EC Saturday Roundup
Barack Obama and John McCain raised about the same amount of money in May. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.
--Eric Kleefeld
NYC Blogging
Explaining how TPM works can be daunting, especially if you're describing it to someone from a traditional journalism background or, say, older relatives for whom something as simple as email is still intimidating.
As most of you know, we have a bricks-and-mortar office in Manhattan. But that's just the anchor for our operation. We have a reporter in DC, another reporter who works most of the week from Connecticut, and I'm in Missouri. So a third of our staff of nine is not based in the NYC office.
For that model to work, we rely some on phones, a lot on email, but primarily on Skype. That means a whole series of Skype chats going on at any one time between and among editors, reporters, and interns. Even most of the internal office interactions are via Skype, so that those of us not in the office proper can be kept in the loop. Picture a staff of mostly 20-somethings squeezed into a 700-some-odd-square-foot newsroom, hunched over their computers, fingers flying across their keyboards as they IM with colleagues who may be sitting right next to them.
As I say, it's a hard arrangement to explain to the uninitiated. Spencer Ackerman, who used to work for us at TPMmuckraker, captured it pretty well in this blog post:
If you want to understand what it's like to work at TPM, spend a couple days with your ten smartest friends and constantly IM with them. Set up IM windows for multi-person conversation, and break out those discussions with individual participants. And make the substance of those conversations deep-in-the-weeds investigative journalism. Make sure you don't often go more than, say, two minutes without contributing to the discussion. And see if you can avoid being overwhelmed.
As odd as all that may sound, one of the most out-of-the-box things about TPM was that until Wednesday, I had never met any of our staff in person, including Josh, even though I've worked at TPM in one capacity or another for approaching two years now, the last 10 months as managing editor.
It had just worked out that way. Josh and I both have young kids. Travel is expensive. Whatever. A hundred reasons why it hadn't happened yet. But since I was flying from St. Louis to Serbia this week, it made perfect sense to stop off at the office for a couple of days on my way back through New York.
There were suspicions among staff that I might not really exist. Maybe I was just Josh's imaginary friend and that I would walk into the office, take off my sunglasses, and be revealed to be Josh himself. (When my kids were younger, their toddler-level understanding of my online work was that I had cleverly managed to squeeze the people I work with into my computer. It suggested that they thought I had superhero powers so I was content to let that misapprehension linger.)
I'm about to catch a flight out of JFK. After a week of Belgrade and NYC blogging, Missouri blogging doesn't have quite the same allure, especially after such a beautiful day in NYC.
I walked from Chelsea all the way down to Wall Street -- passing Philip Seymour Hoffman, or someone who bore a stunning resemblance to him, at a sidewalk cafe in Greenwich Village -- before making my way back up to West 23rd. Not only had I never met my TPM colleagues, but I had never been to NYC before, a point of personal embarrassment I cringe to admit. So I wanted to soak up as much of the city as I could in the short time I had and by foot seemed like the best way to go.
I hope it's not so long until my next visit.
--David Kurtz
Mark Schmitt argues that it's not just new campaigns, but new issues that can win in the age of the internet.
--David Kurtz
Obama on FISA
Obama on the FISA 'Compromise' ...
"Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders."That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.
"After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year's Protect America Act.
"Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance - making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.
"It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives - and the liberty - of the American people."
--Josh Marshall
Be A Patriot, Take Bush's Secrets to the Grave!
There were many entertaining moments in today's Scott McClellan testimony. But I think the best had to be right-wing Rep. Steve King (R-IA) telling McClellan that if he wanted to be a true patriot he would have just shut up and taken the Bush administration secrets and crimes to the grave ...
Steve King, We who are about to say the omerta, salute you!
--Josh Marshall
Sounds of Silence
Obama's spokesman still doesn't know his candidate's position on the new FISA bill that passed the House today. The Senate vote is next week.
--David Kurtz
Bob Gates? Really?
I've been noticing how Andrew Sullivan has been pushing the idea of Obama, if he wins in November, keeping Bob Gates on as Secretary of Defense. But now I see that Joe Klein's pushing the idea. And now Noam Scheiber too.
So I'm going to be generous and excuse myself for not getting it earlier that Bob Gates must be actively pushing now to hold on to his job.
