I Cogitate

NEWSWEEK
Looking For a Leaker

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer. The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")

NEWSWEEK
Looking For A Leaker

A team of FBI agents, armed with a search warrant, raided the White House last week, specifically poring over the offices of President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, shitmeister extraordinare to the president.

The agents nabbed computers, datebooks and a number of filing cabinets from Cheney's and Rove's offices -- including the man-sized safe about whose existence was learned through monitoring Jon Stewart's references to it in his "The Daily Show" monologues -- but a source close to the investigation told us that nothing of consequence was found in the Oval Office, except these four items:

*** the children's game "RISK: The Iraq and Afghanistan edition"

*** a well-thumbed book titled "How To Make Your Codpiece Grow Larger"

*** a collection of gin bottle empties

*** a half-finished coloring book, with the inscription "A gift from me to my sunshine -- Condi" written on the inside cover.

The local FBI branch is apparently working furiously, calling in agents from throughout the country, to determine who the cryptic Condi might be. FBI Chief Robert Mueller offered, "We will spare no expense or effort in finding this person and it's off to Gitmo when we do."

The genesis for the raid centers around the leak to the media earlier this year of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame's name, thereby aborting Plame from her assignment on Middle Eastern nuclear concerns.

When asked by reporters earlier this year, President Bush perplexingly said "everyone knows I devoutly believe abortion is not only wrong but immoral and therefore would have had nothing to do with all this."

In his leadoff remarks at today's White House press briefing, spokesman Tony Snow snarled "C'mon, what's the big deal about a blonde bimbo?," leading Bill O'Reilly, apparently fluffed up but getting it all wrong as usual, to perkily begin his nightly program with "blonde? bimbo?" followed by a plea to have the lady in reference sent immediately to him as he would do his patriotic duty by loofah-ing her into submission. "I will get to the bottom of her but only after ... she would basically be in the shower and then I would come in ... I would kinda put my arm - it's one of those mitts , those loofa mitts you know, so I got my hands in it ... and I would put it around front, kinda rub her tummy with it, and then with my other hand I would start to massage her boobs, get her nipples really hard ... oh, oh, oh my god, sweet Jesus, yes, yes ..."

Another White House spokesperson, Dana Perino, offered: "Leaks happen" which sounded familiar to reporters who then went back and discovered that she offered the same excuse right after Hurricane Katrina.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "What leak?

President Bush seemed baffled when asked as he responded with: "Which leak?"

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