HEART-RENDING CAMPAIGN STORY ON HEALTH INSURANCE turns out not to be true.

KHHAAANN! Mickey Kaus writes:

More important, note that even these Pakistanis sources, according to Reuters, say that the Bush administration “confirmed” Khan’s name, not that the Bushies are the ones who leaked it in the first place. It seems entirely possible that once Khan’s name was out in Monday’s NYT– and Khan had been moved to a safe house–Bush administration officials felt there was no point in sticking with their refusal to confirm his name. . . .

I’ll be quite willing to condemn the Bushies if in fact they outed Khan–even if it wasn’t intentional, it would at least be grossly negligent, and someone (maybe Bush) would deserve to be fired for it. But the surface evidence from the original source–the Times’ piece–points to a Pakistani official, not a Bush official, as the culprit.

As I said before, we really have no idea what was going on here. But Will Collier isn’t happy.

TIM CAVANAUGH IS RIGHT:

The Kerryites should be all over the country applauding their guy for not having a “major piece of legislation with his name on it.” . . . And while we’re at it why not retire the cockeyed practice of using named legislation as a yardstick of political performance?

Indeed.

MATTHEW YGLESIAS on the Kerry/Cambodia story:

Seriously, in my experience these damaging-looking allegations have a way of turning out not to be true, a fact that never seems to get as much coverage as the initial allegation. But it certainly looks bad from here, and I haven’t seen a good explanation yet, perhaps because there isn’t one. It’s a little hard to see what could possibly be the motive for a Kerry lie on this front, which makes it plausible that there’s a reasonable explanation, but also a little freaky if there does turn out to be one. Personally, I’ve never maintained that John Kerry had a George Washington-esque level of honesty (see, e.g., my article about how Kerry is basically lying about his trade policy) so my world won’t be shaken to the core if this turns out to be a fib.

What an endorsement! But he deserves credit for mentioning the issue, as many lefty bloggers aren’t. He also links to Campaign Desk, which links to this Frontline item on covert U.S. operations in Cambodia — though there’s not anything there that actually supports the notion that Kerry was in Cambodia. That’s not much to offset claims by Kerry’s own crewmembers that he was never there.

I agree that it’s hard to come up with a specific motive — beyond simple bragging and posing, anyway — and it’s hard to believe that Kerry could make statements like this and not expect to be called on them. For what it’s worth, this unsourced item suggests that the Kerry Campaign didn’t expect the media to check. I don’t know if it’s true, but it would explain a lot. . . . [LATER: Jim Geraghty reports that the Kerry Campaign denies this.]

At any rate, it’s far too early to compare Kerry to Micah Wright, as many of my emailers are. Unlike Wright (who’s still making lame excuses), Kerry definitely served, and regardless of the Cambodia story seems to have served well — and if he’d stuck to that and obeyed the usual war-hero conventions of manly humility and self-deprecation nobody (including me) would be paying much attention to this. But since Kerry himself has made his war experience — and his recounting of it — the centerpiece of his campaign and invited us to judge him on that (and almost exclusively so), well, it matters.

And Tom Maguire wants the military records released. It seems to me that the Kerry people could clear this up pretty quickly, if they did that.

UPDATE: Ann Haker wonders if Kerry is playing rope-a-dope here. Could be, I suppose. It would show a degree of shrewdness not previously apparent in his campaign, but I suppose that would go with running a good bluff. In some sense, if that were true I would find it comforting.

ANOTHER UPDATE: My colleague Tom Plank, who served with the Marines in Vietnam, emails:

I really appreciate that you are addressing the Kerry in Vietnam issue. As a preliminary matter, I initially thought that Kerry’s and Bush’s service in the late 1960s and earlty 1970s was irrelevant to the question of who would make a better President.

But, Kerry’s emphasis on his service in Vietnam raises issues important to me.

First, as a combat veteran of Vietnam (Aug 1969-May 1970), I was starting to feel that if the Swiftboat veterans questioning Kerry’s Vietnam service could not be heard, then this country is not worth defending. Fortunately, they are getting to be heard.

Second, even without the critics of Kerry’s Vietnam service, the prominence that Kerry has placed on Vietnam is mystifying. For example, why would any active duty officer go back and restage his activities for film? What kind of person would do that? I had a camera in Vietnam, and I took pictures. But not in combat, and not to recreate my combat experiences. I suggest that this action suggests something important about Kerry’s character, and it is not good. Along the lines of a Nixon and Clinton.

