You’ve probably already seen the 6-minute video of UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad being repeatedly tasered by the campus police. If you haven’t, it’s definitely worth checking out on YouTube: UCLA student gets Tazered. It’s also worth reading some of the details about the incident from the Daily Bruin: Community responds to Taser use in Powell.

If you want polarized interpretations by people who always know what to think without bothering to actually think first, check out Michelle Malkin: Screaming UCLA student tasered, and then maybe follow that up with jumpingfish: He had an ethnic name.

A few things I find noteworthy about the video:

• We don’t see the beginning of the incident. Despite the proliferation of video-capable cameraphones, this seems likely to remain an impediment to ubiquitous public oversight of random cop/perp interactions, at least until we get always-on personal video surveillance.
• As compelling as the central action is, I find myself getting caught up in the crowd reaction. I especially like the point after the third (by my count) tasing, when the onlookers’ collective sense of outrage suddenly crosses a threshold, and there’s this surge forward, almost despite the inclinations of the individual observers.
• Part of the reason for my being distracted by the crowd dynamic is that the person filming this was a bad director. Please, can we get someone from the film school to record the next incident? At least the audio is pretty compelling. My vote for best dialog isn’t Tabatabainejad’s “Here’s your Patriot Act! Here’s your fucking abuse of power!” (though that’s certainly worth an honorable mention). Nor is it the officers telling him calmly, repeatedly to “Stand up… stand up or you’ll get tased again.” No, I think the most-significant dialog is the part at the end of the video, when one of the officers, letting his guard down now that Tabatabainejad has been carried from the building, indulges in the following response to one of the angry onlookers: “Get back upstairs or you’ll get tased too.”

There’s an interesting emotional overlay for me in watching this video, because I attended UCLA for a number of years, and during that time I worked in the Community Service Officer (CSO) program. It was a CSO who started this incident, in a sense, by asking Tabatabainejad for his ID, and then using his radio to call the campus police when he refused to produce it. I’m not sure, but I assume that’s the CSO in question, in the final part of the video, after Tabatabainejad has been carried out of the building; you can recognize him by the blue jacket he’s wearing, with the big gold rectangle on the back with “Community Service Officer” inside it. Those are the same jackets we wore back in the day.

I worked as a CSO at UC Irvine during my freshman year in college, then continued to do so at UCLA during my four years there, ending with my graduation in 1985. During a couple of those years I was in charge of the CSO program’s hiring and training operation. I also spent a lot of graveyard shifts patrolling the UCLA Medical Center, where I had the closest thing I ever experienced to the incident shown in this video. In my case, a person who’d been signed in on a 72-hour hold (for drugs? or general danger-to-himself-or-others behavior? I never found out), decided to rip out his IV needle and walk off the ward he was on, and as luck would have it, came walking down the corridor I was in shortly after the call went out over the radio to be on the lookout for him.

Hilarity ensued.

Anyway, I certainly came away from that incident with a newfound appreciation for the men and women of the UCLA Police Department. And I watch this video with a certain sympathy for the officers, as they proceed to repeatedly zap Tabatabainejad.

The video notwithstanding, I wasn’t there. I think the reality of the situation is probably more complicated than jumpingfish would have it, and I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated than Michelle Malkin would have it. But I also think the video makes it pretty clear what the officers’ attitude was, which was: we are going to keep inflicting severe pain on you until you do what we tell you to do. It’s not about our safety. It’s about us imposing our will. It’s about us making you walk out of here under your own power, so we don’t have to carry you. It’s about us being in charge, and dishing out punishment until you decide to stop being obnoxious. And I know that’s a pretty standard part of the cop mindset, but yeah, I think Tabatabainejad has a point: I think that sort of attitude has been more openly displayed since 9/11, and I’m pretty sure if I were a Muslim male being treated this way, I’d interpret it through the same political filter he did. And in the final analysis, I think what the cops did went beyond the role that the police, ideally, are supposed to play.

At the same time, I sympathize with the cops. The one thing that working as a CSO definitely taught me is that police officers aren’t necessarily villains, and they’re not necessarily heroes. They’re just people, with the same emotions and decision-making apparatus as the rest of us.

