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McClellan Under Siege About Rove's Involvement in Outing
of Undercover CIA Operative
Before London Bombing, Leaked UK Memo Warned Iraq War a Key
Cause for Growth of "Extremism" in Britain
How the U.S. Government Exposed Thousands of Americans to
Lethal Bacteria to Test Biological Warfare
McClellan Under Siege About Rove's Involvement in
Outing of Undercover CIA Operative
White House spokesperson Scott McClellan has been besieged
the past two days at press briefings, with many journalists
pummeling away with question after question about the involvement
of Karl Rove in the outing of an undercover CIA operative.
The White House has done an about face from 2003 when it adamantly
denied any involvement on the part of Rove in the leak. We
play an excerpt of Tuesday's hearing. [includes rush
transcript]
Several of the top leaders of the Democratic Party are calling
on President Bush to fire his senior advisor, Karl Rove, over
his alleged role in the outing of undercover CIA operative
Valerie Plame.
Among the leaders of this effort is Senator John Kerry who
yesterday said bluntly that Bush should fire the man many
say is responsible for his two-term presidency. Kerry said,
"Is the value of day-to-day politics, and the value of
political advice, and the value of his position greater than
the national security of our country, and the protection of
the identity of people, as well as their own word and their
own policy? The White House's credibility is at issue here.
I believe very clearly Karl Rove ought to be fired."
Kerry made that statement standing next to Senator Hillary
Clinton of New York, who turned to the cameras and said, "I'm
nodding."
The past several days have seen some of the more dramatic
political moments in DC in recent months with New York Times
reporter Judith Miller being jailed for refusing to cooperate
with a federal prosecutor investigating the Plame case; an
about face by a White House that adamantly denied any involvement
on the part of Rove and now growing calls for Congressional
hearings and the resignation or firing of a man who is perhaps
the most powerful unelected official in the US.
Meanwhile, Rove's attorney Robert Luskin is charging that
Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper "burned" Rove
after the two spoke briefly about Plame and her alleged connection
to the fact-finding mission to Niger of her husband Ambassador
Joe Wilson, where he was sent to investigate claims that Iraq
had attempted to import uranium from the African nation. In
an email sent by Cooper to editors at Time following that
conversation, Cooper wrote that it was Rove who said--quoting
from that email, it was "Wilson's wife, who apparently
works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip."
Cooper goes on to write that Rove "implied strongly that
there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring
uranium fro[m] Niger..." Rove's lawyer says Cooper, not
Rove, initiated the call and that his client spoke to Cooper
about the story only in an effort to stop Time from publishing
false reports that Vice President Cheney or then-CIA director
George Tenet had selected Joe Wilson for the mission. Luskin
says Rove did not out Plame and he told the National Review
"Karl speaks to him on double super secret background...I
don't think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that
what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the
name of Wilson"s wife." Despite these denials, this
story is picking up momentum fast.
The White House is clearly scrapping to keep this story from
growing even more damaging but has been unable to offer any
believable defenses.
Spokesperson Scott McClellan has been besieged the past two
days at the White House press briefings, with many journalists
pummeling away with question after question about the scandal.
At times it has seemed like McClellan is calling on reporters
he often ignores or marginalized in the hopes they will ask
about something other than Rove.
McClellan has tried to end all discussion of the case by
saying it is an ongoing investigation. Here is some of the
melee from Tuesday's White House press briefing.
- White House press briefing, July 12, 2005.
Before London Bombing, Leaked UK Memo Warned Iraq
War a Key Cause for Growth of "Extremism" in Britain
British police now believe that four-British-born men of
Pakistani descent carried out last week's deadly bombings
in London that killed at least 52 people. We go to Britain
to speak with author and activist Milan Rai about how a leaked
British government study concluded that British foreign policy,
and the Iraq war in particular, was a key cause of young Britons
turning to terrorism.