Second, emphasize four months in Vietnam and ignore one’s Senate record? How can anyone buy that? Can Kerry believe that no one will pay attention to his Senate record? I find it hard to believe that Kerry can sell himself as a hawk now (and criticise Bush) when he has one of the most appeasement-oriented and anti-military and anti-intelligence records in the senate.

Third, if you add all of this together, plus the allegations of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, you get the sense that Kerry will say anything to get what he wants (in this case, the Presidency) whether it is true or not. Everthing points to an uprincipled person along the lines of a Nixon.

I am glad this is being aired. Do we really want a President who has this kind of character?

Well, that’s what we have to figure out. And reader Joseph Bator emails:

The point about Kerry’s Cambodia service is the context of his claim. He did not simply inflate his service record. He used the claim as a club to bludgeon supporters of Reagan’s Nicaragua policy. Nicaragua = Viet Nam. Reagan = Nixon. Support for the Contras = John Kerry sent to Cambodia by his duplicitous government. His indignation gave him not the moral high ground, but an amazing simulation. In 1986 that was all he needed to put defenders of Reagan’s policies on the defensive. If his claim to Cambodia service is false it reveals a particularly repugnant form of cynicism. If he can’t prove his claim, it speaks very badly indeed for his political character.

Indeed. Context on the Nicaragua issue here.

ORIN KERR notes a bogus privacy scandal at The New York Times.

MY PRAISE FOR KERRY ON STEM CELLS has generated several hundred emails, which I haven’t had a chance to digest. But a few points:

1. If you believe an embryo is a human life, I can see why you think research on embryonic stem cells is wrong. I don’t believe that. [There goes your shot at a Bush judicial appointment! — Ed. It was already gone.]

2. I actually think that eventually adult stem cells will do all the work. But I don’t know that, and ruling out research involving embryonic stem cells now might keep us from getting to that point, or get us there much later.

3. I realize that Kerry overdraws the effect of the Bush “ban” — which is really a limitation on federal funding — but in fact the funding limitation is very harsh, and it’s also harder to get private money for research the feds won’t fund.

4. I also realize that stem cell research won’t cure Alzheimer’s tomorrow, or whatever, and is oversold by the likes of Ron Reagan, Jr. But it looks pretty promising, and I don’t think we should drag our feet. (I also note that the scientific optimism of the “adult stem cells will do everything” crowd fits poorly with the “stem cells won’t do anything” position).

I’ll try to do something more detailed on this, but I’m actually pretty busy on a law review article at the moment, so no promises.

I think Kerry’s right on this one. If I trusted him on the war, which I don’t, it might be a deciding issue for me.

INTERESTING PIECE on blogs as early-warning systems for corporations. Ignore them at your peril!

DIRTY TRICKS UPDATE: The National Debate reports that a phony editorial review on Amazon regarding the SwiftVets book was inserted by someone that Amazon calls “a bad actor.”

As TND notes: “This is the second instance of manipulation of an Unfit for Command web page on a leading bookseller web site in the past 24 hours. The Barnes & Noble web site displayed a doctored bookcover image which has since been removed.”

Hmm. A “bad actor,” eh? Let the Alec Baldwin jokes begin. . . .

UPDATE: More efforts to silence debate here. It’s a climate of government censorship and dirty tricks by digital brownshirts. I blame John Ashcroft!

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM in Beijing.

Looks fine to me!

MELANIE PHILLIPS has an interesting post on the British terrorist arrests last week. One interesting bit is that some had been planning operations since before 9/11.

HUGH HEWITT’S SITE, hacked and down yesterday, is up now.

THE ANNENBERG OUTFIT, FACTCHECK.ORG, offers a defense of Kerry that’s better than the Kerry Campaign has managed — citing facts and evidence and everything — though it concludes: “At this point, 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth.” This piece is about the Swiftvets ad, though, and doesn’t mention Cambodia.

But Tom Maguire has more on Cambodia, gleaned from Brinkley’s book.

UPDATE: Q&O is fact-checking FactCheck, whose analysis is called “incomplete and inaccurate.”

FORGET VIETNAM: Say, did you know that we’re fighting a war right now? Shocking, but true.

The Belmont Club has a roundup of how things are going: “Although it may be premature to say that the War on Terror is rising to a crescendo, recent events have imparted a distinct sense of movement, as in ‘hey, this thing might actually be going somewhere’. . . . The truism that victory has many fathers while defeat is an orphan may partially explain why the Democratic Party sought to rebrand itself as the War Party during its recently concluded convention in Boston.”

