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Friday, October 03, 2003
How would Americans fare? Yesterday The Guardian ran this article about how poor a sampling of the British public did on an Encyclopedia Britannica poll about art. Today they have an art quiz, but I don't know how similar it is to the one given by Encyclopedia Britannica. The questions aren't that hard (I missed #5 though...back to the Hirshhorn I go!) and it's fun to take. Anyway, at least I now know who the "Australian with the wobble boards" is. Do you think the average American would do any better? Carney on the Air You all can catch me on the radio Saturday morning at around 9:05. The topic: the CIA leak. The Bruce Elliot show, on WBAL in Baltimore (AM 1090). On the left side of the webpage, you'll find a "LISTEN LIVE" link, in case you're not in Baltimore. Phantom Keys Have you ever wondered what the point is of those "Scroll Lock," "SysRq," "Pause" and "Break" keys on your computer keyboard? The Straight Dope explains. A case for the Yankees? Towards the end of last night's Yankees-Twins game, Fox play-by-play man Joe Buck (who in the past has referred to Sox ace Pedro Martinez as Peter Martinez) credits "Yankee mystique" for a seventh inning rally, after Minnesota had held the Yanks to 2 runs through the first 15 innings of the series. So it was "Yankee mystique" that was responsible for a 3 run rally in the 7th inning of game 2 of the divisional series (not exactly Reggie Jackson hitting three home runs in one World Series game). Who should be more upset by this pandering to Yankee loyals: the Twins or the Yankees themselves? According to Buck, it wasn't Minnesota's balanced pitching staff that stifled the Yanks, it's just that the ghosts of Babe Ruth, Micky Mantle and Joe D. happened to have the day off. And as rare as it is for me to ask for credit to be given to the Yankees, doesn't this ignore the work that they've done to put a championship-caliber team on the field? The Yankees scored three in the 7th for a reason that Buck didn't mention: Jason Giambi and Alfonso Soriano are two of the best offensive players in the sport. Thursday, October 02, 2003
Re: An Exercise I take all of Bob's points--with parenthetical qualifications. Indeed, Novak never claimed that he was told outing Plame wouldn't endanger anyone (but that is an obvious implication of what he supposedly was told). It is certainly also true that Wilson alone didn't make this leak a big deal (I meant to say that he made a big deal of it). And finally, it is undoubtedly true that it is important to discern whether the leakers thought outing Plame would endanger other operatives, whatever the truth may have been. It should have been my third qualification, as you said. That said, going on what's been reported (which is mostly rumor and anonymously sourced leaks), it looks like Plame's outing was more serious than the CIA indicated to Novak. The real mystery is that none of this makes sense yet. We have an odd situation where bracketing this complete lack of intelligible motive, everything we know so far points to a genuine and reprehensible crime having been commited. But going on motive alone, the Bush administration had nothing to gain from Plame's outing, and Wilson (Milbank, Pincus, Corn, etc.) seem to have been very well served by it. Not that that proves anything. [add.: A qualification: I suppose I can imagine some low-level Dartmouth conservative somewhere in the administration might have been spiteful and idiotic enough to have tried to pull this stunt off--perhaps thinking that any damage to a Wilson was worth the trouble.] re: An Exercise Just some quick points: - Novak hasn't said that they told him that revealing her name would not endanger anybody, only that they didn't tell him it would. He also says they mentioned that if he printed her name she would have "difficulties" travelling abroad, and I'm still not sure what Novak took that to mean. - I don't think it's accurate to say that Wilson has made this into a big deal. He's been flapping his arms and lips since July, and the mainstream press didn't care until this week. It took leaks from the CIA (to MSNBC, about the investigation) and a senior administration official (to the Post, about the two White House officials making the calls) to turn this into a major story. The CIA first expressed concerns about the leak to the DOJ in July, presumably not at Wilson's bidding. If you're going to argue that the political motives of the players are relevant, you've got to explain why someone in the administration is stoking the fire through the Post and why someone in the CIA wants this investigated and wants the press to know about it. Of course challenging these players' motives is all but impossible when they're anonymous, which is why all guns are aimed at Wilson, who just doesn't matter anymore. - Even if your scenario is indeed what happened, isn't it also important that the two White House officials who made the calls knew that there was no danger in outing her, that they weren't gambling with agent and informant safety and intelligence security? I think that should be your third condition, and I wonder how easy it would have been for two White House officials to thoroughly confirm that there would be no