Daily Briefing: Sour to the Third
Thursday, April 27th, 2006
* Rove testifies for several hours in the CIA leak case; testimony “focused almost exclusively on his conversation about Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in 2003 and whether the top aide later tried to conceal it.” [WP, NYT, W$J]
* Tony Snow could be “the first outsider to become part of Bush’s revamped inner circle”; aides admit there is “broad agreement that the first-term strategy of largely ignoring the mainstream Washington media was a mistake.” Dan Bartlett: “There is a lot of value added in Tony coming on board and helping us internally with his own views and ideas.” [WP, NYT, USAT, WT]
* New spending bill brings cost of the war in Iraq to $320B; total cost of Afghanistan and Iraq missions will exceed the price of the Vietnam War. [WP]
* Approval of Congress in NBC/WSJ poll has dropped 11 points in the past month; respondents are increasingly pessimistic about the direction of the nation and the economy. 77% are “uneasy about the economy” and 44% are tired of partisan fighting. Pollster: “You have never seen such a sour mood in the country. It is sour, sour, sour.” [MSNBC, W$J]
* Senate report concludes FEMA should be abolished because problems are “too substantial to mend.” [WP, NYT, USAT]
* Rumsfeld, Rice visit Baghdad after prodding from Bush; “they were embracing perhaps the last chance the Bush administration had to turn around public opinion at home and to ensure that Iraq has a viable political future.” [WP, NYT, W$J]
* Rove testifies for several hours in the CIA leak case; testimony “focused almost exclusively on his conversation about Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in 2003 and whether the top aide later tried to conceal it.” [WP, NYT, W$J]
* Tony Snow could be “the first outsider to become part of Bush’s revamped inner circle”; aides admit there is “broad agreement that the first-term strategy of largely ignoring the mainstream Washington media was a mistake.” Dan Bartlett: “There is a lot of value added in Tony coming on board and helping us internally with his own views and ideas.” [WP, NYT, USAT, WT]
* New spending bill brings cost of the war in Iraq to $320B; total cost of Afghanistan and Iraq missions will exceed the price of the Vietnam War. [WP]
* Approval of Congress in NBC/WSJ poll has dropped 11 points in the past month; respondents are increasingly pessimistic about the direction of the nation and the economy. 77% are “uneasy about the economy” and 44% are tired of partisan fighting. Pollster: “You have never seen such a sour mood in the country. It is sour, sour, sour.” [MSNBC, W$J]
* Senate report concludes FEMA should be abolished because problems are “too substantial to mend.” [WP, NYT, USAT]
* Rumsfeld, Rice visit Baghdad after prodding from Bush; “they were embracing perhaps the last chance the Bush administration had to turn around public opinion at home and to ensure that Iraq has a viable political future.” [WP, NYT, W$J]
We’ve just laid eyes on the panel for TIME magazine’s “Person of the Year” luncheon on Nov. 14 — the first of many manufactured events in the build up to the POY cover, not the least of which is the cover itself. Say one thing for the panel, though: They didn’t stint on the Coopers:
From high above the Southern Hemisphere, an operative on Air Force One espied the Time scribe’s fledgling literary effort:
Top four signs that Matt Cooper is running out of material for further first-person articles about his involvement in the CIA leak investigation, which are starting to sound less like journalism and more like Bob Graham’s journals:
Another missive from the humid hothouse of journalist-on-journalist love. This afternoon’s entertainment was a Q&A between the cosy duo of Time’s Matt Cooper and Time’s Jim Kelly. Kelly, Time’s editor, kicked things off with a recap of the past 28 months, from the Cooper’s “double super secret background” convo with Karl Rove (in which Rove mentioned, sans name, that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA) to Judith Miller’s aspen-turning move in yesterday’s New York Times. Summing up, Kelly turned to Cooper and asked: “So do you have any idea what the case is about?”