Wednesday December 14, 2005

Two Degrees of Scooter Libby

Well, Republican FCC commissioner Kathleen Abernathy’s last day was Friday. This week, new Republican commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate is gliding through confirmation hearings, while Democratic commissioner Michael Copps used his hearings (for a second term) as an opportunity to call for a crackdown on cable indecency. Cable companies have been scrambling to avert such a crackdown—foreshadowed by FCC chairman Kevin Martin’s recent tough talk to the Senate—by unveiling family-friendly subscription tiers. Still, the big news will be when Bush appoints a fifth commissoner. I run to my computer every morning to see if he has.

While working on something unrelated, however, I did run across an interesting fact about Chairman Martin—a connection to Scooter Libby and Plamegate. As I’ve mentioned before, Martin earned his stripes with the Bushies during the 2000 Florida recount, and with the Parents Television Council for being tough on indecency. But his Harvard law sweetheart and wife, Catherine Martin, also works for Bush, and she used to work for Dick Cheney, as Assistant to the Vice President for Public Affairs. In fact, according to the Washington Post, “apart from Libby, only press aide Catherine Martin is known to have accompanied Cheney,” on a 2003 flight from Norfolk to Washington, where Libby discussed strategies for responding to inquiries about administration critic Joseph Wilson. Libby had his famous chat with Time’s Matthew Cooper later that day.

She also makes an appearance, by title, in the Libby indictment, which reports that “not earlier than June 2003, but on or before July 8, 2003, the Assistant to the Vice President for Public Affairs learned from another government official that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA, and advised Libby of this information.”

What does this have to do with the FCC or her husband? Nothing. (I mean, who would try to discredit a man by appealing to the occupation or actions of his spouse?) But I’d still love to be a fly on the wall at Chez Martin.

UPDATE:: After I posted this, I just couldn’t believe that this connection had never been noted before. I was right, but not by much. TV Week mentioned it in their gossip section on October 24 (in an item titled “One Degree of Separation”), while RCR Wireless News (another pub put out by Crain, my former employer) alluded to it on November 7. But that’s all Nexis turns up.