Now, those who have long memories, or really just medium length memories, will have a certain sense of deja vu. Gates was the CIA Director at the end of the first Bush administration. And he pretty publicly and aggressively auditioned for keeping the job under Bill Clinton. As it happens, Clinton dropped Gates to appoint Jim Woolsey, surely a contender for one of the worst, perhaps the worst appointment Clinton ever made. (Since leaving the administration in 1995 he's focused primarily on giving Iraq conspiracy theorists a bad name.) So holding on to Bob Gates would have been a far superior choice, if that was the choice.
Let me be clear, I do not have a negative impression of Bob Gates. He's mainly had the unlucky task of picking up after the mess created by Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and President Bush. My sense is that Gates is a pretty sane guy and highly capable foreign policy hand. And that's managed to come through even through the heavily cloaking effect of having to operate within President Bush's inane foreign policies. I don't think I know enough about Gates or the particulars of his administration of the Pentagon -- to the extent that can be distinguished from the necessity of operating under President Bush -- to give any qualified appraisal of him. But certainly he is much more in the Scowcroft, rough-realist school than anything from the Bush mold.
But can we realize that this is simply impossible? I shouldn't say impossible. Obama's surprised me a number of times. And I'm not afraid to say, a number of times where I see in retrospect that he was right and I was wrong.
But consider it from this perspective. If Barack Obama is elected president in November it will be for many reasons. But preeminent among them will be the American people's desire to decisively turn the page on the disastrous foreign policy -- in all its permutations -- of the Bush years, a foreign policy that has been characterized by belligerence and in the most direct sense by war, and one in which the Pentagon has played a dominant role, often at the expense of the Department of State. Elected on those terms, I simply do not see how an incoming President Obama can choose to keep on the man who ran the Pentagon on behalf of President Bush and executed his policies, regardless of the man's qualifications in the abstract.
Late Update: A very knowledgeable DOD watcher I know tells me he's pretty sure Gates doesn't want to stay around past January 2009. I guess he really is a realist.
--Josh Marshall
House Passes New FISA Law
After months of battling, in the end the White House got exactly what it came for: broad surveillance powers and telecom immunity.
The vote in the House was 293-129.
--David Kurtz
Double Straight Talk?
Is John McCain saying one thing to white conservatives and another to Latinos on immigration? Jake Tapper talked to one attendee at McCain's recent meeting with Hispanic Republicans in Chicago who says he did.
--Josh Marshall
Moving On Over
TPM Election Central reports that MoveOn is shuttering its 527 outfit for 2008, in response to pressure from the Obama campaign.
--David Kurtz
Don't Arrest Me, Bro!
Those 20-something Florida arms dealers have reportedly been picked up by the feds and are being charged with violating the Arms Export Control Act.
--David Kurtz
White House Invokes Executive Privilege -- Again
The House oversight committee was supposed to vote this morning on whether to hold EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson (and an OMB official) in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas.
But the EPA and the White House have now invoked executive privilege, committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) just announced, so he's delaying the vote to assess the privilege claims.
Keep in mind that the EPA and White House have been stonewalling Waxman for months, but have waited until now to formally invoke executive privilege.
It's all part of the Bush Administration's overarching strategy for its last year in office: Delay. Delay. Delay.
--David Kurtz
House Debating FISA
The House is debating the new FISA compromise legislation now, including telecom immunity. A vote is expected within the hour.
The House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Scott McClellan has been recessed for the duration of the FISA debate.
Late Update: Nancy Pelosi will vote for the compromise plan. A summary of the vociferous opposition from the House floor here.
--David Kurtz
McClellan Testifying
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan is in front of the House Judiciary Committee testifying about his knowledge of the Plame leak. We'll keep you posted at TPMmuckraker of any new developments.
Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) has already gone after McClellan pretty hard.
Late Update: McClellan will resume testifying later today after the FISA debate in the House.
--David Kurtz
Election Central Morning Roundup
Obama's fund-raising haul could top half a billion dollars -- that and the morning's other political news at TPM Election Central.
--David Kurtz
McCain Breaking the Law in Plain Sight
I mentioned earlier today that it was quite a thing to see John McCain denouncing Barack Obama for breaking his word on public financing when McCain himself is at this moment breaking the law in continuing to spend over the spending limits he promised to abide by through the primary season in exchange for public financing. (By the FEC's rules, we're still in the primary phase of the election and will be until the conventions.)
