Nothing Aside

Worth A Read

The Winter issue of The Washington Quarterly, the international policy journal I currently work for, is now available online.  Check it out.  There is a section of five articles on various aspects of U.S.-China relations, as well as a spattering of articles included in our "Provocations" section about defeating insurgencies, German foreign policy, the legacy of the Soviet era in Russian political culture, and the future prospects of the European Union, among other topics.  It's worth a read, especially if you're feeling particularly wonkish today.

Chalabi in DC

I've just returned from a circus-like appearance by Ahmed Chalabi at the American Enterprise Institute.  This was Chalabi's first visit to the U.S. in two and a half years and the first since he has been accused of passing American codes to the government of Iran, and since his home was raided by American forces a year ago.  Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress pushed faulty and false intelligence on the Bush administration prior to the war, which Cheney and his cohorts readily ate up.  This speech was his first moment of potential accountability since the war began.

The audience for the speech was a star cast of top Washington reporters and thinkers: David Corn of The Nation, Matt Yglesias of The American Prospect, Reuel Marc Gerecht of AEI, David Schuster of MSNBC's Hardball, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Michael Barone of US News & World Report, Fouad Ajami of SAIS, David Frum of The National Review, Robin Wright of The Washington Post, and Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair and Slate.  And those were just the people I recognized off-hand.

The room of about 80 people was packed.  When Chalabi finally took the podium, he looked incredibly nervous and hesitant.  I guess I would be as well if I was being investigated (however anemically) by the FBI into the passing of American codes to the Iranians and being harassed by reporters wanting to know why his claims of WMD in Iraq turned out to be so wrong.

Here are a few choice quotes from Chalabi.  I wasn't actively taking notes, but a few things jumped out as particularly noteworthy, shocking, absurd or some combination therein.

• "Most of the Ba'ath Party was Shia."  Huh?  I'm not sure where he's getting this from, but I'm pretty sure that it is blatantly not true. 
• "The fact that I misled the U.S. is an urban myth."  Well, he has certainly picked up on the Bush administration's favored tactic when faced with overwhelming evidence of wrong-doing: deny and summarily dismiss the argument out-of-hand.  Period.  It will go away!
• "I did not pass sensitive information to Iran."  This may not be a surprising quotation, but perhaps you had to be there to see how he was saying this.  I don't think I've ever seen anyone more uncomfortable in my life.  The fact that he was speaking a lie was all over his face.
• "I would go to the Senate and answer questions."  Well, he has offered.  Now where are the senators on the intelligence committee calling for a hearing?  Anyone?
• "I have a multi-dimensional relationship with the Bush administration."  There's a euphemism if I ever heard one.  Chalabi went from the administration's best friend to the top of its black list and now back to its uncomfortable friend all within three years.  Multi-dimensional is a good word for it, to say the least.
• "It is not useful for me to comment on this.  That is in the past."  This is what Chalabi said when asked about how he pushed fraudulent and faulty intelligence about Saddam's WMD's.  Stunning.  The means justify the ends to him, even if the American public is paying the cost of those ends.  His only goal was to overthrow Saddam.  If that meant pimping false evidence so the United States would be persuaded into war, so be it.  So what if 2,000 American soldiers are now dead - he's deputy prime minister now.
• I don't have an exact quote for this one, but Chalabi also suggested that the U.S. needn't really ever leave Iraq.  They should just pull back to a few bases eventually.  Why should the U.S. stay and keep bases in Iraq?  To protect Iraq from its neighbors.  Not to keep Iraq from descending into civil war, but to keep Iraq free from interference from its threatening neighbors.  The man really does think that the U.S. military is his own play thing.
• Chalabi also spoke about Iraqi oil.  For a while.  This portion, quite appropriately, was when he seemed to lighten up and he developed a somewhat evil smile as he spoke about the possibilities for Iraqi oil.  It may sound typically leftist of me, but he seriously began to get an animated look in his eye suggesting that the topic of Iraqi oil was where his real interest lay.  Spooky.

The cast of characters who attended the speech, other than reporters and notable intellectuals, was interesting.  I spotted people from a variety of sketchy-sounding energy and consulting companies.  Just to name a few: C & O Resources, ExxonMobil, Orion Strategies, Aries Group and Goodwin Procter LLP.  Mind you, I don't know what these or some of the other companies and organizations do, but I was sufficiently suspicious of their presence at the Chalabi speech.

