NYT Just In: WH Phone Logs Missing on L'Affaire Plame

[shraby]

An interesting thought about calls made to the switchboard and transferred to Rove.

<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/3/2557/47422>

[Richard Steele]

1. They are EVIL, not STUPID....

Nixon should have burned the tapes;
these guys learned to AVOID taping at all.

Of course it LOOKS suspicious, but "looks" don't have any weight in a court of law.

[applegrove]

2. Too vague. But I did hear that Rove has a full-time babysitter. A la

Grover Norqhuest screens his calls.

I wonder..will Grover offer the same service to Bolton?

[The Doctor.]

3. "Suspicion does not a criminal make..."

"But a crminal makes much suspicion..."

[merwin]

4. You would think that any incominng calls to his extension would be logged.

However, it would be logged with the switchboard as the caller probably.

[flordehinojos]

5. o, yeah. m-i-s-s-i-n-g while like a venomous snake bush h-i-s-s-e-s at us

for even wanting the darn logs.

the thing that is really m-i-s-s-i-n-g is the bushes and their goons' integrity, honor and any hint of moral conscience.

[H2O Man]

6. It would be interesting

to see the article from the New York Times. No matter, this is not a significant issue. No one questions that Cooper talked to Rove.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Oh, I think the shredding and the purging and the falsification of phone

records, and the concoction of "stories" and the coordination among perps, permitted by torture memo writer Alberto Gonzales in his 12-hour warning to them, will be like nothing we have ever seen.

But you will notice that the seriousness of the crimes committed has been confirmed by several judges, as by the continued prosecution, the ongoing grand jury investigation, and the jailing of Judith Miller; and one can only assume that existing evidence is already compelling. Also, I think the panic they were in, in July 2003 (calling at least SIX reporters to get Plame outed) will do them in--and that far, far more was at stake than their desire to "punish" Joe Wilson for his exposure of their lie about Iraq nukes.

What were they most in need of, politically, in summer '03? The answer is staring us in the face. They needed to "find" WMDs in Iraq. And they were just sitting around, moping about it? ("Gee, if only we could find those darned weapons!")

My guess--they were trying to PLANT nukes (or other WMDs) in Iraq, for the tremendous political advantage that that would have given them, and they were foiled. This guess is based on the following timeline:

May 22, 2003: The Brits chief WMD expert David Kelly (who had supported the war) began whistleblowing to the BBC, after the invasion, on the Blairites' pre-war "sexing up" of Iraq WMD intel.

July 7, 2003: After Kelly is identified and interrogated, Blair is told that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things" --"could say," not HAD said.

July 5-12: Panic on AF-1 (with most major Bushites on board--trip to Africa); calls to at least six reporters; Plame memo in circulation.

July 14, 2003: Plame outed (by Novak).

July 18, 2003: Kelly found dead, under extremely suspicious circumstances; his office and computers searched.

July 22, 2003: The SECOND Plame outing (by Novak), of the entire CIA weapons monitoring front company, disabling all projects and putting all covert WMD contacts at great risk.

The phone log item we want is the call from Blair to Bush on July 7.

[Peace Patriot]

8. My theory about Judith Miller is that, when she was over in Iraq with

the US troops "hunting" for the WMDs--on a special "embed" contract signed by Donald Rumsfeld--and making a big drama out of it, she may have been in on the plot to plant the weapons there, and had, of course, arranged to get the "scoop" (her reward for all her warmongering on the front pages of the NYT). Everyone--including all the Bushites--knew there were no such weapons in Iraq. She herself knew that her own sources were, to say the least, unreliable. They were all lying. So why this dramatic buildup?

And it's interesting that it was to Judith Miller that David Kelly wrote one of his last emails--the email (later revealed by his family) in which he was concerned about the "many dark actors playing games." Very curious also is the fact that Miller failed to mention the "dark actors" email (or anything about her relationship with Kelly--with whom she'd written the book "Germs) in the news article that she wrote about his death for the NYT (7/21/03).