Christmas Eve for Media, Waiting for Indictments

RUSH: I think the media have lost respect for themselves but I don’t think that’s possible. I think they think they’re so crucial and so important that it’s impossible for them to lose respect for themselves, but, I’ll tell you what: If this keeps up, an ever increasing number or percentage of the public will hold them in utter contempt. Now, first, here’s a New York Times story, and if you read basically just one-fifth of the story, you’d have to conclude, “Why is it a story?” He’s the headline: “Cheney Told Aide of CIA Officer, Lawyers Report.” (Gasp!) Ooooh! Because, you see, the media’s got their template on this. There’s a little domino theory on the left out there, folks: The Plame leak was to discredit Wilson. Wilson said there were no weapons of mass destruction; no weapons of mass destruction means the war was wrong. The war was wrong means we’ve got another Vietnam. “Another Vietnam” means we have another quagmire, so let’s leave — and who’s responsible for all this now? Cheney! Because Dick Cheney leaked Valerie Plame’s name even though Dick Cheney is entitled to know everything going on in the government, and Dick Cheney is entitled to tell his chief of staff, I. “Scooter” Libby, whatever he wants to tell him. This is as absurd as this locoweed, Lawrence Wilkerson or whatever his name was at the state department saying that the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal “hijacked” foreign policy. For crying out loud, Cheney is the vice president. Bush is the president. They were elected. They are in charge of American foreign policy!
The president can’t hijack anything. The vice president can’t hijack anything, except the Oval Office — and he hasn’t done that. All of this is patently absurd. So the Plame leak was to discredit Wilson. The whole thing here was to destroy Cheney — and I’m going to tell you this, too. I don’t care… If this independent prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, if there are no indictments, it isn’t going to matter. If there are no indictments, that story will be on page A-22, and we will continue with: “There were no weapons of mass destruction. Joe Wilson found out about it and the White House set out to destroy Joe Wilson and his wife.” There were no weapons of mass destruction. The administration lied! They’ve already got themselves convinced that’s what Fitzgerald’s investigation is all about anyway, and they don’t know diddly-squat just like they didn’t know what was going on in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and just like they all told us, “Michael Jackson slam-dunk, guilty; going to be in jail,” just like they’re telling us the same thing about Tom DeLay. Now, here’s the New York Times story: “Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report — I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003…” Go to the Novak column, folks. Novak says her identity was widely known when he wrote about it. But so what? There’s no crime here. Cheney found out? I mean, he’s entitled to know what’s going on at the CIA. He’s entitled to know who’s there.
It still it doesn’t matter though because even when Cheney found out, you know, the law requires that this babe has to be covert in the last five years. She wasn’t. Cheney didn’t know that she was covert when he told Libby anything. This is just absolutely worthless information. It is a non-story.

“Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.” Again, this is not Fitzgerald. Well, we don’t know; it could be, but it’s lawyers. “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.” By the way, the Washington Post has a story today on the unreliability of this Wilson guy. Now, I find this curious. They’re putting this out there. Here we are, it’s approaching Christmas Eve. You know, normally you and I, we know when Christmas Eve is. To the media, Christmas Eve floats. Christmas Eve is the day before indictments come down from this special prosecutor. So they’re hoping. This could be Christmas Eve because Wednesday could be the day, but if it’s not, tomorrow could be Christmas Eve; Thursday could be Christmas Eve. So they’re just getting all excited about this — and on the verge of Christmas Eve, here comes the Washington Post with the story about the essential unworthiness or unreliability, should I say, of Joseph Wilson.
It catalogs his lies, catalogs his misstatements, catalogs what does Senate intelligence committee has been saying. Why run that story now? I’m saying it’s a CYA in case Wilson’s indicted! How about that? What if Wilson and Plame are indicted? What if I’ve been going on the radio for the last three months saying: “Wilson and Plame, I’ve heard, they’re going to be indicted. I’ve got lawyers. I know lawyers. My dad was a lawyer. I know a lot of lawyers. I’ve got some cousins and uncles who are judges, and they told me they think it could be Wilson and Plame.” That’s about what the media is doing here. Wilson and Plame! Anyway, the Washington Post is doing something here because why run this story that basically trashes Wilson? The New York Sun today has a great story (laughing), and I tell you, folks… I will get this story to you in detail in just a second, but — they have a fabulous story in the New York Sun about all of this infighting at the New York Times. Everybody… Maureen Dowd has got Judy Miller down on the mat, gouging her eyes out. You’ve got the editor over there, Bill Keller, piling on. It’s a tag-team. It’s Mo Dowd and Bill Keller beating up Judy Miller. What they’re doing is basically saying is, “She didn’t tell us the truth. She lied through her teeth.” Maureen Dowd’s trying to say Judy Miller slept her way to all these sources, slept her way with Scooter Libby, slept her way with Pinch Sulzberger back in the 70s. Yeah, that’s what Mo Dowd is saying!

