This was the FBI that Deep Throat was defending

Judge LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN writes this in the 20 July 2005 Wall Street Journal:

We told the [House Judiciary] committee that the bureau had sought, at the direction of a political figure, to gather unfavorable information on his opponent during an election campaign. Rep. Herman Badillo of New York pressed me to admit that it was an investigation of Allard Lowenstein, an antiwar candidate running against Rep. John Rooney, the powerful chairman of an appropriations panel with jurisdiction over the FBI. I repeatedly denied that and finally said it involved the presidential campaign of 1964. Shortly thereafter, Don Edwards, the chairman, terminated the hearing. But reporters dug out more facts.

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files.

(HT: Irish Pennants)

Mark Felt's ghost writer offered another story in the same vein:

Contrary to legend, J. Edgar and Richard M. thoroughly disliked each other, though they kept their feelings under wraps. Following his usual custom of trying to keep new presidents off-balance. Hoover sent Mark Felt to investigate trumped-up charges by political gossip columnist Jack Anderson that John Ehrlichman, a Nixon adviser, was a homosexual. Ehrlichman was cleared, but from that moment Felt had him in his pocket, and the president had it in for Felt.

When Hoover died, Felt served for one day as acting director. But when it was suggested that Felt take over Hoover's job, Nixon was emphatically against it. Felt was "a bad guy," Nixon said. "I don't want him. I want a fellow in there that is not part of the old guard." Instead, he appointed L. Patrick Gray III, a Justice Department official. When the scandal began to build, Bob Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, complained, "the FBI is not under control because Pat Gray doesn't exactly know how to control it." Felt was running the investigation, and it was "leading into some productive areas" and getting much too close to home. Every thing that FBI agents were turning up was in Felt's hands. Moreover, Haldeman suspected, and he was correct, that Ehrlichman was reporting White House cover-up activities to Felt, and he had been told that Felt was leaking to the Washington Post and to Time.

Sure, this is old news; we all know that the FBI under Hoover collected reams of information for blackmail. But it is worth remembering that it was precisely this sordid FBI culture that Mark Felt wanted to preserve.

Hoover's capacity for blackmail was wholly a function of the press's love of anonymous leaks. Most of the information in those confidential files was useless for law enforcement or intelligence work. Hoover's victims did not fear arrest: they feared seeing their dirty laundry splashed across the front page of a newspaper. The FBI could always find some "investigative journalist" who was willing to accept their leak and run with a hot story. That their source was breaking the law seemed not to trouble them at all.

This is just one more reason why a blanket shield law for journalists is a bad idea. They "protect the slimiest type of bureaucratic infighter when our goal should be to expose them as the scum they are.

Back to Watergate

Writing in 1982 Ron Rosenbaum offered an interesting hypothesis for Deep Throat's refusal to come forward:

One possible explanation of the silence of Throat … is that if Throat were, like Peterson or Glanzer, part of the Justice Department prosecution team, the disclosure of his identity might give all the Watergate felons cause to petition for a reversal of the verdicts on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.

Now that we know Felt was Woodward's source, we also know that he had even better reasons to stay hidden. But Rosenbaum's point is still a good one. Lost in the debate about Felt's "higher duty" to protect the FBI, is the possibility that he was violating the rights of criminal defendants.

Very few anonymous leakers reveal governmental wrongdoing on the scale of Watergate. Sadly, interference with due process is much more common. I noted one egregious case here. Richard Jewell certainly was a victim of this sort of game. Wen Ho Lee and Steven Hatfill may be two other examples.

In these cases, shield laws do not protect the public from official misconduct. Quite the opposite. Because reporters can protect their governmental sources, shield laws make it impossible to punish officials who violate court-ordered gag-rules or who spread misinformation that can taint the jury pool.

I'm glad there is no real news to report

Did the Chandra Levy madness of 2001 ever reach the heights of absurdity we now see in Aruba?

The spectacle of three news networks doing hourly updates on the water level of a pond is mind-boggling. And they say bloggers are obsessed with trivia.

Homeland Security and "pork barrel spending"

Rich Lowry recently wrote a shallow and smug column on homeland security spending. Lowry disagrees with the way the money is allocated to communities. In fact, he is so certain that he knows how than money should be spent( all in NYC and other big cities) that he thinks any divergence from his "plan" is nothing more than wasteful "pork barrel spending."