Well, and guns. And tasers. And a job description that includes going into whatever ridiculous, complicated, dangerous situations happen to arise, and figuring out in realtime how to fix them, so the rest of us can go about our happy little oblivious lives.

As a practical matter, there’s going to be some sloppiness in that process. That’s unfortunate, but it’s also reality.

From the Washington Post: U.S. seeks silence on CIA prisons.

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the “alternative interrogation methods” that their captors used to get them to talk.

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets and that their release — even to the detainees’ own attorneys — “could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.”

[snip]

Because Khan “was detained by CIA in this program, he may have come into possession of information, including locations of detention, conditions of detention, and alternative interrogation techniques that is classified at the TOP SECRET//SCI level,” an affidavit from CIA Information Review Officer Marilyn A. Dorn states…

Kevin Drum, in Torture and secrecy, writes:

This highlights the fundamental corruption of the human soul that torture causes. We know it’s wrong, so not only do we torture prisoners, but we then do what we must to conceal what we’ve done. And then we try to conceal even that. Torture and secrecy, secrecy and torture, world without end.

That’s not America. At least, it shouldn’t be.

Nope. America, the real America, the America I was born and raised in, is the home of patriots willing to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It’s a nation that faced the Civil War, and the Great Depression. It’s a nation that waded ashore on Omaha Beach, and raised the flag on Iwo Jima. It’s a nation that landed on the Moon.

George Bush wants to turn my America into a very different sort of country, into a pissant little dictatorship, fearful of the outside world, fearful of its own people, fearful of the truth. George Bush’s America would never have dared to sign the Declaration of Independence, or travel with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, or free the slaves, or defeat Hitler, or ride a rocket to another world. George Bush’s America would have peed on itself in the face of any of those terrors.

I’d hate to live in a country like that.

Alan Hirsch of Truth About False Confessions ran an interesting item recently: Happy ending. It describes the $2.25 million jury award given on Friday to Earl Washington, a mildly retarded man who who spent 16 years in prison, 9 of them on death row, for a rape and murder he didn’t commit.

The Washington Post has more about the story: Wrongfully jailed man wins suit. And here’s an article (with accompanying video and audio) based on a talk given by lawyer Peter Neufeld at the University of Virginia law school: Earl Washington case shows reforms to death penalty, criminal cases needed, Neufeld says.

After a three-day trial, Washington was convicted of the murder of Williams. After a half-hour penalty phase, he was sentenced to death.

Scary stuff.

Finally, I’ve just-now added to my Amazon wish list (hint, hint) Margaret Edds’ book An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington Jr.

A really great op-ed that appeared in the LA Times the other day was this one by law professor Alan Hirsch: Why the innocent confess. Hirsch talks about the chilling reality that if the Moussaoui jury convicts the self-described would-be 9/11 hijacker, they will be condemning to death a man who, in all likelihood, gave a false confession.

More of Hirsch’s thinking is available from his weblog: Truth About False Confessions. And because I liked his op-ed so much, and feel that it’s an important viewpoint that deserves to be more-widely read, I’m going to steal the whole thing, and include it here.

If the linkrot-prone people at the Times want to sic their lawyers on me, they’re welcome to contact me. In the meantime, follow the link below, or scroll down, for the whole piece.

(more…)

Speaking of the lies.com domain dispute, I enjoyed reading about Justinsomnia’s recent dealings with Exodus International over his parody of the anti-gay group’s billboard: My first cease-and-desist letter. I especially liked the snarky use of scare quotes in the C-and-D:

You appear to believe that the stolen image is exempt from federal intellectual property laws as a “parody” due to “fair use.” Unfortunately, the intricacies of federal law cannot adequately be covered on “Wikipedia” due to the variety of facts addressed by courts in numerous cases.

Yeah, well, despite the efforts of “lawyers” who work on behalf of “organizations” that believe the US would be better off as a “theocracy,” we do in fact continue to live in a “country” that has a “Constitution” that guarantees certain “rights.” And now, thanks to the efforts of the ACLU, and a well-crafted response from lawyer Laurence F. Pulgram of Fenwick & West, Exodus International appears to have backed off.

