What you had was CIA (and DOJ) violating Judge Hellerstein’s original production orders, way back when. Then as it became clear over the years that they were pissing in the courtrom, and one or two judges thought holding up an umbrella wasn’t really a sufficient response, they began to hold the lawyers feet to the fire vis a vis mutterings on contempt. Mukasey then appoints a whitewasher to make it look like he did something. CIA and the lawyers looking at contempt then ran to the courts and said, “hey, sure, you know, we’d love to quit violating court orders and all, but golly, now there’s this special prosecutor looking at some of this and we can’t produce bc it is all a subject of his investigation.

And Durham played along with that originally – yep judge, I’m busy busy busy making sure people who violate court order and destroy torture evidence get investigated. You need to just go away and leave me be. So Hellerstein called their bluff and said, Alrighty boys and girls, if that’s true, that Durham is actually involved in the kind of ‘for real’ criminal investigation that is going to generate charges and where my proceedings might interfere and screw up those charges, I want that in writing, signed off on under penalty of perjury, by Mr. Durham himself.

So I think you have two elements. The first on the Durham objection to paragraph 4 had Hellerstein call their bluff and they folded.

The second element, though,(revealing the existence of responsive documents outside the date paramenters) walks back to the original production requirments and the Judge’s expressions of interest in pursuing contempt against the agency. What I would say is that there is concern on any one of a number of fronts that at some point, something from beyond the period in the order will come out otherwise and the lawyers and officers already looking at contempt don’t want to be explaining to the judge why they were less than candid with him.

Keep in mind that the failure of the parties to be able to work something out is what resulted in the Judge picking the responsive dates and CIA made him pick those dates without even skeletal production. So it is likely that the production they make from those dates will make it very clear that there is likely to be more outside that cutoff date and then you’re going to have a pissed off judge, getting very sick and tired of the games playing. So fessing up on the docs isn’t really something Durham is doing IMO, it’s something that the agency and its lawyers who are looking at contemp has done.

Then Durham and the agency have to pretend that they aren’t both trying to accomplish the same thing – cover ups – by the agency saying, “We’re not so confused now on our duty of candor to the court, Judge, so we’ve mentioned that when you see what we have to produce under you’re order you’re going to know your cutoff date was too short. Aren’t we good? Oh, but by the way, we have no idea what that mean, tough, thorough investigator who is going to laugh off Obama and Holder’s directions to protect torturers might be doing so who knows, he might have some objections to you making us produce those younger docs. Golly, we just don’t know.”

In general, if you were arm’s length the lawyers handling the CIA’s response would never claim to be able to speak to what position the Special prosecutor investigating the CIA and its lawyers might take on docs.

But I don’t think Durham is why we are finding out about the docs past June 2003 — I think that the lawyers for the CIA who can tell the judge is about to shut down their urinal privileges in his court have decided to try to fly right. I do think that Durham’s failure to be able to make a worry-free affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he is actually pursuing criminal charges is why the production is going forward on the pre-July2003 docs.

fwiw – my take only.

Actually, I think that this may have a lot to do with him shutting down.

From the case history and Jason’s report:

The reversal comes after Hellerstein demanded that Durham and other officials provide the court with a sworn affidavit to back up the CIA’s claims that Durham’s probe would be hindered by the production of relevant documents.

They were trying to play this both ways – Durham not doing anything of benefit to anyone but the CIA saying that they couldn’t possibly turn things over bc it might hinder his investigation.

Now that they’ve killed enough time to let SOL’s die off more and also had time for Obama to publically announce his confiscation of prosecutorial rights in the Dept, it’s pretty clear there aren’t going to be prosecutions. So Hellerstein made them fish or cut bait — if BullBoy is actually doing something other than helping with the cover up, put it in an affidavit and file it in my court.

As seems to have happened with the boys at DOJ when Keller-Kotelly took the same position on the breaches of her orders (that Ashcroft, his DAG, Mueller, et al were going to have to start signing off certifying that those orders had been complied with and if they weren’t face the consequences, the lawyers involved get a little glimmer of religion once their name hits a line with direct liability to the court.

So anteing up the docs is bc Durham can’t and won’t certify in an affidavit that he is actually going to be doing anything. Hard to come up with an affidavit that releasing docs will interfere with your investigation when your only job is to cover up.

was Cheney using those two months to put his get-Wilson offensive together?

cheney started the offensive against Wilson in the first weeks of March, (the 8th or 9th, IIRC) when Wilson appeared on Television with the same message he had all along

the first “whitehouse Iraq Group” meeting was in late march (the 22 IIRC)

NO WMDs in Iraq

and I think Wilson’s first public appearance was in December of 02

we is ALL just a gaggle of plameologists round here. You know that, right ???

G’nite, y’all. I’ve had computer problems tonite, so late catching up.

Bob in HI