GOP Halts Effort to Retrieve White House E-Mails

Theresa Payton, White House Office of Administration chief information officer, and Allen Weinstein, United States archivist, testify on Capitol Hill. (By Manuel Balce Ceneta -- Associated Press)

The Washington Post reports:

After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials, the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel's chairman said yesterday.

The move increases the likelihood that an untold number of RNC e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first term of the Bush administration -- including many sent or received by former presidential adviser Karl Rove -- will never be recovered, said House Democrats and public records advocates.

The RNC had previously told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it was attempting to restore e-mails from 2001 to 2003, when the RNC had a policy of purging all e-mails, including those to and from White House officials, after 30 days. But Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) disclosed during a hearing yesterday that the RNC has now said it "has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails."

"The result is a potentially enormous gap in the historical record," Waxman said, including the buildup to the Iraq war.

Spokesman Danny Diaz said in a statement that the RNC "is fully compliant with the spirit and letter of the law." He declined further comment.

Administration officials have acknowledged that Rove and many other White House officials routinely used RNC accounts for government business, despite rules requiring that they conduct such business through official communications channels. The RNC deleted all e-mails until 2004, when it exempted White House officials from its e-mail purging policy.

About 80 White House aides used RNC accounts for official government business, committee staff members said. Rove, for example, sent or received 140,000 e-mails on RNC servers from 2002 to 2007, and more than half involved official ".gov" accounts, the panel has said.

The RNC dispute is part of a broader debate over whether the Bush administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records -- including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions -- for history and in case of future legal demands.

The committee is investigating allegations that vast stores of official Bush administration e-mails have also gone missing from the White House, which scrapped a Clinton-era archiving system and has struggled with data retention problems.

A former White House technology manager told the committee in statements released yesterday that the Bush administration's e-mail system "was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high."

Steven McDevitt, who left the White House in 2006, said he supervised an internal study that found hundreds of days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices from January 2003 to August 2005. The study stated a range when tallying the total number of days in which an office had no recorded e-mails, from 473 -- which had been previously reported -- to more than 1,000, McDevitt said.

McDevitt also said security was so lax that e-mail could be modified by anyone on the computer network until the middle of 2005.

Administration officials defended their efforts to fix the problems, and said they are still working to locate and identify e-mails reported as missing. "We are very energized about getting to the bottom of this," said Theresa Payton, chief information officer at the Office of Administration.

At the hearing, Payton and GOP lawmakers attacked the 2005 White House study overseen by McDevitt, calling it flawed and unreliable. McDevitt said the 250-page study involved numerous senior technology officials as well as outside contractors.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), the committee's ranking Republican, said in a statement that the missing e-mail allegations are "based on a discredited internal report conveniently leaked to the media." He also said that yesterday's hearing was "less about preserving records and more about resurrecting the spurious claim that the White House 'lost millions of official e-mails.'"

Davis also said, based on a briefing by Payton, that the actual number of days with missing e-mails was 202. "A substantial portion of the so-called 'missing' e-mails appear not to be missing at all, just filed in the wrong digital drawer," Davis said. No other committee member followed up on that allegation during the hearing.

So what is Henry Waxman going to do?

It's not as if Congress wasn't forewarned about Bush's choice of archivists or Bush's assaults on the public's right to know and access to his administrations' documents, both in Washington and Texas.

According to News.com, recovery may be an issue of money and moving obstructionist Republicans on the committee (like Davis and Darrel Issa) out of the way.

White House says, "The E-Mail On Those RNC Laptops May Be Missing"

May be missing?



Wouldn't they already know? Haven't they talked with their employees, checked to see if it's still there? Or was this the White House's way of obstructing justice, signaling all those who have RNC laptops to go back and be sure that when they deleted their email, they did it with a 'secure' delete (which overwrites the email so it can't be recovered)?

The LATimes reports:

The White House said Wednesday that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators.

The e-mails were considered potentially crucial evidence in congressional inquiries launched by Democrats into the role partisan politics may have played in such policy decisions as the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

This potentially affects the Abramoff case, too. From Mother Jones:

Not only did White House officials think better of using their official emails, they also instructed the lobbyists who did business with them to avoid the White House system. "...It is better to not put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.," one lobbyist to wrote to Jack Abramoff in August 2003 after Abramoff accidentally pinged former Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston on her White House address. "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc [Republican National Committee] pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system," Abramoff replied.

