'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
video 'podcast'
screencaps
Special bonus podcast or YouTube (Late Show with David Letterman, cameo)

ShowPlug1: Live on Countdown 8ET: Murdoch tried to "thwart" Scotland Yard hacking investigation; US + UK confer on investigation HERE

ShowPlug2: Our exclusive report - MurdochGate meets ClimateGate. The hacker with a foot in each scandal, w/Joe Romm of @ClimateProgress

ShowPlug3: +The day in Murdoch w/ @MichaelWolffNYC ;Debt Deal Deadline already passed? So says Sen. Reid. W/ @BrianBeutler of TPM

ShowPlug4: They call it "Twitter Presidential Debate." I call it "Batting Practice" 140 characters from people w/ no character; @MattTaibbi

ShowPlug5: Hearings begin to replace "Defense Of Marriage" crap with "Respect FOR Marriage Act" w/ @EvanWolfson of Freedom To Marry

ShowPlugLast: And Billo The Combover insists no implicated NewsCorp people are Americans. I'll have to break it to him on @Current


Segments:
watch whole playlist

'Climate Conspiracy', Joe Romm
YouTube, Current.com (excerpt)

'Climate Conspiracy', Michael Wolff
YouTube

'Debt and Taxes', Brian Beutler
YouTube

Time Marches On!
YouTube

'Reading the Tea Leaves', Matt Taibbi
YouTube

Worst Persons: Steve Smith (R-AZ), Bill O'Reilly, James Murdoch
Current.com, YouTube

'First Comes Love...', Evan Wolfson
YouTube, Current.com (excerpt)


Climate-gate: (blog post)

The Murdoch Phone-Hacking Scandal may have just metastasized.

The so-called "Climate-Gate" controversy -- in which e-mails about global warming were stolen from researchers at Britain's University of East Anglia in November, 2009 -- now turns out to bear the stamp of Neil Wallis, one of the key figures in Murdoch's hacking of the phones, voicemails, and other electronic communications of thousands of people.

Wallis is unique in this scandal.

He had been the Executive Editor of Murdoch's News Of The World when hacking was at its peak.

Yet in 2009 he wound up being hired by the police as a public relations consultant while the police investigated the hacking scandal. And he wound up spying for Murdoch's people on what Scotland Yard was investigating.

Wallis was, as the New York Times put it, "reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case."

Moreover, while Wallis was keeping Murdoch's organization apprised of what and whom the police were investigating, the police were trying to convince other news organizations not to cover the story -- a suppression of evidence that benefited both the police and Rupert Murdoch.

As the British newspaper The Guardian reported last Friday: "Scotland Yard's most senior officers tried to convince the Guardian during two private meetings that its coverage of phone hacking was exaggerated and incorrect without revealing they had hired Neil Wallis…"

It was neither exaggerated nor incorrect.

Last Thursday, Neil Wallis was arrested.

Last night, it was revealed that while acting as a double-agent for Scotland Yard and Murdoch, Wallis was also consulting Conservative Party Leader David Cameron during the 2010 election that saw Cameron rise to become the nation's Prime Minister.

Today, bobbing up to the surface through this vast ocean of ethical filth, comes Neil Wallis's role… in "Climate-Gate."

On November 20th, 2009, somebody broke into a computer server at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and stole thousands of emails and computer files.

The documents were leaked to Climate Change Deniers, and although exhaustive analysis later proved that the emails merely revealed scientists' anxiety that Climate Data and Research were being properly handled and studied, the Deniers have treated those emails as if they were a kind of Holy Grail of fraud.

They claim the emails not only disproved all of climate change, but also that they proved that scientists had doctored data in order to exaggerate the urgency of an international conference on climate change coming up the next month in Copenhagen in Denmark.

As the corporations and lobbyists who sought to feed the myth that there is no man-made climate change disseminated, exploited and deliberately misinterpreted the stolen e-mails -- and used Fox News and other Murdoch enterprises as their principle venues -- the victims, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, decided they'd better hire a public relations pro to help them fight back.

They hired… Neil Wallis.

The Murdoch editor who had supervised electronic hacking at "The News Of The World," but then went to work for Scotland Yard, but then spied on the Scotland Yard hacking investigation for Murdoch's men, but then tried to suppress media coverage of the Scotland Yard hacking investigation, now found himself in exactly the same kind of candy store over climate change denial.

And he was the chief kid!

