THIS IS GREAT!!!!!
WaPo has
two killer stories coming:
WHO FORMULATED ENERGY POLICY? DUH. MORE LIES
Someone give Cheney directions to the Political Morgue.
It gets better below the fold!!!!
WASHINGTON--A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force in 2001- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
The document ... shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate ``to my knowledge,'' and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.
URGENT UPDATE: ANOTHER good WaPo scoop:
WASHINGTON--Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.
In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released Tuesday.
OK, I await WaPo's explanation as to why they are hiding the ID of the official who outed Valerie Plame.
I wish i could give unreserved applause to WaPo.
But I reserve judgment. Woodward withheld the name of a "senior administration official" who outed a CIA agent?
OK tough call as a journalist, you promise to protect your source, but there is a FLIP SIDE to the coin. The source has to provide info IN GOOD FAITH. Not as a political hatchet job.
But I guess Bob Woodward knows about hatchet jobs. Don't get me started.
I will get back to the Woodward/Plame story later, but this is sweet stuff!!!!
If only I could do separate diary entries on these items.
More from WaPo on the Cheney energy task force:
In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate ``to my knowledge,'' and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.
It gets better ...
Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that ``gave detailed energy policy recommendations'' to the task force. In addition, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work; that meeting is not noted in the document.
The task force's activities attracted complaints from environmentalists, who said they were shut out of the task force discussions while corporate interests were present. The meetings were held in secret and the White House refused to release a list of participants. The task force was made up primarily of Cabinet-level officials. Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club unsuccessfully sued to obtain the records.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department Wednesday to investigate. ``The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force,'' Lautenberg said.
Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on the document and said that the courts have upheld ``the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality.''
The executives were not under oath when they testified, so they are not vulnerable to charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, not to swear in the executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making ``any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation'' to Congress.
Now, back to Woodward and Plame ...
More from WaPo:
Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 --one week after Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, was indicted in the investigation.
Citing a confidentiality agreement in which the source freed Woodward to testify but would not allow him to discuss their conversations publicly, Woodward and Post editors refused to disclose the official's name or provide crucial details about the testimony.
Woodward did not share the information with Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. until last month, and the only Post reporter whom Woodward said he remembers telling in the summer of 2003 does not recall the conversation taking place.
well shiver me timbers. OK, now at least the Washington Post admits they are in the business of keeping the
DIRTY SECRETS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.
OK, I am a journalist, I may work for the Possom Crossing (Arkansas) News (just to stir things up), but I know one thing, REAL journalists are not in the business of keeping secrets of slimeballs.
(Steps down from my soapbox)
More from WaPo:
Woodward said he also testified that he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, and discussed Iraq policy as part of his research for a book on President Bush's march to war. He said he does not believe Libby said anything about Plame.
He also told Fitzgerald that it is possible he asked Libby about Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. He based that testimony on an 18-page list of questions he planned to ask Libby in an interview that included the phrases ``yellowcake'' and ``Joe Wilson's wife.'' Woodward said in his statement, however, that ``I had no recollection'' of mentioning the pair to Libby. He also said that his original government source did not mention Plame by name, referring to her only as ``Wilson's wife.''