Former presidential spokesman Scott McClellan on Friday said President Bush has lost the public's trust by failing to open up about his administration's mistakes and backtracking on a promise to tell all about the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
"This White House promised or assured the American people that at some point when this was behind us they would talk publicly about it. And they have refused to," McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee. "And that's why I think more than any other reason we are here today and the suspicion still remains."
The former White House press secretary suggested that Bush could do much to redeem his credibility on the Plame matter and his reasons for going to war in Iraq if he would embrace "openness and candor and then constantly strive to build trust across the aisle." ....
McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee that he doesn't know if a crime was committed and does not believe that Bush knew about or directed the leak. When asked about Cheney, he replied: "I do not know. There's a lot of suspicion there."
To claim that leaking the identity of a covert operative is simply part of the "Washington culture" suggests a deep disdain for those patriots who risk their lives to protect our national security. [White House spokesman Tony] Snow's comment was insulting not just to Valerie Wilson, but to all covert operatives who believe that in return for their sacrifices, our government will do everything it can to protect them. A genuine and sincere apology from the White House -- not just to Mrs. Wilson, but the entire intelligence community -- is long overdue.
These guys really take the cake. Just yesterday Bush said that he respected the jury's verdict, but it was the punishment that he thought was too harsh. Now they're saying that even the verdict may be wrong. But then why not just pardon him, why do it halfway then hint that you may do more later?
I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.
My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.
But if you pardon him, you won't be respecting the jury's verdict or leaving in place a harsh punishment. You'll be exonerating him 100%. Or is Bush playing a little game here. Libby will pay the fine, he's already paid the price to his reputation and to his wife and young children. So if Bush pardons him at the end of his term, he won't really be contradicting his statement about the rest of the punishment being valid. As Joe Wilson said yesterday, nothing from these guys surprises me anymore.
And by the way, we've just seen judicial activism, Republican-style, in play once again. Or, rather, the Republicans are afraid that judges will decide cases badly, so they just take the law into their own hands. Perhaps we should call it extra-judicial activism.
Nice. Snow just said this live during a press conference. So after four years of pretending that this case mattered, that this crime mattered, that this leak mattered, the White House is now suggesting that leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent for political gain is business as usual in Washington, DC. Watch the video below, it quickly becomes clear that the White House's new position on this crime is that it wasn't a big deal - and they're not saying that Scooter lying wasn't a big deal, rather, they're now saying that outing a CIA agent wasn't a big deal. That's a new tack for this administration, and it's quite serious and scary. No one in national security circles would think that leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent was no big deal, was business as usual, or was just like what reporters do every day (see Snow's last comment in the video for that gem).
Joe Wilson was on the Today Show this morning -- succinct and tough. He said Bush "short-circuited our system of justice" and guaranteed that Libby will never tell the truth. Wilson knows -- and the media who were complicit in the Plame leak know -- Bush is complicit in the cover-up and obstruction.
The loyal Bushies always put politics before national security. And, despite all the claims from the right wing pundits to the contrary, Valerie Plame was indeed a covert agent. Per NBC's coverage:
An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.
The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.
Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, told a congressional committee today that he was aware of no internal investigation or report into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.
The White House had first opposed Knodell testifying but after a threat of a subpoena from the committee yesterday he was allowed to appear today.
Knodell has testified that those who had participated in the leaking of classified information were required to attest to this and he was aware that no one, including Karl Rove, had done that.
He said that he had started at the White House in August 2004, a year after the leak, but his records show no evidence of a probe or report there: "I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office," he said.
Rep. Waxman recalled that President Bush had promised a full internal probe. Knodell repeated that no probe took place, as far as he knew, and was not happening today.
"My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department," Plame testified. "I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained."
Bumped and ANOTHER UPDATE: Plame is an amazingly good witness. Wow. Very impressive. She is very firm and clear. She was undercover. She was covert. She was outed for political reasons by the Bush Administration. The first articles are staring to pop up.