I want to return to this subject though because this is not hyperbole or some throw away line. He's really doing it. McCain opting into public financing, accepted the spending limits and then profited from that opt-in by securing a campaign saving loan. And then he used some clever, but not clever enough lawyering, to opt back out. And the person charged with saying what flies and what doesn't -- the Republican head of the FEC -- said he's not allowed to do that. He can't opt out unilaterally unless the FEC says he can.
The most generous interpretation of what happened is that McCain's lawyer came up with an ingenious legal two step that allowed him to double dip in the campaign finance system, eat his cake and spend it too. But even if you buy that line, successful gaming of the system doesn't really count as strict adherence. And the point is irrelevant since the head of the FEC -- a Republican -- says McCain cannot do this on his own.
Like everything that has to do with campaign finance, the details are a little ... well, detailed. But they're worth understanding. Last February in this episode of TPMtv, we explained just how McCain cheated the campaign finance laws ...
--Josh Marshall
Good for the Goose?
The McCain campaign, through Cindy McCain, has been pushing the attacks on the Obama family's patriotism by pushing the Michelle Obama 'proud of my country' quote. "Everyone has their own experience," said McCain when asked about the comments yesterday. "I don't know why she said what she said. All I know is that I have always been proud of my country."
But tonight Dan Abrams of MSNBC found these quotes of John McCain saying he'd never loved away before he was taken captive in North Vietnam ...
--Josh Marshall
Very Clever
As you know, Sens. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) got the 'VIP treatment' from scandal-ridden Countrywide Financial. But what about the other 98 members of the senate. Who'd they get their mortgages from? And did they get any special senatorial consideration.
Well, Eamon Javers and Martin Kady II of The Politico decided to pick up the phone and ask. They're asking every member of the senate who their lender is, who they contacted to get the loan and whether they got any special deals.
You can see the results here.
Not too many big surprises so far. But I can tell you from experience that the early responders are always the clean ones. (Not to say late responders are necessarily dirty; but early responders are always clean.) A lot of senators haven't answered yet. So it'll get more interesting as we see who the hold outs are.
Late Update: TPM Reader WB notes that Pennsylvania senators -- Bob Casey (D) and his predecessor canophile Rick Santorum (R) -- have also gotten a bit of the VIP treatment, though not from Countrywide.
--Josh Marshall
A Pander Too Far?
McCain campaign accuses Obama campaign of "boys club bullying" in campaign finance fracas.
--Josh Marshall
A-Team Revealed!
Straight from the "Intern's Survival Guide", we've assembled bios and photos of Rep. Don Young's lobbyist "A-Team".
--Josh Marshall
Just a Thought
As of a couple weeks ago, Barack Obama is the leader of the Democratic party. By definition and in fact.
What does he think about the FISA deal? As far as I know he has not weighed in publicly over the question. And I'm hearing that the sachems on Capitol Hill are in the dark as well.
When does he show his cards?
--Josh Marshall
Strange Juxtaposition of the Day
This is up on the Yahoo News site at the moment, a story about Obama opting out of public financing:
But check out the photo used to illustrate the piece:
There is no mention of bin Laden anywhere in the story.
--David Kurtz
TPMtv: 2008 General Election Roundup #1
The national polls haven't been great for John McCain of late. But the state by states are worse. We run through the latest numbers in episode one of our weekly 2008 General Election Roundup ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
Black Pot Call Home
Someone help me here. McCain is grandstanding on public financing when he is, as we speak, breaking the law by continuing to spend unlimited primary campaign money after opting in to public financing for the primary phase of the campaign?
And then greenlighting the outside 527s to go after Obama only days ago?
Something doesn't compute.
--Josh Marshall
Not Just Whistling Past Dixie
Obama angers some in the netroots by cutting a radio ad for telecom-immunity-loving, Iraq-War-supporting Blue Dog Democratic Rep. John Barrow, who is facing a progressive primary challenger in Georgia.
--David Kurtz
That's Some Compromise
Who really thinks that the White House and the telecoms would go along with this so-called "conditional immunity" that congressional Democrats have agreed to if they didn't think they could satisfy the condition?
All they must do is provide a federal district court judge with "substantial evidence" they received a written request from the attorney general or head of an intelligence agency stating the president authorized the surveillance and determined it to be lawful, the Wall Street Journal reports.
