Totenberg: Roberts a "Hardline Conservative," "Very Conservative" --7/25/2005

1. Totenberg: Roberts a "Hardline Conservative," "Very Conservative"
NPR's Nina Totenberg, who last week tagged Supreme Court nominee John Roberts as "very, very conservative" and "very, very, very conservative," on Inside Washington over the weekend described him as merely "very conservative." But she couldn't resist adding a modifier every time she applied the conservative label, also dubbing him "a really conservative guy," "a hardline conservative" and "a clear conservative." Plus, she emphasized how he's "a conservative Catholic."

2. Olbermann Sees Wilson as Truth-Teller, Skips Credibility Problems
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann featured Joe Wilson in an "exclusive" live interview on Friday night's Countdown to plug Wilson's book, The Politics of Truth, "now in an updated paperback version." Though, as the Weekly Standard recalled last week, "the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence thoroughly shredded Wilson's credibility," and the magazine contended that "almost every public pronouncement of Joe Wilson's from the spring of 2003 forward is either an exaggeration or a falsehood or both," Olbermann refused to question Wilson's undermined claims and instead treating him and his wife as maligned victims. Olbermann posed such questions as, "Do you have a sense, specifically a chain of events of what happened and who made it happen, who actually ruined your wife's usefulness in the war on terror?" And: "Do you and your wife, or either one of you, ultimately hold the President responsible for what happened here?" He followed up: "Is he [President Bush] responsible for the leak?" Olbermann wondered: "Have the two of you considered civil suits against anybody who might have been involved in the leak of your wife's name and work?"

Corrections: The July 22 CyberAlert referred to how "then-Lyndon Johnson aide Bill Moyers contacted then-FBI Director Herbert Hoover to request that he 'do an investigation of [Republican presidential candidate Barry] Goldwater's staff to find...evidence of homosexual activity.'" As the subsequent excerpt accurately conveyed, that was J. Edgar Hoover.

Totenberg: Roberts a "Hardline Conservative,"
"Very Conservative"

NPR's Nina Totenberg, who last week tagged Supreme Court nominee John Roberts as "very, very conservative" and "very, very, very conservative," on Inside Washington over the weekend described him as merely "very conservative." But she couldn't resist adding a modifier every time she applied the conservative label, also dubbing him "a really conservative guy," "a hardline conservative" and "a clear conservative." Plus, she emphasized how he's "a conservative Catholic."

Last week, the July 21 CyberAlert recounted: There's no doubt in NPR reporter Nina Totenberg's mind that Judge John Roberts is "very conservative," it's just a matter of how "very." On NPR's All Things Considered on Tuesday night, she prefaced "conservative" with three verys, describing him as "a very, very, very conservative man." But in a taped soundbite on the next day's Good Morning America on ABC, she cut back to two modifiers, dubbing him merely "a very, very conservative man." For more, see: www.mediaresearch.org

Inside Washington is a weekend panel show carried on Sunday mornings after This Week on Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, WJLA-TV, and on Saturday nights on the local all-news cable outlet NewsChannel 8, which it owns.

NPR reporter Totenberg's labeling of Roberts in the opening segment of the July 23/24 show:

# "This is a man who is so widely respected in Washington, in the legal establishment, and he will have Democrats going to bat for him. Democratic lawyers who know him, who've litigated against him and just think he's so smart and so honest and is very conservative."

# "I think people who know him know that John Roberts is a really conservative guy."

# "And don't forget his wife was an officer, a high officer of a pro-life organization. He's got adopted children. I mean, he's a conservative Catholic."

# "I think what's likely to happen is he'll name Alberto Gonzales to be Chief Justice. I think this frees him up. He's given conservatives-"
Charles Krauthammer: "No he hasn't."
Totenberg: "-a hardline conservative."
Krauthammer: "I know conservatives, I'm one of them. This is not a way to appease conservatives. They are swallowing this nomination, they are not enthusiastic about it."
Totenberg: "I think that he will say I gave you a guy who is a clear conservative..."

Olbermann Sees Wilson as Truth-Teller,
Skips Credibility Problems

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann featured Joe Wilson in an "exclusive" live interview on Friday night's Countdown to plug Wilson's book, The Politics of Truth, "now in an updated paperback version." Though, as the Weekly Standard recalled last week, "the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence thoroughly shredded Wilson's credibility," and the magazine contended that "almost every public pronouncement of Joe Wilson's from the spring of 2003 forward is either an exaggeration or a falsehood or both," Olbermann refused to question Wilson's undermined claims and instead treating him and his wife as maligned victims. Olbermann posed such questions as, "Do you have a sense, specifically a chain of events of what happened and who made it happen, who actually ruined your wife's usefulness in the war on terror?" And: "Do you and your wife, or either one of you, ultimately hold the President responsible for what happened here?" He followed up: "Is he [President Bush] responsible for the leak?" Olbermann wondered: "Have the two of you considered civil suits against anybody who might have been involved in the leak of your wife's name and work?"