After the speech I followed the throng out of the room and was able to get a few good pictures of Chalabi as he left.  In the elevator lobby I met Matt Yglesias, whose various blogs I read on a regular basis.  He seemed equally amazed by Chalabi's gall.  Here is his take on Chalabi's dismissal of any wrong-doing.  I hadn't read the "page 108" Chalabi was referring to, but Matt has and points it out.  As Matt says, it certainly is a curious way to exonerate oneself.

After pausing to see who else I recognized, I took an elevator down with Christopher Hitchens and David Corn, among other people.  Talk about a recipe for conflict.  Hitchens used to write for The Nation until his pro-war position became untenable and he left in disgust.  Corn is still there and is The Nation's marquee reporter.  Awkward!  The two of them almost immediately started going at it over the CIA leak case.  I didn't catch the whole thing, but watching the two of them go at it was priceless.  Their argument continued outside for about five minutes while Hitchens lit up a smoke, and Corn got apoplectic about the absurdity of the Bush administration's claims about the war.  It was incredible theater. 

After a few minutes I introduced myself to Hitchens and took the opportunity to ask him about his March 2005 piece in Vanity Fair where he looked into the incredible voter irregularities in Ohio, where I voted while at Kenyon College.  I asked him if he thought that the election could have gone the other way had these irregularities not existed and he scoffed at the suggestion.  "It wouldn't have been in the Democrats' interests to pursue an investigation into the irregularities.  Just like with Nixon in Illinois [in 1960], it was best for both sides not to bring it to the fore."  I still have my doubts.

Hitchens then turned the subject back to Chalabi, his good friend.  I asked him if he thought Chalabi had been passing American intelligence to the Iranians.  "No," he insisted.  "It's possible that with his training, you know, at [The University of] Chicago that with his own ability he was able to crack the codes.  He is a mathematical genius.  His expertise is cryptology.  It is possible that he broke the codes himself."  (This is a paraphrase since I was walking down M Street and crossing Connecticut Avenue all while being amazed that I was having an actual conversation with Christopher Hitchens at the time).  Now, I don't believe this for one second.  Why would Chalabi be trying to break American codes in his spare time anyway?  Who does that if they are friendly to us?  Suspicious, I say.

I noticed that Hitchens was without his Kurdish flag lapel pin.  He has been wearing it for years as a symbol of what is possible and as a sign of solidarity with the long oppressed Kurds of northern Iraq.  He said he had lost the pin and felt naked without it.  That is certainly no good.  At Connecticut Avenue we parted ways and I again mentioned that he should try to get back to Kenyon if he could get the chance.  We may disagree on Chalabi, but Hitchens is someone who I wouldn't mind spending some time listening to and arguing with.  Maybe some other time. 

Anyway, there is my close encounter with Ahmed Chalabi, the man who sold the Bush administration a war in Iraq.  Now I'm going to wash my hands.

**UPDATE**: If you're interested in more of the substance of the speech (which I skimmed for the most part), be sure to read this account by David Donadio at Cont'd, the new blog of The American Interest.  Donadio is also a Kenyon alum and is now the Deputy Managing Editor at The American Interest.

Indictments

Finally, the shoes start dropping.  I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been indicted by a federal Grand Jury on five counts: one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements. 

If you read the indictment or if you listened to Patrick Fitzgerald lay out the evidence against Libby, it sounds pretty cut and dry that Libby is guilty of at least some of these charges, if not all.  Yes, there is no charge relating directly to the original inquiry into the leaking of classified information concerning Valerie Plame, but as Fitzgerald said in his horrifically convoluded baseball analogy, an impediment to the investigation shows that something fishy is going on as well.  Why would Libby tell the Grand Jury that he had gotten his information about Plame from two reporters if he had actually gotten it from the Vice President?  There should be no reason to lie about that.  After all, it is perfectly legal for two government officials with high clearance levels to discuss classified information.  Why not admit that the info came from Cheney?

The other area of speculation and rumor that has been going around lately is that Karl Rove would be indicted as well.  He managed to avoid any charge today, though apparently the investigation will continue.  My hunch is that Rove will escape the ax, probably thanks to his last minute testimony of a few weeks ago where he may have cleared up some discrepencies in his previous testimony.  We'll wait and see on Rove.

The area that I am most interested in, and the one that I haven't seen get a lot of play in the major newspapers, is the connection in all this to the State Department's Office of Arms Control and International Security.  That office was run, until a few months ago, by Undersecretary of State John Bolton.  Yes, that John Bolton.

Why is this an interesting angle to the story?

According to the Times account, Cheney told Libby the covert name of the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat who had publicly alleged that the administration had mishandled of intelligence relating to Iraq's nuclear weapons programs.

