Beware Bogus info: Re Powell speaking to McCain about Cheney seeing Memo

[KoKo]

Colin BlowThere's a very detailed but almost certainly very fake e-mail making the rounds in Left Blogstan, purporting to reveal Colin Powell's behind-the-scenes cooperation with the Fitzgerald investigation. Crooks and Liars has linked to a blog that posted it. Sean-Paul Kelly at The Agonist also has posted it. Jeralyn Merritt at Talk Left says she got a copy, too.

Which of course is one of the things that gives the "Wall Street" e-mail a patina of credibility. We assume Powell would be happy to administer the estocade to Cheney if he could. And since all of us on the left -- even the animal lovers -- badly want to believe that the beast is down on its knees, ready for the killing blow, it's easy to see why the bogus tale is getting so much attention.

I do wonder, though, about the motives of the person or persons who cooked it up -- just as I wonder about the suspiciously specific rumors floating around about 18 or 22 or some other impressively large number of indictments to come. Maybe people are just getting overexcited, like kids counting and recounting their presents on Christmas Eve. But the paranoid in me thinks that perhaps, just perhaps, the Rovians are up to their old tricks.

Creating exaggerated expectations of a Halloween Massacre could be a way of trying to deflate the actual indictments, assuming Fitzgerald plans to hand some down. Under ordinary circumstances, seeing a Scooter or a Karl do the perp walk would be an enormous story, even for cable news -- big enough to overshadow even a Wal-Mart heiress who cheats on her homework. And that's saying something. But if the media hive has been led to expect real fireworks -- lines of administration officials chained together on the White House lawn; the D.C. Armory converted into a temporary holding pen; a drunken Bush crying on his knees while the words "unindicted co-conspirator" are branded on his butt -- will the swarm sting as hard?
In the end it probably doesn't matter much -- not unless Fitzgerald surprises us all and walks away without filing charges against anybody. The tension of the past few days has already revved the story into the red zone on the RPM gauge. Once Fitzgerald pops the clutch, it's going to be an absolute media feeding frenzy, even if Cheney isn't on the menu.

http://billmon.org/

[Inland]

1. There isn't any reliable information. Everyone tune out.

Everybody who knows something has incentive to spin.

Stop driving yourselves nuts.

Have faith in Fitzpatrick. If nobody is indicted, it's because the laws are so poorly drafted that even national security criminals can't be stopped.

[Canuckistanian]

2. Didn't make sense to me

They were all thick as thieves back in those days.