Indeed.

UPDATE: Austin Bay emails from Iraq:

Victory has many fathers.. Remember my letter to you where I said we had made the “big move” equivalent to the big moves we made in 1944? I argued there’s still tough sledding ahead but we’re winning. I was not blowing off steam. . . . I do think we’re winning. I’ll have more thoughts when I get back in three or four weeks.

I look forward to reading them.

In the meantime, read this essay by Stephen Green, too: “Nobody ever has a plan for the peace. Or if they do, it will prove useless. ‘No peace plan survives the last battle’ is the VodkaPundit corollary to Clausewitz’s dictum that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

THE DARFUR SLAUGHTER IS NOT A GENOCIDE, according to the European Union. Because if it were, you know, we’d have to do something about it.

HEY, WHEN THE FRENCH ARE RIGHT, they’re right!

TOM MAGUIRE has got your Plame reporters’ subpoena roundup. Curiouser and curiouser — but it seems we’re closing in on the truth. And Novak will be talking, apparently.

STILL BLOWING SMOKE: This Rassman oped in the Wall Street Journal does the WSJ editors credit — imagine the New York Times giving one of the critical Swift Boat Veterans an oped slot to state their charges — but what it’s lacking is any response beyond the “how dare you question his heroism?” line.

Kerry has faced specific criticisms and questions. His campaign is responding with ad hominems and generalities. Perhaps they’re just hopelessly out of touch with events (Jim Geraghty asks: “don’t these people read Instapundit?” — they’d be doing better if they did!) or perhaps they can’t respond with specifics. It’s looking more and more like the latter.

And Rassman looks like a poor choice to defend these charges, as he wasn’t there much. In fact, here’s something that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention:

Jim Rassmann, now part of the Kerry presidential campaign, was a Special Forces lieutenant spending a few days with Kerry when he fell or was knocked off the swift boat while under fire and was fished out of the Mekong River by the future candidate.

So Kerry’s main defender can’t really know much about the specifics because he was only there for a few days. Why don’t they put someone forward who can?

UPDATE: More here:

August 10, 2004 — WASHINGTON — John Kerry’s claim that he was ordered to conduct an illegal combat mission in Cambodia on Christmas Day in 1968 is made up, Navy vets charge in a new book.

The veterans say Kerry “would have been seriously disciplined or court-martialed had he gone there.”

Three of the vets quoted in the book were part of the five-member crew that served on Kerry’s own boat: Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch and Steve Gardner.

They deny they or their boat were ever in Cambodia.

Well, that’s pretty specific. Where’s the specific response?

How badly is the Kerry campaign blowing this? So badly that his best defense comes, believe it or not, from Robert Musil, who argues: “Yes, there is considerable evidence – and always has been – that John Kerry has exaggerated certain aspects of his military record but so have a great many very brave and noble combat veterans throughout history – and it has always been that way, in and after every war.”

I predict that this will be next weekend’s spin from the Kerry camp, but thanks to the magic of the blogosphere you can get it today! And I actually do think that the Cambodia issue is relatively minor compared to other criticisms of Kerry, or even of Kerry’s war record. It’s just one that’s very easy for people to pounce on because of internal and external inconsistencies.

As John O’Sullivan writes in the Chicago Sun-Times today, the truth is sure to come out:

Even if the major media decided to bury this story, they would probably not succeed — and they know as much. The “blogosphere” — that voluntary society of unpaid free-lance journalists — is following the story avidly, correcting errors, producing original documents, sifting through different accounts. Some bloggers are for Kerry, some against, but all are together advancing the story by winnowing truth from falsehood. Unless the bloggers conclusively acquit Kerry before the story migrates outwards, the mainstream media will eventually be forced to devote serious resources to it.

I think the story has already “migrated outward.” But what’s astounding to me is that the Kerry campaign seems so disorganized, flabby and unprepared in responding to charges that it should have known were coming for months. Would a Kerry Administration be better organized than the Kerry Campaign? We have to hope so.

MORE: Reader John Frederick observes:

It’s interesting to note that when the Bush was AWOL/deserter/liar story was in full play a few months back, the press went so far as to interview a dentist that had signed an exam record to question whether his signature had been forged. I guess the point was to try and establish that the record was altered to help Bush. Now we have the Swift Vets’ charges and the press can’t even be bothered to look critically at what they say actually happened. And there’s 250+ of them! I’ve always felt there is media bias but even I am astonished by
the utter lack of analysis of anything Kerry has ever done in Vietnam or public life.

