106th in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. October 2003 begins with some more extremely busy days for the White House and the Office of the Vice President.
October 1-2, 2003:

 

Oct 1, 2003 – Economic specialists announce that Iraq will need $36 billion for reconstruction over the next four years. This estimate comes on top of assessments by occupation forces that Iraq will also need $19 billion for other uses, according to the diplomats and economists, bringing the total needed for Iraq to over $55 billion. The United Nations and the World Bank are involved in this estimate.

 

Oct 1, 2003 – Administration officials announce that they are seeking authorization of more than $600 million to continue the hunt for evidence that Iraq had WMD. U.S. weapons inspector David Kay reports on progress of ongoing hunts in Washington, D.C.

 

Oct. 1, 2003 – Emails from the Office of the Vice President are missing for this day, as discovered later by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

 

Oct. 1, 2003 – Jeff Gannon/James Guckert asks a loaded question about the Wilson-Plame matter at a Scott McClellan press briefing:   
 

“Jeff?

Q Thank you.

Q (Inaudible) -- answer the question. 

MR. MCCLELLAN: You have a hypothetical? (Laughter.) I asked for a hypothetical.

Q (Off mike.) You know, I'm no Bob Novak, but my feelings are really hurt that nobody leaked anything to me. (Laughter.)

Has the White House asked George Tenet or anyone else at the CIA why they would send a partisan like Ambassador Wilson on this mission? And because he is so partisan --

MR. MCCLELLAN: Has who asked? Has who asked anybody?

Q Has the White House asked George Tenet or anyone at the CIA why they would send a partisan like Ambassador Wilson on this mission? He's proven himself to be partisan, and does that cast doubt on the report that he filed in this matter?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Yeah, I think we've kind of been through this issue already. I don't know of any such conversations. Certainly -- you know, I don't think it's my position to get into speculating about someone's motives. I think that is a role for you in the media to determine how to follow, and how to -- and how to present -- but I –

Q Is -- is the White House the least bit curious about how they -- how the process was that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to go on this very important mission?”

 
It will be noticed here that Guckert/Gannon takes exactly the line taken by the OVP and by administration allies at Fox and other friendly media outlets—that the real question raised by Wilson’s trip to Africa is purportedly the question of how he came to be the one chosen to make it.

 

Oct. 1, 2003 – Secretary of State Colin Powell receives a phone call from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who is agitated because he just read a column by Bob Novak about the Plame outing and realizes that he, Armitage, did the outing. A series of communications and meetings leads the State Department to get in touch with the Department of Justice about Armitage and the leak matter.

 

This is a turning point, behind the scenes, in the CIA leak investigation. Long delays will intervene between this early, cathartic moment of recognition and any final resolution in the courts.

 

Oct 2, 2003 -- The Senate approves a requirement that future contracts for Iraq reconstruction be open, competitive contracts. The Bush administration is requesting another $87 billion for the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some of the waste, fraud and abuse in war profiteering is already becoming apparent.

 

Oct 2, 2003 -- The chief American weapons inspector, David Kay, reports to Congress that, after three months of searching Iraq, his team, the Iraq Survey Group, has not found WMD in Iraq.

 

Oct. 2, 2003 – Emails from the Office of the Vice President are missing for this day.

 

Oct. 2, 2003 – The leak investigation is extended to the Defense Department and State. A team of FBI agents from counterintelligence and inspections divisions assembled to conduct the CIA leak investigation question Armitage, who admits that he passed the information about Wilson’s wife to Novak.

 

Same day – Newspapers including the Washington Post report opinion polls showing that a majority of people believe an independent counsel, rather than the Justice Department, should handle the CIA leak. The New York Times reports that Ashcroft's former chief of staff is now the deputy finance chairman of President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, and the Los Angeles Times reports that the Assistant Attorney General is an old friend of Bush’s from the Skull and Bones Society of their Yale days.

 

It is always wonderful to see newspapers recover their spine. Amazingly, three of the most important newspapers in the U.S. all recover their spine on the same day, about the same story. Some Washington insiders predict wisely that leak investigations never lead to anything. Questions about administration credibility in general, it is suggested, may go far enough to taint this particular leak investigation conducted by personnel and entities in the administration.

 

Same day -- Jeff Gannon/James Guckert weighs in with another editorial question on the Plame matter at a McClellan press briefing:

“Jeff.

Q Scott, in addition to the controversy surrounding Ambassador Wilson's wife we've seen open, public dissension in the State Department, the EPA inspector general has made claims that the White House doctored air quality reports, and Senator Clinton is using this to hold up the nomination of Governor Leavitt for the EPA post. Still others leave the administration, write an op ed criticizing the administration, and then join a Democratic presidential nominee's campaign.

My question is, is the president, or anyone else in this administration, concerned that the Clinton holdovers are undermining the administration?

MR. MCCLELLAN: In a certain department?

Q Yeah, in these various departments.

MR. MCCLELLAN: I think that the president has assembled a team that is working together to implement his priorities. We have a strong team that is in place that is trying to implement what the president's focus is.

Q But time and time again, you'll see one holdover from various departments criticizing the administration and --”

 
Scott McClellan will continue to call on Gannon/Guckert throughout his tenure as WH press secretary. At every juncture—as other journalists eventually recognize—the questions will be predictably tied to the administration line. This particular line, that holdovers or liberals from previous administrations are somehow sabotaging administration efforts, is almost exactly that taken by Frank Gaffney in the Washington Times column quoted in August 2003 regarding the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the State Department.