From Pulgram’s conclusion:

Exodus may not find the parody humorous and may dislike people mocking its views. Nevertheless, Mr. Watt’s parody is precisely the free expression that the copyright laws protect. There is no colorable legal basis for any claim against Mr. Watt. Mr. Watt therefore expects that Exodus will abandon its attempts to censor a viewpoint with which it disagrees.

Heh. In your “face,” Exodus.

“As you may have heard, South Dakota has just passed a law outlawing all abortions except when the life of the mother is at stake” … but did you kow that South Dakota’s voter registration laws are specifically designed to encourage “RV Voters” — people who are registered to vote in the state even if they are only there for a week or two camping trip each year?

Registering to vote in Sout Dakota just to try and sway future elections may seem far fetched, but it’s aparently quite practical, and there are evidently some other handy benefits.

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I really have been extraordinarily busy.

Here’s a fun item to tide you over: Police Station Intimidation.

There have been some interesting developments lately as Bush engages in some trademark flailing over the issue of warrantless eavesdropping. Of particular interest to me was this post from blogger Glenn Greenwald (which came to my attention via a story in the LA Times): The Administration’s new FISA defense is factually false.

It describes how in 2002, in response to a proposal from Senator Michael DeWine (R-OH) that the standard for obtaining a FISA warrant be relaxed, with the “probable cause” requirement being replaced by a “reasonable suspicion” standard, at least for foreign targets, the Bush folks argued against the change, saying it was both unnecessary and (possibly) unconstitutional.

What we know now, of course, is that they were already secretly violating those FISA provisions, and had gone even farther, conducting unauthorized wiretaps of domestic communications. In Bush’s recent attempts to justify those actions, he’s been making the opposite argument: that the dramatically expanded executive power he’s exercising via the program is both necessary and legal.

But check out what James A. Baker, counsel for the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (and no relation to perennial Bush-family fixer James A. Baker III, apparently; thank you, Wikipedia) said in the Administration’s official testimony on the proposed DeWine legislation back in 2002:

The Department of Justice has been studying Sen. DeWine’s proposed legislation. Because the proposed change raises both significant legal and practical issues, the Administration at this time is not prepared to support it.

The Department’s Office of Legal Counsel is analyzing relevant Supreme Court precedent to determine whether a “reasonable suspicion” standard for electronic surveillance and physical searches would, in the FISA context, pass constitutional muster. The issue is not clear cut, and the review process must be thorough because of what is at stake, namely, our ability to conduct investigations that are vital to protecting national security. If we err in our analysis and courts were ultimately to find a “reasonable suspicion” standard unconstitutional, we could potentially put at risk ongoing investigations and prosecutions.

The practical concern involves an assessment of whether the current “probable cause” standard has hamstrung our ability to use FISA surveillance to protect our nation. We have been aggressive in seeking FISA warrants and, thanks to Congress’s passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, we have been able to use our expanded FISA tools more effectively to combat terrorist activities. It may not be the case that the probable cause standard has caused any difficulties in our ability to seek the FISA warrants we require, and we will need to engage in a significant review to determine the effect a change in the standard would have on our ongoing operations. If the current standard has not posed an obstacle, then there may be little to gain from the lower standard and, as I previously stated, perhaps much to lose.

I assure [you] that we are moving expeditiously to answer these questions, which, of course, require input from agencies other than the Department of Justice that could be affected by the legislation.

In context, knowing that the administration had already begun violating the FISA requirements at that time, and that Baker, as the administration lawyer responsible for dealing with FISA, was almost certainly aware of that, his statements make for some entertaining ex-post-facto legal parsing.

Bottom-line lesson: When the Bush administration goes out of its way to retain legal wriggle room while not-quite asserting something to be true, it’s a safe bet that they’re actually being intentionally misleading.

Some good followup is available in these items from the Washington Post: White House dismissed ’02 surveillance proposal and Varied rationales muddle issue of NSA eavesdropping.

