Mr. 9/11 is burnishing his credentials with an accounting scandal to go along with his sex scandal and his terrorist association scandal and his corrupt police commissioner scandal and…
From Politico:
“As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.”
Former White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, is joining the ranks of castoff Bushies to belatedly embrace truthfulness in advance of the publication of a new book. This is a disturbing pattern amongst public figures who lie while in office and then recant their deception, after they’ve been ejected from their perch, with a tell-some memoir of their nefarious official activities.
In McClellan’s case, the publisher of his forthcoming tome teased the press with this tantalizing morsel:
“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.”
“There was one problem. It was not true.”
“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself.”
This admission of administration dishonesty could rise to the level of impeachability (as if we needed another reason). It demonstrates a deliberate effort on the part of high ranking officials to mislead the public and to obstruct justice. And it is telling that this criminality was shepherded through the White House press machine with the complicity of McClellan who was either terminally naive or incompetent.
While it is useful that these revelations are coming out, it is galling that it took so many years to do so. The administration has successfully quashed any discourse on the issue by refusing comment when the case was being actively litigated and then declaring that it was old news when the litigation came to a close. Both of McClellan’s successors, Tony Snow and Dana Perino, are just as guilty of covering up this affair as McClellan was. When asked to comment on the McClellan book, Perino said:
“The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information.”
That contradicts the president who admitted that he does lie to the press when it suits him, as it did when former defense secretary Don Rumsfeld resigned.
Contrary to Perino’s protest, the President, along with many of his top advisers, is simply not to be trusted. And the same is true of the mouthpieces like Perino, Snow and McClellan, who will do and say whatever their leader asks of them. They will prevaricate obediently and then, many years later, seek absolution through the purifying glow of book publishing and million dollar advances. The rest of the media will largely ignore this misbehavior because they are either too stupid to ferret out the truth, too frightened to report it, or too compromised by their own involvement or dreams of future book deals.
With a cast of characters that includes Rudy Giuliani, Rupert Murdoch, and Judith Regan, a tale is being woven that starts off better than any novel by Melville, Hemingway or Steinbeck – put together!
“This action arises from a deliberate smear campaign orchestrated by one of the largest media conglomerates for the sole purpose of destroying one woman’s credibility and reputation. This smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.’s political agenda, which has long centered on Giuliani’s presidential ambitions.”
This is the Introduction to a lawsuit filed (pdf) by Judith Regan against publisher HarperCollins and its parent, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The lawsuit was filed by Regan in response to her having been fired in the wake of the aborted publication of O. J. Simpson’s imagined confessional “If I Did It.” The ripples from this wave are certain to roil the waters around both News Corp and the presidential ambitions of Giuliani.
Enter Bernie Kerik, Giuliani’s Police Commissioner whom Giuliani recommended to President Bush to be the first Director of Homeland Security. That appointment was scuttled due to Kerik being waist high in the sort of corruption that just got him indicted for multiple felonies. It seems that Regan and Kerik were sparking a little heat of their own. That revelation has made some folks nervous.
“Defendants were well aware that Regan had a personal relationship with Kerik. In fact, a senior executive in the News Corp. organization told Regan that he believed that she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik”
This story has blockbuster written all over it. There is drama, intrigue, betrayal, corruption, money and sex. If Fox were not so inextricably intertwined in it, this would be a perfect subject for them. The News Corp executive (whom Regan does not name) that directed Regan to lie to Secret Service agents gathering data on a prospective cabinet member is potentially guilty of unlawful intimidation and deception. If true, what’s left of Fox News’ credibility is irredeemably lost (admittedly not a big loss for them).
It remains to seen how this will impact Giuliani who has been all but anointed by Fox as the Republican nominee. The New York Times reported earlier this year on the close relationship between Giuliani, Fox News and News Corp honcho, Roger Ailes. Giuliani has been a frequent guest on Fox, particularly the Hannity and Colmes program. His appearances far outstrip his Republican rivals:
“Mr. Giuliani’s on-air time on Fox [115 minutes] was 25 percent greater than that of his Republican competitor Mitt Romney, and nearly double that of Senator John McCain of Arizona. Fred D. Thompson, who has yet to formally announce his candidacy, came in second to Mr. Giuliani with 101 minutes of Fox interviews.”