How much clearer could they telegraph that such written requests exist?
Late Update: Or as Laura Rozen puts it:
Doesn't that actually endorse and extend to private actors the Nixonian view that if the president says it's legal, it's legal, regardless of what the law says and the Constitution says? Wouldn't that set an awful precedent that an administration could get private actors to do whatever they wanted including breaking the law?
Later Update: Paul Kiel reminds me that the Senate intel committee already knows what those written requests say:
Earlier this year, the Senate intelligence committee declared in a report that lawmakers and staff had examined the classified written communications between the executive branch and the telecoms who'd participated in the program. And all those letters "stated that the activities had been authorized by the President" and all said that the program was lawful.
--David Kurtz
The Bravest, the Smartest, the Whistleiest ...
I feel it behooves me to note that Office of Special Counsel Boss Scott Bloch, whom TPMmuckraker.com reports this morning is about to be sown into a burlap sack and tossed into the Potomac by his staff (some hyperbole, not much), is the very same Scott Bloch who has been caught importuning employees to go under cover in the comment sections of critical articles and blog posts and offer boffo praise of his meritorious service.
So someone might want to be watching to see if anyone shows up in the comments section praising Bloch for eradicating all corruption from the federal government, singlehandedly saving the lives of nine whistleblowers and bravely standing up to the slings and arrows of a lying press corps.
All Hail Scott Bloch! We who are about to sockpuppet, Salute You!
--Josh Marshall
Breaking: FISA "Compromise" Reached
From the WSJ:
The agreement would also pave the way for companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to shed the nearly 40 lawsuits they face for allegedly participating in a prior version of the NSA program, which have cast a shadow over their reputation on Wall Street and Main Street. To win immunity, they would have to pass review from a U.S. District Court.It faces hurdles to becoming law, namely whether it will have enough support from other lawmakers in both parties in the House. Telecommunications companies, which have lobbied lawmakers aggressively in recent weeks, support the compromise as does the White House.
Critical to sealing the deal was a compromise that would grant conditional immunity to telecommunications companies for assistance they provided from September 2001 through January 2007. If the companies can show a federal district court judge "substantial evidence" they received a written request from the attorney general or head of an intelligence agency stating the president authorized the surveillance and determined it to be lawful, the cases against them will be dismissed.
--David Kurtz
Knock His Bloch Off
Facing a growing staff revolt, Bush's scandal-plagued head of the Office of Special Counsel (the one who tried to bamboozle investigators by taking his hard drive to Rent-A-Geek) plans a pricey staff retreat.
"We're trying to deal with this by decapitation," one official in the office told TPM. "The big question is: Why isn't the White House letting him go?"
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
Yes, there've been some problems. But at least we're Exxon's getting their oil.
--Josh Marshall
What's Next?
At PBS's MediaShift, Mark Glaser has a very interesting interview with Chuck Lewis, the legendary founder and longtime director of the Center for Public Integrity (who's now launching the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University) about non-profit journalism, investigative journalism and how and whether they can survive the upheaval and chaos now churning through the media world.
--Josh Marshall
He's Tanned, He's Rested, He's 9/11
After his campaign flame-out, Rudy Giuliani has taken some time off. He's rested, tanned and ready to get back into the political mix. And surprisingly enough he's decided the Democrats big problem is they don't focus enough on 9/11 ...
--Josh Marshall
Blackwater Brings Sharia Law to America!
I know various wingnuts go on about how Muslims or various left-wing freaks are going to bring Sharia law to America and make us into an Islamist theocracy. But I think we may have the first case of a defendant actually asking a US federal judge to apply Sharia law, not American law, to a case.
And the defendant is Blackwater.
--Josh Marshall
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
After catching a lot of grief for having foreign and domestic lobbyists working for and advising the candidate, the McCain campaign instituted a strict new rule barring any current lobbyist from having any role in the campaign.
Now it seems like they've come up with an even better idea to tamp down all the criticism: don't tell anybody who's advising the campaign.
--Josh Marshall
Belly of the Earmark Beast!
We've just gotten a hold of "Intern's Survival Guide" which is part of the initiation material handed out to new interns in the office of Congressman Don Young (R) when they start at the office.
Lots of fun color, as you'd expect. But we're particularly interested in the "A-team," who interns covering the phones were told "can talk to whomever they want" in the office.
