WaPo’s Dan Froomkin joins the growing chorus today of pundits and prognosticators asking “The Question” about what George W. Bush knew and when he knew it.
We covered yesterday’s explosion of voices asking that same question, but Froomkin adds to the mix by taking a fairly detailed look back at the under-reported stories from over a year ago when both Bush and Cheney were questioned in the case by Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald.
He also discusses the growing questions now surrounding the 12-Hour Gap between the time Alberto Gonzales, then head White House Counsel, was told to by DoJ to inform the White House of the investigation — so they wouldn’t destroy any evidence — and the time that he actually, formally, told the White House. As it turns out, of course, Gonzales didn’t “formally” instruct the WH until 12 hours after he learned of the investigation, but he did manage to tell White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card about it. Just to be friendly, we guess.
But The Carpet Bagger today is reporting that the 12-Hour Gap which gave the White House a heads-up to start the shredding machines, may in fact have been a Three Day Gap if one goes back and looks at the dates of a few of the scant contemporaneous reports of the investigation’s start up. [UPDATE: MSNBC is reporting that that may actually be a Three and a half Day Gap. The story of the investigation was first reported by MSNBC some 84 hours before Gonzales “officially” informed the White House.]
On all of this, Froomkin takes an appropriate shot at both his own WaPo and the rest of the delinquent Mainstream Corporate Media which failed to do their job for the American People long ago on all of these matters…
But it’s getting a lot of attention today. Why? Possibly because press coverage of the Bush administration, in the first term, failed to sufficiently heed some developments that, in retrospect, seem worthy of more attention.
Something similar happened when the Downing Street Memo first came to light in May. That memo suggested among other things that Bush was already set on invading Iraq long before acknowledging as much in public. In that case, it took the American mainstream press more than a month to acknowledge that it was a story worth writing about again, even though it was, technically, old news.
Froomkin’s got many more useful links on all of the above.
(Hat tip to DU’s understandinglife for the heads-up!)
OFF TOPIC but ‘What Did the President Know?’"
July 25, 2005 — Please forward to your lists and to
online blogs as appropriate. Permission granted to
reprint, with link.
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Doug E.
Very interesting!!
Some people thought coverup artist Scott Mclellan was bad, but they **didn’t see** coverup artist Ari Fleischer this time.
The following information is from revealing press briefing that was erased from the White House records. Look what they’re hiding.
"Q: So we don’t think this is serious, or whether there’s a serious possibility —
* * * * *
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: **Let me say this on background.** It is not an atypical way of internal Palestinian machinations.
Q: Kind of like the White House? (Laughter.) Are you always threatening to quit?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: — **with the President. (Laughter.)** The President tells Harriet — I don’t think that’s — (laughter.) It is — it’s just sometimes their way of doing business.
* * * * *
Q: What’s the final language, Ari, your final position on the State of the Union speech and the uranium — I know they were working on stuff last night, but I never got a chance to read it.
Q: Is this on the record?
MR. FLEISCHER: Yes, we’re back on the record. After the speech, information was learned about the forged documents. With the advantage of hindsight, it’s known now what was not known by the White House prior to the speech. This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech. There was reporting, although it wasn’t very specific, about Iraq’s seeking to obtain uranium from Africa. It’s a classic issue of how hindsight is 20-20. The process was followed that led to the information going into the State of the Union; information about the yellow cake was only brought to the White House’s attention later.
But there’s a bigger picture here, and this is what’s fundamental — the case for war against Iraq was based on the threat that Saddam Hussein posed because of his possession of weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological, and his efforts to reconstitute a nuclear program. In 1991, everybody in the world underestimated how close he was to getting a nuclear weapon. The case for going to war against Saddam is as just today as it was the day the President gave that speech.
Q: Ambassador Wilson said he made a case months before that there was no basis to the belief —
MR. FLEISCHER: No, he reported that Niger denied the allegation. That’s what Ambassador Wilson reported. "
"Q: Are we going the other way now in overestimating their ability to reconstitute —
MR. FLEISCHER: **Well, obviously the regime is gone, they’re not reconstituting anything anymore.**
Q: But that really wasn’t the question. Did we overestimate his capacity for doing this before the regime was —
MR. FLEISCHER: It remains clear from the United Nations and others that Saddam had biological weapons, chemical weapons that he had not accounted for. Those are weapons of mass destruction. We continue to learn about the Iraqi nuclear program, information such as the scientist who had buried material in his garden for the purpose of bringing it out after the sanctions were imposed. The concerns are valid. The yellow cake report may have turned out to be inaccurate, but the broader concerns remain valid.
So it’s important to get this in context. It’s important to understand whether one specific sentence based on yellow cake was wrong, that does not change the fundamental case from being right. "
"Q: Ari, Prime Minister **Blair is coming next week** , is that correct?
MR. FLEISCHER: I don’t think that’s correct.
Q: I’ve heard — I thought I heard from somebody at the White House —
MR. FLEISCHER: — saying I’m paying a little less attention to events after Monday than I used to, but I don’t —
Q: I heard he’s giving a joint address to Congress —
MR. FLEISCHER: I’ll have to look. I don’t know. I know there’s another head of state visit that you guys know about.
Q: **Right, to the ranch.**
MR. FLEISCHER: But I’ll have to ask. "
http://canberra.usembassy.gov/h...709/epf301.htm
Now what kind of senior administration official would speak on ‘background’? Why use the word background, and why is he talking about the president ‘on record’ and the Niger claim?