In 2004, U.S. News & World Report reported that White House staffers were using Web-based email accounts specifically to keep their emails from entering the public record ("I don't want my E-mail made public," one White House "insider" told the magazine). With the Hatch Act, "want" doesn't enter into it.

The White House said an effort was underway to see whether the messages could be recovered from the computer system, which was operated and paid for by the Republican National Committee as part of an avowed effort to separate political communications from those dealing with official business.

"The White House has not done a good enough job overseeing staff using political e-mail accounts to assure compliance with the Presidential Records Act," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in an unusual late-afternoon teleconference with reporters.

As a result, Stanzel said, "we may not have preserved all e-mails that deal with White House business."

He refused to estimate how many e-mails may have been lost, but the system was used by dozens of officials for more than six years.

"This is a remarkable admission that raises serious legal and security issues," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the role of electoral politics in administration policymaking. "The White House has an obligation to disclose all the information it has."

The missing e-mails not only add to the growing legal and public relations woes for the White House and Rove's political operation, but also to the problems of Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. Gonzales, who is under fire for the handling of the U.S. attorney dismissals, was serving as White House counsel at the time the Republican National Committee's parallel communications system was set up.

His office had at least partial responsibility for establishing ground rules for using the private system.

The White House briefing Wednesday occurred a few hours after the staff of Waxman's committee and staff of the House Judiciary Committee met with White House officials to discuss the e-mails.

The White House has informed congressional investigators that it will not be able to meet the committee's deadline of Friday to turn over the communications.

The House aides are expected to meet with the Republican National Committee's legal staff today. A committee spokesman said the GOP hopes to cooperate as much as possible but provided no further details.

The e-mails were sent through a communications system created in conjunction with the RNC early in the Bush administration. Rove and others were given special laptop computers and other communications devices to use instead of the government communications system when dealing with political matters.

The parallel system was designed to avoid running afoul of the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government resources for partisan purposes, White House officials have said.

But evidence has emerged that system users sometimes failed to maintain such separation and used the private system when communicating about government business.

For example, before the U.S. attorneys were fired, a Rove deputy used an account maintained by the Republican National Committee in discussions with Justice Department officials about replacing some of the regional prosecutors. One e-mail requested a meeting between top officials at the Justice Department and a member of President Bush's campaign team to discuss one U.S. attorney who was among those to be fired.

The Justice Department turned over those e-mails at the request of several congressional committees.

Waxman said some of the documents suggest White House personnel may have used the political email accounts "to avoid creating a record of the communications."

Loss of the e-mail files would create a potential legal problem for the Bush White House: compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which was passed in 1978 in response to the Watergate scandal that enveloped Richard M. Nixon's presidency. The law was designed to ensure that presidential papers were preserved for historical and investigative purposes.

Rove's operation appears to have gone much further. Today, 22 staffers have e-mail accounts issued by the Republican National Committee, Stanzel said, noting that it is a tiny percentage of the 1,000 political appointees in the executive office.

Since 2001, about 50 staffers e-mailed using the system, he said. One former White House staffer told National Journal recently that Rove uses his RNC e-mail account for 95% of his e-mail communications.

One former White House official, Assistant Press Secretary Adam Levine, told The Times that he was issued a private laptop computer but he found the dual system so cumbersome that he decided to use only his official White House computer.

However, Levine recalled seeing White House staff members moving fluidly between their official computers and the laptops provided by the RNC.

Stanzel said that the law has gray areas defining what sort of activity is permitted using government resources, and that some employees may have opted for the RNC system to avoid any suggestion of a Hatch Act breach or because the private equipment was easier to use.

But, he added, "I can say that historically the White House didn't give enough guidance to staff on how to avoid violating the Hatch Act while following the Records Act. We didn't do a good enough job."

Some former employees recall receiving briefings on the Hatch Act. At the time of the 2004 Republican convention, newspaper accounts described emphatic warnings to White House staffers not to use government-issued cellphones for politically related calls.