The 'A-Team' appears to have been made up entirely of lobbyists, nine in all, including Rick Alcade, the lobbyist on the notorious Coconut Road earmark.
See our full report here.
Click on the page for full-sized image.
Late Update: Young's office has now sent along the following statement, which claims that the document in question is "incredibly outdated" and "was pieced together by several former interns and not by staff." Our understanding, however, is that the 'guide' was distributed by a paid member of the Young staff ...
Below is our response. Attached please find the official Intern Guidelines as put together and handed out by our intern coordinator, as well as a screen capture of the properties of the document showing that this document was created in 2006 for distribution."Rep. Young has welcomed dozens of interns into his office over the years and finds their assistance in the office invaluable. But interns are not staff. This incredibly outdated "survival guide" was pieced together by several former interns and not by staff. This "guide" in no way reflects the official policies of Rep. Young's office.
"It's always interesting to see how students view their intern experience. It appears that some of what they have written is tongue in cheek, some to help relieve the daily stresses of working on Capitol Hill. At the end of the day, our goal is to ensure that all interns have the best experience possible.
"As for those listed, they include either former staffers (who represent Alaskans) or close friends and former colleagues of Rep. Young, whom he has known for many years."
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: Yglesias Becomes Foreign Policy God
Matt Yglesias, former TPM Associate Editor and all-around blog star, has a new foreign policy book out, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats. We caught up with him last week at The Strand bookstore here in lower Manhattan and asked him whether he thinks Democrats are ever going to get out of the fetal position when it comes to taking the fight to Republicans on their catastrophic foreign policy record ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
Florida Retiring McCain?
Nate at FiveThirtyEight has a good analysis of the broad swath of recent polls and particularly these polls out this morning from Quinnipiac showing Barack Obama with leads in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. It's only one poll. But this is the first poll that has shown Obama ahead in Florida against either McCain or Clinton. Most models for an Obama win don't include Florida, though Obama's campaign certainly seem intent on contesting it. But that's McCain's firewall. If he can't win Florida, the electoral map starts to look very bleak. Even having to fight for it would put McCain in a hole.
--Josh Marshall
From King of Shag to Second Fiddle
Rudy debuts as McCain surrogate.
Late Update: Oy, another McCain surrogate says Rudy blew it preparing NYC for 9/11.
--Josh Marshall
Rudy!
This should be fun. In a conference call this morning, the McCain campaign is bringing out Rudy Giuliani as a surrogate for McCain on terrorism. Any bets on how many times Rudy says 9/11 in his comments on the conference call?
--Josh Marshall
Michael Gerson is Funny
Post columnist Michael Gerson, who helped bring us Dick Cheney, state-sanctioned torture and official lies to lead the country to war let's us know that Al Franken is the Vulgarian at the Gate. He's also concerned about "the cooperation and mutual respect necessary in a functioning democracy."
--Josh Marshall
Big in the Balkans
As I mentioned Monday morning, for the first half of this week TPM's Managing Editor David Kurtz was attending the International Press Institute World Congress & 57th General Assembly which was held this year in Belgrade, Serbia. At the closing ceremony Tuesday evening, David accepted the "Free Media Pioneer 2008" award on behalf of the entire TPM crew.
I was just checking out the website this evening. And they've got a pretty elaborate multimedia setup, where I noticed they'd already posted pictures of the award event. So I thought I'd share them with you.
As you can see there, the award is some sort of glass obelisk or something. And as David told me by IM early this afternoon (evening local time) his primary remaining mission was to see if he could get it back to New York in one piece.
We'll keep you posted.
--Josh Marshall
Scraping the Barrel
Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld put together a pretty hilarious post today about this list the McCain put out of "prominent Democrats and Independents" supporting McCain's candidacy. A few years back when McCain was considering becoming a Democrat, there were lots of Democrats who were big fans of his. So it really wouldn't have surprised me if McCain was able to put together a list of prominent and half-way normal Dems who are supporting him. But it turns out the list is made up of non-Democrats, hardcore conservatives and what I guess you'd call a smattering of county-level Zell Millers sprinkled around the country.
