Steve Lovelady (yes- this is the same ‘salivating morons who make up the lynch mob’ Steve), has had enough regarding the Plame investigation, and tells Fitzgerald in a letter featured at Poynter that it is time to “put up or shut up.”
David Ehrenstein is mildly amusing himself in his response to my post on Patrick Fitzgerald — emphasis on the word “mildly.”
But he dodges the issue entirely. It’s time for Fitzgerald to put up or shut up. He said beforehand that his investigation was all but wrapped up. Now, he has Cooper’s source; he has Novak’s source; and he has Judy Miller in jail.
Swell.
So tell us, Fitzgerald — is there even a crime here? And IF there is, who exactly IS the White House felon? Or is all this a wild goose chase by a bull in a china shop, who has already smashed plenty of china in pursuit of … what?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I don’t want to impede the investigation, but I tend to agree. Time to show us what you have…
Tom Maguire has two massive summaries (here and here) of current Plame spin.
Marcus Wellby
Did you all want Ken Starr to put up or shut up too? Or was it OK for that investigation to drag on forever? I say Bush should be under the same spotlight Bubba was. I had no problem with Clinton being investigated, in fact, I think there should be a seperate body overseeing every president and congressman. Sadly, its the only way to prevent corruption — if not prevent, at least expose.
But somehow investigating the Bush admin is unseemly…
Anderson
Weird, John. It’s just a teensy bit well-known that Fitzgerald’s investigation isn’t complete … something about reporters reluctant to testify?
So why insist on showing the cards when we all know the deal isn’t over yet?
JonH
It’s not Fitzgerald’s job to determine whether there is a crime there or not. That’s the grand jury’s job.
If Lovelady wants to push for an indictment, he should be telling Judy Miller to cave, so the grand jury can do its job.
Katinula
TPM had a pretty good post on why this investigation is the investigation of a crime, and couldn’t be anything other than that. Money quote:
The Justice Department investigation began in response to a CIA ‘referral’. Presumably the people at the CIA know Plame’s status. Such a referral is made when the referring agency believes that a crime may have been committed that the Justice Department should investigate. If she wasn’t covert, a crime could not have been committed. And yet they sent the referral because they think a crime may well have been committed.
It still doesn’t explain why Miller and Cooper are compelled to testify and why Novak is whistling Dixie, but it does show that unless Fitzgerald is, for lack of a better term, pissing up a flagpole, a crime has been committed.
JG
I had no problem when the investigation was about Whitewater, after that it became an obvious witch hunt which made me embarassed to be a republican.
It is very funny to see the folks who surely supported Ken Starr to now be telling a special prosecutor to get on with it. Funny how no one in the so called librul media is calling them on the double standard.
Jeff
“Did you all want Ken Starr to put up or shut up too?”
yes, actually, I did, but what strikes me about the post above by Marcus Wellby is that i could’ve sworn, on numerous occassions, whenever some right-leaning individual would bring up something bad done by Clinton or Nancy Pelosi or Ted Kennedy in response to criticism of something bad done by Bush or Delay or anyone else, they’d be told “oh yeah, well just because someone else did somethig before doesn’t make it right. Stick to the issue”.
It’s amazing how quickly that approach is thrown out when the shoe is on the other foot.
Put another way, Marcus, JOHN DIDN’T SAY A SINGLE FUCKING THING ABOUT BILL CLINTON OR KEN STARR!!!
Jon H
The comparison with Ken Starr is rather poor.
Starr kept the media stoked by leaking like a sieve. I suspect Lovelady’s real beef is that Fitzgerald is following the law about grand jury secrecy, and isn’t leaking all the salacious details to journalists.
There’s nothing the media hates more than being kept out of the loop.
Tim F
So the Grand Jury, which isn’t scheduled to wrap up for several months yet and clearly has important testimony pending, should close it up now because some online rightwinger is getting impatient. That makes no fucking sense at all.