Now, Stanzel said, the White House has begun a formal review that will include new training material for staff members on maintaining records with special attention to those with RNC accounts.

In addition, the White House will begin the forensic process of trying to reconstruct any lost records. That will probably be hampered by an RNC policy of automatically erasing most e-mail after 30 days. Since 2004, White House records have been exempt, Stanzel said, though individuals might have been able to kill out e-mail messages.

The White House will also explore whether the hard drives of laptop computers might have preserved a record of e-mailed communications.

How about getting these laptops (and all other communications' gadgets that the RNC provided to these government employees) impounded? Before there's a reprise of the early days in the Department of Justice's Plame-leak investigation, when (then White House counsel and now) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales waited twelve hours before ordering the White House staff to preserve documents and electronic files. That's an open invitation to shred, delete, and "talk among yourselves and get your stories straight," i.e., obstruct justice.

Why aren't Democrats in Congress pressing for the appointment of a special master to take possession of these laptops? If not for their own investigations, then for the Abramoff case.

Congressional Oversight Uncovers The Damnedest Things . . . .

. . . . Like Crime.

Laptops and paging devices were supplied to Karl Rove and his aides by the GOP and used in violation of the law.

The LA Times reports:

When Karl Rove and his top deputies arrived at the White House in 2001, the Republican National Committee provided them with laptop computers and other communication devices to be used alongside their government-issued equipment.

The back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC, was designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for political campaign purposes.

It was? It was designed to avoid charges made against the Clinton administration that federal resources were being used inappropriately for politics? Says who?

Now, that dual computer system is creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove's once-vaunted White House operation.

"...embarrassment" and "...legal headaches"?

Obviously the reporter who wrote this (Tom Hamburger) had an off-the-record interview with an inside-the-White-House spinmeister who gave him this explanation. I say that because Hamburger wrote the article, taking the explanation for granted, as if it had to be an innocent mistake with the best of intentions, and that the Bush administration had no intention of skirting the law or trying to conceal their activities from oversight or investigations.

Democrats say evidence suggests the RNC e-mail system was used for political and government policy matters in violation of federal record preservation and disclosure rules.

Here we go....it's "the big, bad Democrats, those nasty people, who are causing the problem."

In addition, Democrats point to a handful of e-mails obtained through ongoing inquiries suggesting the system may have been used to conceal such activities as contacts with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted on bribery charges and is now in prison for fraud.

Democratic congressional investigators are beginning to demand access to this RNC-White House communications system, which was used not only by Rove's office but by several top officials elsewhere in the White House.

The prospect that such communication might become public has further jangled the nerves of an already rattled Bush White House.

Some Republicans believe that the huge number of e-mails — many written hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain more detailed and unguarded inside information about the administration's far-flung political activities than has previously been available.

"There is concern about what may be in these e-mails," said one GOP activist who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.

"The system was created with the best intentions," said former Assistant White House Press Secretary Adam Levine, who was assigned an RNC laptop and BlackBerry when he worked at the White House in 2002. But, he added, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Ah, see?

Just a former White House staffer offering an "aww, shucks, just an innocent mistake that shouldn't let those evil and suspicious Democrats tie us up with endless investigations and keep us from doing the business of the people."

If I didn't know better, if I didn't know who Adam Levine is, I might be moved. But I do, and I'm not.

Mr. Levine pops up in all sorts of "locations of interest."

In 2002, Bob Novak featured Levine prominently in an article about Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Enron & Bush back in 1997.

Levine shows up again in David Corn's and Mike Isikoff's book on the Bush administration, "Hubris":

National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice invites White House communications aide Adam Levine into the White House Situation Room to look over hundreds of highly classified intelligence photos that supposedly constitute evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Levine is supposed to select a few choice photos to release with Bush’s speech in Cincinnati (see October 7, 2002) to strengthen the administration’s case. One of the pictures that catches Levine’s eye is a photo of a UAV. But when he looks closely, he sees that there is a Czech flag on it. One of Rice’s aides explains that the UAV was on display at a German air show. The administration believes it is like the ones Saddam has. Levine also sees a series of before-and-after shots of weapons sites visited by UN inspectors. But the photographs are from 1998. As Levine continues his search for the perfect photo, he realizes that none of them really constitute evidence of anything. “I remember having this sinking feeling,” he later recalls. “Oh my God, I hope this isn’t all we have. We’ve got to have better stuff than this.” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 145]

Adam Levine is hardly the political neophyte, new to government or politics, that the quote Tom Hamburger attributes to him suggests.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, last week formally requested access to broad categories of RNC-White House e-mails.