UPDATE: Plame is testifying. CNN is covering as is C-SPAN. Firedoglake is live blogging.
Outed CIA spy Valerie Plame will be testifying publicly before Representative Henry Waxman's Government Oversight Hearing today beginning at 10 am. Or she should be.
CNN is reporting that Republican members of Congress may use a procedural move to "close" the hearing -- meaning the public and the press would be shut out. Republicans don't want Plame to tell her story of being outed by the Bush White House:
People close to Plame say her primary goal in testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is to knock down persistent claims that she did not serve undercover. "She is so tired of hearing that," her mother, Diane Plame, said in an interview earlier this week.
Plame was an undercover agent. The Bush Administration outed Ms. Plame, an undercover agent, for partisan political reasons. No wonder the GOP doesn't want her story told.
Republicans do not support those on the front lines of keeping our nation safe whether they are soldiers in Iraq, wounded soldiers at Walter Reed or undercover CIA agents.
I've had a security clearance above Top Secret. I've worked on Arms Control issues. I've had, and have, friends working undercover in the CIA. It is one of the most egregious, outrageous, unconscionable crimes ever in this town to out a CIA agent, and everyone knows it. The fact that the Washington Post editorial board doesn't appear to know this is all the more evidence of how slanted, yellow, and/or uninformed the editors of the Washington Post have become since the death of Katherine Graham.
Of all people, Wolf Blitzer explained just exactly what the Bush White House did by outing Valerie Plame:
COLLINS: And remind me, Wolf, there was also quite a bit of discussion about whether or not her identity was very well known in the circles of Washington, D.C., and the level of covertness that she held.
BLITZER: I can speak as a reporter here in Washington for 30 years. I did not know that Valerie Plame-Wilson was a covert officer. I didn't even know that Joe Wilson was married at the time.
I'm not sure it was all that widely known what she did, what she didn't do. The fact of the matter is, she had been what they call a knock.
She was not working undercover as a U.S. espionage officer, a CIA clandestine officer working overseas. The CIA had, years earlier, established fake businesses, fake companies for her to go out and recruit spies, foreigners who would help the United States in various capacities. And as a result, she was not working at a U.S. embassy pretending to be a scientific attache or a cultural attache or something else.
COLLINS: Right.
BLITZER: She was out there on her own, working as a clandestine officer, pretending to be an energy consultant, a private citizen, when, in fact, she was an employee of the U.S. government. She was a clandestine officer working for the CIA.
COLLINS: OK.
BLITZER: And that's very dangerous work. And to release that kind of information obviously not only can compromise her, but can compromise a lot of people who might be working and cooperating with the CIA.
Go Wolf.
Releasing that kind of information compromised the national security of our country. The Bush White House chose politics over the safety of Americans.
That means this wasn't just a rogue operation out of the Vice President's office, it also was an operation involving the President's office. And if Ari Fleischer, George Bush's top spokesman, was involved, and had to seek immunity in order to testify, then something else much bigger may be going on here. More from the NY Daily News:
It’s finally becoming clear why ex-White House mouthpiece Ari Fleischer took the fifth and had to be granted immunity from prosecution in the case: Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus testified that Fleischer leaked the identity of ex-CIA spook Valerie Plame in a July 12, 2003, phone call.
“It was Ari Fleischer,” Pincus testified as the first witness called by the defense. Pincus recalled that Fleischer wondered in that phone call why Pincus was writing about Plame’s husband former Ambassador Joe Wilson: “Don’t you know his wife works for the CIA as an analyst?” barked Fleischer.
Not to mention, we now have Scooter Libby (the chief of staff to the vice president), Karl Rove (the White House's most powerful and senior political operative), and Ari Fleischer (the White Houses's top spokesman) all involved in leaking Plame's identity. Just coincidence that the three most powerful guys in the White House were all involved? Uh huh.
