Who is judge Silberman?
Bush Names Panelists in Iraq Intel Probe
Feb 6, 3:32 PM (ET)
By KEN GUGGENHEIM
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush named seven people Friday to sit on an independent study commission to look into intelligence failures on Iraqi weapons, choosing former Democratic Sen. Charles S. Robb and
retired judge Laurence Silberman*, a Republican, to head the panel.
"We must stay ahead of constantly changing intelligence challenges," Bush said. "The stakes for our country cannot be higher."
Robb, a moderate Democrat, was a former U.S. senator and governor of Virginia and son-in-law of the late President Johnson. He is married to Lynda Bird Johnson and has been practicing law since leaving the Senate. Silberman is a conservative who served as deputy attorney general in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He was named to the appeals court by President Reagan in 1985.
Bush directed federal agencies to cooperate with the commission, which will report to the nation by March 2005. Bush said he has yet to select the remaining two members of the nine-member panel.
Bush also picked Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to be a member of the commission. "In our war against terrorism, it is imperative that we guarantee the credibility and effectiveness of our intelligence capabilities," McCain said in a statement. "I will do my very best to help find the answers that the American people have a right to know."
Bush had come under increasing pressure from Democrats in recent days in the wake of the admission by chief weapons inspector David Kay that he could not substantiate that Saddam Hussein had the kind of weapons arsenal the administration maintained was in existence, and which it used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Bush also named Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton; former federal judge Patricia M. Wald; Yale University president Richard C. Levin, and Adm. William O. Studeman, former deputy director of the CIA.
Wald, a respected former chief judge for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
In a visit to the United Nations, where he relied on Tenet's intelligence in a futile attempt for Security Council backing for the war, Powell said Friday: "I don't think any apologies are necessary."
"It represented the best judgment we had" and "there is no evidence to suggest we were wrong,' he said. And yet, Powell acknowledged "we could not be sure of the nature of the stockpile."
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said, "It is ironic that Secretary of State Colin Powell is in the building. There has been some damage. Damage that probably will take some time to heal. People are going to be very suspicious when we try to use intelligence to justify certain actions."
But, Annan also said that intelligence is necessary for government work and said that "we need to be careful not to throw everything out of the window."
Bush had initially opposed a commission, but agreed to do so as calls grew from Republican lawmakers as well as Democrats. But the White House said the commission would look beyond problems in Iraq and examine the handling of intelligence on terrorists and U.S. adversaries.
Democrats said any commission appointed solely by Bush could not be considered independent and objective. They have called for an examination not only of the work of intelligence agencies, but whether the White House pressured analysts and manipulated data to boost the case for war.
Kay, the former CIA adviser for the Iraqi weapons search, has said he does not believe analysts were pressured. But he said Thursday that the commission should look into whether political leaders manipulated intelligence data.
"I think that is an important question that needs to be understood," he said Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
CIA Director George Tenet offered a forceful defense of prewar intelligence in a speech at Georgetown University Thursday. He said the intelligence was mostly on target and that the analyses were reasonable given the information available to the United States and other nations.
He made clear that analysts differed on important aspects of Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear programs. Tenet said analysts had never claimed Iraq posed an imminent threat, but provided an objective picture of Saddam's efforts to build and conceal weapons programs. He also said that no one told analysts "what to say or how to say it."
On Friday morning, Bush met with Charles Duelfer, who is taking over the weapons search in Iraq, and told him that he "wants him to find the truth ... it is important that we know all the facts," McClellan said.
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Who is Judge Silberman?---BBB
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"Laurence H. Silberman, a senior judge on the court to which Mr. Estrada aspires to serve, recently observed that under the current standards being applied by the Senate, not one of his colleagues could predictably secure confirmation. He's right."
(The full editorial can be read at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22998-2003Feb17.html)
The sweet irony -- and the Post editorial writers must be laughing their heads off about this one -- is that Laurence Silberman, appointed by Reagan, is the ideal example of why some appointees should be kept off the courts, even if it requires a filibuster.
So what does the Washington Post surely know about Judge Silberman, but isn't revealing?
