See That Man On the Corner..... No, the One Over There....

Sam Ervin, 1974

This article has so much information in it I can only give you the link and hope that you read it several times:

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/12/10/hatfill-and-wen-ho-lee-and-plame-and-al-awlaki-and-assange/

Emptywheel is the most serious part of the Firedoglake conglomeration (well, if you don't count the bassets).  It's hard to read, and I don't, except when I do.  But in most cases, there's something there which is packed with information.  Marcy Wheeler covered the Scooter Libby trial, and the Plame "outing," more in depth, and with more seriousness, than anyone in the mainstream media, or even in the general blogisphere, for that matter.  When things come to trial, we tend to go to sleep, Watergate being possibly the only exception.  But in the case of Watergate we happened to have N.C.'s own Sam Ervin, an old-style Senator who kept things interesting.  When Iran/Contra came around, twelve years or so later, the most riveting character was Ollie North, at which point the truth went quite off the rails. 

With the topsy-turvy world of Bush II politics, the public is now swept along from one thing to the next, with almost no comprehension of what underlying themes are of serious note.  It's just this crisis, that crisis, the next crisis.  Meanwhile, there is a flow of real events.  Marcy Wheeler's article reminds us of that.  Underlying much of where we stand today is a mountain of propaganda.  And apparently the Obama Administration is more concerned with keeping the lid on, than with actually educating the public on what has happened. 

For a Democratic Administration to collaborate in deceit is, it seems to me, a very fundamental mistake of policy.  After all, the Republicans are the ones who have mastered deceit.  For the Democrats to continue keeping the public in the dark is to, basically, enhance the Republican base.