But several former and serving U.S. intelligence officials strongly disputed this.  "That is simply not accurate," a very former senior CIA official told this repoter. "Libby's notes on this are misleading and inaccurate or both."

This source, supported by three others, alleged that it was a telephone call from the Department of State that first gave Libby the name of Plame.

The name of the caller? No one is sure. But these sources said that the call defintely came from the State Department office of John Bolton, then the arms control chief of the department.

These same sources alleged that two employees of Bolton, David Wurmser, a virullent pro-war hawk, first told Libby that Valerie Plame had sent Wilson to Niger to attempt to discredit the administration's line on Iraq's nuclear weapons programs.

These same intelligence sources alleged that Wurmser, as Bolton's special assistant, got his knowledge of Plame's classified identity from a colleague in his office, Frederick Fleitz, a CIA officer detailed to Bolton's office from the agency who worked in the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINIPAC).

WINIPAC.  That, of course, is where Plame was working at the time of her outing. 

This story seems entirely plausible to me.  It also adds a giant new wrinkle to the story if Bolton or his former office are involved.  Let's not forget that among Judy Miller's visitors while in prison was Bolton himself.  Everyone was confused by this visit at the time, but perhaps it makes a bit more sense now.  Was Bolton checking to make sure he wasn't the source that Miller was in jail for?  And since it was Libby whom she was in jail to protect, and Libby was not the person who first told Miller Plame's (Flame) name, could it be that Bolton or either Wurmser or Fleitz was her original source (the one Miller conveniently could not remember in her Grand Jury testimony)?  Was it someone in Bolton's office that was the original leaker, the one who committed the original crime?

This story is just getting started, folks.

Plamegate Heats Up With Miller's Account

The latest from the Plame leak investigation is out, and boy is it juicy.  First, there is the absurdly long article by The Times reporters documenting the inside story of Judy Miller and her case as seen and dealt with by the top editors and staff at The Times.  It is interesting if you've been following the case in detail as I have tried to do and if you have an hour or so to digest the rather complicated happenings of Judy Miller, I. Lewis Libby, their lawyers and the various editors of The Times.

But the real damning meat of this case comes from Miller herself.  Based on Miller's account of things I can't see how "Scooter" Libby won't get indicted.  Here are a few key sections.  First is this paragraph detailing where the prosecutor's case is headed:

During my testimony on Sept. 30 and Oct. 12, the special counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asked me whether Mr. Libby had shared classified information with me during our several encounters before Mr. Novak's article. He also asked whether I thought Mr. Libby had tried to shape my testimony through a letter he sent to me in jail last month. And Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Cheney had known what his chief aide was doing and saying.

So first, we're looking at the initial leak charge.  From what I've heard the bar for this charge is quite high and seems unlikely to appear.  Then we're looking at an obstruction of justice charge against Libby.  That seems like the most likely outcome, along with conspiracy.  Then, there is the possibility of some involvement by the Vice President.  This seems like it would be too good to be true, but who knows really.

Here is Miller's account from Jule 23, 2003 - several weeks before Robert Novak's column revealing Valerie Plame's name:

My notes indicate that Mr. Libby took issue with the suggestion that his boss had had anything to do with Mr. Wilson's trip. "Veep didn't know of Joe Wilson," I wrote, referring to the vice president. "Veep never knew what he did or what was said. Agency did not report to us."

This claim that Cheney didn't know who Joe Wilson was and therefore Wilson's claims are irrelevant, is one that administration defenders trot out fairly often.  But what's to it?  Cheney didn't have to know Wilson.  Cheney wanted more facts, the CIA was tasked with getting more facts, and Wilson was the one who was chosen to go about checking on some facts in Niger.  The Vice President shouldn't be in the position of picking, let alone knowing, the person who does all his research.  That's why he has an intelligence community working for him. 

But continuing on:

Soon afterward Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson's wife for the first time. I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, "Wife works in bureau?" I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the C.I.A. The prosecutor asked me whether the word "bureau" might not mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I told him, normally. But Mr. Libby had been discussing the C.I.A., and therefore my impression was that he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency that dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. As to the question mark, I said I wasn't sure what it meant. Maybe it meant I found the statement interesting. Maybe Mr. Libby was not certain whether Mr. Wilson's wife actually worked there.

What was evident, I told the grand jury, was Mr. Libby's anger that Mr. Bush might have made inaccurate statements because the C.I.A. failed to share doubts about the Iraq intelligence.

