Noted fiction writer Judith Miller has her
latest work up at the New York Times.
Elsewhere in the Times others try to fathom why she is sometimes referred to as a journalist.
Please feel free to leave your observations, impressions and snarks in the comments, we'll be posting on all of this shortly and anxious to hear what everyone has to say.
Boy, emptywheel and Tom Maguire sure picked a helluva weekend to go on vacation.
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Matt Yglasias is right. If the new line of defense on Traitorgate is, as
Bill Kristol's piece in the Weekly Standard implies, that worse leaks than this happen all the time in DC, it's a really perverse argument:
From where I sit, if Bill Kristol has a credible allegation of criminal conduct on the part of Richard Armitage or George Tenet to make, I'd be happy to hear it. Not "happy" as in "call Kristol's bluff happy," but "happy" as in "we can throw as many Bush administration officials in jail as he likes" happy.
On the other hand, Roger Simon is
on 'ludes:
I don’t know Judy Miller, but I doubt any journalist would spend 85 days in jail for money, even a lot of money.
Methinks Roger is a tad out of touch with the economic realities of everyday Americans. Everyone who
wouldn't do 85 days in the can for $1.2 million dollars raise your hand.
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Life began early for young Turd Blossom today. He awoke promptly at seven, chose a somber yet earnest black for his fourth appearance before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury, then hopped in his sexy, rich-boy gun metal gray
Jaguar S-Type and drove off....
No, no, Karl! Bad idea! This'll never work. Think of the cameras...they'll all pounce on you for being a rich asshole...it'll be just like those photos on Air Force One...can't pass yourself off as a poor simpleton hounded by an overzealous prosecutor if you show up in an $80,000 ride with skidmarks on the tires from running over the homeless...you're smarter than that...think, Karl, think...Humble public servant Karl Rove arrived today at the courthouse in a beige
Toyota Camry.
...
at which point Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald skewered his nuts and roasted them over a slow fire for four and a half hours.
Adam Entous, Reuters:
Friday's testimony appeared to be Rove's last opportunity to convince grand jurors that he did nothing illegal following the disclosure that he had spoken to two reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband, despite earlier White House denials.
Do you suppose he was off the
Manuel from Faulty Towers bit? Four and a half hours is an awfully long time to endlessly repeat, "I know nothing."
People close to the case said Rove's unusually lengthy grand jury appearance on Friday suggested prosecutors closely scrutinized his earlier testimony, asked him to explain any inconsistencies and may have confronted him with additional information.
"Being in there that long after testifying three times before can't be viewed as a particularly positive sign," said a legal source in the case.
"Inconsistencies." That's an SAT word that means "lies."
Fitzgerald could send out letters to senior administration officials advising them they are targets of his probe, and bring indictments as early as next week, the lawyers said.
Fitzgerald also might decide that no crime was committed and issue a report of his findings.
Yeah and I could sprout wings and fly to Cancun for the winter, but not bloody likely.
Pete Yost, AP:
For the White House in 2004, the good news about Fitzgerald's probe was that it didn't become an issue during the presidential election year.
Thank you,
Time Magazine.
The power to create even more trouble for the administration or wrap up the investigation and return to Chicago, where he is U.S. attorney, lies with Fitzgerald. An experienced prosecutor with a Republican pedigree...
Fitzgerald's a nothing. He was registered as an "independent" before they started sending him shit and he realized it was a party, so he re-registered with no party affiliation. I just got off the phone with Mary Jo White, who used to be his boss at the US Attorney's office in New York, who says that "he is apolitical, and clearly he would judge things objectively, without any consideration of politics."
(He's probably referring to the feeble GOP attempt to draft Fitzgerald for a suicide run against Obama in 2004 -- but mostly just to get him off everyone's fucking back, IMHO. They would've given that nod to anyone, as they proved when they tapped Alan Keyes. Fitzgerald was disinterested.)
Press secretary Scott McClellan on Friday rejected suggestions that the investigation of two key players was distracting the White House.
"We're aware of all those things," he said. "But we've got a lot of work to do and that's where we're focused."
Tell me about it.
Rehearsals are a bitch.
(Best line of the day, from
The General: "Allison Barber made a bunch of soldiers rehearse lines for a televised conversation with Our Leader. There's nothing wrong with that. She's prepped God for the President's prayers since 2003, and He's never complained.")