danger in exposing her. Apparently, the CIA still doesn't know: "After the column ran, the CIA began a damage assessment of whether any foreign contacts Plame had made over the years could be in danger. The assessment continues, sources said." re: An Exercise or: When Character Matters One can be simple about this. If a.) Novak is not lying when he says that the CIA told him that revealing Plame's identity would not endanger anybody (i.e., that they made only a "weak" recommendation not to run her name) and b.) the CIA was not wrong in telling Novak this, then whatever the legal ramifications this was not really that big a deal. You can get worked up if you like based on technicalities of the law or the general precedent this sets, but in the above scenario, there was never any risk of serious damage Plame or any other operatives. That is only meant to be a possibility. I think it fits a lot of what the sources you listed say (perhaps she was an operative once, but is not now, etc.) It doesn't fit the third-party account of Novak's conversation with the CIA in the Washington Post, but Carney and Novak himself dispute this. But if this mere possibility ends up being the truth of the matter, then one might reasonably ask why Joe Wilson has made such a big deal out of all of this. It becomes more a political issue than anything else, and so the political motives of the people in the story become a relevant object of investigation. (Of course, nobody cares about whether Wilson's a pederast. What one could legitimately care about is whether this issue is anything more than a vehicle for Wilson's opportunism.) The possibility worth considering is that Wilson is only upset about this violation of the law because he thinks he can hang the administration on a technicality. "Technicality", you might exclaim, "but this was outing a covert agent!" Again, the only thing that makes any violation of this law significant is that such a violation endangers the lives and work of operatives, but we are here postulating that such a danger did not exist. "I am deeply sorry about that." Arnold deserves credit for coming clean. He could have denied the charges and smeared the accusers, but he didn't. Even though I think Clinton showed that past inappropriateness with women isn't a dealbreaker with American voters. Groper Arnold Schwartzenegger just delivered a denial/apology concerning a recent L.A. Times story which accused him of groping six women--one as recently as 2000. He was on the first stop of a campaign tour, and when he arrived he got a hearty welcome. The crowd was very enthusiastic to hear his denial of this story (he said, I think, that the accusations were trash and that you shouldn't believe everything you hear). But he must have surprised his supporters when he transitioned into the apology part of his statement with "but where there's smoke there's fire...", because a few continued to cheer and clap. I wonder what they were imagining would follow from that opening: perhaps "...and this campaign is on FIRE!" Relativism Says someone at espn.com, "Knuckleballer Tim Wakefield will get the start for the Red Sox in Game 2. He was roughed up in two starts against the A's during the regular season (4.50 ERA), but escaped with two no-decisions." One man's "roughed up" is another man's "quality start." An Exercise Let's scrub this story of everything that depends on Wilson's word and see what's left. What was done? From the WaPo's administration source: - "a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." [link] - "The official said there was no indication that Bush knew about the calls." [link] From an anonymous journalist who talked to WaPo: - "Another journalist yesterday confirmed receiving a call from an administration official providing the same information about Wilson's wife before the Novak column appeared on July 14 in The Post and other newspapers. [link] From other anonymous WaPo sources: - "A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson's wife as 'fair game.'"* [link] From anonymous CNN sources: - "But sources told CNN that Novak was among as many as six journalists who were told Plame's name." [link] How classified/dangerous was the leak? From the White House Counsel's first letter to White House employees: - "We were informed last evening by the Department of Justice that it has opened an investigation into possible unauthorized disclosures concerning the identity of an undercover CIA employee." [link] Emphasis added. From Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst: - "I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. But given that, I was a CIA analyst for four years. I was undercover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until I left the agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it." [link] From the WaPo CIA/intelligence source(s): - "When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover." [link] - "Plame currently is an analyst at the CIA. But, intelligence officials said, she previously served overseas in a clandestine capacity, which means her name is kept classified to protect her previous contacts and operations, and her ability to work again undercover overseas." [link] From an anonymous "senior intelligence official" who spoke to CNN: - "'If