"No briefer came in and said, 'You got it wrong, Mr. President,' " he said, according to my notes.

It seems pretty clear that there was an atmosphere in the White House that was just not going to listen to someone who would stand up to the President and say such a thing.  For Libby to suggest that doubters were free to air their thoughts proves that he is either coy by half or blissfully ignorant of the fact that he is a part of an atmosphere that bred timidity among those who doubted the administration's Iraq policy.

Miller and Libby met a second time, July 8, 2003:

Our meeting, which lasted about two hours, took place over breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I almost certainly began this interview by asking about Mr. Wilson's essay, which appeared to have agitated Mr. Libby. As I recall, Mr. Libby asserted that the essay was inaccurate.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked about a notation I made on the first page of my notes about this July 8 meeting, "Former Hill staffer."

My recollection, I told him, was that Mr. Libby wanted to modify our prior understanding that I would attribute information from him to a "senior administration official." When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a "former Hill staffer." I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill.

Did Mr. Libby explain this request? Mr. Fitzgerald asked. No, I don't recall, I replied. But I said I assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.

Now why, why, why would Libby ask to be attributed as a "former Hill staffer"?  Maybe this is commonplace, but it also strikes me as suspicious in light of what else went on in that meeting:

At that breakfast meeting, our conversation also turned to Mr. Wilson's wife. My notes contain a phrase inside parentheses: "Wife works at Winpac." Mr. Fitzgerald asked what that meant. Winpac stood for Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control, the name of a unit within the C.I.A. that, among other things, analyzes the spread of unconventional weapons.

I said I couldn't be certain whether I had known Ms. Plame's identity before this meeting, and I had no clear memory of the context of our conversation that resulted in this notation. But I told the grand jury that I believed that this was the first time I had heard that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for Winpac. In fact, I told the grand jury that when Mr. Libby indicated that Ms. Plame worked for Winpac, I assumed that she worked as an analyst, not as an undercover operative.

This is the meat of the case.  Did Libby knowingly release the details of Plame's professional status?  While it seems as though Libby never explicitly said that Plame was an operative, and indeed Miller assumed she wasn't by way of this detail, why did it come up in the first place?  Why was she mentioned?  And why use her agency name if the issue of concern to Libby and others was the fact that she was Joe Wilson's wife?  All of this seems unnecessary, and throws more light on the motives of Libby.

Here is where Miller get's sloppy though - and on the most important point no less:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me about another entry in my notebook, where I had written the words "Valerie Flame," clearly a reference to Ms. Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to know whether the entry was based on my conversations with Mr. Libby. I said I didn't think so. I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

This is just about the most important point there is - who told her the name in the first place - and Miller "could not recall."  Nonsense, I say.  Nevertheless, Libby seems to have divulged this information as well, even if Miller's notes indicate that he wasn't the first person she heard this from.

Finally, there is the recent letter from Libby to Miller releasing her from her confidentiality (or re-releasing her as Libby would contend).  This part is straight out of a spy novel:

Mr. Fitzgerald also focused on the letter's closing lines. "Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning," Mr. Libby wrote. "They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."

How did I interpret that? Mr. Fitzgerald asked.

In answer, I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

"Judy," he said. "It's Scooter Libby."

Huh?  A little poetry from Libby, or a coded message of some sort?  And the cowboy hat and sunglasses in Wyoming bit?  There's an overload of intrigue in this. 

Keep an eye on how this all develops in the coming days.  Indictments seem certain, though for whom and when still remain open to speculation.

The "Goyal Foil"

The job of the White House Press Secretary might be one of the least forgiving jobs out there.  Every day he or she must avoid, tip-toe around and deflect destructively prying questions from the White House press corps.  In the past few years though, the press corps has backed off a bit and has allowed non-answers and complete dodges to go unchallenged.  This is unacceptable.  The job of the press corps is to get to the facts despite the spin - not to get caught up in the spin. 

When the CIA leak investigation blew up onto the front of the news cycle the past few weeks, the White House press corps finally stood up for its right to ask tough questions.  No more evasive and time-wasting "The President believes strongly that all people want to live in freedom" nonsense which just avoids the meat of a question. 

So how does a battered press secretary find respite from the new found courage of reporters determined to do their job?

