All Blog Posts from Public Eye

SCENE: A darkened parking garage in Rosslyn, Virginia.

(A silhouette of a man is visible next to a support pillar. The embers from his cigarette illuminate his face. He wears a trenchcoat and speaks softly to the young man who approaches him.)

Deep Throat: Follow the money.

Woodward: Wait.

Deep Throat: Follow the money.

Woodward: No, I hear you loud and clear. I just have some paperwork I need to go over with you. See, my newspaper has different degrees of the anonymity I can give to you. There’s full anonymity. Then there’s ‘confidential’ status. Then there’s a …

Deep Throat: I’m not applying for an HMO, Woodward.

Read full post…

Before stories like the CIA leak investigation were splashed across the front pages of newspapers, we didn’t hear much about government investigations into leaks to the media. These days, however, we hear quite a bit about them. In the latest example, The Washington Post today notes a recent request by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for a “sweeping inquiry into the possible leak of a classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq by a staff member, including and audit of staff telephone records and e-mail to identify unauthorized contacts with news media or messages related to the leaked document.” I spoke to National Security Correspondent David Martin about the effect such investigations have on reporting from the Pentagon.

“Most of the time when there’s a leak,” said Martin, “whatever recriminations that are made within the government are made privately. It rarely gets to be subject of a story. What has really changed with the Bush administration is that these leak investigations are now spread exhaustively on the public record."

Martin cited the Valerie Plame case, the government’s investigation into the leaking of the NSA eavesdropping story to the New York Times, and the CIA’s investigation of leaks to the Washington Post about secret prisons.

What’s particularly interesting about the potential House Intelligence investigation, said Martin, is that the information about the NIE that was disclosed to the New York Times was, within days, declassified by the government. “The government decided that it wouldn’t harm national security so they declassified it. So the harm there [for the leaker] was in deciding on his or her own to put it out.”

For the most part, said Martin, the disclosure of most classified information wouldn’t necessarily pose a threat to national security. Often, it’s just that no one has bothered to declassify it.

The threat of disclosure instead may be political, said Martin. “Either it’s counter to the message – like the NIE, which was counter to the message that the Iraq war was making us safer.”

The other possibility is that leaked information limits the government’s “freedom of action,” said Martin. “If [as a reporter] you don’t know something is going on, then you’re not asking them questions about it. Then they can take their time and make decisions without any outside pressure.”

“Obviously we want full, real-time information and they want to reveal partial information with a significant time delay.”

Read full post…

Rem Rieder at the American Journalism Review asks the question few in the Washington press corps seems willing to pose: Where’s all the coverage of the Valerie Plame leak case these days? After all, it wasn’t all that long ago the city’s tongues were wagging with speculation over the identity of the person who leaked the name of the former CIA operative to columnist Bob Novak, thereby blowing her cover in what was widely assumed to be a campaign to discredit her husband, Bush administration critic Joe Wilson. Now that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has confirmed that he was the original source for Novak’s column, what’s happened to the story? Is the lack of hoopla because, as Reider suggests, because:

… it turns out the villain wasn't an angry neocon bent on revenge against a critic of the Iraq war – Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson – but a Colin Powell ally who was at best a lukewarm supporter of the invasion.

Far from being part of an orchestrated plot or a vast White House conspiracy, Plame's unmasking was simply the handiwork of that Washington, D.C., staple, an insider with a big mouth. The culprit was gossip, not political gunslinging.

The whole thing is worth a read (hat tip: Romenesko). Reider can’t fully answer the question of why the Armitage revelation hasn’t gotten more attention but wonders if the DC press corps simply wants to sweep this one under the rug:

Maybe it's simply a matter of embarrassment. After so much breathless coverage of supposed White House character assassination, maybe the MSM just kind of hoped the whole thing would go away.

Whatever the reason, it was a curious and disappointing performance.

Read full post…

Bob Novak really knows how to make the most of an anticlimactic ending. In a much-anticipated decision, the conservative columnist yesterday told all about his mysterious role an investigation reaching into the highest offices in the land, and how he came to be the first person to reveal the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Web sites breathlessly anticipated Novak’s coming disclosures and media watchers tripped all over themselves to hear them.

Trouble is, it doesn’t appear that Novak had too much to teach us that we didn’t already pretty much know. One of the most anticipated revelations – the identity of his “primary source” on Plame’s identity and relationship to husband Joseph Wilson – remains shielded out of journalistic obligation. From the standpoint of unraveling part of some great whodunit, it’s quite a bummer.

