raises for everybody!

by now, many have noticed that whenever someone in the bush administration fucks up, they get a raise. wolfowitz is now at the world bank. condi is the new national security advisor. and so on. so it's not a big surprise that, now that karl rove and scooter lewis are at the center of a big political scandal, one where they could be indicted and even sent to jail as convicted felons, bush is giving them a raise. (courtesy americablog)

some white house counsels also got raises. so why did bush hire an outside attorney to represent him in the CIA leak case when he has all these top-notch well-paid attorneys already in his administration? john dean, former counsel to the nixon white house and an important player in bringing down that administration, thinks he knows why: the logical conclusion is that bush knows more than he's admitted to knowing, and he can't confess that to white house lawyers becase ken starr destroyed the concept of "attorney-client privelege" in regard to white house counsel.

of course, the real news of the day is this washington post article with lots of new information:

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.

Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.

the story does a good job of summarizing what we know about the investigation. and it confirms for the infinity+1th time that plame was indeed undercover and that the CIA explicitly warned novak not to mention plame's name:

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.

this post by hunter on dkos also very nicely collects some of the biggest revelations in the case that happened while i was AFB (away from blog) last week. ¶