Category Archives: Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals

Thoughts on the Libby Bombshell

Posted on April 6, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

This is a time when no amount of cynicism is too much. This is a time for Informed Comment.

The admnistration’s current line of defense is when the President does it, it’s not illegal.

Atrios has the perfect rejoinder:

It’s probably reasonable that the president can declassify whatever he wants, or at least I haven’t really seen an especially strong argument to the contrary, but that doesn’t mean that the president can declassify stuff, show it to Judy Miller, and then turn around claim the stuff is still classified. That’s where this argument falls apart.

The Carpetbagger Report: All of a sudden it’s a scandal again shows how completely the administration’s latest spin conflicts with the previous spin.

I wonder how long before the defense becomes, ‘Cheney said Bush authorized the leak, but in fact he was mistaken on that point.’ Nixon threw Agnew to the wolves. But it didn’t work.

(Here’s the full text of the Special Prosecutor’s filing)

Bonus: David Neiwert challenges the media.

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze, Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | 1 Comment

Libby Fingers Bush, Cheney as Ordering Plame Leak

Posted on April 6, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Why do I have to read news like this in my brother’s blog rather than major media? Read today’s column — scroll down to “Fitzgerald lets loose”.

[The NY Sun’s Josh] Gerstein writes that according to [special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s latest] filing, Libby “testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded ‘National Intelligence Estimate’ on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush.”

…

That reporter, of course, was Judith Miller.

Here’s an excerpt from Fitzgerald’s filing: “Defendant testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was ‘pretty definitive’ against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought that it was ‘very important’ for the key judgments of the NIE to come out.”

Gerstein writes: “Mr. Libby is said to have testified that ‘at first’ he rebuffed Mr. Cheney’s suggestion to release the information because the estimate was classified. However, according to the vice presidential aide, Mr. Cheney subsequently said he got permission for the release directly from Mr. Bush. ‘Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE,’ the prosecution filing said.”

That is, as my brother says “a shocker”.

Yet, he writes, “In fact, as of this writing, none of the major news outlets has published a word on the subject.”

(Although, I see that since he wrote that, at 12:35 the Associate Press has moved the story.)

Posted in Dan Froomkin, Politics: The Party of Sleaze, Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals, The Media | 5 Comments

OPIC and the Mafia???

Posted on June 27, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

At best, really lousy managmeent of federal assets by the GOP. At best. The Globe and Mail: Agency funding raises 'red flag'

A government agency that helps U.S. businesses investing in developing countries has approved millions of dollars of loans to companies whose owners did business with Mafia figures and rebels in a bloody African conflict, records show.

I like CNN's headline: OPIC: Offers it should've refused?

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | Comments Off on OPIC and the Mafia???

PTI 961 Mystery Solved

Posted on October 25, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Remember the AWOL Project's focus on the mysterious separation code “PTI 961” in Lt. Bush's records? Well, Paul Lukasiak writes to say that PTI 961 has been decoded … but all it means is “Loss to USAFR – Discharged due to change in residence.” Or, as Emily Litella used to say, “Never Mind”.

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | 1 Comment

Boom Goes the Last Shred of Bush’s Reputation as a Terrorism-Fighter

Posted on October 25, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

The New York Times has more details about this stunning piece of incompetence in the keystone kops war on terror.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. But the other components of an atom bomb – the design and the radioactive fuel – are more difficult to obtain. “This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk,” one senior Bush administration official said.

“not necessarily” — that means “might or might not be depending on whether they have plutonium” — I feel so much better now given what one hears about the plutonium bazaar in the southern parts of the former Soviet Union….

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

This translates as “they screwed up bigtime”.

… One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives HMX and RDX were stored was listed as a “medium priority” site on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. In the chaos that followed the invasion, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.

“Should we have gone there? Definitely,” said one senior administration official. “But there are a lot of things we should have done, and didn't.”

And what were the “high priority” sites, pray tell?

The remaining stockpile was no secret. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., frequently talked about it publicly as he investigated, in late 2002 and early 2003, the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was secretly renewing its pursuit of nuclear arms. He ordered his weapons inspectors to conduct an inventory, and publicly reported their findings to the Security Council on Jan. 9, 2003.

So there really is no excuse here.

Posted in National Security, Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | 10 Comments

Is This The Smoking Gun on Bush National Guard Record? And Why You Should Care

Posted on October 18, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

[Amended at 22:05]
Forget your highpowered TV networks, with their big staffs that fall for phoney documents. Enter Paul Lukasiak, a lone researcher—not even a trendy blogger—just a guy with some web pages. A guy who has been doing detailed archival work reconstructing GW Bush's service records. A guy who may have found something, and who's put it up on the web.

And what a set of web pages. I've linked to the AWOL Project often in the past, because it's meaty and detailed and explains its reasoning. So far as I'm aware, Mr. Lukasiak's conclusions have held up well. Admittedly, much of the Project, especially in its early days, was written in a detailed, quirky style that isn't all that media-friendly. Which is why, I think, the press has only lately begun to appreciate the AWOL project for what it is.

Today the AWOL Project unveils what may be its biggest blockbuster. [Regrettably, the site works much better in IE than in Firefox — in IE you can see excerpts of all the key documents, but in Firefox you cannot.]

Back in February I started blogging about the mystery of GW Bush's missing separation codes (also known as SPN codes). In the saga of the Bush National Guard career, the absence of any mention on any of the documents of the separation codes that normally give the reasons for a military discharge have always struck me as the biggest and strangest hole in the story, especially because during the period in which Bush served, Army SPN codes were remarkably detailed and chatty—and often very derogatory. Were the same or similar codes used in the National Guard? It seemed at least possible.

Now it seems as if Lukasiak has found and partly decoded Lt. Bush's separation code. The records released to date include Bush’s NGB-22 (.pdf), his “Report of Separation and Record of Service in the Air National Guard of Texas and as a Reserve of the Air Force.” That document has a section called “Reason and Authority for Discharge” (section 31, near the bottom). And therein is found a mysterious code, PTI 961.

Mr. Lukasiak theorizes that PTI 961 was a code which

indicates that he was being thrown out of the Air National Guard for failing “to possess the required military qualifications for his grade or specialty, or does not meet the mental, moral, professional or physical standards of the Air Force.” In other words, despite the fact that Bush had an unfulfilled six year Military Service Obligation, he was discharged from the Air National Guard not because he moved to Boston, but because he failed to meet his obligation to maintain his qualifications as an F102 pilot.

Getting to that conclusion takes a little bit of work.

Continue reading →

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | 9 Comments