Free Republic

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

Condoleezza Rice may be willing to compromise at a Middle East negotiating table - but not at a jewelry counter. Coit Blacker, a Stanford professor who is one of the secretary of state's closest friends, recalls going into a shop where Rice asked to see earrings. The clerk showed her costume jewelry. Rice asked to see something nicer, prompting the clerk to whisper some sass under her breath. Blacker remembers Rice tearing the woman to shreds. "Let's get one thing straight," he recalls her saying. "You are behind the counter because you have to work for minimum wage. I'm on...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer leaked the identity of a CIA operative to Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus during a 2003 phone call, Pincus testified Monday as the first defense witness in the CIA leak trial. Pincus was one of the first reporters to learn the identity of Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and prominent Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Pincus said he learned her identity July 12, 2003 but did not immediately write about it. Plame was outed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak two days later. Pincus testified on behalf of Vice...

A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect. Senior State Department officials deny that and say an investigation has found that the proper personnel practices were followed. But three officials involved in the reorganization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, acknowledge that a merger of two bureaus reduced the influence of employees who were viewed by some...

Yesterday, in a discussion about another issue, I picked up on a disturbing recent piece by Glenn Kessler, a regular Washington Post reporter/columnist. Kessler's January 16 piece, N. Korea Progressing, U.S. Visitor Says, presented an optimistic assessment of the stability of North Korea's communist leadership from one of the previous Administration's State Department officials who was recently shown the red-carpet Potemkin treatment by the masters of Pyongyang:

January 19, 2004 The President's Credibility, and the Post's This morning's Washington Post includes an article by Glenn Kessler, titled "Arms Issue Seen as Hurting U.S. Credibility Abroad." Kessler's theme is announced in his the opening sentence: "The Bush administration's inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- after public statements declaring an imminent threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- has begun to harm the credibility abroad of the United States and of American intelligence, according to foreign policy experts in both parties." Regular readers of this and many other blogs need no reminder that the...