Waxman told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that a separate "e-mail system for high-ranking White House officials would raise serious questions about violations of the Presidential Records Act," which requires the preservation and ultimate disclosure of e-mails about official government business.

Waxman's initial request to the RNC seeks e-mails relating to the presentation of campaign polling and strategy information to Cabinet agency appointees. He is also expected to ask for e-mails relating to Abramoff's activities, which Waxman is also investigating.

The Senate and House Judiciary Committees are also expected to formally request e-mail records from the RNC that relate to last year's firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

The private e-mail system came to light in the U.S. attorney controversy because one of Rove's deputies used an RNC-maintained e-mail domain — gwb43.com — to communicate with the Justice Department about replacing one of those prosecutors.

White House officials said the system had been used appropriately and was modeled after one used by the Clinton White House political office in the late 1990s.

"The regular staffers who interface with political organizations have a separate e-mail account, and that's entirely appropriate," said White House spokesman Scott M. Stanzel. "The practice is followed to avoid inadvertent violations of the law."

Stanzel said he did not know how many officials used the separate system. Another White House official called it "a handful."

Some Republican activists say the e-mail request will not create great difficulty for the White House because nothing nefarious happened and because the RNC automatically purges some e-mails after 30 days.

RNC officials are expected to meet with House Government Reform and Judiciary Committee lawyers as early as this week to discuss the first document request.

"We'd like to cooperate to whatever level is appropriate," Republican Party spokeswoman Lisa Camooso Miller said Friday.

Waxman focused on the e-mails after a hearing last month examining a presentation of campaign forecasts and polling data made by a Rove deputy to top appointed officials of the Government Services Administration, some of whom believed they were being instructed to help GOP candidates.

White House staff arranging for the GSA briefing by a Rove deputy, Scott Jennings, used the gwb43.com e-mail domain name. That caught the attention of Waxman's investigators, who had previously examined e-mails from Abramoff to Rove's executive assistant, Susan B. Ralston, to object to an impending Interior Department decision. The decision, he wrote, was "anathema to all our supporters it's important if possible to get some quiet message from the WH [White House] that this is absurd."

Ralston used outside accounts — including at rnchq.org — to communicate with Abramoff and his partners. One e-mail from an Abramoff associate said that White House personnel had warned "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] … e-mail system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc."

Abramoff's response, according to a copy of his e-mail released by Waxman's committee, was: "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system." Ralston later resigned in connection with the lobbying scandal.

Waxman told RNC Chairman Mike Duncan in a letter that such exchanges "indicated that in some instances White House officials were using nongovernment accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of communications" that could be reviewed by congressional committees or released under the Presidential Records Act.

Lawyers for the committees say that use of campaign-connected e-mail addresses may make it easier to gather information because it would be harder for the White House to make a broad claim of executive privilege. Lawyers for congressional Democrats have anticipated that the White House will invoke executive privilege in an effort to block requests for information about its role in the firing of U.S. attorneys, Abramoff and other matters.

In the U.S. attorney case, Rove deputy Jennings used the RNC e-mail system to write to D. Kyle Sampson, then Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, in August 2006 about replacing Arkansas U.S. Atty. H.E. "Bud" Cummins III with former Rove protege Tim Griffin.

"We're a go for the U.S. atty plan. WH leg, political and communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes," Jennings wrote in an e-mail from the gwb43.com domain name. Sampson noted in a related e-mail that "getting him appointed was important to" Rove, then-White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers and other officials.

The gwb43.com account, and others like it, have been traced to the Republican National Committee computer servers, Waxman's staff said.

Doug Sosnik, White House political director under Clinton, says that his office had a small number of separate computers and cellphones for campaign-related matters but that the scope of the political operation was smaller than that in the Bush White House.