I guess the Kerry campaign was counting on that. Or maybe it’s a brilliant strategy, as reader Joseph Fulvio suggests:

Keeping focus on endless quarrels over Kerry’s Vietnam experience could be a net plus for him, as it distracts from examination of his Senate record, which provides unimpeachable evidence that his campaign rhetoric contradicts 15 years of behavior.

You never know.

MORE STILL: Jeff Taylor:

I swear Kerry saw Apocalypse Now during its first run and immediately began grafting parts of the story onto his own life. Boat into Cambodia? Check. Horrors and atrocities? Check. One tortured soul who sees through the lies? Check.

He’s no Martin Sheen, though.

And here’s more of tomorrow’s spin today, courtesy of the blogosphere:

The fact that he made up his covert op time in Cambodia would come under the heading of neccesary evil. . . . He was working for the greater good, so the lie was not bad, it was neccesary. If Kerry didn’t actually spend Christmas Eve on an illegal covert op, then someone did, and that rat-bastard wasn’t man enough to come forward and admit it, like Kerry was. Yup, Kerry was man enough to admit he had done it, even if he hadn’t really done it and was just taking the credit (see “thrown medals” above.)

It’s like having a time machine!

COMMENTS ON THE NIGHTLINE SWIFTVETS SEGMENT here (“ABC didn’t examine the issue so much as to try and make ‘nothing to see here, best to just move along’ noises.”) and here.

Sounds like they’re still behind the blogosphere on covering this.

HERE’S A USEFUL SUMMARY of Kerry’s Cambodia claims.

NIGHTLINE will be covering the Swiftboat Vets story tonight.

KERRY ENDORSES IRAQ WAR! No, really:

Stripes: The charge is out there that Republicans are much better suited to handle defense issues. How do you counter that?

Kerry: My record counters that, and my friends counter that. . . .

They went into Iraq in a brilliant military strategy, which we all adopted and supported, but they didn’t have a plan to win the peace. They didn’t bring other [countries] to our side. They didn’t give our troops all the equipment — the body armor and the armored Humvees and things they need and deserve.

There’s a great tradition of Democratic presidents who’ve led us in war.

(Emphasis added). Leaving aside the “other countries” bit, which is bogus unless “other countries” is just a synonym for France and Germany, note that this is an endorsement of the war, and seems to completely undercut earlier statements that Bush “misled the country.” Will this be the new Kerry position — the war was justified, but the peace was bungled? And I’ll handle the wars I start better? Is it a return to the 2001/2002 pro-war Kerry?

I’m not terribly averse to that, but I wonder how it’ll play with the antiwar base? (Via Sarah). Probably no better than this even stronger statement:

GRAND CANYON, Ariz. (Reuters) – Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Taking up a challenge from President Bush, whom he will face in the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator said: “I’ll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively.”

This really seems to undercut the “Bush lied, people died” line, doesn’t it?

THE SWIFTVET BOOK HACKING at Barnes and Noble was probably an inside job, according to this report.

I’M ON HUGH HEWITT: His website is down, though so you can’t listen live over the Internet. [LATER: Roger Simon, who was on at the same time, has posted his comments here.]

Via the show, I heard a Carl Cameron story on the Kerry/Cambodia issue that ran last hour. It sounded devastating, and the Kerry campaign sounded disorganized and un-credible. They’re now saying that Kerry was “near” Cambodia (58 miles away), but can’t explain why he repeatedly said he was actually in Cambodia.

UPDATE: Several readers note that the “near Cambodia” completely destroys the point of Kerry’s original statement. This is representative:

If the campaign is really saying Kerry was just “near Cambodia”, isn’t that phenomenally lame?

When Kerry brought up Cambodia, he was always doing it in the context of presidential lying–i.e. “I was in Cambodia, listening to the president say we had no troops in Cambodia”.

With this re-write, it becomes “I was *near* Cambodia, listening to the president say we had no troops *in* Cambodia, which, okay, was true as far as I could tell, but if I’d been just, like, sixty miles further west, it would’ve been a LIE!”

I hope he can do better.

Me too. Meanwhile several readers raise another concern, summed up here in an email by John Lucas.