I meant to link to this last Tuesday, when it was actually news, but failed to do so, dammit. Anyway, I’m linking to it now. From the WaPo: Judge rules against ‘intelligent design’.

You can also get the full text of Judge John Jones’ ruling in the Dover (Pa.) school district case: TAMMY KITZMILLER, et al., v. DOVER AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION (312 KB PDF file).

My favorite part:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

[snip]

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

One of my main motivations in originally setting up this web site was to have a place not only for highlighting glaring falsehoods, but also for recognizing the brave and forthright expression of truth. Judge Jones (a lifelong Republican appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, heh), by ruling as he did, definitely qualifies for recognition.

There’s a point where reality gets so absurd that it subverts any possible effort to parody it. I’m not sure what the people at The Onion are going to do with this. In the meantime, Philosoraptor has a nice treatment of the latest insanity: Still more irrelevant and dishonest rationalizations for the wiretaps:

The short version:

Q: Isn’t this illegal?

A: We have to move FAST to stop the terrorists!

Q: But can’t you get retroactive warrants?

A: Yes, but we have to move faster than that! The president’s approach allows him to actually act so quickly that he travels backward in time to thwart the enemies of freedom!

Q: Since the president has non-zero mass doesn’t that violate the laws of physics?

A: The president was granted the authority to violate the laws of physics by the authorization to invade Afghanistan.

Q: Doesn’t that not make any f*cking sense whatsoever?

A: We cannot discuss any aspect of this or any other matter because it will compromise national security.

Glenn Greenwald has the dirt on a right-wing blogger named Al Maviva who deliberately misquoted the law in order to make a dishonest case that what Bush did in authorizing warrantless wiretaps was not illegal: Purposely misquoting FISA to defend the Bush Administration. It’s kind of involved, but worth a read.

On a related note, I liked this part of Bush’s Saturday radio address:

Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.

I thought it was a cool statement, because by changing one key phrase, it could serve as a perfectly apt criticism of another, quite different, act:

Yesterday the identity of Valerie Plame was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.

See how that works?

In doing my best to think objectively about this latest outrage, I find myself reaching a new appreciation of what Bush has been doing. And I actually (I mean actually actually; I’m not being snarky here) think Bush has a pretty strong argument re: the whole Patriot Act renewal, illegal wiretapping of US citizens, torture as an instrument of government policy, and so on.

Bush’s argument basically comes down to this: It’s a dangerous world out there, with really nasty terrorists who want to do really, really nasty things to us. And it’s Bush’s job to protect us from that. And Bush is arguing, quite explicitly, that he needs these extra-legal powers in order to do that job.

His position is that in this modern era of terrorism, we simply can no longer afford the rule of law, separation of powers, civil liberties, and any sort of limits on the power of the president. And he’s right about that — but with one important caveat. With George W. Bush as president, we can’t afford all those things. Because the fact of the matter is, he’s proven that he is incapable of defending the country against large-scale terrorist attacks while constrained by traditional limitations on presidential power.

But here’s the thing: It isn’t necessarily the case that no one could protect us while also protecting the Constitution. In fact, international terrorism has been around for a while, and every president before George Bush seemed to be doing a pretty decent job of keeping large-scale attacks from happening on US soil. It’s just George W. Bush who’s turned out to be an abysmal failure in that regard.

We clearly must protect ourselves against large-scale terrorist attacks. That’s not negotiable. So we have a simple choice before us: We can choose to retain George W. Bush as president. Or we can choose to retain the rule of law, separation of powers, and civil liberties as national attributes.

We just can’t have both.

Dahlia Lithwick in Slate has an interesting article on Jose Padilla, the homegrown alleged “dirty bomber” who has spent three and a half years locked in a military brig without charges: Public Enemy No. 43,527 – The government throws back another small fish.

