(no subject)

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(no subject)

Today is Sweetmorn, day 18 in the season of Discord, 3270.

From yesterday's "In the Loop" column in the Post:

Note to Eric: U Need 2B More Careful

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, March 31, 2004; Page A23

Did you hear the one about the guy at Starbucks? No? Okay. A guy walks into the Starbucks at Connecticut Avenue and R Street NW on Sunday to get his favorite latte, and sits down at a table.

On the table, he spots four pieces of paper. One is stationery with the heading "Office of the Secretary of Defense," and right under that "The Special Assistant."

It has a penciled map of directions from the Pentagon to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's house in Northwest Washington. Another sheet says, "Eric's Telephone Log." Someone has written "Conf. call" at the top and some notes, some in partial shorthand, on one side. These apparently were taken by Eric.

The notes say: "Took threat v seriously and then segue to wh we have been doing. Rise above [ Richard A.] Clarke.

"Emphasize importance of 9/11 commission and come back to what we have been doing.

"[Commission member Jamie] Gorelick pitting Condi [ Condoleezza Rice] v. [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage

"Our plan had military plans to attack Al Q -- called on def to draw up targets in Afg -- develop mil options."

There's an underlined notation "DR" in the margin and a quotation, apparently from DR, perhaps Rumsfeld, to "Stay inside the line -- we dont need 2 ruff [or puff] this at all. we need 2b careful as hell about it. This thing will go away soon and what will keep it alive will be one of us going over the line."

A third sheet is dated Saturday, 4:30 p.m., and headed "Possible Q's for Sunday Talk Shows," but there are no answers.

A fourth sheet describes actions taken to change a policy of treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter to treating it as war.

Our good citizen, no dummy he, concluded these were significant papers and should be turned over to the appropriate people. So that would be the Pentagon or the White House?

Oh, no. He turned them over to none other than that most left-leaning think tank, Center for American Progress, headed by none other than former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta.

The CAP folks have been having so much fun with this, they've taken to providing answers for the "Possible Q's." For example, in answer to the question, "Why did the Administration think it had 7 months to develop policy?" the CAP people offer: "We made a point of ignoring as long as possible anything that was recommended to us by the Clinton Administration."

In answer to the question, "Commission member [ Richard] Ben-Veniste said a long string of reports on the use of airplanes as missiles was available. Did you ever see them?" the Center, adapting the administration's "Clarke Attack," proposes: "Ben-Veniste is disgruntled. He's angry that he was demoted from Watergate prosecutor to 9/11 commissioner. He's writing a book . . . and just wants to make a lot of money. Ann Coulter and Robert Novak told me he can't deal with an African-American woman."

Clearly, they're having too much fun with this.
[...]

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The Center's web site has a PDF of the papers (with the map to Rumsfeld's house redacted) and an added sheet of their proposed answers. I wonder if Eric's friends have seen or heard from him recently?