Update: WaPo:Rove's defense team asserts that President Bush's deputy chief of staff has not committed a crime but nevertheless anticipates that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald could find a way to bring charges in the next two weeks, the source said.
When your own defense team is preparing the media for the worst, man you are
fucked.
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TBogg:We should not condemn these people for cranking out children like pasty-faced pies on a conveyor belt and should realize that they are good parents to their sixteen children and that they have taken up this task for the greater glory of God who shines his light upon them.
They also like to fuck a lot.
Praise the Lord and pass the Astroglide.
TBogg's just funny, that's all.
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On the eve of his rumored fourth testimony before Patrick J. Fitzgerald's grand jury, things are not looking so good for our chubby little smear muffin. Even
the bookies have turned on him:
With Karl Rove's future as White House Deputy Chief of Staff in serious doubt, Sportsbook.com is the only online sportsbook to offer updated odds on the long-running scandal that continues to plague the Bush Administration. Current odds are 1-2 that Rove will have to leave the White House in the wake of an ongoing criminal investigation, and 3-2 that he will not.
(snip)
The significant shift from the opening odds of 1-6 that Rove would not be dismissed or resign is a reflection of the grand jury's increased focus on Rove and of the growing consensus that he will not emerge unscathed. Recent testimony from jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller may have given the grand jury reason to doubt previous statements made by Rove regarding the leak.
I've been watching talking heads on TV all day (yes, I turned it on again) sputtering about how Bush will be devastated by the loss of his "brain."
Maybe.
There is another camp of people who think Bush is only too ready to cut Turd Blossom loose. People from the Beltway in-crowd who have seen the delight Bush takes in personally taunting and humiliating Rove (which he does publicly and frequently by all accounts) think that this is the inevitable result of the single most damaging blow to Rove's career -- when the meme "Bush's brain" entered the popular lexicon.
"Think about it," said a source who has watched Dubya treat Rove like some white, puffy version of Mr. Bill. "If anyone had called Stephanopolous 'Clinton's brain,' how do you think Clinton would've felt? But because it's Bush, nobody considers it."
The psychology certainly fits. Preznit Horse Cranker quite obviously has an ego that can barely be constrained within the Crawford city limits, and his reputation as C Plus Augustus has got to rankle. It would have looked too much like Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation was leading BushCo. around by the nose to dispense with Rove when
Matt Cooper's article came out, but the sports books are not the only ones who are predicting that Dubya will soon find a convenient moment to throw Rove under the bus, if only to prove he can function without him.
Fitzgerald may be the hangman, but it looks like Dubya's tying the noose.
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The effort to slap a coat of whitewash on Ol' Judy and truss her up as
First Amendment Heroine is on:
New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal her source to federal prosecutors investigating who leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent, will pick up a First Amendment Award at the 2005 Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Convention & National Journalism Conference on Oct. 18 in Las Vegas.
According to a press release for the event, Miller will speak to participants and then join a panel discussion titled "The Reporter's Privilege Under Siege." Joining Miller on the panel are Associated Press reporter Josef Hebert, Patricia Hurtado of Newsday, and Bruce Sanford of Baker and Hostetler law firm.
Well that's just swell. Bruce Sanford, partner in crime of that old war wagon
Victoria Toerag (who has been on the Smear Patrick Fitzgerald tour this week) will carry water for the benefit of Ms. Miller. How lovely.
Why, one has to wonder, isn't the award being given to Matt Cooper, who has acted all along like a paragon of integrity that all others should be measured by in this very difficult situation? (I'm still waiting for the straight poop from
Pumpkinhead, and word has it we will all be treated to a delightful fiction from Judy herself tomorrow in the pages of the NYT if they can get them off the presses before they burst into flames.)
For those who have no interest in being served a plate of bad banquet food with Judy's self-serving stories, you can hear Matt Cooper's take on it all today on the Abrams Report on MSNBC.
OT, Johnny Wendell will be for Randi Rhodes on
Air America LA from 3-7pm PT, and you can listen to me on Air America Phoenix from this morning with Charles Goyette
here.
Should be an interesting day tomorrow with Turd Blossom on the hot seat, no?