she were only an analyst, not an operative, we would not have filed a crimes report' with the Justice Department, a senior intelligence official said." [link] From anonymous "U.S. officials" who spoke to MSNBC/NBC: - "But the CIA affirmed in answers to questions from the Justice Department this month that the woman was a covert operative, other U.S. officials told NBC News." [link] From an anonymous "senior intelligence official" who spoke to MSNBC: - "'We would not have filed a crime report if we didn't think so [that federal law could had been violated],' a senior intelligence official told NBC News' Pete Williams and Robert Windrem on Tuesday." [link] From other anonymous WaPo sources: - "Sources said that some of the other journalists who received the leak did not use the information because they were uncomfortable with unmasking an undercover agent or because they did not consider the information relevant to Wilson's report about Niger." [link] - "Sources said Wilson's wife is a clandestine operations officer for the CIA, now out of the field and working on weapons of mass destruction." [link] From the Newsday intelligence source: - "Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity -- at least she was undercover until last week, when she was named by columnist Robert Novak." [link] What motive would the White House have for leaking this? From the WaPo's administration source: - "'Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,' the senior [administration] official said of the alleged leak." [link] - "the senior official said the leaks were 'wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility.'" [link] From an anonymous journalist who talked to WaPo: - "The journalist, who asked not to be identified because of possible legal ramifications, said that the information was provided as part of an effort to discredit Wilson, but that the CIA information was not treated as especially sensitive. 'The official I spoke with thought this was a part of Wilson's story that wasn't known and cast doubt on his whole mission,' the person said, declining to identify the official he spoke with. 'They thought Wilson was having a good ride and this was part of Wilson's story.'" [link] From other anonymous WaPo sources: - "Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility. They alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him." [link] Why would anyone in the administration be talking trash about someone else in the administration to reporters? From anonymous "U.S. Officials" who spoke to NBC News: - "Privately, however, Bush's senior advisers were angrily accusing the CIA of leaking word of the probe last week to embarrass the White House, U.S. officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity." [link] _________________________________ So what's left without Wilson's claims? A senior administration official has accused two top White House officials of calling at least six journalists and revealing Plame's identity and occupation on top of telling Novak. CNN sources have confirmed this. At least one journalist has acknowledged receiving such a call. The CIA thinks this information was sensitive enough to merit what the White House Counsel has called "an investigation into possible unauthorized disclosures concerning the identity of an undercover CIA employee," strongly suggesting that the CIA's request for the probe referred to Plame as "undercover." Her undercover status has been confirmed by a Republican former CIA analyst who says he trained with her, "intelligence officials" who talked to WaPo, "U.S. officials" who talked to NBC News, and "intelligence officials" who talked to Newsday. The WaPo senior administration official, one of the contacted journalists, and "sources familiar with conversations" all concur that the motive behind the leak was to undercut Wilson's credibility in the immediate aftermath of his Times piece. In short, Wilson could be exposed as an illiterate, smack-addled pederast and this would still be a big, disturbing story. One might discount the value of anonymous sources, but there are a number of them, they're agreeing with each other, and at least one comes from within the administration. *- Incidentally, this is an echo of the one bit of evidence Wilson claims to have of Rove's involvement, that "Washington reporters told him that senior White House adviser Karl Rove said his wife was 'fair game.'" If this WaPo source is Wilson or has communicated with Wilson, big deal. If it's not, then that's quite a coincidence. re: Rush on Judgment Karl Ravech just interrupted my Sox game to report that Limbaugh has resigned from ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown. Looks like Rush has bigger problems now. Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Re: Victoria Plame, Overt Agent "Neo-conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both."