What is it, code speech, or **Karl Rove** speech? Is this not the same period of time, Karl Rove was doing his deeds to the Washington Post….Karl Rove is the senior official here isn’t he? Why is his name blocked out?
Why do we see an interesting **tone** about regime change, which confirms what the downing street minutes said? What are they hiding?
Doug E.
Hooray, our elected officials in Washington are finally going to hold some hearings. Hooray.
Oooops, they’re not going to investigate the massive corruption in the White House, they’re going to investigate our intelligence agencies and their "cover" classifications. And on a sidetrip, they’re going to investigate the grand jury probing the outing of Valerie Plame’s top-secret NOC identity at the CIA. REPEAT: the Republican puppets in Congress are going to investigate the investigators who are seriously looking into the treasonous act committed by someone in the Bush administration.
Gee, I smell the stench of a Republican "Fishing Expedition" initiated by that slime-ball Karl Rove.
Leaking grand jury information is against the law. But will Fitzgerald and members of the grand jury be called to testify before these "fake" hearings and thus divulge how far along their investigation has progressed? Will these "fishing expedition" hearings led by partisan Republicans be held behind closed doors? Will any information that the Republicans in these "fake" hearings uncover about the grand jury proceedings be hand delivered to Rove and Gonzales in the White House? Surely not. Yeah, right.
In other words, are these "fake" Americans who are calling these "fake" hearings really conducting what is called in legal circles "discovery"?
Now, if these "fake" Americans had scheduled hearings for AFTER the release of the final report by Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury, then I wouldn’t have raised this suspicion. But for them to call for hearings while a grand jury is determining whether or not some Bush official betrayed the natiional security of our country, then I must presume that Karl Rove or Alberto Gonzales came up with this idea so they can discover what information the grand jury and Fitzgerald have uncovered up to this point.
But, then, we are dealing with a bunch of Mafia types in the Bush administration, aren’t we?
You got that right, Oracle. Good assessment.
Just the fact that all those many months ago Bush had the presence of mind to say he’d fire anybody who released the NAME of an agent suggests he knew exactly what was going on.
And "we may never know the name of the top level leaker" suggests he had no intention of demanding answers. If I were President I’ve have had the answer in less than one day.
Sorry Mister President ,can I just attach these senors to your temples, chest and finger tips, turn the polygraph on, Now if you could answer that question again Mister President.
:crazy:
An investigation, including a grand jury panel, is organized to probe wrongdoing that (we now know) involves people close to the president.
Said investigation threatens to produce indictments against those same people.
Now the president’s friends decide to investigate those hired to find out the truth, hoping to discover what evidence the prosecutor has so that they can strategize on how to combat it and avoid the consequences. This is Soviet Russia stuff, truly. Stalin would be proud.
By the way, for the third day in the last four, The New York Times has published nary a word about Treasongate.
Playing forgetful or stupid just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Reagan couldn’t remember. Bush I was pardoned. Nixon just denied he was a crook. But, American can’t accept such denial of responsibility. It can’t accept those denials from corporate leaders and it can’t accept that those who are in charge are somehow not responsible. It just doesn’t make sense for the public to accept that crazy standard.
Bush is responsible.
Right. Bush Sr. "wasn’t in the loop" on Iran-Contra, even though he was already planning to run for president in 1988 and made it his business to know everything about everything. Ha ha. Ken Lay didn’t know what was going on at Enron, even though he visited the White House twice as the scandal was unfolding. Ha ha ha. Bush Jr. didn’t anticipate 9/11 in spite of a warning a month earlier, because it contained "no specifics." Ha ha ha ha. Nobody in the Pentagon knew about Abu Ghraib or other incidents of torture…it was all the work of "a few bad apples." Ha ha ha ha ha. It was "ridiculous" to think anyone in the White House was involved in the Plame leak. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
A new phrase has entered the political lexicon, but you aren’t seeing it in the mainstream media.
IMPAUSIBLE DENIAL.
Implausible denial.
RLM #12
Lets just hope the MSM turns up the heat and "implausible denial" becomes impossible to deny.
It is late for the MSM but perhaps not too late …
What did the president know?
Nothing, the jerk is as dumb as a post.
What did the President know?
He knew he was a liar.
When did he know that?
Since he met Karl.
Next question!?
Today’s New York Times was a beauty. One article about Treasongate (of course they don’t use that word, that say "investigation"); it focused on Ari Fleischer. It appears on page A-19.
A reporter went out to his house in Pound Ridge (exclusive suburb), and Ari (who wrote a book that described the scandal as his last tussle with the media before resigning) referred the reporter back to the investigators. Ari was very talkative while promoting his book, now he clams up. Of course.
The rest of the article was devoted to claims (by an unattributed source, natch) that prosecutors have shifted their attention away from Rove, Libby, and other insiders…but without telling us why, or whom they have shifted their attention to.
Simply God-awful reporting, from the most prestigious newspaper in the world.
Patriot ACT has to be renewed so the fbi the cia and all the other a’s can investigate the quakers and anti war protesters..go to the library and see the books the read. Read their emails and look at their medical backgrounds. BUT THE TRAITORS GET A TWELVE HOUR HEADSUP. And the party of patriots are running to stop the investigation. These people are toast whether they go to Hague or not.