Communication Breakdown

Apparently, the media has a hard time getting its story straight when it's not simply reporting White House press releases.

As commenter E-mart points out, some news agencies say that Valerie Plame didn't work in Winpac. Was Libby passing along disinformation? Was someone passing along disinformation to Libby? Or was Judith Miller just wondering about Winpac after learning that "Flame" worked on wmd issues at CIA?

I'm checking firedoglake regularly now because the talented writers there are following the news stories about "Treasongate" very closely. Plus, at least one of the bloggers there seems to be a former prosecutor. That blog, and others, have reported that Miller didn't really have a security clearance.

Hmmm.

The blogosphere and the media are truly exploding with energy about the different and rapidly changing angles on this story.

For example, writers are not merely speculating that Dick Cheney is a target of the leak investigation. No, some already have him thinking about resignation! The most fantastic speculation concerns the identity of Bush's new Veep. While some are saying Condi Rice, my money would be on a politico from the congressional leadership -- or a Governor from a red state. The person would have to be totally clean on the selling of the Iraq war, and there aren't many in the administration who are.

Vice President Marc Racicot?

Other rumors concern the theory that someone in the administration has flipped and is volunteering evidence to the leak investigators. John Hannah's name has surfaced. Remember, Hannah's name already emerged in February 2004 as a possible leaker -- along with Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Moreover, reporters are starting to turn on Judith Miller. Laura Rozen recalls that Miller didn't want to believe that the anthrax attacks were home-grown terrorism, and former Times colleague Barbara Crossette says Miller's oil-for-food stories were unsubstantiated.

Here's my contribution to these developments. Hannah not only worked in Cheney's office, he was apparently the point man in the Veep's office to receive Iraq intell info directly from the INC. From Newsweek:

For months, Cheney’s office has denied that the veep bypassed U.S. intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two "U.S. governmental recipients" for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, "defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed"; the info was then reported to, among others, "appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies." The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a "principal point of contact" for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney’s staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans.

Did you notice the way the Office of Special Plans figured in there too?

If Hannah has flipped, he might know a lot about the origins of the Niger uranium story.

This is getting good.