As it was phrased in a gushing review last year in "Music Week Magazine" of Neil Wallis and his PR firm "Outside Organization": "Wallis led on the University of East Anglia's 'Climategate' job, when Outside was drafted in to help the university's Climatic Research Unit defend itself against charges of scientific misconduct."

Climate change scientists and outside experts agree that, with Neil Wallis at the helm, the Climatic Research Unit couldn't have done a worse job defending itself. The myth that its emails "disprove" Global Warming persists today.

In the Murdoch Hacking Scandal, Wallis has already been shown to have been undermining the efforts of the people for whom he'd been hired to work -- the police.

In the Murdoch Hacking Scandal, Wallis has already been shown to have been feeding information from the investigators, to those being investigated.

In the Murdoch Hacking Scandal, Wallis has already been shown to have been working for Rupert Murdoch, long after he claimed he wasn't working for Rupert Murdoch.

And in the Murdoch Hacking Scandal, Wallis was an executive editor in charge of having people illegally hack phones, voicemails, and other electronic communications, and then publicizing the data and details that the hacking had produced.

And yet it was to him that climate scientists turned… to defend themselves against hackers.

What, if anything, Neil Wallis had to do with the original hacking of the climate emails at the University of East Anglia, is still speculative… just as whether or not he was a double-agent for Murdoch in this hacking case, just as he had been a double-agent for Murdoch during Scotland Yard's hacking investigation.

But it may not be speculative for long.

There is the news from The Financial Times: a possible FBI / DOJ investigation of a Murdoch subsidiary hacking the computers of a business rival.

And earlier today, PC World Magazine reported that while we've all been working with a number of 3,870 hacking victims in the Murdoch Scandal, data released by Britain's Home Affairs Committee suggests the number may actually be as high as 12,800.

Only 170 of the victims have yet been notified.

If any of the others among the "Hacked Twelve Thousand" turn out to be scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, Rupert Murdoch may be in a lot bigger trouble than he is, even tonight.

He may be the man ultimately responsible for the illegal and inaccurate attempt to dismiss climate change as a scientific fraud.


Worst Persons:

First, because no "Defense Act" blunts the impact of the Nation's seemingly inexhaustible supply of The Stupid...

Here are Countdown's top three nominees for today's Worst Persons In The World.

The bronze to Steve Smith, yet another crazy state senator from Arizona.

Even though illegal border crossings from Mexico have now slowed to a trickle...

Mr. Smith has a great new plan, to raise both fears, and money.

He has launched a website that will accept contributions that will go towards building a fence between Arizona and Mexico. The fund-raising goal: 50 million dollars.

Well, more, really.

"It's not my end goal. If we can raise $50 million, we're off to a fabulous start."

Mr. Smith was elected to office for the first time last year.

Public records show that for his campaign, the total contributions he raised... 37-thousand 800 bucks.

Mr. Smith may have spent too much time outside in Arizona without his hat on.

The runner-up: Billo the Comb-Over.

He has actually addressed the Murdoch scandal on his Fixed News comedy show. And comedy it is...

"...here in the United States, there isn't any intrusion of this story thus far on News Corp. Properties."

What has happened here, he added... "that was allegedly done by the News of the World British people. Not any American people. There's not one American employee of the News Corporation implicated in any of this.

Oops.

Les Hinton, the man who ran Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal for Murdoch, has been an American citizen for 26 years.

James Murdoch has joint citizenship, here and in the U-K. He went to Harvard, and to the Horace Mann prep school here in New York. By the way, for all of us who went to Hackley School or Dalton or Rye Country Day or Riverdale - that explains everything.

And then there's another News-Corp guy implicated in any of this, who also became an American citizen in 1985. His name is Rupert Murdoch.

Nice work, Billo the Comb-over.

But our winner: speak of the Devil...

James Murdoch.

As William Hurt famously said in "Body Heat," Sometimes the crap comes down so heavy I feel like I should wear a hat.

As a result, I missed this entirely yesterday.

He and his father spend two hours tap-dancing away from any responsibility, knowledge, or fore-knowledge of the absolute journalistic corruption in their newspaper.

Then Daddy Rupe gets hit in the pie-hole with a shaving cream pie and according to British reporters, James Murdoch turns to the police and asks about the attack, quote:

"Why didn't you see what was happening?" Pre-ject much, Jimmy?

James "I didn't say 'Why didn't I see what was happening?'" Murdoch -- today's Worst Person In The World.