Found notes may show Bush plan on Clarke

UPI ^ | 3/31/04 | Pamela Hess

[HarryCaul]

Nothing surprising or even controversial here.

Of course, "Eric" should get a talking to, at the least. It's one thing to leave behind political strategy notes, but does this guy have a clearance?

[Feiny]

It wasn't an employee, just some liberal who hangs out at Starbucks.

[HarryCaul]

Actually, if this is the Starbuck's I think it is, then yeah, it's a very popular place with the gov't bunch.

It's also quite near the bookstore where Lewinsky did her infamous gift shopping.

[ravingnutter]

Insight often has reported on Clinton-era officials and Republican defectors who have tied Bush's national-security strategy in knots since the beginning of his presidency [see "Blinded Vigilance," Oct. 15, 2001; "Clinton Undead Haunting Pentagon," June 17, 2002; and "Democrats Subvert War Intelligence," Jan. 6-19]. Indeed, this magazine reported on Sept. 7, 2001, just four days before the terrorist attacks, that Clinton holdovers continued to run the U.S. intelligence community [see "Ground Down CIA Still in the Pit" at Insight online] without needed reforms to deal with post-Cold War threats such as international terrorism [see sidebar, p. 19]. Days after the carnage, even the president's most bellicose critics in Congress, including Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), were on CNN saying as publicly as they could that they were reconsidering their long-held positions that limited the fight against the terrorist enemy and piously alluding to the need to repeal a post-Watergate executive order banning assassinations abroad.

At that point the president's own defense and security team was still taking shape. His top NSC special assistant for intelligence programs, Mary K. Sturtevant, had been on the job only eight weeks before the 9/11 attacks. For months, Sen. Levin personally had held up the confirmation hearings of Bush's appointees who were to design the U.S. antiterrorism strategy - Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Programs J.D. Crouch and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Peter W. Rodman - refusing for apparently partisan purposes to allow them to take office until late July 2001. While Levin was holding up their appointments, the incoming Pentagon policy team had no legal or political authority to do their vital jobs - a fact that helps explain why it took eight months for the Bush administration to draw up a strategic operational plan to destroy al-Qaeda.

Making matters worse for the Pentagon leadership after 9/11 were the machinations of a network of senior Clinton political appointees who still held sensitive posts, including Peter F. Verga, Clinton's deputy undersecretary of defense for policy integration, which was a major intelligence post. Senior administration sources tell Insight that Verga made himself useful to the Rumsfeld team but beavered to curry favor at the top, in part by "sniping and playing bureaucratic games" to make life difficult for the incoming defense policy team. Even today the divisive Verga holds a senior homeland-security post at the Defense Department.

Insight

[Steve_Seattle]

This is a very strange story. A Pentagon official just happens to leave sensitive notes in a coffee shop, and the notes just happen to fall into the hands of someone who forwards them to a liberal advocacy group. And the notes just happen to have a map showing directions to Rumsfeld's house. Isn't there something bizarre about this story? Doesn't it suggest that someone in the administration is working as an agent for the Dems?

[js1138]

All's fair in politics. Some years ago rush got hold of some notes tht Ted kennedy left in a lunchroom. this is nothing. It's just talking points. there's nothing remotely embarrassing in it.

[TexasCajun]

The loyal liberal democrat socialist who found the notes certainly knew where to take it.

[RepatriatedTexan]

Thanks, I misread that.

[South40]

It's possible someone in the administration deliberately had them left where they would be found with the map to lend to the argument of the inadvertence of their loss.

Either way, something smells.

[Snuffington]

"Stay inside the lines. We don't need to puff this (up). We need (to) be careful as hell about it," the handwritten notes say. "This thing will go away soon and what will keep it alive will be one of us going over the line."

Wow. What a sizzling revelation! The White House told its folks to be calm and not to do anything outrageous over this. The perfect non-scandal scandal!! Election shocker written all over it!

[CyberAnt]

"Pentagon political appointee Eric Ruff"

Anybody know who this guy is - it might be a clue as to what was really going on and why the "notes" were left - and maybe if they were left on purpose.

Curious??

I don't see any detailed info or damaging info .. so I think the media's hyperventilating over nothing - as usual.

[South40]

I don't see any detailed info or damaging info .. so I think the media's hyperventilating over nothing - as usual.

They're jumping on the sentence that says the administration plans to do nothing but the the issue die. There's nothing else there.

[Zathras]

This doesn't make sense!
I don't walk around with memo's from MY work. They stay on the computer or locked in secure drawers.

[Sloth]

Isn't it interesting that the notes reveal a White House that has character? Imagine if the notes were found from a Clinton aide. It would say something like, "We have to pull out the FBI files. Say he's a flamer, attack his Grandma, call Peter Jennings and have him do a hit piece."

Exactly. If anything, these notes simply show integrity in the Bush administration. Unlike, say, the senate DemonRat memos that called Estrada dangerous because he's Hispanic.

[Gator113]

My God....they will be printing what they read on the restroom walls before this is all over!

End stall...." Tom D. will be here for you on Monday at 8PM........Richard C". xxxooo

[petitfour]

Considering liberal advocacy groups showed up at the homes of Rove and Chao over the weekend, I would consider it an interesting coinkydink that directions to Rumsfeld's house are now floating around liberal circles.

[Helms]

"A nation at war, mourning its dead, with homeland innocents slain en route to work, has a press corps obsessed with undermining a govt focused on preventing a further domestic slaughter.

I keep asking: IS IT TREASON YET?"

They, the Liberal Media thought they got over in 2000, don't you think they will try again?

At the least it is Insanity. These are robots in what may be called the Liberal Machine or Matrix. This is absolutely disgusting and it reveals their naivatte and their loathing.

[william clark]

Clearly there needs to be an investigation into this lack of conspiracy.

[South40]

Bio for Eric Ruff

[petitfour]

Wasn't CLinton's impeachment lawyer named Ruff? Probably not related. Though the lawyer dude was found dead in his home if I recall.