Lucas writes:

Here’s another indicator that Kerry’s story about being shot at in Cambodia at Christmas 1968 is a complete fabrication: He claims to have been shot at by the “Khmer Rouge and Cambodians,” clearly distinguishing between the Cambodian government forces and Khmer Rouge. Not bloody likely.

The Khmer Rouge were a small force in 1968, by all accounts less that 2500 (compared w/ 30,000+ by 1973). They did not launch a major offensive against the Cambodian government until 1970 — they were too small and lacked the capability. In 1968 ther were virtually unknown to Westerners and were not engaged in operations against the U. S. military. They finally overthrew the government and took Phnom Penh in 1975. Only then did they become well known to most Americans.

Kerry’s claim to have been shot at by the Khmer Rouge in 1968 is simply not plausible. Even if he had been shot at by someone from the shore in the dark, he would have no way of knowing if they were Khmer Rouge or Cambodian government troops. The embellehment that he had been shot at by the Khmer Rouge simply added a bit of spice to a fabricated story that implicated a group that was notorious for its brutality by the time he gave his Senate speech, but which was virtually unknown in 1968.

Other people have been looking for evidence of operations by the Khmer Rouge at that time without success. I looked in Jim Dunnigan’s Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War, which is chock-full of interesting information, but it’s inconclusive here. There’s no specific mention of Khmer Rouge activities before 1969, but — though the book isn’t specific — it seems possible that they were active in 1968. Were they shooting at Kerry? Doubtful, as they seem to have been mostly in the north, and the Mekong river crosses the border in the south. I think we’d have to score this as “unlikely, but conceivable” — though how Kerry would have known he was being shot at by Khmer Rouge and not the far-more-likely North Vietnamese remains puzzling, especially as Dunnigan says that the Khmer Rouge wore NVA equipment in their early days.

The Khmer Rouge issue is something of a sideline, but it does add to the suspicion that Kerry was making the whole thing up. As another reader observes:

I read your digital camera extract of the 1986 Congressional Record quote from Kerry re Cambodia in 1968, and here’s my guess: 18 years after Vietnam he had invented the Cambodia memory. At the time, he really believed it.

From the context of your larger photo, he was making an impassioned speech regarding the Contras, not directly testifying about Vietnam. So instead of checking his facts, he went with his recollection, seared into his memory, which turns out to have been dead wrong. How embarrassing! But as a lawyer you knowsomething about how wrong eyewitness testimony can be, especially after the witness has had time to repeat the story to himself over and over.

BTW, the Congressional Record extract provides no evidence that he was talking about Nixon as President. His fanciful memory could just as well have been referring to LBJ.

The best thing he could do at this point is admit the mistake. That probably won’t happen.

Probably not. It’s true that the Nixon reference in the Congressional Record passage is oblique. He’s more explicit in the Boston Herald article, of which I’m still trying to get a hardcopy. Here’s the passage:

I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real.

I can’t personally vouch for the authenticity of this quote, reproduced here, though I have no actual reason to doubt it. I’m still trying to get hold of an original.

While searching, though, I did find more Kerry Cambodia versions here:

June 24, 1992, Wednesday

LENGTH: 876 words

HEADLINE: Senate Committee Says Americans Left Behind in Vietnam

BYLINE: By Kimberly C. Moore, States News Service

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

…

Kerry, who served in Vietnam on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta from 1968 to 1969, said he was involved in a “black mission” near Cambodia. “On Christmas Eve of 1968, I was on a gunboat in a firefight that wasn’t supposed to be taking place,” Kerry recalled. “I thought, if I’m killed here, what will my family be told?”

(Found on NEXIS, News, All (English, Full Text) Terms: kerry and cambodia and mekong and christmas). So was he in a firefight? In danger of being shot by drunk allies celebrating Christmas? On a covert mission inserting clandestine operatives? (“‘My good luck hat,’ Kerry said, happy to see it. ‘Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia.’“) Or — for the real man-of-action spin — all at once?

I don’t know, but stale brownies were involved, somehow:

Copyright 1994 The Providence Journal Company
Providence Journal-Bulletin (Rhode Island)

April 3, 1994, Sunday, ALL EDITIONS

SECTION: RHODE ISLANDER MAGAZINE, Pg. 8M

LENGTH: 2914 words

HEADLINE: MAN ON A MISSION Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry got his first taste of politics leading the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. To this day, the Vietnam War drives his activism.