For both administrations, the separate system was an acknowledgment that certain White House jobs necessarily mixed policy and politics. Though campaign-related activity is prohibited for federal workers on the job, White House appointees typically work extraordinarily long hours and are required to be available around the clock.

Sosnik said only a handful of people used the political computers in the Clinton White House, which were purchased with campaign funds. However, he said, the political messaging from the Bush team appears to have been broader than that of Clinton's. He could recall no instance, for example, in which campaign computers or cellphones were used to communicate with the Justice Department.

Levine, the former Bush press aide, said he saw senior White House colleagues, including Rove and his top staff, moving fluidly between the two computer systems, which often sat on officials' desks along with their government computers.

But Levine said he found the two computers with their separate purposes and log-in procedures confusing and inefficient. So he quietly slid his RNC laptop into a desk drawer, deciding to use the telephone rather than e-mail to communicate anything that was not considered official government business.

"In retrospect," he said last week, "I was lucky."

No, Mr. Levine, 'luck' had nothing to do with it.

When the next special investigation convenes, high on the list of questions that the prosecutor will have for you will probably be, "When separating became 'confusing and inefficient,' did you wonder how everybody else managed it?" "Did you observe anyone else mixing uses?" "Did you talk with others, or warn anyone, or did others warn you, to be careful because it was easy to mix uses?" And, "If you realized the importance of keeping these computers and accounts distinctly separate and were having trouble doing it yourself, did you report your concern to anyone, suggest a protocol be created for safeguarding the inadvertent use of RNC machines?"

"Did you ever hear anyone say, 'If you get caught, just say Clinton did it!'"?

Wouldn't the reaction to a past administration's practices that you and your party had accused of criminality (if you were honest and ethical) be to dispense with the practice altogether? How does increasing the numbers of the laptop computers, communications' devices, private email accounts, and people in your administration required to use this dual system of back-channel communications provide a better safeguard against misuse occurring in your administration than in previous administrations?

Will we be hearing about another executive order like the one Bush signed November 1, 2001, which effectively prevents the release to the public of any and all papers a president doesn't want anyone to know about?

Republicans End The Day's Hearing With A Little '3 Card Monte'

A shell game. "Hide the pea."

The third and final panel of witnesses of the day at the House Oversight Committee hearing were Victoria Toensing and Mark Zaid, "Managing Partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Krieger & Zaid, PLLC and specializes in litigation and lobbying on matters relating to international transactions, torts and crimes, national security, foreign sovereign and diplomatic immunity, defamation (plaintiff) and the Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts (FOI/PA)."

That's from his website, which looks like something he made himself after school, from a book report on James Madison (just turned in last week? -- I've eaten yogurt older than this guy). I'm being somewhat facetious about Zaid's age; what he lacks of it, he apparently makes up for in experience. In addition to founding the James Madison Project (an organization dedicated to reduce government secrecy, a laudable if not futile exercise during this period of our history), Zaid "also operates www.EsquireComics.com where he sells hi-grade or notable comic books primarily from 1930-1963."

Part 1 - Mark Zaid's opening statement

Part 2 - Victoria Toensing's opening statement

Highlight: "It's all the CIA's fault."

I see that she got the memo.

Part 3 - Representative Tom Davis [R-VA] questions Victoria Toensing and Mark Zaid

Highlight: Toensing tells Congress about "the Rule of 38," which means, "Leak classified information to enough (38) people, and because it's so difficult to trace, you won't be prosecuted."

Wasn't that Bush-Cheney modus operandi in leaking Plame's name?

Part 4 - Representative Henry Waxman [D-CA] questions Victoria Toensing

Part 5 - Representative Elijah Cummings [D-MD] questions Victoria Toensing

Part 6 - Representative Diane Watson [D-MD] questions Victoria Toensing

Part 7 - Representative Chris Van Hollen [D-MD] questions Victoria Toensing

Highlights: "Do you think White House officials, as stewards of our national security, when they find out someone works for the CIA and before telling the press about it, have any obligation to find out whether that disclosure would compromise sensitive information?"