British police now believe that four-British-born men carried
out last week's deadly bombings in London that killed at least
52 people and injured 700.
Police said all four men are of Pakistani descent and at
least three are believed to have died in the explosions.
The four suspected bombers were aged between 19 and 30 and
were so-called "cleanskins" -- with no convictions
or known connections to terrorist organizations.
Police first learned of the four men when the family of one
of them called the police last week to report their 22-year-old
son, Hasib Hussain, was missing. Closed circuit television
film from around 8.30am the day of the bombings shows four
young men, all wearing identical large rucksacks similar to
those carried by infantry soldiers. The three subway bombs
went off 20 minutes later.
Police said personal documents belonging to three of the
men were later found at three blast sites. Police have not
recovered any timing devices at the bomb sites and it is possible
that all four men blew themselves up deliberately.
Police raided six homes in and near the northern industrial
town of Leeds on Tuesday and arrested a relative of one of
the suspects. The relative was brought to London for questioning.
The raids led police to a bomb factory in Leeds. Explosives
were also found in a car at Luton railway station.
Meanwhile, British home secretary, Charles Clarke, today
warned that Britain must be prepared for more attacks. He
said, "We have to assume there are others who are ready
to do the kinds of things that these people did last Thursday."
Britain remains on its highest-ever security alert.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said on Tuesday there
was no link between last week's bombings in London and the
Iraq war.
In the House of Commons a day earlier, Blair rejected a suggestion
that Britain was more at risk from a terrorist attack because
of its involvement in Iraq. Blair said, "It is a form
of terrorism aimed at our way of life, not at any particular
government or policy."
Not everyone may agree. In the aftermath of the bombings
last week, CNN's Christiane Amanpour was reporting live from
the streets of London when her broadcast was interrupted.
- Christiane Amanpour, reporting for CNN from London.
We go now to Britain to speak with Milan Rai, author of "Regime
Unchanged" and "War Plan Iraq" and one of the
founders of Voices in the Wilderness, UK. He is currently
coordinating the group Justice Not Vengeance and has been
doing extensive analysis of the aftermath of the London bombings.
He joins us on the phone from Hastings, England.
How the U.S. Government Exposed Thousands of Americans
to Lethal Bacteria to Test Biological Warfare
The Homeland Security Department last month released what
they said was nontoxic gas into New York's Grand Central Station
to trace how chemicals might flow through the terminal in
a terrorist attack. We speak with biological and chemical
terrorism expert Leonard Cole, who asks what this "nontoxic
gas" actually was. He wrote a book about how - in the
1950s and 1960s, U.S. government scientists ran a series of
tests to determine how easy it would be to expose large numbers
of people to a lethal bacteria.
In the aftermath of the London bombings, the U.S. Government
raised the terrorist threat level to Orange, or "High."
The alert was particularly applied to the nation's trains
and subway systems. Although far less money has been spent
on security measures for public transportation than for the
airline industry, experts say subways and trains may be particularly
vulnerable to chemical and biological attacks. Late last month,
the Homeland Security Department released what they said was
nontoxic gas into New York's Grand Central Station to trace
how chemicals might flow through the terminal in a terrorist
attack.
But some government simulations of chemical and biological
attacks in the past have been somewhat different.
In the 1950s and sixties, scientists from the Fort Detrick
biological weapons program ran a series of tests to determine
how easy it would be to expose large numbers of people to
a lethal bacteria. Containers of nontoxic bacteria were planted
in the New York subway, bacteria was secretly pumped into
the Pentagon ventilation system and clouds of bacteria were
released in San Francisco. And germs that were meant to sicken
but not kill humans were tested on conscientious objectors
in the military.
- Leonard Cole, an Adjunct Professor of Political Science
at Rutgers-Newark in New Jersey. An expert in biological
and chemical terrorism, Cole is also the author of "The
Eleventh Plague, The Politics of Chemical and Biological
Warfare," and "The
Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story."
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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