Libby Trial opener - Witness sings on spinning leaks
As I've said before, I don't plan to post a lot about this case. If you want perspective on the legal issues of the Scooter Libby trial, go to Fire Dog Lake who built their blog on this matter and if you still can't get enough of the legalese, stop by Talk Left. But yesterday's revelations from Cathie Martin, former Cheney communications director are too delicious to leave unmentioned. Ms. Martin sheds some much needed light on just how the White House spin machine works.
Just as we suspected, Tim Russert's Meet the Press is a fav of the administration because they can count on softball questions to "control the message" or as we like to call it, pushing the propaganda. Cathie notes it "was a tactic we often used." She goes on to reveal the administration's copious and deliberate use of the Friday news dump. In a moment of unmitigated candor she told the court that bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.
She described at length how she and Steve Hadley worked long hours with George Tenet helping him draft his political suicide note in which he faked responsibility for the erroneous mention of yellowcake uranium in the President's SOTU speech that year. And she confirmed "the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others. To deal with the Wilson controversy, she hastily arranged a Cheney lunch with conservative commentators."
But probably her most damaging testimony, backed up with written notes, clearly indicates that the "no leak" White House routinely used leaks to White House friendly reporters in order to advance their false story lines.
Even if nothing else happens in this trial and Scooter gets off, these revelations proving the odious duplicity of the White House are worth every penny we're spending on it.
Just as we suspected, Tim Russert's Meet the Press is a fav of the administration because they can count on softball questions to "control the message" or as we like to call it, pushing the propaganda. Cathie notes it "was a tactic we often used." She goes on to reveal the administration's copious and deliberate use of the Friday news dump. In a moment of unmitigated candor she told the court that bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.
She described at length how she and Steve Hadley worked long hours with George Tenet helping him draft his political suicide note in which he faked responsibility for the erroneous mention of yellowcake uranium in the President's SOTU speech that year. And she confirmed "the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others. To deal with the Wilson controversy, she hastily arranged a Cheney lunch with conservative commentators."
But probably her most damaging testimony, backed up with written notes, clearly indicates that the "no leak" White House routinely used leaks to White House friendly reporters in order to advance their false story lines.
Even if nothing else happens in this trial and Scooter gets off, these revelations proving the odious duplicity of the White House are worth every penny we're spending on it.
posted by Libby Spencer at 10:10 AM
4 Comments:
I've only been paying a bit of attention to this, but Martin's revelations did confirm so much of what everybody's suspected all along. My only conclusion is that Bu$hCo must believe that no one cares, or is to burned out to care, about their tactics.
I think the crazy bastids believe they can get away with doing anything they damn well please and don't give a flying leap about what we think, Kvatch.
cheneys excuse is stupid. Byron york was on C SPAN today and he mentioned about 329 times that Cheney was somehow upset by the fact that the article implied he, dick cheney, had "sent" wilson. that is like the last thing you would notice about joe wilsons essay. it's not called "I'm friends with dick cheney" its "what i didn't find in niger".
No one who ead that op ed thought about whether or not cheney sent him or he sent cheney or sant claus sent the joker. It was about how the bush administration was twisting intelligence. and it was absolutely right. the niger story was a set with the aluminum tubes, the mobile weapons labs, mohammed atta in pargue, and all that other stuff.
cheneys problem is someone, probably him, decided on a really dumb way of selling a really dumb war: WMD and connections to al queda. if they had had any actual evidence like photos of saddam at an al queda training camp or video of WMD's in Iraq they would never have had to twist anythingo r out anybody. but they didn't because it didn't exist!
You'll get no argument from me Lester.
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