So everybody is responding, “Well, you slept with Michael Douglas, and he ditched you and threw you overboard, and you became a basket case after that, Mo, so who are you to talk?” This place is turning into an absolute soap opera. She was never the same after Michael Douglas dumped her, but that’s for the soap operas, folks. The bottom line here is that let’s say that Fitzgerald’s got all these indictments ready to go, and Judy Miller is a star witness, and here comes their own newspaper basically discrediting her! “You can’t rely on what she says!” (laughing) Fitzgerald’s got indictments ready to go, and he’s getting up reading the New York Times going, “Oh, my God, oh!” So the “newspaper of record” wants to take out Cheney and wants to take out Bush may be — and it’s just possible — (laughing) providing the roadblock to indictments, because the star witness here has just virtually been discredited by the newspaper of record.
Let me finish this New York Times story on Cheney, because one-fifth of the way in, you say to yourself, Why is there a story here? “Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that will Mr. Cheney had gotten his information from George Tenet. Well, how can Cheney be the leak? If Cheney got the news from Tenet and Tenet’s at the CIA and Tenet is her boss, how can any of this be a leak? That’s still not the point. But they contain, those notes — Libby’s notes contain “contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.” Well, that’s where you say, Where’s the story? Why did you guys bother writing this? “Libby’s notes contain no suggestion that either Cheney or Libby knew of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified, and if you have to know that to be guilty of a crime,” and you didn’t know that, we will take a break.
We will be back. Now, AP tried their version of this after the New York Times story came out and it’s utterly irresponsible and the AOL.com, AOL online, whatever. America Online, is that what it is? Moscow Online! Change the name! Moscow Online, Beijing Online. At any rate, they’ve got this story, and a picture of Cheney snarling with his upper lip. You know how sometimes when Cheney smiles, half of his mouth moves, the other half doesn’t, and they’ve got inning pictures of (shutter sound) auto winder took and they’ve taken one of these pictures in mid-smile making Cheney look like he’s snarling at you, to go along with this story.
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RUSH: Okay, I just shared with you the New York Times version of the story. “Cheney…” In fact, let me get the headline right here. “Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report” That’s their headline. Now, the AP takes this a step further: “Cheney May Be Source of CIA Leak, Report Says,” but this story also recounts the fact that Cheney learned about it from George Tenet. If you read the story, there are no facts in this story whatsoever, just supposition, hopes and dreams. It’s utterly irresponsible. The media is out of control here, folks. The media is a modern-day scandal in action. People die because of the media, as in New Orleans (Who knows wherever else?), but it’s a breathtaking thing to watch. Now, here is the Josh Gerstein story in the New York Sun today: “A recent barrage of attacks on the credibility of a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, could affect a prosecutor’s decision about whether to bring indictments of White House officials in an investigation,” blah, blah, blah, this “according to legal analysts. Attorneys closely following the case said the sharp criticism Ms. Miller has received from her editors and colleagues may discourage the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, from bringing perjury charges against…Lewis Libby.
“According to Ms. Miller and others who have testified before the grand jury investigating the leak, Mr. Fitzgerald has shown significant interest in whether Mr. Libby or other White House officials testified truthfully about their involvement in an alleged effort to discredit a vocal critic of President Bush,” the self-styled raconteur, “Joseph Wilson. “The prosecutor’s…” Oh, by the way, in that Washington Post story that I talked about, it also alludes to the fact that Wilson really was instrumental in getting her identity and name out there. Ye-e-es! If I didn’t know better I’d say the Washington Post, rather, transcribed one of my monologs yesterday and rewrote it with two different guys, because it’s amazing. I haven’t seen this anywhere else in the media — and it’s not there by accident. They’re covering their bases. It means they’re not sure what’s coming here, folks, bottom line, despite all the certitude that you hear from them in their reporting. Now… “The prosecutor’s intense interest in Mr. Libby may be related to an alleged discrepancy about how he came to learn that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA…. The notes do not indicate that Mr. Cheney … knew that the operative, Valerie,” Flame…
Well, that’s Judith Miller’s name for her. “I thought her name was ‘Flame,’ judge. That’s what my notes say.”
Anyway Paul Rosenzweig, former federal prosecutor, said, “‘If it’s going to be a perjury case,'” if that’s where they’re headed, here, Fitzgerald has “‘got a hard case because his key witness is Judy Miller [and] she has some issues as a witness.’ Last week, the Times published a lengthy story containing unflattering anecdotes about Ms. Miller, including a claim that she referred to herself as ‘Miss Run Amok.’ On Friday, the newspaper’s managing editor, Bill Keller, sent a memo to his staff asserting that Ms. Miller ‘seems to have misled’ the paper’s Washington bureau chief, Philip Taubman, regarding her knowledge about Mr. Libby’s alleged campaign against Mr. Wilson,” and don’t forgot you’ve got Maureen Dowd in her column on Saturday pretty much alleging here that Judith Miller slept her way to these sources and it was carefully, cleverly disguised with a word you’d have to go to dictionary to look up. I don’t even remember the word right now but the word means “openness with powerful men.” (Laughing.) That’s exactly what the dictionary says. “Her willingness to be open (ahem — think eagle) with powerful men.” Well, there is a word. I forget the word, but it was clear what Maureen Dowd’s implication was. Then you’ve got Bill Keller out there writing this CYA memo.
“On Saturday, a Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, questioned Ms. Miller’s candor and suggested that she no longer be allowed to write for the newspaper. Mr. Rosenzweig, who worked on the independent counsel investigation of President Clinton, said the attacks on Ms. Miller would complicate any attempt to present her as a witness. ‘Can you imagine a defense attorney saying, “So, I understand they call you Miss Run Amok?”‘… A law professor at George Washington University, Jonathan Turley, said the storm surrounding Ms. Miller adds a layer of complexity to Mr. Fitzgerald’s decision about how to proceed.” So it would be just juicy as it can be, just ironically juicy as it could be if the New York Times beating itself up in public in an effort to cover itself, forever trusting this horrible run-amuck reporter, does such a great job of discrediting her credibility that nobody wants to use her as a star witness in any kind of a criminal proceeding. This is the kind of thing we may never know, too. I mean, if there are no indictments of these figures, we’ll not know why. So much is unknown here, and it’s just going to be sort of like waiting for Christmas. It just takes a lot of patience there, when you are a kid.
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