ODD--There is an *aspen institute* ("aspens will already be turning)

[Carni]

Not sure this is relevant to anything but I found an "Aspen Institute" on google...get a load of the board of trustees, it's packed with media people, Madeline Ablbreight(sp?)and Ann Richards are also on the board--so is Prince Abdullah (I think it said Abdullah --it's one of the biggies in Saudi)

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/c.huLWJeMRKpH/b.612063/k.AE55/Board_of_Trustees.htm

I wonder if this has anything to do with Libby's bizarro world coded comments in the letter to Miller?

Here they are again:

"Out west where you vacation the aspens will be turning"
"They turn in clusters because their roots connect them"

I found this very odd--not sure if it's connected or means anything.

Thoughts?

[sam sarrha]

1. you just cant make up stuff like this... it is just toooo strange

[janx]

2. The Aspen Institute has been around for a long time.

It's probably unrelated. I know that the Aspen Institute is not a "conservative" organization. Academics of all stripes go there.

[Carni]

4. There is also an Aspen institute *Berlin*

Chalabi appeared there in 2002 to discuss plans to take Saddam's place yada yada yada--I wonder if it's in *west* Berlin?

Does Judy vaca in Germany? One wonders...

I can't decide if the message means -- Bail while you can the media and main players are turning on us.

Or if the message means come out of hiding they can't prosecute us because we're all connected (I mean both parties to a degree in this Saddam mess)

I think the reference may be connected but I have no idea how.

[patricia92243]

3. Maybe it means the media wil be turning (Aspen Institute). The media has

been on Bush's side and now they are tuning????

Sounds like as good an explination as any.

[JaneGat]

5. Aspens were once used as message boards

"In the high mountains of Colorado, between 1890 and 1950, sheepherders and ranchers used aspen trees as their bulletin boards." -- SFGate

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/10/02/state1624EDT7946.DTL

Also, watching the aspens turn color in the fall is a big event.

[applegrove]

6. I liked that Fitz & the gang asked Judy if she felt she was being

'sent a message' by Aspen part. Could be a veiled threat.

[Solly Mack]

7. She belongs to the Aspen Institute (Miller, that is)

Judith Miller
Judith Miller is a senior writer for The New York Times. In 1977, she was a member of the Washington Bureau, where she covered the banking and securities industry, the House and Senate, national politics, foreign affairs with special emphasis on the Middle East, and nuclear proliferation issues. In 1983, she was the chief of the Times Cairo Bureau in Egypt. Ms. Miller then became the Times' special correspondent in Paris, in 1986. She returned to Washington to serve as news editor and deputy bureau chief of the Washington Bureau. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and a member of the Aspen Strategy Group.


http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/c.huLWJeMRKpH/b.613779/k.32CA/US_Participant_List_in_Pakistan.htm

This has already come out.

[Carni]

8. Thanks, I noticed a thread on daily Kos to that same effect

The Aspen institute thing was news to me but apparently not to many people.

I think the reference has to be tied in because it's just too strange and her being on the board is even weirder.

I am really surprised that Dumsfeld isn't tied into this somehow...remember he years ago was touting HIMSELF as some type of terror WMD expert for the right? (It was during Clinton's Presidency)

[Solly Mack]

9. I find the message too weird not to be a reference of some sort

I'm not sure more digging wouldn't find a tie-in to others around Bush.

Here, note this:

U.S. Participant List in Pakistan

2002 Outreach Meeting
January 18-19
Islamabad, Pakistan

U.S. Delegation

Chair

Philip Zelikow
Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is the director of the Aspen Strategy Group.He is a current member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Zelikow is also the executive director of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, better known as the Carter-Ford Commission. A former professor at Harvard University, he served in the government as a career diplomat in the Department of State and on the staff of the National Security Council in the earlier Bush White House. Before working on international and national issues, he was a trial lawyer in Texas. He is the author of several books, including The Kennedy Tapes (with Ernest May), Essence of Decision (with Graham Allison), and Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (with Condoleezza Rice).

Participants

[Carni]

10. Woah-that's pretty interesting!

You are finding way better info than I am...

I got all sidetracked looking up *project aspen*... there is one but it's a study on air sea temps effects (or something it all looks like greek to me) and is (was actually) being conducted by a German corp called GKSS.

They also have something to do with the development of small nukes but even so, I don't believe Libby's comments would make any sense in that context.

Unless he is telling Miller they're planning on creating a nuke to make a massive tidal wave and that is way too tinfoil even for me! (lol)