Besides the valuable airtime Hannity contributes, he also headlined a $250.00 a plate fund raiser for Giuliani. Then there is Rudy’s personal relationship with Ailes, the Chairman of Fox News:
“Mr. Ailes was the media consultant to Mr. Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign in 1989. Mr. Giuliani, as mayor, officiated at Mr. Ailes’s wedding and intervened on his behalf when Mr. Ailes’s company, Fox News Channel, was blocked from securing a cable station in the city.”
It will be interesting to see how all of this unfolds. Kerik is already facing serious charges for his unscrupulous misadventures. Giuliani’s house of cards is only just beginning to wobble. But the real cliffhanger is News Corp and Fox News. How will they fare after being accused of threatening Regan to secure her silence regarding Kerik and Giuliani? Will regulators take any of this under consideration with regards to the Dow Jones acquisition? How will the media report the details of this lurid scandal that marries elements of the media (Fox News) and the government (Giuliani, Kerik) with the tabloid exploits of the “Golden Vagina” as Regan was known to her critics at News Corp.
The good news is that Fox’s reputation for honest and impartial journalism is not in jeopardy because, of course, they have no such reputation. Thus, it may not surprise many that they have suborned perjury, intimidated witnesses and clandestinely supported a presidential candidate who was a friend and benefactor. I just wonder when the conservative population in this country, who have prided themselves on the virtues of law and order, will finally surrender to the fact that Murdoch and Co. are a criminal syndicate that simply cannot be trusted.
Update: Giuliani’s non-denial denial: “I don’t respond to the story at all. I don’t know anything about it, and it sounds to me like kind of a gossip column story more than a real story.”
Plus, Regan reportedly has “juicy” tapes that bolster her account of the events detailed in her lawsuit.
Yesterday’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence has rocked Washington and the rest of the nation. Everybody’s got something to bitch about. Democrats are incensed that the President exhibits such contempt for law and order. Republicans are inconsolable that Libby didn’t get a full pardon.
One name keeps coming up as justification for Bush’s action. A name that, not surprisingly, seeks to refocus blame on the GOP’s favorite boogey man, Bill Clinton. It was Clinton that pardoned financier Marc Rich in a move that generated much controversy at the time. Republicans have jumped on that pardon in order to sanitize the President’s obvious special treatment of Libby.
But guess what? Scooter Libby was Marc Rich’s lawyer!
Libby represented Rich at the time the pardon was considered and granted. Libby even defended Rich before Congress while Libby was serving as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Here is a bit of Libby’s testimony:
“There are no facts that I know of that support the criminality of the client [Marc Rich] based on the tax returns.”
“[Rich] had not violated the tax laws.”
So when you hear Republicans drag out the canard that Clinton did it too (as if that would make it OK), remind them that the man who is the beneficiary of Bush’s commutation agrees with Clinton’s decision to pardon Rich.
What’s more, the President does not agree with Clinton and said so at the time:
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, on Marc Rich? First of all, I didn’t agree with the decision. I would not have made that decision myself.
Nevertheless, the President did make that decision on behalf of Libby. And that’s not all. It seems that the prosecutor of Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald, also participated in the prosecution of Rich. And if your head isn’t spinning at this point, you are on some pretty potent psychotropic medication.
In the past couple of days, the Bush White House has been frantically contorting itself to explain why they are above the law. Vice-President Dick Cheney claimed that he was not subject to oversight mandated by law because his role as President of the Senate means that he is not a part of the Executive Branch of government. Then the President’s spokesperson said that neither Bush nor Cheney are subject to the oversight provisions of the law because of an executive order exempting them, even though the order does not actually say anything about that. These absurd assertions produce this surreal chronology:
Could this get any curiouser? Bet on it.
The CIA has announced that next week they will release a collection of documents that many refer to as the “Family Jewels.” They reportedly contain accounts of clandestine adventures like assassination plots against Castro and wiretapping of journalists.
If you’ve been paying attention so far, you might wonder why an administration that has been so obsessively secretive is suddenly volunteering to throw open the drapes and let a little sunshine in. Why is it that within the span of a few days the administration is openning the door to intelligence confessionals from the past and at the same time feverishly scrambling to conceal its own more recent behavior?
The conspiracy theorist in me cannot help but become suspicious of what the administration does not want us to know, and the lengths to which they will go to keep us from knowing it. The media will be eagerly analyzing the CIA data when it is made available to them. They will assume their pack-mentality posture and focus like a laser beam on these documents to the exclusion of all other events (except, of course, the Paris Hilton liberation, which will squelch all other news items that threaten to emerge).