What’s really going on? This Grand Jury has been run tighter than a sober nun and it’s driving everyone a little batty. In the absence of leaks our own fevered imaginations paint a picture of what’s going on. Forget wingnut grousing; that this procesutor has succeeded where the last guy failed miserably should earn him a medal.
noname
Ah, yes, David Ehrenstein
Classy fellow.
JG
‘Starr kept the media stoked by leaking like a sieve.’
Witch hunt. Keep dropping bad news into the press. Find, and leak, enough embarassing crap and he’ll resign. No real hard evidence nescessary, the people who hate him will swallow anything the special prosecutor leaks and if he’s tarred enough he’ll resign. Do in the court house what couldn’t be done at the ballot box.
Even if this new investigation is politically motivated, just like in the beginning of the Whitewater case, there’s meat here. If it morphs into an ivestigation of Rove’s sex life then we have a problem.
Anderson
If it morphs into an ivestigation of Rove’s sex life then we have a problem.
Brother, you can say that again. Just the reminder that Rove may have a sex life is enough to put me off my lunch.
Simon
I agree with TimF. Seriously, who gives a flying shit whether Lovelady wants Fitzgerald to finish up. He’s doing his job and as far as I know, there’s no legally imposed timetable requiring him to finish when some self-important fake superstar (right or left) deems he should.
Inquiring minds want to know.
or
I wnat to know now!!! Whaaaaa!!!!
Calm down and have patience. Why should a perfectly legal process cater to such childish, impatient requests for information? It’s not as if this wouldn’t all be over by now if it weren’t for the appeals process for Cooper and Miller that started last October.
This post from Digby gives some insight into some of the complications of the case and leands credence to the possibility of a serious crime being committed.
Compuglobalhypermeganet
Yeah, you can’t have a single discussion with these Bush-haters without them bringing up Clinton. Come on, the guy hasn’t been President for 5 years! Get over him!
Hee-hee.
Simon
translates roughly to:
In terms of actually affecting the legal process, what actual standing does any of us have to tell a prosecutor to hurry up? Please give a solid, legal reason why Fitzgerald should “show us what he has” other than, “because we want to know”. If there is one, I’d love to hear it.
John Cole
Simon-
More like:
Although you may be correct to the practical effect…
Just tired of this whole thing, and tired of the pro- and anti- Rove spin.
Rocky Smith
Calling J. C. Watts a “House Nigger” is just wrong. So it’s okay to discriminate against a Black man if he’s a conservative? Shameless.
p.lukasiak
I very seldom disagree with Steve Lovelady, but this time I think he is completely off the mark. Its not Fitzgerald’s job to satisfy the craving of the media for gossip, and he should be applauded for not allowing his investigation to become “Whitewater II”.
The people who should be explaining what happened are in the White House — we now know White House officials were talking to reporters about Valerie Plame, specifically telling Walter Pincus in a manner specifically designed to raise questions about the credibility and integrity of Joseph Wilson. (On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson
Simon
I agree that all the speculation is getting a little old, but don’t you think your frustration should be directed towards the speculating press or our need-instantaneous-results-for-every-single-thing social environment, rather than at Fitzgerald? It seems that as the need for patience wanes, so does patience itself, which is hardly a good thing. And as said above, let’s not confuse this investigation with the showy trials we are all now used to. Investigations (non-leaky ones anyway) aren’t for public consumption like trials are.
Stormy70
The problem may be that reporters were approaching White House officials, and asking about Valerie Plame’s role in the Wilson affair, before the officials knew about her. Lots of reporters knew about her before the officials knew, and Fitzgerald is trying to get to the original source. My question is why did Plame get to pick her husband for this mission? And why did he lie in his oped in the Times? The 9/11 commission’s report outed his lie, and showed he told the CIA one thing, and later went on to say the opposite in his oped. Wilson is completely discredited, and his wife looks ridculous for sending the guy she sleeps with on such a sensitive mission. The CIA has too many leftist holdovers in it, and Goss is clearing them out, thank God.
