious business. Did someone at the Bush Whitehouse leak the name of a CIA operative (Valerie Plame Wilson) who was the wife of a former ambassador (Joseph Wilson IV) who wrote an op-od critical critical of the Bush administration? If administration officials broke the law by deliberately leaking her status with the CIA, then by all means they should be prosecuted and fired. If it was a nobody somewhere in the great Military Industrial Complex who did this (i.e. me), that’s the fate they would suffer. It shouldn’t change because of either its political nature or the position of the officials. I know that in the past nothing happens to leakers, but it ought to. I think putting a few senators and representatives in the dock would be highly beneficial, but then I think all public officials, regardless of party affiliation, should be held accountable to the same standards as everybody else.

If you want blog coverage, Just One Minute is all over this. If you prefer your coverage from big media, Google News is always a great source.

The odd thing to me is that the parts that should be straightforward are so murky and the the murky stuff is simply opaque. The CIA should know whether or not Ms. Plame is an undercover operative as covered by law and therefore whether or not the leak broke the law. If she isn’t covered, there should be no investigation, so I have to assume she is. And the next stop should be to question the star witness, Bob Novak – just like they should for any journalist who is an eyewitness to a crime. I don’t buy the notion that there is some right to keep sources confidential if a crime has been committed, and I don’t think journalists should be treated any differently than any other private citizen. So it should be straightforward whether or not a law was broken and if so, who did it.

But it isn’t, and so Bush will twist slowly, slowly in the wind while the investigation fumbles along to no certain conclusion. If Bush were machievellan, he’d get a couple of volunteers to claim they were the leakers, that it was inadvertant and not malicious, and have them resign. What would Novak do – reveal his real sources? The scandal would be over, and the whole matter would be forgotten by most of the electorate.

The larger picture is very much confused in my mind. Apparently, Dick Cheney was concerned enough about the intel about Iraq trying to buy yellow cake from Africa that he asked the CIA to indepently check on it. So the CIA sends Joe Wilson – why? Of all the nutty yet courageous ex-Ambassadors, they picked him. What, wasn’t Felix Leiter available? Besides being married to an agent, what were his qualifications (remember his contacts in Niger were from 25 years ago)?

So he conducts his investigation by talking over tea with some Nigerians, comes back to the US where he files only a verbal report, and then goes on to right an op-ed that claims that based on his brief and cursory investigation, Iraq didn’t get yellowcake from Niger, and therefore the Bush administration was lying when it claimed that UK intellegence was reporting that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa.

Then somebody tells Bob Novak that his wife works for the CIA, and that’s how he got the job. How does this person know that Mrs. Wilson works for the CIA? Do they sign their reports, and as an expert on WMD proliferation they’ve been reading a lot of them recently? Is this how everybody seems to know that she works for the CIA? And how is leaking her CIA connection supposed to intimidate the Wilsons, or even undercut his op-ed, which if anything is enhanced by giving him some connection, however tenuous, with expertise in WMD proliferation? It is either really stupid, or simply honest.

After this Wilson claims that even mentioning her maiden name is somehow a breach of security, despite the fact that he included it in his bio on the net. And now he’s claiming that he knew all along that Iraq didn’t have WMD, although he apparently felt confident of it earlier to claim that Saddam would use it against US troops. Yeah, I know, a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of small minds.

And now we have the press outraged that somebody would leak a CIA agent’s name, although not outraged that the press would print it, we have serial leakers (i.e. congresspeople) outraged that somebody would leak confidential information, and we have people demanding a special prosecutor despite their track record when all we need is a justice department that isn’t afraid to put a journalist in jail for refusing to name a criminal.

And yes, you have me, who hopes that we find out who did what and why, who hopes that the guilty are punished and the innocent exhonerated, that justice be applied impartially, and that we all remember and hold accountable the people we place our trust in, in public service or in the media. But then, I’m just an old fashioned guy.

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