Consequently, I will be looking intently beneath the surface of the news to see what may be hiding there. While I approve of the CIA disclosures in principle, it is just not credible that this administration decided to be forthcoming at this time without some ulterior motive. They have never been known for their openness or honesty and the machinations evident in the Cheney affair demonstrate their extremism in pursuit of deception and obfuscation.
It would be nice if we had courageous reporters like Jack Anderson or I. F. Stone working to reveal the illicit activities being concealed from us by our disreputable so-called leaders. It would be great if there were patriots like Daniel Ellsberg inside of government willing to expose the criminality ongoing in the White House. We can keep hoping that figures like these will emerge and clean out the rot in Washington, but more likely we will have to rely on ourselves to unmask the offenders.
Next week, when the press is busily dissecting the minutiae that is fed to them, try to stay alert. There is something behind the other door. Like a magician waving a wand in one hand to misdirect your attention from the other hand as it furtively slips into his pocket, the Amazing Bushini, with the aid of his lovely assistant the Media, may be pulling a fast one. So keep your eyes open and maintain a healthy skepticism. One thing we know for sure is that these guys always seem to have something foul up their sleeve.
The CIA is refusing to permit publication of a book by former covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson. Ms. Wilson’s cover was blown by Bush administration officials in retaliation for critical comments made by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, regarding trumped up evidence for the invasion of Iraq. I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby has already been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for giving false testimony in the investigation of this affair.
The agency is claiming that information in the book, “Fair Game,” is classified and prohibited from publication. That would seem to be a reasonable position had the Agency not already sent unclassified versions of the data to Wilson which was subsequently published in the Congressional Record. Wilson and her publisher, Simon & Shuster, are now suing the Agency to secure permission to publish her memoir.
This is a blatant example of prior restraint and a violation of free speech rights. The notion that data that has previously been publicly disclosed can be forced back into obscurity is absurd, especially in this Internet age when information is widely dispersed and recorded. The data in question regards Wilson’s dates of employment with the Agency, and those dates are even published in the newspaper accounts of this litigation. It’s not exactly top secret.
We need to remember that we are dealing with the most secrecy obsessed administration in history; an administration that has been busily RE-classifying thousands of documents that were previously de-classified, and taking many more steps to inhibit open government and free access to materials of interest to the public.
It is particularly ironic that the White House that cavalierly outed Wilson as part of a political vendetta is now pretending to be concerned about operational security. A spokesman for the CIA gave this explanation for why they were refusing Wilson’s request to publish:
“Official acknowledgment of certain matters could cause some on whom we rely to think that we do not take protecting sensitive equity seriously, or cause them to think twice about assisting us in the future, and that could have serious ramifications.”
If they were truly concerned about the ramifications of not protecting sensitive equity, maybe they shouldn’t have unveiled Wilson’s identity in the first place. And while they are now calling it a “mistake” to have released her dates of employment, there has still been no acknowledgement that blowing her cover might also have been an error. This hypocrisy only affirms that the obvious intent of the CIA, and their bosses in the White House, is to frustrate Wilson’s efforts to tell her story because it might embarrass a corrupt and dishonest administration. Let’s hope that the courts demonstrate more integrity and rule to uphold the First Amendment.
It is now being widely reported that the U. S. Treasury Department is investigating filmmaker Michael Moore in connection with his upcoming documentary, “Sicko.” The feds are alleging that Moore made an illegal trip to Cuba with a group of 9/11 rescue workers who are suffering from health problems related to their relief efforts. But only News Corpse has the courage to reveal the truth:
Michael Moore and the U.S. government are now working together! Despite the protestations published on Moore’s website that the investigation of Michael Moore is “politically motivated,” the more significant revelation is this:
“Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in just one week and opening across the U.S. on June 29th, ‘SiCKO’ will expose the corporations that place profit before care and the politicians who care only about money.”
This kind of publicity is worth millions and is almost never available for documentaries. Are we supposed to think the timing of this investigation is a mere coincidence? How stupid do they think we are? There are only two possible explanations for this investigation being commenced at this time:
The clockwork-like efficiency of this administration effectively rules out option two, so that leaves us with option one: Collaboration!
I never thought I’d see this day, but the evidence of conspiracy is overwhelming. We have to wake up to reality, people. Follow the money!
Update: For good measure, the conspirators have recruited the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post to further advance their plot. The Post is alone in reporting a number of shocking sidebars to this disturbing story that the rest of the media is actively suppressing.
For instance, they describe the film as “an attack on American drug companies and HMOs that Moore hopes to debut at the Cannes Film Festival next month.” This is obviously disinformation as the film has actually already been selected as an official presentation at Cannes.
