Friday, September 15, 2006

Leopold vindicated?

* glenn:
"This is one of the most incoherent and baffling aspects of an extremely incoherent war -- even if our ongoing occupation of Iraq had any hope of stabilizing the Iraqi government, all we will have accomplished is ensuring that Iraq is run by a government whose primary allegiance is to the country which is, according to the Bush administration, our greatest enemy and the worst threat to world peace. We transformed Iraq from a steadfast enemy of Iran into a subservient colony. How could doing that even theoretically make us "safer"?"

* ken:
"Note: Another controversial film made its Washington premiere last night—9/11: Press for Truth. I wasn't able to attend—but these video clips showing Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice are highly amusing in a dark way."

* political affairs:
"US Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ) became the 38th Member of the US Congress officially listed as a supporter of H. Res. 635, a bill which could lead to recommendations to impeach President Bush.

The bill, sponsored by US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), would create a Select Committee to look into the grounds for impeaching President Bush over misleading the public on the need to go to war; retaliating against public officials who disagree with him; and encouraging torture.
[]
An Atlanta Progressive News analysis has found that, interestingly, 30 of the 38 total co-sponsors are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. However, only 30 of the 62 members of the Caucus have signed on."

* AP:
" A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel Wednesday to claims that electronic voting machines used across much of the country are vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote totals or disable machines.
[]
About 80% of American voters are expected to use some form of electronic voting in the upcoming election, in which the makeup of the U.S. House will be decided, as well as 33 Senate seats and 36 governorships."

* Ken:
"I'm told that a number of CIA employees have been complaining to Inspector General John Helgerson about the detainee program. “They have told him that they don't like the program and they want to be on the record about it now, in case the subpoenas start flying,” a source reports."

* 2 comments from robbie c at EW's place
Comment:
"FYI, Jason Leopold was on the radio just now in Seattle and he said he is going to break big news this afternoon with someones ON THE RECORD who is well known saying the investigation is definitely continuing and that the person also has the copy of the letter Fitz sent to Luskin outlining Rove's deal. Leopold sounded happy because he believe it will vindicate him."
that didnt happen. then later:

Comment:
"I am IM'ing with Leopold right now and he said he and his supervisor interviewed someone in the case very well known today and they are going to break the story next week after giving the person time to respond. But he said he is sure the evidence he and his people have and the on the record information will vindicate him.

he said they have a team of attorneys and document specialists they are working with and that this is the story he has been working on for five months."

15 comments:

«—U®Anu§—» said...

I've been keen on defending Jason Leopold. When Rove wasn't carted away the weekend of May 10-13, I was the first to point out a lot of things can happen to a grand jury indictment between the chamber and defendant. Luke, I saw you call him a sock puppet the other day, and I tried to understand your thinking. But I haven't read the whole archive, so I'm dreadfully uninformed.

I fought with the trolls and pounded his critics in Truthout's forum here and (ha ha) linked to this blog. The thread is long and doesn't provide shortcuts to the individual comments within the discussion. You can see what I wrote down at the bottom. Not too bad. I had a little correspondence with Jason Leopold in June after the Washington Post and CBS went after him.

He and Mr. Ash were pretty discouraged about it. They must not have known much about media scandal. I envied them, because I'm a world class expert, and they got a first rate education from me. It didn't take much. There is an especially blistering appraisal of his critics by yours truly in that thread ("The correct decision").

Here is a link to all my comments.

In my correspondence he said he was taken by my statement that while it might seem like he was at a dead end, he was actually at the threshold of a finer and greater experience in life. Not wishful thinking on my part, I lived through it in my dad's career. I think they get it now. Love him, hate him, I suppose he has the social skills needed to get lucky breaks with information. I don't have that much snap myself. I can encourage every writer working on the story to keep dragging these scoundrels out into the light of day. If someone doesn't like it, they answer to me, and I'm nothing but hostile.

«—U®Anu§—» said...