My favorite from the list is the aptly named "prominent Democrat" and "former Democratic gubernatorial candidate" Philip "Icky" Frye of West Virginia. Sounds pretty impressive. But it turns out that Frye's credential as a Democrat is limited to ... well, Frye's wife made a cuckold of him by sleeping with then West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise (D). In revenge, the humiliated Frye decided to challenge Wise in the Democratic primary for governor -- which, I'll have to say is one of the more creative and civically-minded ways I've heard of to get back at the guy who slept with your wife. Wise decided that things were getting a little out of hand and without precisely admitting to the affair decided not to run again. At this point Frye seems to have lost interest in the job and ended up garnering less than one half a percent of the vote.
When the Charleston Gazette found out that McCain was carting small Frye out as a 'prominent Democrat' they had more than a little fun at his expense.
--Josh Marshall
Not As Out As There as Woolsey
Despite being a pal of notorious charlatan and con-man Ahmad Chalabi's and a prime architect of the public campaign to get the US to invade Iraq, I confess that McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann just isn't quite as over the moon as his colleague and fellow McCain advisor Jim Woolsey. But here's Peter Slevin's run-down on Randy in the Post's Trail blog anyway.
--Josh Marshall
Daniel Levy on what to expect from the Egypt-brokered Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
--Josh Marshall
Their Knight in Shining Armor
Can you believe this dude was their dream candidate?
--Josh Marshall
Clay Shirky at TPMCafe Book Club
Clay Shirky joins us this week at TPMCafe Book Club to talk about his new book, Here Comes Everybody. He opens the conversation by considering a couple of questions about social software-- and social status on the web. Are new ways to acquire social status (say, by achieving a level 75 Night Elf Roghe in World of Warcraft) a net gain, or a net loss?
--Josh Marshall
How Could I Forget?
Back on the topic of using Jim Woolsey as your presidential surrogate to call your competitor "delusional" and "naive", I'd almost forgotten Woolsey's freelance James Bond mission to England back in 2001 to prove the crackpot theory of Laurie Mylroie who came up with the idea that Saddam wasn't just behind the 9/11 attacks but was actually behind the original attack on the Twin Towers back in 1993. For a wonderful article on Mylroie, her theories and expertise, see this wonderful article by Peter Bergen -- I guy who's actually interviewed bin Laden, not just had fever dreams about him.
Mylroie's theory was that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing who is now in the federal supermax facility serving a life sentence, was actually a covert Iraqi intelligence agent sent to America by Saddam to blow up the World Trade Center. Like other delusional fantasies, it's always difficult to know quite how deeply to delve into their internal logic. But in brief, Woolsey and Mylroie's idea was that the Iraq intelligence agent had stolen the identity of a man named Abdul Basit. In the weeks just after 9/11, Woolsey went to England to check fingerprints on documents Basit had handled in the UK back in 1988 and 1989 and the compare fingerprints of Basit and Yousef to see whether they were in fact the same person.
Like the guy who's not a doctor but plays one on TV, Woolsey didn't go in any official capacity representing the US government, but Doug Feith gave him the thumbs up on the idea. So he apparently thought that was good enough. And according to subsequent reports, Woolsey led the Brits on to believe that he actually was in the country on a secret mission from Washington.
We catch some of the antic detail in this October 2001 Knight-Ridder article by Warren Strobel ...
Woolsey, in an article in the New Republic magazine last month, said the only way to determine the truth is to "investigate the materials that Abdul Basit handled while in the United Kingdom in 1988 and 1989, which were taken into custody by Scotland Yard."Woolsey went to England to determine whether Basit's fingerprints matched Yousef's, current and former officials said.
"It was implied that he was doing so on behalf of the U.S. government, but it doesn't appear it was coordinated through the U.S. Embassy" in London, one official said.
But another official said the former CIA chief "was careful not to hold himself out as representing the U.S. government in any way," but went "to look at some of the evidence that he thought had not been looked at carefully enough."
On at least one of the trips, Woolsey visited the Swansea Institute, a technical school in Wales where Basit studied, as well as the South Wales Constabulatory. The constabulatory contacted the legal attache at the U.S. Embassy in London to ask if Woolsey was acting in an official capacity, an official in Washington said.
The British "were intrigued" that a former CIA chief "was asking these questions," another official said.
Several of those with knowledge of the trips said they failed to produce any new evidence that Iraq was behind the attacks.
Anyway, this little excursion became what I think you'd have to generously call both sad and sympathetic eye-rolling by close-watchers of the Iraq story back in the early part of this decade. So I'm more than a little amused that this is the guy who's advising McCain today.
