Wednesday, July 27, 2005

More, More, More
A 12-hour gap reminds me a lot of the 18-minute gap in the tapes that Nixon's secretary erased.



Plame Scandal Widens
By Matthew Roths
July 25, 2005
The Valerie Plame scandal is engulfing the White House.
With the grand jury empaneled until October, we may yet see indictments come down on Karl Rove and on Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby.
But they aren’t the only ones implicated in the scandal.
As Frank Rich noted in Sunday’s New York Times, our old friend Alberto Gonzales also has left his fingerprints sloppily around.
At the time this scandal broke, Gonzales was White House Counsel. The Justice Department kindly notified him that it was investigating this leak, and Gonzales passed word on to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.
This was around 8:00 p.m. on September 29, 2003, and Gonzales asked the Justice Department for permission not to notify the rest of the White House staff until the next morning, permission which he got.
This could have allowed Rove or Libby or anyone else involved the time to destroy incriminating documents or get their stories coordinated.
On Face the Nation Sunday, Gonzales tried to make light of what Rich calls the 12-hour gap. “Most of the staff had gone home,” Gonzales said. “No one knew about the investigation.”
But what if Andy Card gave them a heads-up?
It’s increasingly difficult and embarrassing for the Bush White House to deal with this scandal.
Bush’s top aide and Cheney’s top aide are directly implicated.
Gonzales himself looks bad, at the very least.
Card may have been a player.
Press Secretary Scott McClellan either lied to the press or was lied to by Rove and Libby.
And what role Bush himself had in the whole thing, as his aides were apparently discussing the Plame matter on Air Force one, has yet to be revealed, though Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has interviewed the President.
The water is getting neck high in the White House.

http://progressive.org/?q=mag_wx072505

3 comments:

Kate said...

A 12-hour gap, huh? This is interesting....

I bet the Prez hides behind the soundproof, bomb-proof, radiation-proof shell of Air Force One on this one, under the heading of "deniability."

JimBob said...

i think his excuse is simply,

"I'm too friggin' stupid to actually know what's going on. Ask the puppetmasters. THEY might know."

Karen Zipdrive said...

Yeah, the 12-hour gap where Gonzales said to Card, "Be sure and tell the staff that they have 12 hours to be sure all the evidence is preserved and ready to hand over to the special prosecutor.
"And whatever you do, be sure to authorize overtime so they can stay here all night to preserve evidence if need be.
"And don't forget not to mention the 500 new paper shredders you just bought down in the basement, on aisle 3, shelves 1-6, near the 12 new dollies and those camoflauge tarps you bought at the same time.
"Oh, and Andy, if the staff gets cold working all night, the incinerator will be left on all night in case they want to run downstairs and warm up."