Nobody disputes that small-fry terrorists must be caught and punished. After all, most of the Sept. 11 murderers were small fish with no real grasp of the big plan. Nor does anyone dispute that these terrorists should be questioned by the state if they can help foil big terrorist plots. But most Americans now dispute — and some have long disputed — that all this needs to be done outside the existing legal stratosphere. More than three years after the government began holding citizens in jails without charges, there is no proof that anyone in this country is safer for it. Nor is there any proof that ordinary criminal trials for Padilla, Hamdi, and the other terrorists we’ve tagged would have exposed vital intelligence information or resulted in acquittals. Yet with Hamdi sent home, and Padilla shuffled to the criminal courts, there may be no testing the addled theory that President Bush has boundless wartime powers, even after the Supreme Court has told him he doesn’t.

This story really burns me up. Not because I have any particular sympathies for Padilla. But because the wrong being committed by those who have locked him up without charges, using him as a poster boy to promote fear and civil liberties erosions, strikes me as more significant than anything he ever did himself.

I meant to link to his a while back when it appeared in the LA Times, then got caught up in Fitzmas obsessions and whatnot, and neglected to. So I’m doing it now.

From Kyle Zirpolo, one of the child accusers in the McMartin preschool-molestation trial: I lied.

I’m not saying nothing happened to anyone else at the McMartin Pre-School. I can’t say that — I can only speak for myself. Maybe some things did happen. Maybe some kids made up stories about things that didn’t really happen, and eventually started believing they were telling the truth. Maybe some got scared that the teachers would get their families because they were lying. But I never forgot I was lying.

My stepdad was a police officer who had guns in the house. I remember when all of this was coming down, he was put on a leave of absence from work because he was being investigated for supposedly threatening the McMartin family. He was cleared of that accusation — apparently it wasn’t true. But being only 9 years old at the time, I thought my dad was saying he would kill the McMartins. So in my mind, I figured no one from the school was going to dare mess with him because he would have hurt them first. That made me feel secure. It could be a reason I never mixed up reality and fantasy and always knew I was lying.

But the lying really bothered me. One particular night stands out in my mind. I was maybe 10 years old and I tried to tell my mom that nothing had happened. I lay on the bed crying hysterically — I wanted to get it off my chest, to tell her the truth. My mother kept asking me to please tell her what was the matter. I said she would never believe me. She persisted: “I promise I’ll believe you! I love you so much! Tell me what’s bothering you!” This went on for a long time: I told her she wouldn’t believe me, and she kept assuring me she would. I remember finally telling her, “Nothing happened! Nothing ever happened to me at that school.”

She didn’t believe me.

I moved to Manhattan Beach after preschool age, but a lot of my friends in junior high and high school were former McMartin students. My girlfriend and her brother both went there; both were interviewed as part of the investigation, and both said they’d never seen or experienced anything unusual or questionable.

I give Zirpolo a lot of credit for being willing to come forward now. But I can also understand the surviving defendants refusing to meet with him to hear his apology.

Children lie. Hell, grownups lie, all the time. But for children, there’s something innocent about it, an element of the fantastical, magical thinking that makes anything potential as “true” as any other thing. Words like “fantastical” and “magical” have something of a positive connotation, and I’m not trying to say there’s anything good about little kids lying, especially when the lies ruin the lives of innocent third parties.

But the children who testified in the McMartin trial to abuses that didn’t actually take place weren’t really responsible for their actions. They were little kids. They were victims of the process, too. But the grownups who elicited those accusations from them, and the police and district attorneys and parents who took the ball and ran with it, and the media that sold lots and lots of advertising while demonizing Ray and his mother and the rest of the accused, have more to answer for.

The Washington Post’s Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHe have an interesting article that looks at Scooter Libby’s testimony, and the argument that he was trying to protect Dick Cheney from the Fitzgerald investigation: Libby may have tried to mask Cheney’s role.

There’s nothing really new here, but it does a good job of explaining the basic facts. Doesn’t come right out and say, “yeah, Libby lied to protect Cheney,” but makes it clear that that’s what Fitzgerald’s probably thinking. Because, you know, it’s pretty obviously the truth.