Lowry's certainty is anchored on just two ideas. First, population is the best measure of risk. Second, all the homeland security money should spent to high risk/high value targets. Implicitly, Lowry believes that money spent in the heartland is money wasted.

There are those who disagree. Richard Clarke, for instance, wrote a long article for the Atlantic a few months ago that was an extended scenario on future terrorism. Clarke believes that al Qaeda is likely to hit soft targets in the heartland (shopping malls, casinos) in their next wave of attacks. It is not so much that Lowry disagrees with Clarke, it is that he in no way considers Clarke's arguments for even an instant.

Worse, Lowry never mentions Beslan. How could he? The attack on the school in that remote town demonstrates that his smug "spend it in New York" prescriptions are out of touch with the realities of the global WoT.

He also seems unaware that high value targets can be found in low population areas. Railroads, pipelines, and chemical plants are all potential sites for an attack. There is no inherent reason why terrorists must attack these targets only in urban areas.

Rural areas face special challenges when it comes to potential attacks. They have limited law enforcement and disaster resources because they are generally low crime areas. A terrorist event, however, would stretch those resources past the breaking point. Unlike New York or Chicago, they do not have tens of thousands of LEOs and firemen to deploy if the worst happens. Nor do they have specialized equipment on hand or close-by. There are thousands of communities where the firemen are all volunteers and where bingo pays for the new fire equipment.

This does not mean that there is no waste in homeland security spending. Finding it, however, takes more research and analysis than Lowry is willing to devote to the subject.

Good article on the perils of profiling

I hate to say it, but Michelle Malkin is dead wrong on the ethnic profiling issue. This post explains why.

Profiling can also blind you to threats outside the profile. If U.S. border guards stop and search everyone who’s young, Arab, and male, they’re not going to have the time to stop and search all sorts of other people, no matter how hinky they might be acting.

And this

Despite what many people think, terrorism is not confined to young Arab males. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid was British. Germaine Lindsay, one of the 7/7 London bombers, was Afro-Caribbean. Here are some more examples:

In 1986, a 32-year-old Irish woman, pregnant at the time, was about to board an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv when El Al security agents discovered an explosive device hidden in the false bottom of her bag. The woman’s boyfriend--the father of her unborn child--had hidden the bomb.

I'm glad someone said it

I do not mean the following to be a judgement on her in any way. She is like so many parents who just wish their children to be happy and have fun while they are young. I understand that. Perhaps I am paranoid. But with the world as it is today, I would no more let my 18 yr old go off to a tropical island with a bunch of friends than I would let him drive off a cliff.

from Rightwingsparkle

Still suspicious

Edward Jay Epstein finds some aspects of the Felt revelations just a little too convenient.

Plame/Wilson

The Junk Yard Blog looks at some of the ex-CIA-types who are pouring fuel on the get-Rove fire. It makes for interesting reading. I wish some enterprising journalist or Congressman had the guts to follow-up on JYB's leads.

Speaking of which, most of these questions are still unasked by the MSM.

This from the Powerline archives still makes interesting reading.

The media's curveball

Welcome Galley Slaves readers

Unfortunately, most of this blog is neither funny nor about movies. But you owe it to yourself to check out this post.

And if you want a taste of the real Lead and Gold blog, start here.

Most important lesson of the day

It's buried in a short post on movies. Trust me, you'll know it when you read it.

Wow, i agree with John Dean

Rove must have had "authorized access to classified information" under the statute. Plame was an NCO (non-covered officer). White House aides, and even the president, are seldom, if ever, given this information. So it is not likely Rove had "authorized access" to it.

Found here.

If Plame was really covert, someone had to break the rules to reveal that classified information to Rove-- someone inside CIA or close to Plame. Rove, on his own, had no access to information about covert CIA employees. I tried to make that point last week here.

Wonkette's secret life

Who knew that Wonkette was an actress? Pictures cannot lie, can they?

Compare here

to here and here.

Interesting activity for a "covert operative"

From the Jamuary 2004 Vanity Fair profile of Joe Wilson (found here):

In early May [2003], Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, at which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it, but not name him. At this point what he wanted, Wilson says, was for the government to correct the record. "I felt that on issues as important to our whole society as sending our sons and daughters to kill and die for our national security we as a society and our government have a responsibility to our people to ensure that the debate is carried out in a way that reflects the solemnity of the decision being taken," he says.

I've always thought the Wilson to Kristof to Miller path was a pretty good explanation for how Miller learned about Plame's CIA job.