Update: I guess Judy has better things to do than sweat over her impending story. Per reader Stephen J., Judy will also make a special appearance this weekend at an event at Cal State Fullerton by the First Amendment Coalition honoring Mark Felt. From the press release:
Miller, who went to jail to honor a pledge of confidentiality to her sources, will present a special award Saturday honoring Mark Felt (aka "Deep Throat"), the ultimate confidential source.
I will unfortunately be otherwise engaged, but if anyone goes, please do email and dish. You can find more about this revolting mockery of the First Amendment
here.
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From
Raw Story:
Two officials close to Fitzgerald told RAW STORY they have seen documents obtained from the White House Iraq Group which state that Cheney was present at several of the group's meetings. They say Cheney personally discussed with individuals in attendance at least two interviews in May and June of 2003 Wilson gave to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, in which he claimed the administration “twisted” prewar intelligence and what the response from the administration should be.
Sources close to the investigation have also confirmed that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to determine Vice President Cheney's role in the outing of Mrs. Wilson, more specifically, if Cheney ordered the leak.
You have to wonder where this came from -- Fitzgerald's investigation has been as tight as a tomb, with no leaks coming from anywhere. If this isn't bullshit, I'm betting PF will spend tomorrow one hopping mad Irishman.
Reddhedd will have more on WHIG tomorrow, after her daily dose of
The Wiggles. I'll be on the
radio in Arizona. And Patrick Fitzgerald may be putting a fist through a wall somewhere.
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I have to admit I was beginning to wonder. The cooler minds of people I respect absolutely were looking toward the simplest solution to the Judith Miller diary enigma -- namely that Miller has been cooperating with Fitzgerald all along, and he learned about her June notes during her September 30 testimony.
But sometimes being a bit of a loose cannon gives you the inside track into the psychology of wack jobs. Via Swopa, we learn that the
Wall Street Journal says Miller might have been a bit evasive in her first appearance before the GJ:
She first appeared before the grand jury on Sept. 30 to talk about two conversations she had in July 2003. She made a second appearance Wednesday to disclose a third conversation in late June that she had previously failed to mention to the grand jury.
Over at
Reuters, Adam Entous underscores the obvious question:
It was unclear how Fitzgerald learned of the June 23, 2003, conversation.
Well if you read yesterday's
WSJ, her helpful lawyers leaped into the breech:
Since then, her lawyers have told Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leak of the CIA agent's identity, that Ms. Miller's notes show that she also spoke with Mr. Libby in late June, information that was not previously given to the grand jury.
It implies they all woke up one morning and spontaneously pulled the notebook out of their collective asses, with no prosecutorial prodding.
I'm not convinced.
Todays' WSJ also goes on to note that following Judy's September 30 testimony, her
order of contempt was not lifted: Her appearance Wednesday, which lasted about an hour and 15 minutes, won her a judge's order releasing her from the contempt-of-court citation that landed her in jail. The contempt order was still in place until her testimony was complete.
If Judy had gone in initially and told the GJ about the June meeting and said "oh you know, I just might have some notes," the contempt order most certainly would've stayed in place until she produced them. But she didn't do that. Her lawyers imply that her testimony was complete on the 30th, then she suddenly remembered her notes the following week, had Bob Bennett get Fitzgerald on the horn and say "St. Judith wants to step into the confessional again."
But if Fitzgerald thought Judy had told him everything on the 30th, why wasn't the contempt citation lifted then? He knew she was holding out.
I'm sticking with my initial guess --
Judy lied and Fitzgerald nailed her.Oh but not in a biblical sense. Image be gone.
Update: Eriposte has a superb post outlining why Miller was probably not honest (aka, the "dust bunny" theory).
Go now.
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A source close to the Plame case is saying that Fitzgerald met alone with Judge Hogan yesterday, presumably to ask for an extension of the Grand Jury.
BushCo. sphincters to be set on "pucker" for a little while longer.
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CNN is reporting that in Judy Miller's testimony today before Patrick Fitzgerald's Grand Jury she revealed she had more than one source.
How CNN would know I have no idea (must be some sort of lawyer or FBI leak) but it means one of two things:
1) Miller bold-faced lied in her
press conference about the fact that the scope of her deal with Fitzgerald was limited to testimony about Libby alone:
Once I got a personal, voluntary waiver, my lawyer, Mr. Bennett, approached the special counsel to see if my grand jury testimony could be limited to the communications with the source from whom I had received that personal and voluntary waiver. The special counsel agreed to this and that was very important to me.