Future chronology:

• 2006: Libby’s lawyers drag out the trial’s start to minimize impact on the 2006 midterm elections.
• 2007: Libby convicted at trial, begins serving sentence. McClellan: “As you know, I’d love nothing more than to answer your questions. But there is an appeal under way, and this administration believes it would be irresponsible to make public comments that might prejudice an ongoing legal proceeding.”
• 2008: Libby loses on appeal.
• January, 2009: On his last day as president, Bush pardons Libby.

Interesting analysis from John Dean: A Cheney-Libby conspiracy, or worse? Reading between the lines of the Libby indictment.

Will Libby flip? Unlikely. Neither Cheney nor Libby (I believe) will be so foolish as to crack a deal. And Libby probably (and no doubt correctly) assumes that Cheney — a former boss with whom he has a close relationship — will (at the right time and place) help Libby out, either with a pardon or financially, if necessary. Libby’s goal, meanwhile, will be to stall going to trial as long as possible, so as not to hurt Republicans’ showing in the 2006 elections.

So if Libby can take the heat for a time, he and his former boss (and friend) may get through this. But should Republicans lose control of the Senate (where they are blocking all oversight of this administration), I predict Cheney will resign “for health reasons.”

On that last point, I don’t think it takes a crystal ball to predict a Cheney resignation “for health reasons” after the 2006 elections. Putting the person that the Republican party would like to have replace Bush into the vice presidency after the midterms is the obvious thing to do for political reasons, regardless of whether Cheney has become a political liability because of Plamegate.

But given my own feeling that Libby will stick to his story, secure in the knowledge that a pardon is waiting for him during Bush’s last few days in office, it was interesting to me to see Dean saying essentially the same thing.

The level of chatter about the upcoming indictments (maybe) from Patrick Fitzgerald’s Plame-outing investigation has doubled yet again. Good lord; what did we do for fun before we had a global computer network to use for obsessive speculation?

I’m consciously taking a step back, myself. Yes, like many people, I desperately want for a tough-minded, principled, take-no-prisoners federal prosecutor to expose the lies that lay behind the Bush administration’s headlong rush to war in Iraq. But I’m also aware that no desire on my part for such an event, no matter how fervent that desire is, actually increases the chances that the event will come to pass.

I think a certain percentage of the Bush-hater predictions currently making the rounds probably owe more to fervent desire than they do to actual tea-leaf reading. An example of what I mean is this item from James Moore, as previously posted at the Arianablog, pointed to here at TomPaine.com: Fitzgerald’s historic opportunity.

As much as I would personally enjoy Fitzgerald’s exposing Bush administration complicity in the original forging of the documents alleging an Iraqi effort to obtain yellowcake from Niger, I don’t expect that to actually happen.

The chatter pretty much has convinced me that we’ll be seeing an indictment of Scooter Libby, at least, in the next few days. Maybe Karl Rove. And maybe (pleaseohpleaseohplease) Dick Cheney. But probably not on the Cheney part.

But really, in all honesty, I don’t know. I only know that a lot of people in whose opinions I place a certain amount of faith think something big is going to happen. (And a lot of other people in whose opinions I don’t have much faith think something absolutely spectacular is going to happen.)

Whatever. In a few days we’ll all know. Until then, I’m going to put on my headphones and listen to loud music. Talk to you after.

Publius of Legal Fiction doesn’t think we children eagerly awaiting Fitzmas should spend too much time comparing Republican statements in 1998 about how significant a crime perjury was, regardless of the underlying offense, with their comments these days that really, perjury isn’t all that big a deal. And he makes a pretty good case: Perjury and context.

A couple of Plamegate items for your Sunday:

From Josh Marshall: There is a flood of articles appearing… Talks about the piece from the LA Times the other day that seems (at least potentially) to represent the beginnings of an administration effort to make Libby the fall guy for the Plame outing.

Also, the New York Times has this background piece about Patrick Fitzgerald: Leak prosecutor is called exacting and apolitical.

Continuing my sense of 1974 deja vu, here’s today’s entry in the “what did the President know and when did he know it?” file. From Thomas M. DeFrank, Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News: Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak.

