January 22, 2004

Ex-spooks speak up

"The disclosure of Ms. [Valerie] Plame's name was an unprecedented and shameful event in American history and, in our professional judgment, has damaged U.S. national security, specifically the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence-gathering using human sources." -- Letter from 10 former CIA agents requesting an immediate congressional investigation into the disclosure that Plame was an undercover agent. The Valerie Plame affair has been perking along for months. But there’s been no resolution, and the intelligence community is getting angrier by the day. The latest evidence of this is a letter from 10 former agents – two of whom were overseas CIA station chiefs – demanding a congressional investigation into the outing of Plame. The New York Times reports: “The unmasking of Ms. Plame is viewed within spy circles as an unforgivable breach of secrecy that must be exhaustively investigated and prosecuted, current and former intelligence officials say. Anger over the matter is especially acute because of the suspicion, under investigation by the Justice Department, that the disclosure may have been made by someone in the White House to punish Ms. Plames's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for opposing administration policy on Iraq.” All clues so far point to the highest levels of the Bush administration – the President’s or Vice President’s offices (or both) – as the likeliest culprits.

Posted by tbrown at 12:28 PM

An insider’s look at the Mabton mad cow

A fellow named Dave Louthan, who says he worked at Vern’s Moses Lake Meats, where the one U.S. cow that has tested postive for mad cow disease (so far) was slaughtered, paints a picture of the handling of diseased animals and the haphazard and most likely ineffective USDA testing program that makes for unsettling reading. Among other things, Louthan says that had the mad cow – which, by the way, he says was still walking – not arrived with several “downer” animals it never would have been tested Read it all here.

Posted by tbrown at 11:36 AM

More GOP ‘law and order’

The Senate Republican leadership is implicated in a deepening dirty-tricks scandal that’s threatening to slop right over the tops of their ample hip waders. The Boston Globe reports that for a year Republican staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access the restricted files of Democratic members -- which they did and used what they found for partisan purposes. “Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics,” the Globe says. The continuing investigation into this mess – which appeared more limited in scope when it was first disclosed in November – has led to the seizure of four Judiciary Committee servers, one server from the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and several hard drives from individual desktop machines. The Judiciary Committee has, of course, been the central arena of the fight between Democrats and Republicans over President Bush’s judicial appointments. The computer security hole apparently allowed GOP staffers direct access to Democratic memos about their strategies for opposing Bush nominees. The contents of those memos wound up in a column by Robert Novak (the guy who also outed CIA agent Valierie Plame after a separate leak by “senior administration officials”), the Wall Street Journal and a conservative web site. The GOP staffer the Globe says seems most clearly implicated, one Manuel Miranda, is in full CYA mode. "There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff." OK, pal. We’ll see what lawyers higher up the food chain think when the investigation is complete. Given that this little problem reaches all the way up to Frist’s office, there’s going to be a scapegoat and it just might be Miranda. Regardless of the outcome, though, this incident just says volumes about the nature of the current Senate leadership, since the chances are nil that information this sensitive would have been obtained and leaked without a wink and a nod at the top.

Posted by tbrown at 11:23 AM

New Hampshire watch

More tracking polls are in today with results from respondents who were aware of John Kerry’s victory in Iowa. The new crop shows Kerry leading Howard Dean by as much as 10 points, Dean second but probably slipping and Wesley Clark third, but perhaps moving up slightly. John Edwards, second in Iowa, trails but is gaining strength. Today’s numbers are here. Joshua Marshall is blogging from New Hampshire and in this post discusses the qualities that at first blush make Edwards seem an ideal candidate … but later leave Marshall wanting more. Update: The American Prospect's blog, Tapped, offers this important footnote to the conditions that prevailed when Dean let forth his damaging primal scream after the Iowa caucuses: DEAN'S BARBARIC YAWP. It's been played on all the cable shows and already has been re-mixed into a techno tune, but one thing about Howard Dean's full-throated cry during his concession/fight speech that hasn't been much discussed was that it was really loud in there at the Val Air Ballroom when he made his speech, which is something the TV mikes -- and hence film footage -- did not pick up. So it's worth noting for the historical record that I -- and others -- could scarcely hear what Dean was saying on the stage from the press section in the back of the room because several thousand Deaniacs were making so much noise (Dean wasn't the only one screaming) and the acoustics in the room weren't very good. From inside the room, it seemed that he was feeding off the energy of a crowd that was cheering him on, and that they got louder and louder in concert with eachother. Anyway, none of that will matter in the end. Richard Nixon was sick during his 1960 debate with John F. Kennedy, too, but there are no excuses in politics. Still, when the final story of the Dean campaign is written, the difference between what was going on inside that room and what it looked like on television will make an instructive chapter. --Garance Franke-Ruta

Posted by tbrown at 11:20 AM

It’s still the economy – and it’s not good

“Manufacturing activity is increasing. Inflation is low. Interest rates are low. Exports are growing. Productivity is high, and jobs are on the rise.” -- President Bush in his State of the Union Address The polls show increasing discontent with Bush’s economic policies, which becomes quite understandable when you consider the bad news he left out of his speech. An estimated 2.5 million jobs have been lost on his watch and no matter what happens between now and November they will not be recouped. Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to complete a four-year term with a net loss of jobs. And it will be a big net loss. Furthermore, when those jobs are recovered it’s quite likely that the bulk of them will pay much less than the jobs they replaced. So says a new study by the Economic Policy Institute, using data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. “In 48 of the 50 states, jobs in higher-paying industries have given way to jobs in lower-paying industries since the recession ended in November 2001,” the EPI says. “Nationwide, industries that are gaining jobs relative to industries that are losing jobs pay 21% less annually. For the 30 states that have lost jobs since the recession purportedly ended, this is the other shoe dropping—not only have jobs been lost, but in 29 of them the losses have been concentrated in higher paying sectors. And for 19 of the 20 states that have seen some small gain in jobs since the end of the recession, the jobs gained have been disproportionately in lower-paying sectors.” The EPI finds, for example, that in Washington state, jobs in growing industries pay an average of $36,838 a year, compared with $52,351 paid in declining industries (which, in Washington’s case, would include aerospace). That’s a 30 percent difference. In California, the gap is even wider, 40 percent, between expanding industries, which pay $37I,742, and declining ones, which pay $57,800. But no doubt we left-coasters deserve what we get. Unfortunately for Bush, however, the same thing is going on in the industrial heartland. In fact, the only two states where the phenomenon is not at work are Nebraska and Nevada. Here’s an L.A. Times piece on the California situation (free site registration may be required).

Posted by tbrown at 11:14 AM