Since her attorneys Bob Bennett and Floyd Abrams both said in interviews that her testimony was limited to the entire Plame affair (meaning it excluded testimony about the Niger uranium matter, which Fitzgerald's original subpoena sought), this may well be true.
2) Fitzgerald busted Judy in a lie before the Grand Jury, and all deals are now off.
Neither possibility offers a particularly flattering portrait of the Gadfly Girl.
When Judy stood on the courthouse steps and preened about how she'd stuck it to Fitzgerald and only had to testify about Libby, there was a collective heart sink in the blogosphere that her "other sources" (John Bolton?) were going to skate.
Sphincters in DC must be all a-puckered today.
Update: The CNN sub-head said "Times reporter disclosed conversation with second source." I contacted Susan Petitt at CNN in Washington DC, who contacted the writer of the headline and now says it was an error they are going to correct. Sorry no "second source" was discussed.
Damn.
Update 2: They've not changed it to read "Times reporter details previously undisclosed conversation." That's us. Keeping the MSM honest, one sub-headline at a time.
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Murray Waas:
In two appearances before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, did not disclose a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame, according to sources with firsthand knowledge of his sworn testimony.
Yeah, well not exactly a news flash. Considering Patrick Fitzgerald himself outlined Libby's testimony in the
September 12 (PDF) letter leaked to the
NY Sun on October 4, and made no mention of the June interview:
Mr. Libby has discussed a meeting with Ms. Miller on July 8, 2003, at the St. Regis Hotel and a later conversation between Mr. Libby and Ms. Miller by telephone in the late afternoon on July 12, 2003. Mr. Libby has described his recollection of the substance of those two conversations, without limitation.
Let's lift up the rug -- check underneath -- nope, no mention of any June conversation anywhere.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald apparently learned about the June 23 conversation for the first time just days ago, after attorneys for Miller and The New York Times informed prosecutors that Miller had discovered a set of notes on the conversation.
Like he didn't know about Karl Rove's
memo to Stephen Hadley until Rove's attorney produced it. How helpful everyone is being. Is it just me, or does it seem like there are key bits of information being left out here by eager beaver attorneys who conveniently forget to explain why it wasn't proffered long ago? Just wondering.
Meanwhile, in recent days Fitzgerald has also expressed significant interest in whether Libby may have sought to discourage Miller-either directly or indirectly through her attorney-from testifying before the grand jury, or cooperating in other ways with the criminal probe, according to attorneys familiar with Miller's discussions with prosecutors.
Again -- no crystal balls involved. As became clear when
Fitzgerald's letter was leaked, he had not seen Libby's letter to Judith Miller 'till the rest of us did after it appeared in the New York Times. Fitzgerald told Tate that Libby was free to communicate with Judy
as long as he didn't coach her testimony, and that he didn't need to see a copy of the correspondence. Libby wrote that letter thinking Fitzgerald would never lay eyes on his torrid, overwrought prose.
I said at the time, whoever leaked that letter
fucked Libby. Now that Fitzgerald is looking into charging him with obstruction, I guess the effort was a success.
Dan Richman, a professor at Fordham Law School and a former federal prosecutor for the southern district of New York, said in an interview that while he could not speak specifically as to what occurred between Tate and Abrams, "[A]n attorney encouraging a witness to withhold information from a grand jury when the witness had no right to withhold is engaging in obstructive behavior."
It didn't occur to me that the leak of Floyd Abrams' letter in the New York Times might have the effect of screwing Tate, too. Man, that was
one fucked-up huge leak to the NYT and Powerline. I still wonder why that one doesn't have red flags all around it for anyone but me.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch,
E&P is reporting that Judy must testify again:
The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, had summoned her for the meeting today after she reportedly remembered her previously unknown June 23, 2003, meeting with I. Lewis Libby, and sent the prosecutor the notes of the meeting.
I guess she left a few things out of her original testimony. Wow. After everything she's been through, what a dramatic climax, to just now recover from a bout of amnesia. This is turning into a real bodice-ripper, no?