The Post further reports that, “the sick sojourn, which some say uses ill 9/11 workers as pawns, has angered many in the responder community.” And we all know how reliable “some say” are as witnesses.
Then there is the testimony of Joe Picurro, an ailing relief worker who said, “I would rather die in America than go to Cuba.” I’m sure that’s a sentiment with which all Americans can relate.
But the icing on the conspiratorial cake is this:
“Although he has been a critic of Cuba, Moore grew popular there after a pirated version of his movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” was played on state-owned TV.”
That’s right, Moore is popular in Cuba! The Post’s disclosure of this classified intelligence seals the case that they are in cahoots with the government’s scheme to help Moore generate valuable controversy and media attention. This should put an end to any stray skepticism.
Here’s an interesting turn of events. Fox News will be hosting the Republican Party’s presidential primary debate in South Carolina next month. The terms of the agreement call for a process of validation to determine which candidates will participate. The interesting part is that Fox gets to play a role in the decision. There is a set of criteria which has not been disclosed other than that it includes a requirement to have…
“…garnered at least 1 percent in recent state and national polls leading up to the registration deadline, as determined by Fox News Channel and the South Carolina Republican Party.”
I couldn’t care less who Fox wants to allow to play in the Republican sand box. But if there are still any unconvinced critics of the Democrats who objected to Fox hosting their affair, this should conclude the debate on the debates.
It should be clear now that Fox is not a neutral player. Republicans consider them a partner and grant them broad privilege in producing their partisan events. Can you imagine what would have ensued if Democrats had gone through with the proposed Fox-sponsored debate in Nevada?
There is a disturbing report from the International Federation of Journalists that alleges an assault by American soldiers against the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists. The IFJ’s account of these events says that…
“United States soldiers caused destruction and havoc last night when they broke into the offices of the Syndicate, which is a member of the IFJ’s global union network. They destroyed furniture, ransacked the offices, arrested state-employed security guards, and confiscated 10 computers and 15 small electricity generators destined for the families of killed journalists.”
This action, if true, constitutes a severe violation of the principles of democracy. Remember democracy? It is what we invaded Iraq to bring to them. It would not be the first time that Americans sought to suppress or distort the free expression of local media. A little over a year ago, the U.S. military was caught secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories intended to portray operations there in a positive light. As bad as that is, this new story has much more frightening implications. The IFJ also reports that…
“the confiscation of computers and records of membership also suggests that US forces could now target all members of the Syndicate. ‘Anyone working for media that does not endorse US policy and actions could now be at risk,’ said [IFJ General Secretary, Aidan] White.”
There is certainly cause for concern here. Which makes me wonder, where is that concern? I have been unable to find a single story from any conventional news outlet. Not from newspapers, nor television, nor wire services, not even the Internet arms of those organizations. If the IFJ were a shadowy, obscure association, this could be dismissed as unreliable. But they are a recognized international trade group representing half a million journalists in 100 countries. At the very least I would expect a CBS or a New York Times to be inquiring of the Pentagon as to the allegations in this report.
The job of reporters in Iraq is difficult and dangerous, but this story is too important to ignore. If the military is attempting to enforce a media blackout, we need to shine a light onto it. Censorship cannot be tolerated, particularly when it is imposed by American soldiers in the name of freedom.
The sad discovery of a deceased celebrity is certainly worthy of mention in the press. The real sadness, however, is a private matter shared by family and friends. That privacy is intruded upon when media clowns turn the event into a circus. That’s what happened yesterday (and continues today) to Anna Nicole’s family.
If being dignified and respectful isn’t enough reason for reporters to refrain from being exploitive vultures, maybe journalistic professionalism and pride should be considered. The wall-to-wall coverage of Anna Nicole’s passing was entirely out of proportion to its imapct on the lives of news consumers. ThinkProgress compared the handling of this story with another important topic that has far more relevence to the American public.
References to Anna Nicole and Iraq on Cable Networks After 3PM ET:
NETWORK ANNA NICOLE IRAQ CNN 141 27 FOX NEWS 112 33 MSNBC 170 24
That’s a pretty heavy overweighting of a tabloid bereavement, especially knowing that dozens of deaths occurred in Iraq the same day, including seven American soldiers.
NBC, though, surpasses all competition for shamelessness by devoting 3 minutes and 13 seconds (14% of their program) on Anna Nicole, and only 14 seconds on Iraq.