–Joseph Wilson in the Washington Times* Now I don't have any dogs in this fight, but I think as far as repulsiveness and ruthlessness are concerned, it looks like Wilson's a good match for Rove, who he's accused, apparently without any evidence whatsoever, of being behind the leak. However this shakes out, though, Wilson's certainly not mounting anything remotely close to the moral high ground. And what Wilson has offered doesn't amount to a coherent story yet. How exactly, was outing Plame supposed to "smear" Wilson (which he says)? Why would Rove be calling reporters to "smear" or "out" Plame after the Novak piece was published? Maybe Wilson's carried away with righteous rage, or an admirable sense that he needs to protect his wife from this. But it's starting to look like there's a possibility that he's simply an opportunist–and his wife's outing was relatively inconsequential. *: Neo-cons and religious conservatives have hijacked the administration? Who, exactly, was flying this plane before the hijacking? Thank God! The First Lady has weighed in! "My husband wants the very highest ethics in the White House. So, I suspect whenever this washes out, we'll see who did it, if anyone did." re: Novak I wouldn't have included the "(!)" after mentioning the Corner's questions about Bob Novak. If you were looking for criticism of Novak, NRO is as good a place as any. In fact, it would be fair to say that it's a better place than any. Read the relevant paragraphs below from the Washington Post piece and note that the disagreement seems to be between CIA folk who weren't in the conversation and Bob Novak--who was: When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover. Novak said in an interview last night that the request came at the end of a conversation about Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's role in it. "They said it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment," he said. "They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it." Rush on Judgment Limbaugh: "We supposedly have freedom of speech in this country." We do. And your critics have the freedom to criticize you, rightly or wrongly, and ABC has the freedom to fire you, rightly or wrongly. Did Congress abridge something new today? re: Novak Robert A. George over at The Corner (!) has a question about that: "Exactly what did Novak think his CIA contact meant with the statement that printing Plame's position would cause her "difficulties" traveling abroad? Novak concluded that the contact didn't mean Plame or anyone else would be endangered, but that word seems to be some sort of red flag." And as I mentioned below, a CIA official has said that Novak was urged not to run it "for security reasons." If that's true (and I don't know that Novak has specifically denied it... he should, and loudly, if it's false), it's just hard to understand how they didn't make the argument. Novak It's almost laughable when folks say Novak should have sat on the story that Wilson's wife was an agent because the CIA asked him to. If a reporter squelched a story every time a government asked him to, all we could do was run press releases. There needs to be a compelling argument why to cover something up. The CIA didn't make that argument, apparently, and so their hush request was disregarded. And yeah, I concur with Jay. Finally, Novak will be on with Wolf Blitzer today at 5:05. Yesterday, Wolf made it clear he disapproved of Novak's behavior. Process of Elimination? It seems clear that Novak referred to his source as "no partisan gunslinger" to subdue some of the momentum of those who see this as a calculated, cut-throat move from within the administration. But is he also telling us that it couldn't have been Karl Rove, who was the name thrown out there by Mr. Wilson? If "partisan gunslinger" were to be found on any official's business card, wouldn't it be Rove's? Perhaps this was unintentional on Novak's part, but it's hard for me to see Rove on the other end of Novak's line. So... one down, dozens to go? re: Novak's Latest Trying to add it up. Novak today: "During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue." Novak on 7/22: "Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger." Now, there’s nothing factually contradictory here, since all that appears to have changed is Novak’s interpretation of how the info was given to him and the emphasis placed on it by the leaker. But it’s awfully hard to reconcile "It was an offhand revelation" with "they thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." If by "the published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue" Novak is challenging the initial WaPo article from Sunday (which he should be: it's the one that broke this and it's the most damning), he's mischaracterizing it. Here's the relevant section: "Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge." Nothing is said about the order in which the reporters and Novak were contacted, only that the calls were made before his column ran. Nothing is said about the White House seeking Novak out, or using him as a "willing pawn." That piece from 7/22 ran in Newsday, and it's by Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce, both of whom were named in the most recent letter sent to all White House employees by Alberto R. Gonzales, the President's Counsel. When Novak says "...the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else," he really ought to mention that they specifically asked him not to run her name (according to him) "for security reasons" (according to a CIA official). If Novak thinks the official is wrong or lying, he should say so. Novak's motives for his initial article: "I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one." Novak later says that aside from Wilson's wife suggesting him for the job, he was an "incredible choice by the CIA for its mission," a "vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one." He doesn't mention that Wilson has also donated heavily to Bush, and that he was originally appointed ambassador to Gabon by Bush's father. Novak isn't using the meat cleaver that Cliff May and others are weilding, but before he calls Wilson's credibility and character into any more question, he would do well to remember his own words: "That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism."" An incredible choice? One last thing: all of the denials of Rove's involvement that I've found seemed directed towards the allegation that he leaked to Novak. Someone should ask him or McClellan specifically if he was involved in calling the six other journalists. Novak's Latest I think Novak explains why he published the name, as well as much more in his column today. re: Classic Classics From the Inbox: A friend sent a useful link for those who are interested in the Harvard Classics, but not interested in paying $55. Tuesday, September 30, 2003
re: Valerie Plame, Overt Wife I can't vouch for Larry Johnson, but he's former CIA, he's a Republican, he knows Plame personally, and on the Newshour he said that this is a very, very big deal. Atrios has a transcript and a link to the audio. "This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been under cover for three decades. She is not, as Bob Novak suggested, a "CIA analyst." Given that, I was a CIA analyst for 4 years. I was under cover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the CIA until I left the Intelligence Agency on September 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it. The fact that she was under cover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous." Other DC News The Iraqi Orchestra will be performing at the Kennedy Center in December. This will be their first visit to the United States. (Here's the story from the Washington Post.) re: Valerie Plame, Overt Wife Re Dempsey's point about why Novak didn't withhold the name even though the CIA asked him to: we should maybe ask why six other journalists did withhold it (along with her occupation). [add.: Namely, did they not think it newsworthy, or did they also call the CIA?] Or, then again, why Time didn't withhold it. They might indeed share some blame (by acknowledging that another source was correct, aren't they also disclosing confidential info?), but the CIA has the facts on their side: they asked Novak not to run the name. Novak's got the interpretation: that by not explicitly saying that running it would endanger anyone, they were implying that it wouldn't. I'd sooner blame the CIA for confirming her identity in the first place than for not telling him not to run it with enough emphasis. And again, it's quite possible that even if she wasn't undercover, her position was still confidential, and its disclosure would still be potentially illegal. That, I think, is supported both by the language of the CIA report, according to both MSNBC's and the Post's accounts. re: Valerie Plame, Overt Wife TNR's posted the start of a debate on this between Spencer Ackerman and Cliff "No, seriously, look over there at Wilson!" May. re: Valerie Plame, Overt Wife According to the Times, Novak "said he checked with the C.I.A., which asked him not to use Ms. Plame's name but gave him no indication that doing so would endanger her or anyone else." Assuming that's true, I'm curious to know how the CIA "asked" Novak to withhold Plame's identity, and why he didn't. I imagine that if the CIA really wanted to keep Plame's name confidential at that point, it would not have ended up in Novak's column. This only supports Carney's point that this may not have been a "leak" of a covert operative at all, or it may have been the responsibilty of the CIA as much as the Administration. re: Valerie Plame, Overt Wife Calpundit consolidates what we know about how undercover Mrs. Plame was. The most informative bit comes from MSNBC: "The CIA lawyers responded this month by affirming that the woman's identity was classified, that whoever released it was not authorized to do so and that the news media would not have been able to guess her identity without the leak, the senior officials said." Wilson doesn't matter anymore. re: Valerie Plame, Overt Wife Straight from a senior Crux-family official*, via Google: "He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has two sons and two daughters." That's Copyright 2002 at the bottom of the page. Again, I think Wilson's credibility is to the side of things now, but I do wish he'd tighten up his story. * - My mother. Valerie Plame, Overt Wife Wilson is just wrong when he says his wife's maiden name is a secret. Wilson said the series of similar calls he received, which included four journalists from three networks, stopped on July 22, after he appeared on NBC's 'Today' show and said the disclosure of his wife's maiden name could jeopardize the 'entire network that she may have established.' Wilson's entry in Who's Who in America lists his wife as Valerie Plame. I have trouble believing this is only thing Wilson's wrong