And Ol' Yeller Keller is getting a bit testy with what he terms "armchair critics":
"We'll be reporting this in the paper, of course. It means that for a couple more days she remains under a contempt-of-court order, and is not yet clear of legal jeopardy."
Of course, Bill. Of course.
Update: HuffPo:
The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name.
Hurricane Patrick about to make landfall.Update 2: I stand corrected, Swopa is
all over the weird leak angle. Swopa is also the author of my favorite post title of the week,
Judy Plants One in Lewis Libby's Back. I'm gonna use that one some day.
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I really had no idea I would touch such a nerve when I blogged about
Judy Miller finding her notes following her release from prison, and speculating about the events that led up to that. For those late to the game, Mark Kleiman actually does a better job of summarizing the "
dust bunny theory."
In a nutshell: it posits that Judy thought she could get cute, cut a deal with Fitzgerald to limit her testimony and then lied to the Grand Jury (possibly about the first time she met with Libby, having been coached by him). Fitzgerald busted her, and she's now scrambling to save her ass and offering up her notes from a heretofore unknown meeting with A Boy Named Scooter on June 22.
Since then, a lot of really
superb bloggers have offered their thoughts on the "dust bunny theory." Jeralyn at TalkLeft is skeptical that Judy lied before the Grand Jury, and argues that since Judy's June 22 notes were not covered in Fitzgerald's original subpoena (which sought documents from July 6 to July 13), she could not be in trouble for
failing to produce them:
I don't see anything from which to conclude she hid the notes and is now in trouble or facing a perjury charge. To the contrary, I think Miller is cooperating with Fitzgerald now. She is not going back to jail period.
Well that may very well be true. But I have to point out that the
original subpoena called for "documents and testimony between her and a specified government official [Libby]...concerning Valerie Plame Wilson...
or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium."Judy very much wanted to get out from under that uranium inquiry, and at her post-testimony self-congratulation ceremony was
really proud that she had backed Fitzgerald into a corner and pounded him into submission:
I can only tell you that as soon as I received a personal assurance from the source that I was able to talk to him and talk to the source about my testimony, it was only then and as a result of the special prosecutor's agreement to narrow the focus of the inquiry to focus on the way - on that source, that I was able to testify
Now, I have spent the week talking to people who have known and worked with Fitzgerald over the years, and my sense is he could give a rat's ass if Judy stayed in the slam doing pilates in the yard for the next ten years.
If the uranium was coming off the table, he got something for it. Something like extending the scope of his inquiry into June without having to go back for another subpoena.
I'm giving pretty high odds that something like this happened, because -- well -- I'm just not ready to embrace the idea that Judy willfully renounced the dark side and happily turned over notes that
Fitzgerald otherwise knew nothing about. It just violates my sense of character, psychology and drama.
In order to believe this, you would have to accept the fact that when
Judy returned to the Times, she inhaled the fragrant bouquet of the flowers. She reveled in the warm embraces and the camaraderie. She looked out over the crowd of fellow reporters-in-arms and said, "This is my clan, this is my tribe. I belong here...."
....and then turned around and fucked the entire newsroom.From the
NYT on October 1, in an article written by David Johnston and Richard W. Stevenson, with reporting by Doug Jehl:
Ms. Miller spoke with Mr. Libby first on July 8, when the two met, and on July 12, when they spoke by phone. She was working on an article about banned weapons in Iraq that was not published.
(my emphasis throughout)
The article appeared two days after she cut her deal with Fitzgerald, the day after she testified before the Grand Jury. Now that we know that Miller and Libby first talked about Wilson on the 22nd and not on the 8th, we have to ask -- who is the source for the statements about when Miller and Libby "first" spoke?
Well, there are only two people (presumably) who were party to that conversation, Judy and Scooter. Scooter's career of talking to reporters has been tragically truncated, and he now speaks through his lawyer.
Aside from the shame of having their hands tied behind their backs by a hopelessly complicit management, these reporters are thorough professionals who have shown themselves on repeated occasion to be perfectly capable of adding
"...according to sources who have been briefed on the meeting" or some other roadsign to hip the reader when what they are about to read is quite possibly dissembling lawyer bullshit.
One would naturally assume that this information came from the Times' own star reporter, Miller, recently out of jail and anxious to get back with her peeps. And she punks 'em.