The "Scrapbook" page in the July 25 Weekly Standard published last week provided a compact rundown of questions about Wilson's credibility. An excerpt:

The Nine Lives of Joe Wilson's Reputation

That sound you hear is The Scrapbook gagging at the images we saw on television last week. We're speaking, of course, about the spectacle of leading Democrats and sympathetic media types performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's moribund reputation....

We're saddened -- though not really surprised -- by the amazing ability of Democrats to forget that last summer the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence thoroughly shredded Wilson's credibility.

Take New York senator Charles Schumer, for instance, who held a joint press conference with Wilson in the Capitol last Thursday. "This man has served his country," Schumer said. What's happened to him since, said Schumer, groping for a novel literary allusion, is downright "Kafkaesque." Whereupon a reporter pointed out that Wilson's credibility is seriously in doubt.

"I would urge you to go back and read the record," Wilson said.

A capital idea! What the record shows is that almost every public pronouncement of Joe Wilson's from the spring of 2003 forward is either an exaggeration or a falsehood or both. The essence of his tale was that he had selflessly gone to Niger and personally debunked reports that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium there to reconstitute its nuclear program. But his account didn't bear up under close scrutiny.

I. Wilson denied that his Feb. 2002 mission to Niger to investigate reports of an Iraqi uranium deal was suggested by his wife, who worked in the CIA's counterproliferation division. In fact, according to the bipartisan findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wilson's wife "offered up his name" at a staff meeting, then wrote a memo to her division's deputy chief saying her husband was the best man for the job.

II. Wilson insisted both that he had debunked reports of Iraqi interest in Niger's uranium and that Vice President Cheney, whose interest in the subject reputedly prompted Wilson's trip, had to have been informed of this. The Intelligence Committee found otherwise when it questioned Wilson under oath:

On at least two occasions [Wilson] admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims....For example, when asked how he "knew" that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, [Wilson] told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved "a little literary flair."

III. In the spring of 2003, after a purported "memorandum of agreement" between Iraq and Niger was shown to be a forgery, Wilson began to tell reporters, on background, that he'd known the documents were forgeries all along. But the Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA (and Wilson) had been unaware of the documents until eight months after his trip. Moreover, it found that "no one believed" Wilson's trip "added a great deal of new information to the Iraq-Niger uranium story." It found that "for most analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal."

IV. Wilson's confidence that Cheney knew about his trip served as the basis for his accusation, passed along uncritically by the New Republic, that it "was a flat-out lie" for President Bush to have accused Saddam Hussein of trying to obtain uranium in Niger. He told Meet the Press interviewer Andrea Mitchell, "The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there."

The Intel Committee's findings: "Because CIA analysts did not believe that [Wilson's] report added any new information to clarify the issue...CIA's briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President's previous questions about the issue."

As Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts concluded in the "Additional Views" section of his report: "The former ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading."

Meanwhile, a grand jury still sits in the inquiry into whether someone in the administration broke the law by leaking Plame's name. We hope the outcome doesn't hinge on the reliability of testimony from her husband.

END of Excerpt

For the Weekly Standard item in full (registration required): www.weeklystandard.com

But Olbermann didn't press Wilson about any of that, treating him instead as a sage of the truth. Olbermann plugged the upcoming July 22 interview segment: "Also tonight, the probe into Karl Rove's alleged involvement in the outing of a CIA officer may be a whole lot less complicated than we thought. It may be just a question of lying. Tonight, an exclusive interview with the target of the leak that started the whole thing, former Ambassador Joe Wilson."

