Looking at television's most prominent news personalities eagerly shill for the worst of the worst in administration policy, it’s hard to blame the Libby defense team for making the news media part of its defense strategy. Serves them right: when the large media outlets engage in what amounts to tacit collusion with giant military-security contractors, roll over when they should stand up to abuses of office, and go along with what they should know are bogus ploys by the powerful, they deserve to lose credibility.

 

So once again, the motion for release on bail pending appeal filed yesterday evening by Mr. Libby’s defense attorneys leans on news-media arguments. A somewhat sickening newspaper article by a Libby juror who had worked for the Washington Post (and is now pushing a book) is attached as an Appendix. Tim Russert, who did not distinguish himself in testimony, comes up again. And the defense says it will appeal the exclusion of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell from the trial:

 

“As the court knows, in October 2003 Ms. Mitchell was asked, point blank, whether she had had any idea “that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA.” [citation] Ms. Mitchell replied that this fact “was widely known amongst those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger.” But, Ms. Mitchell added, it was not until Mr. Novak published his column that she also became aware of Ms. Wilson’s “actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction.” [citation]”

 

Wonkette, where are you? I posted the material below on February 12. Here it is again, cut slightly:

 

Here is Andrea Mitchell’s actual statement about Joe Wilson on October 3, 2003, from NBC transcripts. The program was Capital Report, co-hosted by Alan Murray:

 

“MURRAY And the second question is: Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?

MITCHELL: It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it.”

 

[Andrea Mitchell does NOT say here that it was “widely known” that “Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA.” She says it was “widely known” “who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger.” – By this time, Joe Wilson had already appeared on television criticizing the Niger item. Mitchell’s fuzzy syntax is clarified by what she immediately goes on to say, that “frankly” she was NOT “aware of [Plame’s] actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction” until Novak wrote it.]

 

[Mitchell’s other statements in the same program go the same way:]

 

a.      “MURRAY: We have news that a memo was sent today to the White House, asking for information about this leak very quickly. In fact, there's a deadline

set for next Tuesday. Looks like they're trying to move rapidly on this, right?

MITCHELL: They are. They are trying to narrow the focus of the investigation, and try to wrap it up as quickly as possible. And truth be told that if they are going to find anything and the track record on these leak investigations is that they rarely do, because journalists don't want to disclose their sources. But if they do find something, they want to do it as quickly as possible. And in this case, you've got a very small universe. All they have to find out is who are the people at the CIA who first talked to Bob Novak? We pretty well know that. That's been disclosed. And who were the people who talked to Novak and to at least these two other reporters from Newsday who have been mentioned in the White House memo, and that should be easily ascertained.” [doesn’t sound like “widely known”]

 

b.      “[Mitchell] But why did it take so long? July 6th, Joe Wilson comes out and discloses that he was, indeed, the secret envoy who went to Niger for the CIA, and this is an op-ed on a Sunday morning in the New York Times. Well, Saturday night, we see that this is coming, so I was substituting on "Meet The Press," and called Wilson and said, 'Would you come on?' And we had him come on the show, so he's also on television. Now that certainly was a double whammy as far as the Bush administration was concerned. Interestingly, Bob Novak was also one of my invited guests on that program on a different subject, so they clearly met for the first time, Wilson and Novak that day.” [back to the “secret envoy” question, the one on which Mitchell had focused]

 

c.       “BORGER: Did Wilson's wife come, by the way, to the studio or not?

MITCHELL: Not at all.BORGER: OK. All right. Just thought I'd ask.

MITCHELL: Separate lives. So that week, on the 8th of July, I did a story on "Nightly News" about Wilson's allegations focusing on Niger, the uranium, not focusing on any issue involving his spouse. Then on the 14th, the bombshell from Novak, which was the revelation which clearly he says came from two administration officials--he wrote that in his column--that she was a covert--rather an operative, as he put it, at the CIA. The clear implication that she had somehow been involved in getting him to take this assignment and in somehow positioning him, that this was part of the overall attempt of the CIA to go up against the White House and to challenge the president's policy. So this is where it fits within the ongoing wars which are only becoming more heated between the Cheney-Bush White House, Rumsfeld hard-liners on weapons of mass destruction, and the more skeptical analysts and operatives, CIA officers, covert officers at both the CIA and the State Department.” [Mitchell keeps Wilson's Niger story and Wilson’s wife separate.]

 

d.      “We should point out that I did do a story after that, on July 21st. I interviewed Wilson, did a story on the fact that he was now alleging that there was an attempt to bring his wife into it, that this was an administration attempt to intimidate him. So it was on the air in July. But then the CIA secretly asked the Justice Department to look into this. The Justice Department took its sweet time, frankly, came back to the CIA and said, 'Answer these 11 questions: Was she covert? Was there a possible violation?' Eleven questions had to be answered prima facie. The CIA responded to the Justice Department. And last Friday, as we reported at the time, the Justice Department said, 'OK, we're going to proceed and investigate.' That's why the lag time.” [Wilson’s wife was a separate story for Mitchell, which she got to AFTER doing Wilson on Niger; she keeps saying so.]