Grading on the Curve

Welcome to today's overly long post! Live-blogging of the Libby trial is under way at Firedoglake and Just One Minute, though I think the latter (by Clarice Feldman) may come a bit more slowly and carefully packaged--Clarice says she's taking notes and will upload in batches. Firedoglake's accounts (by various bloggers over there) have been excellent. Update: Also Jeralyn Merritt at Huffingpost. Apparently the Firedog blogger is editorializing a bit enthusiastically.

Now--in the Washington Post today--

Carol Leonnig's Media Figures May Be Reluctant Defense Witnesses In Libby Case pulls no punches on colleagues in the press, with a coccoon- piercing awareness of where the media stands these days:

Just when you thought it was impossible for more harm to come to the national news media's reputation, the defense in the trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff is about to present its case.

Starting today, when Libby's attorneys try to show that he did not intentionally lie about his role in leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, they will rely heavily on a string of journalists as witnesses. In several ways, those witnesses will be asked to raise doubts about the testimony and accuracy of other reporters, and some may end up tarnishing themselves or their sources...

Leonnig has NBC's Andrea Mitchell's odd recantation on the Imus show:

"So . . . what happened?" radio host Don Imus asks NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell about her confusing reporting on an undercover CIA officer. "Were you drunk?

"I obviously screwed up," Mitchell responds in the exchange, which Libby's defense hopes to play for the jury in coming days. "I guess I was drunk," she jokes.

And a rare exposure--in mainstream media--of unlikely representations by Tim Russert:

This past week, a pillar of broadcast news -- Tim Russert, Washington bureau chief for NBC News -- was heard chortling on the air on Oct. 28, 2005, about the possibility that Bush administration officials would be indicted that day. That interview, also with Imus, helped the defense suggest that Russert, a star witness for the prosecution, may have held a grudge against Libby.

So due credit--not for bashing the press in in line with our mission statement, but as a simple matter of reporting the facts on the ground. Ah, but some of the usual mistakes eventually resurface.

When I say rare exposure--in mainstream media--of unlikely representations by Tim Russert I refer also to this, also in Leonnig's story:

Libby's defense argued that Mitchell may have told Russert -- who testified for two days last week -- about the CIA operative but later wanted to back away from her assertion of knowledge. If she did know the information, they said, it would bolster Libby's contention that he learned about Plame's identity in a July 10, 2003, telephone call with Russert.

Russert said that was not possible because he did not hear of Plame until several days later.

To date Leonnig and partner Amy Goldstein have still not reported that according to an FBI summary of its previously undisclosed conversation with Russert, Russert could not rule out that Valerie Plame/Wilson's name came up in conversation between Russert and Libby. (Covered in excruciating detail in To Dream The Impossible Dream last week).

And in today's story, Leonnig dishes this out several times:

Woodward's testimony could help bolster Libby's contention that there was no White House campaign to discredit Wilson... That admission helped the prosecution suggest Libby was part of a White House campaign to discredit Wilson.

It is not illegal for the White House to "discredit" anyone. Yet. And what Libby has frankly testified to (in the grand jury, leading up to this prosecution) is trying to refute Wilson's false representations about his trip to Niger.

And speaking of Goldstein and false representations, she has a "Libby Trial Contradictions" box that I can't find online--it's a perfectly informative summary of statements by Marc Grossman, Robert Greiner, Cathie Martin, Ari Fleischer, Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper and Tim Russert contradicting Libby's accounts. But in the intro she includes the now-classic false reporting about what Joe Wilson found in Niger, revived by Howard Kurtz last year. Goldstein:

Plame is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was sent by the CIA in 2002 to Niger to explore reports that Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake uranium, which is used to make nuclear weapons. Wilson concluded that the reports were baseless.

Oh please:

Susan Schmidt, July 10, 2004:

Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts.

Washington Post editorial, End of an Affair, Sept. 1, 2006:

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials.

Comments

[SA]

Why did Plame go to Montreal just before all this started and Woodward went to Toronto to leak he had Plame information?