Nice work by you, Luke, following this and making sense of it. Marc Ash says the mainstream press doesn't cover it because they have an axe to grind with Fitzgerald for throwing Judith Miller in jail. Did someone tell him that? I missed it. It couldn't get much goofier. Anyway, I trust you and Truthout, and everybody else is...everybody else.

lukery said...

i'm not keen on defending leopold - he is odious at times - but i do believe that there was some legitimacy in the journalistic process he and ash went through - so i suspect that there is something to the story.

re 'sockpuppets' - this is when someone appears on a blog or somewhere using an alias (usually to defend their own work) - leopold's sockpuppet history is DISGUSTING (and stupid) in ways that I can barely being to describe - and not just in a 'journalistic integrity' sense - but odious.

so - i don't defend him - but he has some good journalistic skills - and i trust Truthout's process.

«—U®Anu§—» said...

Thanks for that. Of course I don't know these people, but I do know Karl Rove wants them to go away, and that makes me like them. Yes, they go through a long confirmation process, and that's a rare thing these days.

As a road driver, a sock puppet was my only companion, and it was an actual sock. Mine used to talk dirty. I put them back in the laundry bag.

lukery said...

"I put them back in the laundry bag."
lol

Anonymous said...

Lukery, I have seen many commenters pointing to the "alleged" sock-puppet scandal involving Leopold but you have to admit that the evidence is pretty weak. Larry Johnson knows Leopold well and he said that there are people posing as leopold and posting crap, which I suppose is pretty easy to do. One person over at DU said someone was posting under the name Leopold and warned everyone that it wasn't Leopold because Leopold was at Air America being interviewed live while the person was posting under his name. I'm just sayin. It's pretty suspicious to me and pretty lame to find someone guilty with such weak evidence.

lukery said...

thanks hillary.

I agree that there are lots of situations where the evidence is weak (and other people sockpuppeting him) - but there are also examples that he has admitted to.

Don said...

IIRC, from all of the back-and-forth over JL in May, the only thing that came out as certain was that nothing was certain. That said, as apparently happened again this afternoon, there seems a tendency to jump the gun at the TO camp: days become business days, this afternoon becomes next week.

While a desire to get out in front of the competition is understandable in journalism, one shouldn't be getting too far ahead of the story; else, one's credibility suffers, as JL's has, and may again.

lukery said...

don - agreed. although i can understand the possibility of this latest delay - it'd make sense to keep some powder dry.

«—U®Anu§—» said...

I think of Marc Ash and Jason Leopold as "young bucks." They aren't the fishprint in stone I've become. I told them to just make sure the work is good, and to ignore their critics, that they owe them no penance. They were fretting about how maybe Rove had used them. I told them probably not, but even if you could learn he had, what good is that knowledge? I hope they got the message.

Anonymous said...

Don, I must have missed something. What news are you referring to when you say the same thing happened again this afternoon.

As a separate point, the developments that have come to light in this case during the past few months prove to me (and me personally) that Leopold was onto something big and that it was dead on. He's a damn good reporter (I've followed him for a long time) and he's made mistakes but he keeps doing the work and doing the work and hopefully learning. That's how people learn by making mistakes. Which is more than I can say for people like Howard Kurtz who excoriate him. What have you done latetly Howie that is half as worthy as what leopold has done in his career?

And having gone back and read Leopold's work on this case I believe that he and Larisa Alexandrovna at Raw story who he used to write with did some of the best reporting on the Plame case than anyone. Let's not forget when Woodward and Bernstein were covering watergate they too made some big mistakes in the paper when they were first reporting.

It's too bad the blogs took umbrage with Leopold and maybe he lost his cool witht he bloggers but the man is human. Alexandrovna has since moved on to Iran (well worth following her. She has been way ahead of the MSM).

lukery said...

stanley - I think that Don was referring to the fact that leopold mentioned that he'd break the story on Thursday, and then delayed it till next week...

i agree with you that it appears that jason was on to something in this story - let's hope he has some good news this week.

(and yep, we're larisa's greatest fans here)

Anonymous said...

Does anyone here no Marc Ash Personally? I mean I trust Leopold but I am not so sure about marc Ash.

lukery said...

anon - i don't know him

Anonymous said...

no = know...sorry