Late Update: I'd almost forgotten. But TPM Reader DB reminded me: Woolsey also apparently thinks Saddam blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
--Josh Marshall
Kentucky?
It's been my assumption for months that John McCain would absolutely crush Barack Obama in Kentucky. And I'm still virtually certain McCain will beat him there this fall. But this SurveyUSA poll has McCain up by only 12 points -- 53% to 41%. That's a very solid lead. But I would have expected substantially more.
--Josh Marshall
Republican Outreach
Button on sale at the Texas GOP state convention this weekend.
Late Update: Our reporter-bloggers at Election Central got in touch with the folks at the Texas GOP. And they say they didn't know anything about it, would have prevented it from being sold if they had.
--Josh Marshall
Naive and Delusional?
I don't know if I can expect anybody else to point this out. But check out the participants list of the McCain campaign's conference call this morning calling Barack Obama "naive" and "delusional". Look at the names of the two worthies making these accusations.
Randy Scheuneman and Jim Woolsey. Let's track back for a moment here. Both were top supporters of disgraced charlatan and accused Iranian spy Ahmad Chalabi in the lead up to the Iraq War. Woolsey, in addition to being one of his top DC confidants, was actually Chalabi's lobbyist. Needless to say both were also big advocates of the most lurid and far-fetched claims about Saddam's phantom WMDs. And not just the stocks of mustard gas and botulinum toxin that a lot of people in DC believed Saddam had. But truly loopy stuff.
I remember numerous panels I attended at AEI from the early part of this decade when Woolsey, to eager gasps and awws, would describe some ingenious concoction of this or that chemical agent that would not only kill you but turn you inside out and and reduce you to your constituent elements before doing so. Yes, that's a bit of lyrical hyperbole. But I assure you, not much more far-fetched than a lot of the stuff Woolsey was peddling back in those days -- which, to be generous and give him the benefit of the doubt -- let's assume Chalabi and his other fellow hucksters fooled Woolsey into believing.
Delusional and naive? I'd say both of these guys are really overdrawn in that department. These two simply have too much egg on their faces to be hurling those claims at anyone else.
But let's have a little fun with this. Google is a wonderful thing. What quotes can you find from Scheuneman and Woolsey from 2001, 2002 and 2003. There are a lot. Send in what you find. We'll print some.
Late Update: Okay, it's not exactly what I was looking for since it doesn't have Woolsey talking about some Saddam-invented chemical compound that makes turn into molten rock. But TPM Reader RR sends in these choice quotes from this November 23rd, 2003 article in the Washington Post. McCain on Chalabi: "He's a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart." And Woolsey on Chalabi: "He's a class act."
--Josh Marshall
Disclosure Forms are Hard Work
Last year you'll remember, former TPMmuckraker.com reporter Laura McCann broke the story of how Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski had gotten a sweetheart deal on a piece of Kenai River river front property from a wealthy campaign contributor and Salmon mogul named Bob Penney -- a transaction she failed to disclose on her senate filings. The story eventually got picked up in the state's big paper, the Anchorage Daily News. And after a couple weeks of hemming and hawing she finally agreed to sell it back.
This years disclosure documents have just come out and it seems Murkowski had even more trouble remembering where all her income came from. In amendments to her 2004, 2005 and 2006 filings, she now come up with roughly $100,000 a annual income that she'd forgot to mention. Kate Klonick has the details.
--Josh Marshall
Tea Leaves
The Times has a bit more detail about the on-going Inspector General's and Office of Professional Responsibility probe's into the US Attorney firings. Seems, as we learned yesterday from the Wall Street Journal, that Bradley Schlozman has moved furthest along toward potential criminal charges. Meanwhile Alberto Gonzales' attorney, George J. Terwilliger III, assures the Times that Gonzales is not the target of any criminal investigation tied to the US Attorney firings but he was not willing to give any such assurance about whether his client is being looked at for perjury in the NSA wiretaps case.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
Nice Army you've got there. Would be terrible if something happened to it, says top military contractor KBR.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: McCain Social Security Bamboozle
One of the most entertaining things about the 2008 campaign has been watching John McCain embrace all of President Bush's policies and word game flimflams. And there's no better example than Social Security where McCain has not only adopted President Bush's proposal to phase out Social Security and replace it with private investment accounts he's even adopted Bush's word game bamboozlement to try to trick voters into thinking he doesn't support the policy he actually does support.