See Joshua Micah Marshall’s commentary: It’s slightly sugar-coated…, A few more thoughts on Tom DeFrank’s article…, and Right at the top of the gaggle…

Fitzgerald doesn’t get to indict Bush (since he’s a sitting president, and apparently that falls outside a prosecutor’s constitutional authority). But evidence that Bush was part of the conspiracy either at the time of the original outing or during the coverup afterward would certainly be politically damaging.

Again: This is all pretty premature. But Fitzgerald is a prosecutor going after a criminal conspiracy. And what does a prosecutor going after a criminal conspiracy do? He puts pressure on the little guys, doing whatever he can to get them to flip and deliver the bigger guys who are higher up in the conspiracy.

It’s pretty much the opposite goal from that of Pentagon investigators looking into Abu Ghraib, or Sen. Pat Roberts looking into the Iraqi WMD intelligence debacle, in which the whole point was to seal off the upper levels from accountability, assigning all blame to the low-level foot soldiers.

Go, Patrick Fitzgerald.

There’s certainly a lot of “chatter” on the Bush-hater weblogs about what Patrick Fitzgerald might or might not be getting ready to hand down in the way of indictments. Some of that speculation apparently centers on the activities of the “White House Iraq Group,” or WHIG, a team including Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that was set up in August 2002 to run the PR campaign that (as the Downing Street Memos told us, after the fact) was under way at that time as part of fixing the intelligence around the administration’s Iraq-invasion policy.

Joshua Micah Marshall has some interesting commentary about this: There are certainly a lot of hints…

If Karl Rove goes down in this investigation it’ll be a disaster for the president, both in terms of the damage occasioned by such a high-level White House indictment and, frankly, because he needs the guy like most of us need legs.

But this WHIG thing is a whole ‘nother level of hurt.

This group was the organizational team, the core group behind all the shameless crap that went down in the lead up to the Iraq war — the lies about the cooked up Niger story, everything. If Fitzgerald has lassoed this operation into a criminal conspiracy, the veil of protective secrecy in which the whole operation is still shrouded will be pulled back. Depositions and sworn statements in on-going investigations have a way of doing that. Ask Bill Clinton. Every key person in the White House will be touched by it. And all sorts of ugly tales could spill out.

As I said back in July (Corn, Marshall on Rove/Plame. And I see an elephant.), if Fitzgerald goes for it, the truth will be out there. The reality, I am convinced, is that there was a criminal conspiracy to out Plame, followed by a criminal conspiracy to cover up the outing. But in exposing those relatively limited crimes, Fitzgerald would also be highlighting the Bush administration’s much larger crime of fudging the case for war.

And note the results of this poll: Americans favor Bush’s impeachment if he lied about Iraq.

If Fitzgerald brings indictments, Bush’s lies on Iraq are going to be front-page news for months on end. We’re going to get all kinds of detail on just how those lies were sold to the public. It won’t be the president’s hand-picked commission on Iraqi intelligence, or the kid-gloves inquiry by Pat Roberts’ Senate intelligence committee, with the most-embarrassing-to-Bush parts of the investigation deferred to a hypothetical “phase 2.” It will be an aggressive federal prosecutor making the strongest case he can, working in the high-intensity spotlight of a Watergate-level criminal investigation.

What will Congress do in such a situation? Remember, this stuff will be on television. If the public reacts with the same sort of outrage with which they reacted to Bush’s strumming while New Orleans drowned, there is going to be incredible pressure on Congress to do something. Would a Republican Congress actually impeach Cheney? Would it impeach Bush?

I can’t believe it would. But in the aftermath, would there be a backlash from voters? A year ago I would have said yes, of course. But my faith in the American electorate was shaken by the 2004 presidential election.

My sense is that this stuff is already being fought tooth and nail by the Bush people, just out of sight. They are preparing whatever they can for the PR campaign, and I don’t doubt for a second that if cornered, they’re going to go nucular. If this really does go down, it’s going to get really, really ugly. Rove will have no choice but to try to engineer the Swift-boating of Fitzgerald. And I just don’t see how he could pull that off.

But then, he’s surprised me in that area before.