According to a BuzzFlash interview (May 2002) with David Brock, author of "Blinded by the Right," Judge Silberman openly advised him on ways to help attack Clinton, while Silberman was sitting full-time on the appellate court that Estrada is nominated for.
Here is an excerpt from one of two BuzzFlash interviews with David Brock:
DAVID BROCK: Judge Lawrence Silberman, who sits on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, was an appointee of President Reagan to that court. His wife Ricky was the vice-chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the period that Clarence Thomas was the chairman on the Commission. I met them originally as sources for my first book on the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. They went beyond the role of source.
BUZZFLASH: And he was a sitting judge at the time?
DAVID BROCK: Yes he was a sitting judge. For example, they reviewed in draft the galleys of that book. And so it certainly went beyond a reporter-source relationship. And coming out of that, Judge Silberman became a mentor to me and was someone who I relied on, as well as Ricky, for political advice while I was at the American Spectator pursuing a lot of the anti-Clinton stories. When Ricky Silberman left the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she founded, or was one of the co-founders, of the Independent Women's Forum -- it was actually her idea. And it was actually Ricky Silberman's idea to approach Ken Starr to file that friend-of-the-court brief in the Paula Jones case. And Ricky knew the Jones case was simply payback for the Anita Hill affair. She thought, wouldn't it be delicious that Clinton would now be accused of sexual improprieties in the same way that Clarence Thomas had been? Judge Silberman played an absolutely key role at a critical juncture.
I write in the book that I had misgivings about publishing the Troopergate article, even back at the time I was working on it. I had some concerns about -- both about the credibility of the troopers and also had some concerns about setting the precedent of vetting a sitting President's private life. Because again, Troopergate, you know, did not have anything to do at that time with sexual harassment. It was simply tales of alleged extramarital affairs, not even currently, but back when Clinton was governor of Arkansas. And so I was concerned about the journalistic precedent of that, and the political impact, and the impact on my own career if I went ahead with that story. And so I did seek advice from a handful of people, and Judge Silberman's advice was to publish the article. And I think it's fair to say, had he advised me not to, I very well might not have. That's how seriously I took his advice.
BUZZFLASH: Well, you say on page 146 of your book, in reference to that, "though, he was a sitting federal judge who would rule on matters to which the Clinton administration was a party. Larry strongly urged me to go forward."
DAVID BROCK: By the way, his court sits right below the Supreme Court. And so there are a lot of cases that come before the court dealing with the Executive Branch -- regulatory matters, things of that nature. When various assertions of executive privilege were being made by the White House during the impeachment, he sat in on at least one, if not more, of those cases.
BUZZFLASH: And Silberman did not recuse himself.
DAVID BROCK: No, he did not recuse himself, even though, as I said, he had been directly involved. I think it's clear that the kind of activity that Silberman was engaging in is not permitted. It falls into a category of the kind of partisan politics that's not permitted. And he was aware of this, because he would jokingly say to me that, when I would go to him for advice, he often started out saying something like well, it would be improper to advise you on this. And it was set sort of tongue-in-cheek, and then he would go ahead and advise me. So he was aware of what he was doing.
Aside from me, he was also very influential with the Wall Street Journal editorial page in terms of advice. And of course, the Journal editorial page was, along with the Spectator, probably the second principal anti-Clinton vehicle during that time.
And who was one of the judges that overturned the felony convictions of Admiral Poindexter, Bush appointee to oversee a computerized spying operation on private American citizens? Why, no coincidence here, Laurence Silberman: "Poindexter was convicted by a federal jury for lying and obstruction of justice. Though sentenced to prison, he escaped hard time thanks to conservative appellate judges Laurence Silberman and David Sentelle (later of Lewinsky affair fame), who overturned his conviction; they ruled that independent counsel Lawrence Walsh had relied too much on testimony that the NSC adviser himself gave while under congressional immunity.
