-Caveat Lector- http://www.j-marshall.com/talk/july0102.html#071401509am TALKING POINTS MEMO By Joshua Micah Marshall (July 14th, 2001 -- 5:09 AM EST // link) Regarding the Condit lie detector test, here's some other morsels to keep in mind. In his post tonight Mickey Kaus notes that Aldrich Ames, the notorious CIA spy, passed a number of lie detector tests. So clearly the technology is not infallible. But this only scratches the surface of the story. The polygraph expert retained by Condit attorney Abbe Lowell is named Barry Colvert, a former CIA lie detector expert. One of the bullet points on Colvert's resume is that he did the interrogations of Aldrich Ames. Now I don't know if the tests Ames beat were administered by Colvert. But it seems like a definite possibility. So it's not just that Ames beat a lie detector test. It may be that he beat this expert. But there's more. A lot more. Back in January 1998 when former Teamsters' head Ron Carey was trying to fight off an indictment and expulsion from the union over the campaign donation-swapping scandal, he decided to take a lie detector test to clear himself. He passed the test. The test was administered by none other than Barry Colvert. Now this is a little painful for me to say, because I always liked Ron Carey, but the bottom line is that he was eventually indicted. So Colvert's results look a little iffy in retrospect. More striking though is the way that test was apparently administered. Read this snippet from a January 21st, 1998 AP story and see if it doesn't sound very similar to what Abbe Lowell said today about the test Colvert administered to Gary Condit. Barry Colvert, an agent for 35 years who interrogated Aldrich Ames and other high-profile spies, asked Carey two crucial questions about the scheme. "I did not find any indication of deception in either of those primary questions," Colvert said. He added that, "If the readings were close and flat, I wouldn't have rendered that opinion." Colvert's questions and the questions posed to Carey by his attorney, Reid Weingarten, were limited to charges that about $ 735,000 was donated by the Teamsters to generate contributions to Carey's re-election campaign. Carey was not asked if he knew that other labor leaders, including AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka, allegedly had funneled prohibited donations to his campaign. Sounds similar, doesn't it? Highly restricted questioning ... "two crucial questions" ... "the primary questions" etc. And apparently no follow-ups on the factual nitty-gritty of the case. (Carey seems to be the only other high-profile case Colvert has handled since he went into private practice in 1997 -- I base this on a Nexis search on Colvert's name which revealed no mentions beside Carey.) And then there's one more detail. My understanding is that, at approximately this time, Carey had under contract a PR consultant by the name of Marina Ein. (I do not know whether she was still working for Carey in January 1998 -- but I know she was shortly before that.) And as you'll remember, if you're following the case, that's the same Marina Ein who is now working for Gary Condit. What does this all mean? I'm going to let the information speak for itself. But it does make you wonder. -- Josh Marshall (July 14th, 2001 -- 3:19 AM EST // link) I think my attempt at subtlety in my last post left me a bit misunderstood. So let me try to clarify. I'm still trying to sort out what I think of the in-house lie detector test that Abbe Lowell arranged for his client Gary Condit. Opinion on that point seems to have evolved pretty quickly, even over the half-dozen hours or so since Abbe Lowell's press conference. But for the moment let's take the answers to these three questions wholly at face value and assume their accuracy. If you boil down the three questions they asked of Condit they basically come down to this: a) were you involved in, or did you cause, Levy's disappearance? and b) do you know the current whereabouts of her or her remains? These two questions leave some pretty obvious questions unasked. Like, Do you know what happened to Chandra? Do you know who harmed her / is responsible for her disappearance? In any case, for now, suffice it to say that even if you completely buy that this was a legit test, it leaves a pretty big and obvious question unanswered, especially because it's not too difficult to speculate about who some potential other people might be. Now, on to other matters. There seems to be some anti-Talking Points mojo in the air tonight because I'm being called on the carpet by fellow me-ziners Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan -- for two entirely different things. Kaus says I'm going soft because I criticized the Washington Post's story on Condit's alleged affair with the then-18 year old woman from back home in Modesto. Sullivan is on my case or, perhaps better to say, putting me on the spot for not providing the name of the ABC News reporter discussed in this article I wrote yesterday in Salon. I'm going to come back to the matter of the unnamed reporter. But first let's deal with Kaus. I went back and read the July 12th Washington Post story about the minister and his daughter and I think I was in part wrong to deny its relevance. Now this will get kind of complicated so bear with me (it's also four o'clock in the morning so incoherence is a possibility too). My initial concern was the combination of how distant this affair seemed from anything to do with the Levy case and the fact that the alleged paramour herself denied the affair took place. Hardly a small matter. The combination, I thought, made it not ready to publish. However, what's really key is not the relationship itself but Susan Levy's alleged phone call in mid-April confronting Chandra with news of the earlier relationship, and Chandra's subsequent discussion of that relationship with Condit. This chain of events seems quite relevant to what was happening in Chandra's life in the last two weeks before her disappearance -- even if you allow the possibility that the other affair didn't happen. For the purposes of understanding what was up with Chandra, what matters is that she and her mother believed it was true and that she discussed it with Condit. This is all a roundabout way of saying that I think I was at least partly incorrect on the question of relevance -- though I still have misgivings about the fact that they went with the story while the woman herself denied the affair took place. Make sense? I'll get to the Sullivan's very legitimate point (and challenge) tomorrow. -- Josh Marshall (July 13th, 2001 -- 7:22 AM EST // link) Maybe it's just my underlying innocence and naivete, but it's hard for me not to look at this case in a rather different light now that Rep. Condit has submitted to a lie detector test, even one in a highly controlled setting, and with questions contrived with precision by his attorney. The questions asked of Condit, according to various media outlets, were: Did the congressman (you) have anything at all to do with the disappearance of Ms. Levy? Did he (you) harm her or cause anyone else to harm her in any way? Does he (do you) know where she can be located? But I would have wanted to ask just one other question ... Do you know who else may have harmed Chandra Levy? -- Josh Marshall (July 13th, 2001 -- 7:13 AM EST // link) Gary Condit's flacks have to look pretty long and hard these days to find something -- anything -- which will let them go on the offensive against the media avalanche of stories adverse to their client (like plowing the sea, as Bolivar famously said). But yesterday's Washington Post gave them a pretty good shot at it. The Post has done what I think is a pretty admirable job reporting this story thus far -- even though they do seem to be working in pretty close concert with the Levy's PR firm. But their story about an affair Condit allegedly carried on with a then-18 year old woman is a textbook example of a story that just doesn't seem to have any relevance to this case. We already know that Gary Condit is ... well, how shall we say it? ... a bit of a man about town? Unlike the Anne Marie Smith case, which has an arguable relevance to the Levy story, this one seems to have none. Plus, the alleged paramour herself first wouldn't confirm the relationship and then actively denied it. The entire evidence for the affair apparently hinges on the woman's father's say-so. A lot of other news outlets apparently had a shot at this story and took a pass -- a number with reputations far beneath that of the Post. Did Condit have this affair too? Who knows? But more to the point, who cares? -- Josh Marshall Copyright 2001 Joshua Micah Marshall ======================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ======================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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