Notes from former Vice President Dick Cheney's interview with the FBI about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity were finally released on Friday afternoon after a lengthy legal battle. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the Justice Department last year to obtain the interview notes; a judge finally ordered their release on October 1. In the interview, Cheney demonstrated a behavior common among Bush administration officials under investigation: he couldn't remember much of anything. Here's a non-comprehensive list of 22 things Dick Cheney claimed he couldn't recall about the Plame case, in the order they appear in the FBI's notes:

• Whether the Wilson trip was discussed during any of the visits he made to the CIA with his Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby.
• Any reaction he had to Nicholas Kristof's New York Times' article about the Wilson visit at the time the article was published.
• Whether he discussed the Wilson situation with George Tenet at their meeting on June 10, 2003.
• Who he spoke to about Joe Wilson's July 6, 2003 editorial (he did remember speaking to someone, but not who it was).
• What happened to the Joe Wilson op-ed after he wrote on it suggesting that Valerie Plame Wilson had sent Joe Wilson on a "junket," and put it in his outbox.
• Any specific advice he gave his press people in the May-June 2003 timeframe regarding the Wilson trip to Niger.
• Whether he discussed the Wilson situation with Eric Edelman, one of his national security advisers.
• Whether Cathie Martin, his press secretary, entered his office while both he and Scooter Libby were present and advised both of them that Joe Wilson's wife was employed by the CIA.
• Discussing Joe Wilson or Wilson's wife with his former press secretary Mary Matalin, although he said it was possible.
• Ever discussing Valerie Plame Wilson with Libby prior to the publication of Novak's column.
• Whether Scooter Libby knew about Valerie Plame Wilson on July 12, the day before the publication of the Novak column.
• If Libby ever told Cheney he had independent knowledge of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity
• Dictating notes to Libby on July 12, 2003 that Cheney said looked and sounded like something he might have dictated to Libby.
• Discussing the Novak column or any of its contents with anyone at the time it was published.
• Whether he discussed the Wilson trip with Libby as a sort of "boondoggle" or "junket," although he believed it possible that he had such a conversation.
• If Libby told him that Libby was not Novak's source.
• Libby telling him how he first learned that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative.
• Whether he told Libby that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative.
• Waving off Libby when Libby offered to tell him everything he knew about the Wilson matter.
• Anyone on his staff, including Libby, ever meeting with Judith Miller during the week of July 7, 2003.
• Having a conversation with Libby during which Libby said he wanted to share the judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate with Judith Miller.
• Whether Libby told him that certain material in the NIE had to be declassified before it could be shared.

For an interview conducted around a year after the events in question, the Vice President seems to have forgotten a lot, including one very crucial detail: whether he told Libby about Valerie Plame Wilson.

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The congressional investigation into the forged Bonner letters has exposed a number of clearly or potentially illegal activities conducted by or on behalf of the coal industry in its fight against the Waxman-Markey climate bill. But the documents released by the investigation also made plain that even the ostensibly legal astroturfing activities of the industry and its contractors are at best really, really questionable.

The documents show that the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) hired contractors who reached out to community groups representing vulnerable constituencies and blatantly mislead those groups about their motivations. ACCCE paid a PR company, the Hawthorn Group, nearly $3 million in 2009 for "outreach to individuals and groups representing the interests of minorities, seniors, business, and veterans." Hawthorn in turn hired Bonner and Associates to drum up letters from those groups. The plan, as an email between Hawthorn and Bonner confirms, was to send the letters to politically weak Democrats who were still on the fence about their vote on the climate bill.

The investigation shows that even the 45 supposedly "legit" letters that Bonner managed to generate from these groups were elicited under false pretenses. Bonner employees were provided with a script that directed them to identify themselves as "working with seniors" or "working with vets"—without ever mentioning that they were actually calling on behalf of the coal industry. Callers were then instructed to play on the economic anxieties of the constituency in question:

"Hi xyz, I am working with seniors/retirees to help stop their utility bills from doubling," reads one script offered to Bonner employees.

[Read more]

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Via Media Matters, I see that Fox News has begun its annual attempt to defend America in the War on Christmas^TM:

(Other groups started their fight to defend Christmas earlier this month.) It's probably hopeless to point this out, but Christians are not an embattled minority in this country and Christmas is in no danger of becoming any less of a holiday. This seems like a good time to repeat my favorite statistic: a higher percentage of America's population is Christian than Israel's is Jewish.

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The Washington Post has a blockbuster story today based on a House ethics committee report the Post obtained after the document was accidentally made available on a file-sharing network. Dozens of House members are under investigation for ethics violations, according to the document. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit which filed many of the initial ethics complaints against the members in question, rejoiced at the news that so many investigations were actually going on behind the scenes. But Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, cautioned that most of these inquiries don't result in any consequences for members:

[W]e were pleasantly surprised to learn the ethics committee is investigating so many members of Congress, but starting an investigation isn’t enough. The real question is whether any of the members under investigation will ever be held accountable for their conduct. The committee’s record on such matters is dismal. You have only to look back at the Mark Foley investigation—where all of America knew there was wrongdoing yet the committee found none—to be skeptical of the House ethics process. There’s not much reason to think anything has changed, but one can always hope."

It will be interesting to look back at the Post report a year from now and see how many of the ethics' committee's investigations have actually amounted to anything.

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