Rearranging the Chairs

The Libby Profiles

Mark Leibovich writes in The Washington Post: "Among vice-presidential aides throughout history, Libby is distinctive for the power and authority he wields, a product largely of Cheney's outsize role in the Bush administration."

Richard W. Stevenson profiles Libby in the New York Times; John Dickerson does it in Slate; Julie Hirschfeld Davis does it in the Baltimore Sun.

The Week Ahead

Adam Entous writes for Reuters: "Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be laying the groundwork for indictments this week over the outing of a covert CIA operative, including possible charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers and other sources involved in case said on Sunday. . . .

"Fitzgerald is expected to give final notice to officials facing charges as early as Monday and may convene the grand jury on Tuesday, a day earlier than usual, to deliver a summary of the case and ask for approval of the possible indictments, legal sources said. The grand jury is to expire on Friday unless Fitzgerald extends it."

Brownstein on the Press

Los Angeles Times reporter Ronald Brownstein was a guest on Howard Kurtz's CNN show on Sunday:

"BROWNSTEIN: Everybody has got to take a deep breath. I mean, look, the press does a lot of things well. I'm very proud of the way we covered Harriet Miers. There is a lot of other things we've done well, but this is not -- this is not the best moment.

"When you get one of these investigations, and we are coming down to the wire, there is just enormous pressure on every news institution to have a new story every day. And inevitably, you're sort of, you know, you are sort of casting at shadows.

"Some of these stories may turn out to be extremely prescient, and very revealing, and others may not. I mean, we're talking to lawyers on the periphery of the case, we're trying to sort of peer through the keyhole. And you just wish that everybody could sort of take that deep breath and say, all right, we're going to know pretty soon one way or the other. Let's let the report come out and analyze it. But that isn't the way it works."

About That Web Site

My Friday column caused a bit of a ruckus, with my scoop that Fitzgerald had launched a new Web site -- and my observation that one of the documents on it showed that he had received explicit authority from the Justice Department to expand his inquiry to include criminal attempts to interfere with his probe.

Friday was a pretty slow news day and my exclusive -- uncredited, alas -- made headlines in newspapers all over the country and was great fodder for the television talking heads.

I was the first to suggest that this did not look like the work of an office about to close shop, and I still believe that. But some of the speculation over the Web site's significance was a bit over the top. For instance, I can assure you that the prosecutors were not intentionally sending a sign to anyone.

When I spoke to him Friday morning, Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn was surprised and clearly not happy that I had discovered the Web site, which he acknowledged had actually first gone up on Wednesday night. It was my distinct sense that Fitzgerald would have been much happier if no one had noticed it until they were ready to post something new.

The Secret About Secrets

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "There are still lots of real secrets in Washington. But the most secretive White House in modern history has learned the hard way -- even while its spokesman reflexively utter the caution, 'We don't talk about intelligence,' or, 'Sorry, that's classified' -- that it must reveal a pretty steady stream of secrets all the time. . . .

"In five years of covering national security issues at the Bush White House, I've seen classified information leaked or suddenly declared 'declassified' for many reasons, most often to explain a new policy and sometimes to back up a presidential statement."

For instance, he writes: "There are moments when what is classified in the morning becomes public record in the afternoon. Two weeks ago, President Bush gave a speech defending his record fighting terrorism, saying the United States and its allies had stopped 10 terror plots, including three in the United States. He described none of them, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, declined to provide details.

"But by late afternoon -- after heated conversations between reporters and the White House, and then the White House and intelligence agencies -- the White House e-mailed reporters a list of plots. It was a mix of cases that were well known and a few never before made public. A senior official who talked about them that night joked that a few hours earlier he might have been jailed for discussing the subject.

" 'Now we've posted it on the White House Web site,' he said."

About Those Foiled Plots

Sara Kehaulani Goo writes in The Washington Post: "A White House list of 10 terrorist plots disrupted by the United States has confused counterterrorism experts and officials, who say they cannot distinguish between the importance of some incidents on the list and others that were left off.

"Intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the White House overstated the gravity of the plots by saying that they had been foiled, when most were far from ready to be executed. . . .

"The president made it 'sound like well-hatched plans,' said a former CIA official involved in counterterrorism during that period. 'I don't think they fall into that category.' "

Scowcroft Joins the Critics

In a New Yorker profile out today, Brent Scowcroft, who was the national security adviser to Bush's father, goes public with his critique of the neoconservatives who took the country to war.

Blogger Steve Clemmons has excerpts.

Here's one passage from the New Yorker story: "Scowcroft suggested that the White House was taking the wrong advice, and listening to a severely limited circle. He singled out the Princeton Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, who was consulted by Vice-President Cheney and others after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Lewis, Scowcroft said, fed a feeling in the White House that the United States must assert itself. 'It's that idea that we've got to hit somebody hard,' Scowcroft said. 'And Bernard Lewis says, "I believe that one of the things you've got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power."' Cheney, in particular, Scowcroft thinks, accepted Lewis's view of Middle East politics. 'The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney,' Scowcroft said. 'I consider Cheney a good friend -- I've known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore.' "

Grilling the Onion

Katharine Q. Seelye writes in the New York Times: "You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda -- stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.

"The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site ( www.theonion.com/content/node/40121 ), where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia."

A complete archive of the Onion's spoof of presidential weekly radio addresses can be found at weeklyradioaddress.com .