Has Raghubir Goyal ever had a bigger week? And has White House press secretary Scott McClellan ever been more grateful for Goyal's presence? Goyal is the White House correspondent for the India Globe and the lifeline for White House press secretaries during daily briefings since, no matter what issue or scandal is preoccupying the rest of the press corps, Goyal is a sure bet to ask a question about something else--namely India and Pakistan. During the days of the Enron scandal, for instance, when reporters were pummeling then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer with questions about Ken Lay and the administration's ties to the bankrupt company, Fleischer would reliably catch his breath during the daily briefing by cutting off other reporters and calling on Goyal, who would ask about the Indian home minister or Pakistani fighter planes. "If you're in a jam, go to Goyal," Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart told The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, who in turn famously termed press secretaries' habit of using Goyal as a life raft the "Goyal Foil."

Last week, the Goyal Foil reached a level of effectiveness never before seen. First, and not surprisingly, McClellan relied heavily on Goyal as a respite from the rest of the White House press corps' questions about Karl Rove and his involvement in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. When the press' pummeling got particularly brutal during one briefing last week, McClellan immediately employed the Goyal Foil--and CNN, which had been covering the briefing live, just as immediately went back to its regular programming, as Goyal launched into a long question about Pakistan and McClellan replied with a long answer about how "free nations are peaceful societies."

When you're drowning, go to Goyal.

In An Uncertain World*

Let's go over some of the implications that the London bombings have wrought.  If you listen to the never-ending television coverage from London you would get the idea that this was somehow an unexpected event.  Many of the commentators are covering this horrific event as if it is of the same shock value as September 11.  That may be the easiest way to portray the events - each event as a stand-alone day of death.  But that's not reality. 

The London attack was perhaps the most predictable terrorist attack yet.  It was just a matter of time before Britain was hit.  Behind the United States, it was target #2.  Its steadfast partnership with the United States over the years has made it an inviting target - especially when American targets are less vulnerable.  Again, I saw this when I was in Turkey and saw the bombings in Istanbul.  The United States consulate in Istanbul is a virtual fortress on the edge of the city.  The British consulate, on the other hand, was still in the heart of the city - amid narrow streets of old buildings.  As a result, it was the British consulate (as well as a British bank) which were targeted, not American targets. 

But where am I going with this?  The Brits have long been our #2 and have long been the #2 target of the various anti-American/Western terrorist groups out there.  This attack only made sense.  So why does the media act as if there was something new about this?  Why all the talk about "what will our response be"?  Our response will be the same as it has been: pursue and eliminate those responsible and continue to go about our lives. 

And here's a tangent thought: as I mentioned in an earlier post, the terrorists responsible for the London attacks were incredibly unsophisticated.  They used basic explosives, low-tech timing devices, put them in an unassuming bag/package and hit some of the most vulnerable infrastructural targets in the city.  As far as terrorism goes, that's amateur. 

Unfortunately for us, this is the type of terror we will see in the future.  It is basic but elusive.  It is nearly impossible to prevent precisely because it is so simple in nature.  Perhaps we can take some lessons from the Israelis on how to prevent low-tech, yet deadly threats.  But ultimately the terrorist threat we now face is one that can not be stopped completely - it can only be minimized.  That has always been the case with terrorism, but unlike an airliner attack where we can better monitor passenger lists and screen passengers thoroughly at airports, there is no way to completely prevent London-type attacks and still live in a free society. 

We live in an uncertain world, but then, we always have.  Your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are still far below your chances of dying in a car accident.  In fact, according to the Center for Disease Control and the National Security Council, you have better odds of dying by your own deeds than you do at the hands of terrorists. 

So please, for one moment let's not freak out and demand a massive alteration in our policy or in our lives.  The best we can do is limit the ability of terrorists to exploit our weaknesses, while also living our lives as we otherwise would.  The Brits know this all too well after decades of IRA bombings, and we would be wise to emulate them.

(*Apologies to Robert Rubin for stealing the title of his memoirs for the title of this post.  When the shoe fits...)

Finally A Clear Messenger?

Granted I only saw the last half of Bush's news conference this morning, but I must say that I was impressed.  I think it was the first time I have ever found him to be a convincing speaker.  Perhaps it was because he was speaking on brand new talking points ("I have firmly planted the flag of liberty") and was excited about it, but he seemed like a much better spokesman for the ideals of his administration. 

The fact is, the administration's ideals have always appealed to me because, fundamentally, they are liberal, Wilsonian goals.  What I have been so frustrated with though, is how those ideals have been corrupted by incompetence and a failure to lead effectively in the course of enacting the admirable vision. 

Today Bush made a convincing and clear case.  I still don't think he has any idea what reality is like on the ground in Iraq or any idea how to fix the problem (since he doesn't let himself know about the problem in the first place) but as for his clarity of message, he was spot on.