Novak tells us that he testified before Patrick Fitzgerald’s federal grand jury about conversations with his three sources on the story, but only after Fitzgerald provided him with waivers from all three (read the entire column for all the detective details). Novak’s bottom line:

I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves. I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue.

As if to underscore his dedication to those journalistic privileges, Novak tells us he cannot reveal the name of what he calls his “principle source” because that individual “has not come forward to identify himself.”

Read full post…

The leak columnist Bob Novak revealed in his infamous Valerie Plame column may have been one of the last he can expect out of the Bush administration after curious comments he made recently to a John Locke Foundation luncheon in Raleigh, North Carolina. Throughout the entire investigation into who leaked Plame’s name we’ve endured a parade of journalists who’ve leapt from ring to ring to ring of this circus. After countless battles with the special prosecutor, testimony before grand juries, jailhouse drama, public purges and newsroom explosions, I thought this tale couldn’t get stranger.



Now it has, courtesy of Novak, the one person whose name has been attached to this story and the one person who has refused to speak about it. Plame’s name first appeared in Novak’s syndicated column, which was the basis of the investigation into who made the CIA agent’s name public and whether that action was part of a coordinated effort to damage Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson. But from that day until Tuesday, Novak has not spoken to it.



Why he decided to say anything now remains very much a mystery. What he had to say wasn’t. According to the Raleigh News & Observer, Novak told the lunch crowd:

“I'm confident the president knows who the source is. I'd be amazed if he doesn't. … So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.”

The statement had to be like manna from heaven for scandal-starved reporters and operatives.

Read full post…

The man who helped make “anonymous sources” famous appears to now be smack dab in the middle of the investigation that is helping make the phrase infamous. Revelations this morning that Bob Woodward testified under oath in the Valerie Plame investigation have taken it to a strange new level. We have no idea what real impact Woodward’s testimony might have on prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation, or the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby. But it does crack open the door a little further to some of the Byzantine rules reporters and their sources can concoct.



The Washington Post story recounting the testimony says Woodward testified that “a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.” Woodward says he testified because he had been released by the source to testify – but not to discuss the official’s name publicly.



In a statement, Woodward says he discussed “portions of interviews” he conducted with three separate administration officials. “All three persons provided written statements waiving the previous agreements of confidentiality on the issues being investigated by Fitzgerald. Each confirmed those releases verbally this month, and requested that I testify,” Woodward says. We’ve come a long way from the days of flower pots on the patio and clandestine meetings in a parking garage.



Update: Woodward apologizes to The Post.

Read full post…

The Village Voice’s Syndey Schanberg has few kind words for Bob Woodward. It seems that the Watergate legend has talked down the importance of the Valerie Plame investigation and Schanberg thinks he knows why:

“To write his books, Woodward needs special access to major people in the White House and the key cabinet departments. He is presently working on what he says may be a multivolume treatment of Bush's second term. He had access to the president himself for his book on the first term. But with this scandal still unfolding, lots of government biggies have suddenly zipped their lips. This has complicated Woodward's work. Perhaps that explains, in part, his reluctance to mouth any full-blown criticism of Bush administration missteps.”


“Also, the indicted Libby has reportedly been a source for Woodward in the past. Critics in the press have suggested that Woodward is too close to some of his sources to provide readers with an undiluted picture of their activities.”


“His remarks about the Fitzgerald investigation convey the attitude of a sometime insider reluctant to offend—and that is hardly a definition of what a serious, independent reporter is supposed to be. It's a far piece from Watergate.”

(Tip of the hat to Romenesko).

Read full post…

Today’s Wall Street Journal (free online this week) looks at the roles three prominent journalists are likely to play in the eventual trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine have been the media community’s faces throughout this story up until now but NBC’s Tim Russert is emerging as an important player. And he’s increasingly getting heat from bloggers about it, even as other players remain in the spotlight.

Read full post…

When I picked up the New York Times this morning, a little shiver ran through me. There, in the top right-hand column was the headline over the story about Vice President Dick Cheney: “Cheney Told Aide Of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report.” After all the rumors, innuendo and speculation, here was a story that seemed to pull the vice president into the grand jury investigation of how CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name was leaked to the media.



In spite of all the caveats, one sentence of the article, reported by David Johnston, Richard Stevenson and Douglas Jehl, stuck out:

“The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.”

Those are the kinds of sentences we often look back on in a year or so and say, ah ha, that was the moment this thing started to get really serious. It falls somewhere between the Washington Post’s little-noticed report on the original Watergate break-in and the day that the Monica Lewinsky bombshell exploded. It might not be all-important at the end, but marks a time where the story turned.



By the time I had finished the Times op-ed page, though, I started to wonder about the importance of the Cheney story.

Read full post…