Now, the unbelievable part in this theory is not that she tried to make her fellow reporters her bitches -- she'd certainly
done it once before to Jehl, a decent guy who's tried to hold the Times to account in the past and who ought to be getting pretty tired of Judy's bullshit at this point. (Note to Jehl: third time's the hat trick, man. Enough's enough.)
No, for me this theory falls apart when Judy has an interlude of honesty standing before Fitzgerald's Grand Jury. Why would she then walk out and lie to Johnston and Jehl and the rest of her "clan?" I'm not buying it. If she was honest with Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury, why did she allow her own paper to print a blatant fabrication on the very next day? If she planned to cop to the June 22 meeting all along, why hang her "tribe" out to dry and make them look even stupider and more uninformed than they had been before in her wake, if that was even possible?
That's the thing about liars. Once they start with a particular lie, they don't make pit stops for honesty. They keep going 'til they're busted.
Also, Fitzgerald interviewed Judy in jail on Thursday, September 29. We assume she told him everything she was going to tell him the next day -- and by all accounts he is a very, very careful and thorough prosecutor. If she had mentioned any notes, my gut feeling is that Fitzgerald would've had them in his hands, pronto. Why wait a week? Why drag Miller in front of the Grand Jury without having seen what could be critical information in the notes first?
For those who want to argue that Miller just "remembered" a bunch of previously forgotten documents outside the scope of the subpoena that she (or the New York Times) simply willingly offered up -- you're going to have to work a little harder to convince my inner novelist.
Update: I got done late last night and forgot to add the props -- to shystee in the comments for the title, to
Mark Kleiman's reader who helped congeal my own thoughts on the Niger uranium aspect of Judy's testimony, and to the co-author of the "dust bunny" theory
emptywheel, who also adds this in the comments:
And we know, too, that the NYT did their own correcting of the Johnston story. Two days after the fact. But they didn't correct the July 8 date. Which says that, as of Sunday night, the NYT was still operating on the story that Judy first spoke to Libby in July.
I'd add to that the silence of the NYT after this happened. They went from Happy Judy to Taciturn Judy in just a few days. Something happened.
Further, the intrepid and compulsively readable
Tom Maguire points to this in the October 1 NYT article:
Lawyers for Ms. Miller would not discuss her testimony. But a legal adviser who has talked with her about her conversations with Mr. Libby said she talked twice to Mr. Libby and did not fully recall all the details, but kept notes that had been turned over to the prosecutor in edited form.
So both Judy AND her legal advisers were sticking to the "talked twice" fiction the day after she testified. Anyone still want to argue she went in and uncharacteristically coughed up the truth to Fitzgerald?
Update 2: From the comments,
Roger Ailes says that the Times has printed
a correction and now the date is June 23, not June 22. Keeping up with this stuff is a bitch.
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Last night saw the quarterly gathering of the LA Bloggers in Kobepallooza II at the lovely Laurel Canyon home of Brian Linse of Ain't No Bad Dude. In attendance were Mark Kleiman, Elton from Busy Busy Busy, Skippy, Kevin Drum, Arianna Huffington, Mickey Kaus, John from Crooks & Liars, Johnny Wendell from Air America, Cookie Jill, Leah from Corrente, David E., Steve Audio, RJ Eskow, The Disgruntled Chemist, Rob from Dirty Liberal Words, Some Watery Tart, and my old friend from the San Francisco punk rock days, Howie Klein (who is now blogging at Down With Tyranny). (If I forgot anyone don't suffer in silence, remind me and I'll put you up.) Brian also invited a bunch of wingers and libertarians he knew from being in the blog world for many many years, but since I didn't really talk with any of them I wasn't sure who they were exactly. (Nothing personal, just spent my time catching up with the people I knew).
Kobe actually got to go to this event, and was remarkably well-behaved in spite of the fact that he is an outrageously spoiled little guy (seen here flirting with Cookie Jill & Leah). When I spoke with Brian today he said only half the wine he usually goes through for a party of that size was consumed, which he attributed to the fact that most of the wingnuts he invited did not show up.
I guess it just goes to show who's leaning heavily on the booze these days.
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I'll be on KTLK AM 1150 (the local Air American station here in Los Angeles) with Johnny Wendell some time after 11:00 am PT this morning, you can go to the web cast
here.
Gotta put the muzzle on the four-letter words.
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