BYLINE: James M. O’Neill

…

Some relief came from home. “I got a great package around Christmas,” he says. “Filled with stale brownies. Broken, stale brownies. It was great – they were homemade. Came back in from a five-day patrol. Christmas Eve I was up getting shot at somewhere near Cambodia. Stupid Vietnamese were celebrating Christmas by shooting tracers, fifty-caliber, right up into the air, and the goddamned things were coming right over our head. That was a wild night. That was a night like right out of Apocalypse Now. It was just surreal. Mortars going off. Tracers piercing the sky. People crazy. Flares.”

(Via the same Nexis search). Now we’re back to drunk Vietnamese — and now we’re “somewhere near Cambodia.”

Perhaps — it being 1968, after all — the off-taste in those brownies wasn’t from staleness, which might explain both Kerry’s fascination with the lights, and the confused nature of his memories. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

The NPR woman on Brit Hume’s segment on Fox just tried the spin that
maybe Kerry was off course. 58 miles off course on a river system?
What kind of river boat skipper gets 58 miles off course? Just the
kind of skipper we want at the helm of a whole country?

Hey, those Gilligan’s Island jokes may be closer to the truth than I realized!

MORE: Apparently, even Kerry’s own diary contradicts these claims:

Every living officer up his chain of command says Kerry was never ordered to Cambodia. At least three of his five crewmen say their boat was never in Cambodia. And if you don’t believe any of his fellow veterans, read the excerpt from Kerry’s own journal published in Tour Of Duty, the recent hagiography by Douglas Brinkley.

On December 24 1968, Kerry was at Sa Dec – that’s well inside Vietnam, 55 miles from the Cambodian border – and waxing wistful to his diary about a quiet Christmas far from home: “Visions of sugarplums really do dance through your head and you think of stockings and snow and roast chestnuts and fires with birch logs and all that is good and warm and real. It’s Christmas Eve.”

Doesn’t sound like Apocalypse Now. But it’s not inconsistent with the brownie hypothesis. . . .

JIM GERAGHTY is defending Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe:

The publisher, Public Affairs, has just created a big headache for the Globe and Michael Kranish, by initially touting an independent book with a reporter covering Kerry involved, and then publishing Kerry’s campaign book under the same number. Now Amazon has the new book with the old cover and Kranish is being called a Kerry campaign shill.

Kranish may have misquoted Elliott — in fact, it seems pretty clear that Kranish interpreted some of Elliott’s statements about wishing to reword the specifics of his affidavit about Kerry as a recanting of his entire criticism — but he’s not a paid operative of the Democratic campaign.

Well, it may be, and probably is, the publisher’s fault. (Full disclosure — Public Affairs is part of the Perseus Group, which owns one of my publishers, from whom I still get a minuscule royalty check twice a year). My last book — different publisher — was put into the databases under the wrong title and that persisted, on Amazon and elsewhere, for a surprisingly long time. And there’s no real reason to regard Kranish as a “paid operative.” One notes, however, that journalists are quicker to assume innocence when things like this happen to journalists than they are when they happen to people in, say, the (non-media) corporate world.

THE PLAME WALL OF SILENCE CRUMBLES:

A reporter is being held in contempt of court and faces possible jail time, and another was earlier threatened by a federal judge with the same fate, after they refused to answer questions from a special prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of a covert CIA officer last year.

Newly-released court orders show U.S. District Court Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan two weeks ago ordered Matt Cooper of Time magazine and Tim Russert of NBC to appear before a grand jury and tell whether they knew that White House sources provided the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media. . . .

Both journalists had earlier tried to quash the subpoenas issued by Fitzgerald in May. But, citing a Supreme Court decision, Judge Hogan ruled that journalists have no privilege to protect anonymous sources when the state has a compelling interest to investigate or prosecute a crime.

Hogan wrote in his just-unsealed order that the information requested from Cooper and Russert is “very limited” and that “all available alternative means of obtaining the information have been exhausted.” He added that “the testimony sought is expected to constitute direct evidence of innocence or guilt.”

The opinion is here. (Via Baseball Crank.) Maybe we’ll finally get to the bottom of the “who leaked” scandal once the press — which has known all along — tells us. Earlier posts here and here.

UPDATES: Readers wonder where Robert Novak is in all of this? Since grand jury testimony is normally secret, it’s entirely possible that he was subpoenaed and testified — the only way we know about Russert and Cooper is that they refused to comply. But there’s no way to know.