Those of us who are about to talk straight, Salute You!
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
A Little Piece of Yugoslavia in London
Even some of the European attendees here at the IPI Conference were surprised to learn that Serbia has a royal family.
They had been in exile for 60 years, having fled in 1941 in advance of Hitler's invading army, until Crown Prince Alexander II and Crown Princess Katherine took up residence in the Royal Palace in Belgrade in 2001. As best I can tell, the royals have no formal constitutional role in Serbia, but they have returned to a position of some public prominence, in an apparent nod to Serbian nationalism. If nothing else, they had the foresight to be the first to register the domain www.royalfamily.org.
The 62-year-old Crown Prince was himself born in exile, although not technically. In the sort of diplomatic maneuvering that seems entirely of a different age, the British government in the 1940s went to great lengths to assure that Alexander II would be born on Yugoslav soil, according to the Crown Prince's official bio:
On 17 July 1945 while living in Claridge's Hotel, Queen Alexandra gave birth to a son - HRH Crown Prince Alexander II of Yugoslavia. Crown Prince Alexander, the heir to the throne, was born on Yugoslav territory as the British Government under the orders of the Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill declared suite 212 in Claridge's Hotel Yugoslav territory. His Holiness Patriarch Gavrilo of Serbia baptized the newborn Crown Prince in Westminster Abbey with Godparents King George VI and HRH Princess Elizabeth (now HM The Queen Elizabeth II).
A Brit I've met here wondered aloud if that designation of Suite 212 in Claridges has ever been revoked. A very good question. If not, would that make it the only Yugoslavia that still exists?
Late Update: Word is that having lived most of his life in Europe and the United States, the Crown Prince speaks Serbian with a pronounced accent.
--David Kurtz
Laugh Line
Hafez Mirazi, the former Washington bureau chief of Al-Jazeera, this afternoon in Belgrade, describing a T-shirt someone he knew was trying to promote just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq: Come to America -- Before America Comes to You.
--David Kurtz
Balkans Blogging
I won't bore our non-journalist readers by recounting in any great detail the shop talk from IPI Conference here in Belgrade. But a couple of points that might be interesting to the broader audience.
The hand-wringing about the future of newspapers is not limited to the States. The consensus seems to be that, while U.S. papers are in much worse shape than European papers, the newspaper business model is collapsing in Europe, too, largely but not exclusively because of pressures related to the explosion of the Internet.
One observation I've heard made more than once is that European papers were better positioned to meet the challenges of the Internet age because they had learned long ago how to survive in a fiercely competitive marketplace. American papers, on the other hand, enjoyed near monopolies in their respective local markets for decades.
There is so much turmoil in the industry on both sides of the Atlantic that it's not clear yet how things will ultimately shake out. A BBC reporter asked me to put a number on it: how many more years will newspapers survive? I hesitate to get into the predictions business, but it seems obvious that in another 20-25 years two full generations will have grown up consuming news exclusively online. Whatever print editions still survive then, at least in America, with which I am familiar, will not look anything like newspapers today. An old American newspaperman in attendance here remarked to me, archly, "I can't tell if the U.S. is a leading indicator or a lagging indicator."
Interestingly, the disconnect between publishers and journalists in their responses to the industry's shifting financial fortunes is just as pronounced here as in the States. In a provocatively titled panel -- "Are Profits Killing the News?" -- William Green, the editor of Time Europe, was nearly at his wit's end, although diplomatically so, in trying to get two major European publishers to acknowledge and address the cutbacks in news and the effect of the industry's financial struggles on journalism itself.
Britain's David Montgomery, CEO of publicly traded Mecom Group PLC, and Switzerland's Michael Ringier, chairman of privately owned Ringier AG, would have none of it. They rejected outright the premise that journalism has suffered from declining news budgets, and argued to the contrary that the quality of journalism is better than ever before. Ringier was particularly pointed, dismissing some of the criticisms as "bullshit" and declaring that despite the hand-wringing about Rupert Murdoch taking over the Wall Street Journal, the quality of the paper had actually improved since his arrival.
Green, ever earnest, implored them, "Aren't you in denial?"
--David Kurtz