about. He's already retracted what he said about Rove. Will he now retract what he said about the WH calling all sorts of reporters to pitch this story? re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent According to WaPo, "the CIA report pointed to a 'possible violation of federal criminal law involving the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,'" suggesting perhaps that there's plenty of trouble without needing to use the covert-agent-outing law. Blind speculation, but doesn't it seem that if the CIA thought there was enough of a wrong done to merit approaching the DOJ, Plame's identity/occupation was most likely classified, even if she wasn't covert? I wish someone would explain if "She is a case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction" means she was covert. Classic Classics Cruxers aware of the “great books” program at St. John’s College, might not realize that the origin of the great books in American popular consciousness was Charles Eliot’s “Five-Foot Shelf of Knowledge” The Harvard Classics, which first appeared in 1909. Aside from being edited by a Harvard President, however, the Harvard Classics had very little to do with Harvard education as it existed then (or at any time). The Classics were part of an attempt to democratize, and market, high culture--Eliot thought that anyone who could read these fifty books could provide himself a liberal education and Collier and Sons saw this as a golden opportunity to make money from middle-class’s sense of cultural inferiority. Which is not to say that the books weren't a good and welcome thing to popularize. Some of my own first acquaintace with the classics came through the Harvard Classics and their much inferior cousin the Britannica Great Books. The Harvard Classics, however, were also the forerunner of less defensible things like the audio-taped lecture series you see advertised in contemporary high-brow periodicals--a typical ad in the current Foreign Affairs serves as a particularly vulgar example: “It took 3,000 years for the debate chronicled in these lectures to reach maturity. Your mind can encompass it by the end of next month”. The market that Collier and Sons identified in 1907 is thus now in 2003, pretty well-saturated. (For a good account of one part of this story, the marketing of the Everyman Modern Library, see Jay Satterfield’s fantastic, absorbing, insightful The World's Best Books.) The Harvard Classics have never been out of print for long during this time, though they have gone through many revisions. To distinguish itself from this throng of competing culture-purveyors, though, the Classics have recently been reissued in a particularly ostentatious style: premium-quality leather deeply dyed in Harvard crimson, moiré fabric end sheets, accents in 22kt gold, and so on. The most interesting marketing angle, though, is that the “Millenium Edition” is a faithful re-issue of the first set of Harvard Classics as Eliot assembled them, and so includes works that no one in his right mind would include on a contemporary “Great Books” list, like such not-quite-immortal works as Cellini’s Autobiography and Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast. The idea, I suppose, is that if there’s some snob appeal to having an edition of the classics of Western Civilization, there’s even more snob appeal to having a classic edition of the classics. But the obvious consequence of this is that whatever contemporary relevance the great books had that derived from the selection process is totally gone. The middle-classes are now invited to read the books that would have made them well-read had they lived at the turn of the last century instead of now (though there is, of course, overlap). And for $55 a pop. It’s enough to make you yearn for the relative sanity of Mortimer Adler. re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent Here's the law governing the disclosure of the identity of covert agents. Two points: 1) It applies to covert agents only. 2) It is my understanding that nobody is prosecutable under this law who was not authorized to receive the info. In other words, Novak can't be busted under this. Valerie Plame, Oppressed Woman Well, Democrats have turned the Senate floor into a political rally against the Administration. Hearing Barbara Boxer lament just now that women have to deal with a glass ceiling and then complain: "here's a woman, working in a non-traditional field, not getting any recognition..." Yeah, Barbara, that's why Plame wasn't getting any recognition, because she's a girl. re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent Is WaPo dropping a hint? "An article that appeared on the Time magazine Web site the same week Novak's column was published said that "some government officials have noted to Time in interviews . . . that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." The same article quoted from an interview with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, saying that Cheney did not know about Wilson's mission "until this year when it became public in the last month or so."" The byline includes Mike Allen, who wrote that "The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists," suggesting that the official might have named the leakers off the record. Ten bucks on Scooter. Monday, September 29, 2003