Part 8 - Representative Henry Waxman [D-CA] wraps up this day's hearing with pointed words for Ms. Toensing

Highlights: "We are pleased to accommodate the request of the minority to have you as a witness, and some of the statements you've made without any doubt with great authority I understand may not be accurate so we're going to check the information and we're going to hold the record open to put in other things that might contradict some of what you had to say" and "When we heard from Mrs. Wilson, and we heard from Fitzgerald, and I talked personally to General Hayden, they have a different view as to what is a protected agent than you do, and your knowledge is based on writing the law thirty years ago."

Plamely Speaking

On Friday, March 16, 2007, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform examined the exposure of covert CIA agent's (Valerie Plame) identity:

The Oversight Committee held a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee received testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred.

Valerie Plame Wilson's appearance before the Committee:

Part 1 - Committee Chair Henry Waxman's opening statement

Highlights: "Today we'll be asking three questions:

1.) How did such a serious violation of our national security occur?

2.) Did the White House take the appropriate investigative and disciplinary steps after the breach occurred?

3.) What changes in White House procedures are necessary to prevent future violations of our national security from occurring?

For more than three years a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald has been investing the leak for its criminal implications. By definition, Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation had an extremely narrow criminal focus. it did not answer the broader policy questions raised by the release of Ms. Wilson's identity, nor did it seek to ascribe responsibility outside of the narrow confines of the criminal law. As the chief investigative committee of the House of Representatives, our role is fundamentally different than Mr. Fitzgerald's. It's not our job to determine criminal culpability, but it is our job to understand what went wrong and to insist on accountability and to make recommendations to avoid future abuses, and we begin that process today."

Part 2 - Ranking Member Tom Davis' opening statement

Highlights: "It's all the CIA's fault."

Part 3 - Valerie Plame Wilson's opening statement

Part 4 - Congressman John Yarmuth [D-KY] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: For future CIA employees and future sources, the leak had a very negative effect, "If our government can't even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the CIA in providing needed intelligence would think twice, 'They can't even protect one of their own; how can they protect me?'"

Part 5 - Congressman Paul Hodes [D-NH] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights:

Part 6 - Congressman Tom Davis' [R-VA] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: The latest Republican talking point: "It's all Bill Clinton's the CIA's fault!"

Part 7 - Congressman Elijah Cummings [D-MD] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: Wilson clarifies whether she worked covert, undercover, "I was a covert officer in the CIA. Just like a general is general, whether he is in the field (in Iraq or Afghanistan), when he comes back to the Pentagon, he's still a general. In the same way, covert operations officers who are serving in the field, when they rotate back for a temporary assignment in D.C., they, too, are still covert."

Part 8 - Congressman Lynn Westmoreland [R-GA] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: "The Bush administration blew my cover."

Part 9 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich [D-OH] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: "I'm not aware of any leaks of a covert agent's identity by their own government."

Part 10 - Congresswoman Diane Watson [D-CA] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: "The CIA has confirmed your status was covert and classified."

Part 11 - Representative Stephen Lynch [D-MA] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: "Once or twice might be a careless disclosure, five or six times might be reckless, but 20 times is a deliberate attempt to destroy your status as a covert agent."

Part 12 - Representative Chris Van Hollen [D-MD] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: "Are there any leakers still in the Bush administration?"

Part 13 - Representative John Sarbannes [D-MD] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: "It paints a picture of an administration of bullies."

Part 14 - Representatives Lynn Westmoreland [R-GA] and Tom Davis [R-VA] question Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlights: "Is your husband (Ambassador Joe Wilson) a Democrat or a Republican, and would you say whether you are a Democrat or a Republican?"

Part 15 - Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton [D-District of Columbia] questions Valerie Plame Wilson

Highlight: Executive Order #121958, and "Why did Karl Rove, with a 'need-to-know'-clearance, need to know your identity?"

Part 16 - Representative Tom Davis [R-VA] clarifies earlier testimony ("He did it!") with Valerie Plame

Highlights: "Outing a CIA agent is a very very serious business."

Part 17 - Chairman Henry Waxman wraps up the Valerie Plame Wilson portion of the hearing with comments by Representatives Watson, Davis and Hodes

Highlights: "Mrs. Wilson, facts are not 'Republican' or 'Democrat'."