And when a lower court unanimously ruled that Ashcroft had exceeded his authority in assuming broad wire tap powers, who was one of the three judges that said he was acting within his powers? Why, Laurence Silberman. Silberman sits on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the final court decision making stop in deciding what powers the Bush administration can assume in violating our Constitutional rights. The Washington Post, in an editorial last year noted, "Yesterday the court of review sprang to life, overturning a lower FISA court decision and handing Attorney General John D. Ashcroft a major victory -- one that significantly changes the rules under which sensitive surveillance is conducted in this country." The Post blamed Congress for the problem, even though the lower court had ruled against Ashcroft and had taken the unprecedented step of releasing a dossier of wiretapping abuses by the Justice Department.
The American Prospect magazine noted that Judge Silberman has resorted to physical threats in battling liberal judges: "A decade and a half ago the court was notoriously polarized; The New York Times even reported that Judge Laurence Silberman at one point threatened to assault Judge Abner Mikva."
(See:
http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/3/mooney-c.html)
The Washington Post editorial board writers surely know Judge Silberman's insidious history as a partisan operative for the Ted Olson legal contingent of the right wing, yet they used him as their "distinguished" source, anyway. Why?
Beyond the cynical use of Judge Silberman as a "prestigious" spokesperson for Estrada, the Post employs other bizarre references. In arguing that Estrada is not too young for the courts (which no one is raising as a very serious issue anyway -- it's called setting up your own paper argument), it triumphantly points out that Estrada is younger than -- get this -- Kenneth Starr was when he was nominated. Say what!
As for stonewalling questions, Estrada did much more than that. Like Ted Olson, he was flirting with perjury. Whether he committed perjury in judiciary committee hearings or not would require an investigation, but the Post knows that this was more than just standard evasiveness. It was evasiveness that appeared to cross into dishonesty at times, because there is a point when saying "I don't know" or "I don't have an opinion" about a controversial topic is basically a lie. But again, we can only point out questionable responses. Only Congress could determine if Miguel Estrada did actually lie. If he didn't, for "technical" reasons, he came about as close as you could come without falling off the edge of the cliff.
The Washington Post editorial board states: "For Democrats demand, as a condition of a vote, answers to questions that no nominee should be forced to address -- and that nominees have not previously been forced to address." Excuse us, were the Post editorial board writers too young to watch the Clarence Thomas hearings? If that's the case, that would make them under 20 years of age right now, which may explain everything.
Maybe the Post should talk with Ann Coulter -- she thanks Estrada for his help in the acknowledgments for her latest book. If that weren't enough to make you question his motives, Democrats also have reason to be suspicious of Estrada because he was a key lawyer, working with Ted Olson, on the Bush Florida recount legal team. More than that, he is rumored to be one of the "Little Elves" that behind the scenes assisted in one way or another with the effort to impeach Clinton. The Democrats would like to get to the bottom of those rumors -- and they have every right to.
So we'll let Ann Coulter get the last word in before BuzzFlash winds this editorial up. In a January 31 appearance on Crossfire, Coulter had this exchange with Paul Begala (See:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0301/31/cf.00.html):
BEGALA: So you're not going to tell me about any of his [Estrada's] views?
COULTER: What do you want me to say?
BEGALA: Are you embarrassed by his views?
COULTER: The second he gets in there, he'll overrule everything you love, Paul Begala.
Maybe Rupert Murdoch is pulling the strings after all at the Post. Stranger things have happened.
After all, the title of the Post editorial in support of Estrada -- and slamming the Democrats for finally showing that they have some spine -- is a paraphrase of Bush's challenge to the senate on Estrada: "Let's Vote."
We suspect the next pro-Iraq war editorial that the Post will run may be entitled, "Let's Nuke."
If it shows up on FOX News, you might just see it showing up on the Post editorial pages.
Coincidence or Not?
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
* * *
BUZZFLASH NOTE: The New York Times vigorously opposed Estrada's nomination in an editorial entitled, "An Unacceptable Nominee," (See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/opinion/29WED2.html).
Also, as far as the Washington Post beating the drums for war, the Washingtonian Magazine notes: "The Washington Post issued a clarion call for war against Iraq in a February 5 editorial, thus becoming the nation's most hawkish major daily newspaper."
(See:
http://www.washingtonian.com/inwashington/buzz/war.html)
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