re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent Drudge is now running that Wilson has donated $1,000 to the Kerry campaign; May dedicates about seven paragraphs of his piece to attacking Wilson by painting him as a raging Democrat who opposed the war; Mark R. Levin writes that Wilson has brought this on himself and his family, claiming that he "clearly relished every second of his 15 minutes of fame." This is pretty standard damage-control garbage, but isn't it obvious to everyone how irrelevant Wilson's credibility is? The players here are Novak, the administration and the other journalists. The only thing, if anything, resting on Wilson's word is Andrea Mitchell's involvement. In Novak's defense, his original article contained none of this ugliness: "[Wilson's] first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism." President George H.W. Bush the next year named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998." I'm reminded of something my brother once said: "The politics of personal destruction isn't as fun as it sounds." re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent Over at The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez thinks she's found an out: "Bob Novak, on Crossfire a little ago, said that Joe Wilson's wife is not an operative, but an analyst, suggesting this debate is really over nothing if that is true. (He also says no one from the White House called him.)" But WaPo's had it up since 12:20 this afternoon that she's an analyst, and that's not exactly like saying she's a janitor: "She is a case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction. Novak published her maiden name, Plame, which she had used overseas and has not been using publicly. Intelligence sources said top officials at the agency were very concerned about the disclosure because it could allow foreign intelligence services to track down some of her former contacts and lead to the exposure of agents." What's more, the fact that Novak initiated contact with the White House doesn't change that the officials told him that "the trip was inspired by his [Wilson's] wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction," as Novak said on Crossfire today. What it does mean is that there are six more journalists out there who were called, not five. Upcoming Shows in DC A couple of shows are opening this week in DC that look interesting: (1) Surrealism and Modernism is opening at the Phillips Collection on October 4th. The show is from the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford Connecticut. (The Phillips Collection has a new website as well.) (2) Starting October 1st you can see Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier in the East Building of the National Gallery. I'm very excited about the latter show. Since the subject will be held constant, I think it will be an excellent way to see Picasso's development and exploration in Cubism. I'll post some thoughts after visiting. Also, if your wallet isn't feeling Phillips friendly (the show is $8 for students and $10 regular) and Picasso isn't your thing, check out the Romare Bearden show at the National Gallery. It's really wonderful. (I'll post more about it soon.) re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent It's worth reading closely the relevant graph from Novak's 7/14 column: Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. There are three claims: (1) Plame is a CIA operative; (2) Plame suggested Wilson for the Niger mission; (3) CIA says its people picked Wilson and asked Plame to contact him. Claim (2) is the only one attributed to "senior administration officials." Claim (1) is the claim at stake, and it is not attributed. Claim (3) implies Plame might be an operative, and is credited to the CIA. In other words, close reading of this paragraph, and everything else I know about the 7/14 story, in no way pins the "leak" on the administration, pointing to the CIA if anyone. re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent CNN is playing up that one of the central characters in the Plame/Wilson story is a commentator for their network and is going on Crossfire today. Let me just say this: don't tune in expecting any scoops on who the sources are. You'd have better luck phoning Andrea Mitchell, who also spoke with these sources. Also, note, Scott McClellan repeatedly refers to the punishment that would be appropriate, if anyone in the WH, "leaked classified information." He has never said, to my notice, "leaked this information." In other words, Plame's identity may not be classified. Re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent Foxnews.com, cnn.com, WaPo, abcnews.com, Drudge... They're all leading with the Plame story. WSJ put it at the top of its news column this morning. So why can't it be found anywhere on the front page of nytimes.com? Re: Valerie Plame, Overt Agent Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Jacob Levy responds to May's article. May's response is the first defense that I've heard put forward, though of course it doesn't hold water. A secret that's "open" to beltway reporters (if this secret was) isn't the same thing as public knowledge, and two White House officials calling six journalists "purely and simply for revenge," with the obvious intent of getting them to run it, is "wrong and a huge miscalculation." May references his own hatchet-job on Wilson from July, the nasty spirit of which Novak was partly responding to in his now-famous column: Novak painted Wilson as a hero who "risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath." If anyone hasn't read Dan Drezner's take on the affair, you should. Valerie Plame, Overt Agent It makes a fun mystery novel to try to guess who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Sadly, that may be a silly undertaking. Valerie Plame may have been an overt agent. Cliff May asserts as much in this National Review Online piece. In other words, it's possible that "senior administration officials" "leaked" something that could have been learned through more open channels. more later... Sunday, September 28, 2003
A New Pearl Harbor Ed Vulliamy, the Observer's American correspondent of six years is going home, and has written a passionate elegy for the lost America of the late 90's. It reminds me of the line from Mr. Show: "It's the people from your generation, the mid-seventies, who ruined things for my generation, the late seventies." The crux of Vulliamy's argument, though it winds itself through murky suggestions of a vast conspiracy of oilmen to return national sovereignty to Texas, is that America is no longer cool. It's no longer casual about blow-jobs and is really uptight about terrorism. (I warn you, though, that Vulliamy is probably not the best authority on what's "cool" in America; he seems to think it has something to do with listening to the Allman Brothers with George Stephanopoulos). His account of his time in America and the changes America has undergone is glib, flowery and self-satisfied. In other words, it has all the common vices of cultural punditry. But what bothered me was the implication of the following passage (which is merely a repetition of a charge more explicitly made in various leftist magazines): "For nearly a decade a group of people exiled from power during the Clinton years had been making plans. Their names are now more or less well known: Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Douglas Feith. In a series of papers they devised a blueprint for unchallenged and unchallengeable American power, military and political, across the globe, with the Middle East and Iraq as fulcrum. All that was needed to realise that dream - said a document produced by one of their many think-tanks, the Project for the New American Century - was 'a new Pearl Harbour'." The thinly veiled insinuation here is that September 11th was part of some right-wing plan, blueprint or dream to take over the world. Vulliamy, of course, is careful not to imply (which would be crazy) that Cheney et. al. actually planned, dreamt or drew up the blueprints for September 11th. He suggests instead (and this is merely malicious and ungrounded) that they wanted it or something like it ('a new Pearl Harbor') to happen. Reading the whole sentence he excerpts, which is the only evidence he provides, goes most of the way towards exonerating PNAC from this ridiculous accusation. Here it is: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" see The "process of transformation" spoken of is the move from old military paradigms and weapon designs to new ones which are more responsive to information technology. The sentence can thus be rewritten with no loss of meaning as "The modernization of the military will probably be gradual unless there is some crisis that makes it a public issue." Still uncool, perhaps, but definitely not evidence that anyone in the PNAC ever yearned for a new Pearl Harbor. The Gerrymander This week, if Texas Republicans can work out their disagreements over whether to pair Lubbock with Abilene or with Midland, there will be a new congressional map for the Lonestar State. The legislature failed to pass a map before the 2002 elections and so a court made a least-change map, perpetuating the 1992 Democratic gerrymander. The 2002 map added two GOP districts as reapportionment gave Texas two new seats. This decreased the Democratic majority in Texas down to a 17-to-15 edge. This is a little odd when you look at Texas politically. In 2000, George W. Bush won Texas by more than 20 percentage points. The state Senate has 31 seats, and the GOP there has a 19-12 edge. The State House of Representatives has a similar almost-two-thirds-GOP breakdown. Every single statewide office, including both Senate seats, Governor and Lieutenant Governor, is held by a Republican, and none of those races was really close in 2002. It's fair to say that this new map, which likely will give the GOP a 20-12 edge in the delegation, is far fairer than the current one, which wasn't even drawn by a legislature. 08/31/2003 - 09/06/2003 09/07/2003 - 09/13/2003 09/14/2003 - 09/20/2003 09/21/2003 - 09/27/2003 09/28/2003 - 10/04/2003 10/05/2003 - 10/11/2003 10/12/2003 - 10/18/2003 10/19/2003 - 10/25/2003 10/26/2003 - 11/01/2003 11/02/2003 - 11/08/2003 11/09/2003 - 11/15/2003 11/16/2003 - 11/22/2003 11/23/2003 - 11/29/2003 11/30/2003 - 12/06/2003 12/07/2003 - 12/13/2003 12/14/2003 - 12/20/2003 12/21/2003 - 12/27/2003 |
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