Not sure this is how it is supposed to work

A mother discovers that the handyman at her trailer park is a registered sex offender via the Pennsylvania version of Megan's Law. She sets out to warn other residents. The owner of the park commences eviction proceedings against the mother.

The story here.

Now that's an understatement

Duncan's defense attorneys have thankless job
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — The two public defenders of convicted sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan III have a thankless job in a community where many are baying for Duncan's blood.

Joe Wilson's carefully calibrated '"courage"

Originally posted on Tuesday, July 20, 2004

For a year Amb. Wilson reveled in his persona as a courageous truth-teller who stood up to power and then warned the American people about the lies of the neocons. The factual case he presented in his book and in interviews has been shredded beyond repair. Less discussed is the curious timing of his courageous stand.

The New York Times op-ed that ignited the firestorm over "the 16 words" appeared on 6 July 2003. This was months after the SOTU speech where the words appeared.

Most importantly, it was after the war, after the capture of KSM, and after the Coalition called off the intense search for WMDs. Wilson knew that he was unlikely to be refuted by captured stockpiles or documents.

A courageous, public-spirited man who was certain that he really had debunked the case for war in 2002 would have gone public before the war. That way he might have prevented a grievous mistake by the government.

Evidence of opportunism? Certainly, and no great surprise. But it also suggests that Wilson was less certain of his conclusions in March 2003 than he now pretends he was.

Well, that's one way to get a gig with the network

The court also strongly rebuked then-prosecutor Nancy Grace -- now host of Court TV's "Closing Arguments" -- of engaging in "inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of the trial."

This included, Carr's appeal said, an illegal search of Carr's home to allow one of Grace's expert witnesses to view the crime scene and allowing, before the trial, a CNN television crew to enter Carr's home while filming a feature on her.

Article here.

Plame, Rove, and Cover

If we are to believe the anti-Rove hardliners, KR found out that Valerie Plame was a covert operative at CIA because he had access to classified material at the White House. It does not seem reasonable, however, to think that the name of a covert operative would be in a written report sent to the White House. That's what code names are for.

To go farther, the CIA officer would never be the source of intelligence; they would merely be the conduit. The source would be the spy, electronic bug, or loquacious bureaucrat that produced the information. Hence, the NSC might receive a top-secret report that stated that HIGHBALL, an Iraqi general in Basra, had reported that no sarin gas labs were in his city. It would be absurd for that report to say that HIGHBALL reported this information to Linda Smith a CIA officer who operated under cover as Penny Jones a German archeologist.

So it is with Plame. It does not make sense that CIA sent over material to the White House that identified her as a covert agent. Yet, if they did not share such information with the White House, then it is hard to see how Rove could have broken the law or done anything immoral.

Everything bloggy must converge

In this post, I noted that one reason the Watergate cover-up received all the attention (as opposed to the burglary itself) was that only Nixon could direct an Oval Office cover-up. By focusing on that crime, the media and Congress could keep Nixon, and only Nixon, in their sights. I think the same thing is happening to Karl Rove in the Plame/Wilson matter.

Right now, the only question the MSM is interested in is did Rove use the words "Wilson", "wife", and "CIA" in a sentence spoken to reporters? The press corps acts as if the answer, in and of itself, is a modern day smoiking gun. They completely ignore the equally critical question-"did Rove learn about Plame from a classified source?" If Plame's employer was an open secret among reporters and pundits, then Rove did nothing wrong.

In fact, I do not think that Rove could have known about Plame from classified sources if she was really covert. Her identity, in that case, would never show up in any document sent outside CIA.

There is another interesting Watergate parallel. In his book Secret Agenda, Jim Hougan argued that the press missed a blockbuster story in Watergate: widespread domestic spying operations conducted by CIA. In his view, Nixon failed in his attempt to use CIA to stop the FBI investigation. OTOH, CIA was successful in using the Plumbers as a cover for their own (illegal) domestic activities and then managed to deflect investigators away from their operations and onto Liddy, Dean, Mitchell, and Nixon. In Plame/Wilson, the ignored question has been the role of Plame and her co-workers in feeding misleading information to the press and into the intelligence stream.

Right now Washington is obsessed over what Rove said and whom he said it to. It might also be useful to find out what Wilson said to Pincus, Judis, and Kristof about Plame and if she spoke to anyone else in the MSM.

Rove/Plame/Wilson

Irish Pennants

Byron York

Volokh

Calblog