Olbermann got to his #3 story just past 8:30pm EDT, and the MRC's Brad Wilmouth took down the segment in full:
"Call it the 'CIA leak investigation' or the 'Valerie Plame follow-up' or the 'Karl Rove case,' but by whichever name, it may have just turned from the difficult to follow and legally subtle pursuit of someone who could have violated a complicated law about not deliberately revealing the identity of covert agents into something much simpler. Our third story in the Countdown, the special prosecutor may be going after Karl Rove and perhaps Scooter Libby for making false statements to the prosecutors -- in other words, lying. In a moment, the man whose New York Times op-ed piece, printed exactly two years and sixteen days ago, Valerie Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, joins us here for an exclusive interview.
"First, the new developments on Rove and Libby. Bloomberg News quoting people familiar with the case who say that while Rove told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned Agent Plame's name from the columnist, Robert Novak, the news service reports Novak, quote, 'has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor.' Rove also told prosecutors a version of his conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper that does not match up to Cooper's testimony. Several news organizations noted that Rove testified that Cooper had called him on July 11, 2003, to at least nominally talk about welfare reform, and that Cooper then switched topics quickly to Wilson and the uranium from Niger that had been mentioned in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. But Cooper has reportedly testified that he never talked about welfare reform in that conversation with Rove. As to Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Bloomberg News reports that he told prosecutors he first learned Plame's identity from Tim Russert of NBC News, but that Russert has testified to the grand jury that Libby's testimony is not true.
"The New York Times, meanwhile, reporting that special prosecutor Fitzgerald is simultaneously also investigating how Rove and Libby had drafted a statement for CIA director George Tenet to make about the Joe Wilson op-ed, specifically to see if that and other damage control by Rove and Libby might have led to the disclosure of Valerie Plame's work, and to see what information or documents Rove and Libby might have had access to as they prepared their statement for Tenet. And that mainlines back to the Wall Street Journal story that John Harwood broke on this newscast last night: An internal State Department document prepared for an Undersecretary of State and then seen by the then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, mentioned Valerie Plame's CIA work, but to remind readers that her work was classified, the portions pertaining to her were marked 'TS' for 'top secret' and 'S/NF,' a designation meaning, in essence, 'classified, do not share with foreign intelligence services, even friendly ones.'
"Joining us now, this country's former acting ambassador in Iraq, and 22-year veteran of the U.S. Diplomatic Corps, Joseph C. Wilson IV. His book about his experiences and those of his wife, Valerie Plame, 'The Politics of Truth,' now in an updated paperback version. Thank you for your time tonight, sir."
Joseph Wilson, via satellite from Washington, DC: "Keith, nice to be with you."
Olbermann: "There's a lot of new and seemingly small details in this story in the past week or so. Obviously, you have a vested interest in following this story. What part isn't really small? What part arched your eyebrows?"
Wilson: "Well, certainly the conflicting testimony between Mr. Russert and Mr. Novak and Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove. I think that's of some interest. But I would go back to what I've tried to say all along, and that is, is that this is really a national security issue. And what's been dismaying the last couple of weeks, of course, is the extent to which the Republican National Committee has tried to turn this into a partisan issue. In 1999, former President Bush said those who would expose the identities of covert sources are the most insidious of traitors. Here we are, just six years later, and not a single Republican of national stature has even stood up to say that what Mr. Rove now, it's documented, he has done, was wrong."
Olbermann: "There is an irony related to that in the newest developments, the memo that pertained to your wife's CIA work was marked, in essence, 'top secret, shut up about this.' Yet, the prosecutor is reportedly more focused on the prospects of a perjury case or perhaps a conspiracy case. In terms of the prosecution here, do the particulars matter to you? Do they matter to your wife, what, if any, charges are filed here?"
Wilson: "Well, I think Mr. Fitzgerald is going to, obviously, have the last word on that, and I haven't spoken to him in almost a year and a half, so I have no idea where he's headed in his investigation. But irrespective of whether he indicts or declines to indict, we now have, thanks to Mr. Cooper and his notes, documentary evidence that Karl Rove gave him, gave up my wife's identity. He can call her 'Wilson's wife,' but when you say 'Wilson's wife,' I have only one wife, and that is Valerie Wilson."
Olbermann: "Having watched the entirety of the investigation move slowly over the year and a half, or slightly more, with details leaking out here and there, do you have a sense, specifically a chain of events of what happened and who made it happen, who actually ruined your wife's usefulness in the war on terror?"
Wilson: "Well, I've been told, and I did not do any sleuthing myself, but I've been told by people who were looking into this last year, the year before last, that there was a meeting held in the middle of March in the White House in the Vice President's offices, possibly chaired by Scooter Libby, in which it was decided to do a, quote, 'work-up,' on me. That's what I was told then. Now, obviously, there's this State Department memorandum of June 7th, which was then updated for the Secretary's trip to Africa, and people were talking about the possibility that the name leaked out of that particular memo. It would be appropriate, I would think, for the Secretary of State to want to know how this trip came about and what happened so that he wouldn't be blind-sided by questions about it. What was not appropriate, I don't believe, was putting Valerie's name in the memo since, as I've said repeatedly, and as the CIA has said repeatedly, she was not part of the decision process that led to me going out there."
Olbermann: "So you think perhaps the mentioning of her name in that memo was leaving a door unlocked or leaving a trail opened up to somebody or leaving the prospect of something accidentally leaking out that wasn't quite so much of an accident?"