Katinula
Stormy 70,
I guess you are only concerned with a crime when conservatives are the victims. This woman, despite her politics, was a covert operative and was outed in the press, with a White House official listed as a source. As my post above said, that is a crime and was sent to the Justice Department by the CIA for investigation.
To write that “Wilson is completely discredited, and his wife looks ridculous for sending the guy she sleeps with on such a sensitive mission. The CIA has too many leftist holdovers in it, and Goss is clearing them out, thank God.” just makes you look petty and partisan. What at all does that have to do with the crime committed?
Tim F
It’s like Stormy’s post comes from some other planet. Fascinating.
Simon
Stormy, I think you’re wrong about Plame getting to “pick her husband” for the mission. This talking point, and the main reason for the leak to begin with, is bogus. She didn’t have the authority to pick him. She was asked, because she knew him and stuff, if he would be willing to go and she said, ‘yes’.
Here:
KC
I’d like to know what’s going on with the Grand Jury too. However, Fitzgerald’s got a job to do, he’s intent on doing it, and he’s got a reputation as a tough, thorough, but fair prosecutor. He’s not leaking to the press and probably for good reason–he doesn’t want to compromise his case.
As for whether a crime has been committed or not, I think it’s fair to say from DC Circuit’s opinion, which definitely seems sympathetic to reporters, that a crime has been committed. If not a crime, something serious enough and close enough to a crime that it merits the incaceration of reporters to compell testimony. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s the last paragraph of the DC Circuit’s decision on the matter:
Were the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security or more vital to public debate, or had the special counsel failed to demonstrate the grand jury
Jon H
Lovelady should be directing his ire squarely at the White House, and at the press corps, which hasn’t asked any questions about Rove’s involvement since it came out that he was in contact with Cooper.
If he wants to see movement, he should apply pressure to the people who are stonewalling, not to the prosecutor.
Darrell
Bullshit. VPlame was no “covert operative”, she was nothing but a desk jockey at FBI headquarters. Furthermore, she had donated money to Al Gore’s prez campaign and she herself listed her employer as the CIA. Some ‘secret agent’, huh?
Katinula
Actually Darrell, the only way a crime COULD have been committed is if she was covert. Since the CIA referred the investigation to the Justice Department, they feel that she is a covert agent. As Josh Marshall says, I’d trust them over you (and Tucker Carlson).
So..technically, NOT bullshit.
Simon
It’s funny to see these old talking points recycled over and over again.
– Plame wasn’t a secret agent.
– Plame put the trip together for her husband in some big conspiracy plot to take down Bush’s war plans in early 2002… before he had any.
Blah, blah, blah. These are talking points delivered directly by the very people who now appear the target of this investigation and who stand to lose the most. Most definitely not uninterested parties. At least a healthy dose of skepticism is in order. For many, it seems though, healthy mistrust/questioning of the gov’t has been replaced by absolute trust of absolutely anything “my party” says. A crime has most likely been committed, despite what you think you know, which is not much in this case. Stop acting as if you’re cheering for your favorite sports team. Did you forget that Rove’s got a history of doing really shady things like this? Like say, bugging his own office and blaming it on his opponents.
Bob
Periodically during the Watergate investigations people protecting the President would say for the prosecutors, House Committee, Senate investigators, whoever, to put up or shut up, all while the perps were withholding evidence.
I’m damned curious, and I suspect that something will happen soon, but I doubt that Fitzgerald, who is working in the shadow of the most powerful political institution in the country, is going to be cowed by those demanding he cut to the chase.
As far as whether or not Plame was a secret agent, the CIA thought she was and went to the Department of Justice. The prosecutor thought she was, the three-judge panel thought she was. By now there are probably a couple other charges, like perjury, and maybe a couple more potential targets of the investigation.
Does anyone know if Jeff Gannon/Guckert was ever called in to testify about that mysterious memo no one seems to have seen?
Kimmitt
I guess we’ll find out in a month or two, won’t we?
Bob
That would be CIA headquarters, wouldn’t it be?