Wilson: "Well, I don't think there's any question that it was not an accident when you've got a memorandum that says 'top secret, no foreign,' that's 'NF,' 'not for foreign distribution,' then people with those clearances know precisely what it means, and they all sign non-disclosure agreements with the government when they go to work for the government. It means that you don't share this information with anybody who doesn't have a need to know."
Olbermann: "On another matter related to this, on Monday the President said that if anybody in his administration was guilty of a crime in revealing your wife's work, they would no longer be working in his administration. What do you make, what did you make of that statement in the context of Mr. Bush's previous statements and his press secretary's previous statements about people who might have been involved in the government and might have been involved in leaking your wife's identity?"
Wilson: "When the compromise of Valerie's identity first took place and it was traced back to the senior administration officials, that was a breach of trust between the White House and our clandestine service. When the President changes his tune on this, and in June of 2004, he said that he would fire anybody who was involved in the leak, and he backtracks on that, I think it's a breach of trust with the American people. This President has said that he's a man of his word, his word is his bond, he's a straight-shooter. And now it appears that he's not. It appears that he's willing to go back on that word, and I think that compounds the breached trust with the clandestine services as well as with the American people."
Olbermann: "Do you and your wife, or either one of you, ultimately hold the President responsible for what happened here?"
Wilson: "I think the President had a responsibility to enforce his own orders that people cooperate fully with the Justice Department. Remember, now, it's been two years, two years in September, the President gave an order that everybody should cooperate fully with the Justice Department. This issue had to be litigated up to the Supreme Court, Matt Cooper and his family had to be put through agony, Judy Miller, the New York Times reporter, is languishing in jail, and all because the President has apparently been unable or unwilling to enforce his edict that people cooperate fully."
Olbermann: "Do you believe his responsibility goes back further than that statement? Does it go back to the, in some way, to the leak itself? Is he responsible for the leak?"
Wilson: "I would hope not. When the President assembles his senior staff, part of the responsibility of the senior staff is protection of the office of the presidency. This is bigger than just the man. This is the office. And I would certainly hope that he was not in any way knowledgeable of a tawdry leak from his political hatchet men."
Olbermann incredibly asked a man who has written a book and never shied from TV cameras: "That's largely the big picture. Give me the more focused one. Have you and your wife gotten your lives back in the last two years?"
Wilson: "Well, it's not very easy when you hear the likes of Ken Mehlman ranting, just spouting lies on news programs, or the likes of our distinguished congresspeople, such as Peter King, saying that Valerie got what she deserved. After all, she served this country for 20 years. Without telling you where she served, I can tell you that she was in some of the areas of real high priority to the United States. I, myself, served my country for 23 years, including as charge in Baghdad during the first Gulf War for the first President Bush. The first President Bush made me an ambassador to African countries. President Clinton asked me to be his special assistant on African affairs. It's hard for us to see why our good names are besmirched the way they are by Republicans headed by the RNC when, after all, my opinion piece said nothing but the truth. There was no evidence of uranium sales from Niger to Iraq. There was no evidence of an interest that had been pursued by either party. There was no evidence turned up by the Iraq survey group. It didn't happen, it wasn't going to happen, it would not have happened."
Olbermann: "Regardless of what the special prosecutor chooses to do or not do, have the two of you considered civil suits against anybody who might have been involved in the leak of your wife's name and work?"
Wilson: "Well, we're keeping all of our options open. We've decided that we would not do anything until the special prosecutor finishes his work. We're not big believers in frivolous suits. We didn't like what happened with Judicial Watch and all the various attempts that were made to get at the Clinton administration through the use of civil suits. We have absolute faith, and I admit our prejudice as government employees -- my wife is still a government employee, and I'm a retired government employee -- we admit our prejudice in having full faith in the institutions that have made this country great for 229 years."
Olbermann raised one criticism of Wilson, but only so Wilson could follow Olbermann's lead and dismiss it: "My last q -- and you mentioned some of the politics involved in this -- uestion: Obviously, the people who have pooh-poohed this whole thing -- they tend to dismiss the whole thing by saying, 'Wilson has been proven wrong, Dick Cheney didn't send him to Niger, he was sent there because his wife suggested it.' It struck me the other day, let's just assume for the moment that those premises are correct, how would they have changed the facts of what you did or did not find in Niger, even if your wife had made the, had the responsibility of making the decision to send you there?"
Wilson: "Well, first of all, the premise is not correct. If you go back and you look at the original article, it says very clearly it was the office of the Vice President that expressed an interest that led to the CIA sending me there. So that was the first lie in these RNC talking points. And if you can't believe that, why should you believe everything else? In actual fact, it wouldn't make any difference at all whether my wife was involved in a trip that was essentially pro bono, but the fact is, as the CIA has said repeatedly since June 22nd of 2003, she was not involved in the decision-making process."
Olbermann: "The former acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq, author of 'The Politics of Truth,' and the man who inadvertently started the special prosecutor's investigations of Karl Rove and others, Joe Wilson, great thanks for your time, sir."
Wilson: "Thanks, Keith, very much. Good to be with you."
Olbermann: "Good to be with you."

-- Brent Baker