According to the Times, Current management "unanimously" agreed that Mr. Olbermann had failed to honor the terms of his five-year, $50 million contract, giving them the right to give him the boot. After declining to speak to the Times, Mr. Olbermann slammed network executives Mr. Gore and Joel Hyatt on Twitter, saying they had fired him unethically and he would seek legal recourse.

"Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers," the network wrote in a letter to viewers. "Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it."

"I'd like to apologize to my viewers and staff for the failure of Current TV," Mr. Olbermann tweeted Friday afternoon. He went on, 140 characters at a time:

"But for more than a year I have been imploring @AlGore and @JoelHyatt to resolve our issues internally, while I've been not publicizing my complaints, and keeping the show alive for the sake of its loyal viewers and even more loyal staff. Nevertheless, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract. It goes almost without saying that the claims against me  in Current's statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently.  To understand Mr. Hyatt’s “values of respect, openness, collegiality and loyalty,” I encourage you to read of a previous occasion Mr. Hyatt found himself in court for having unjustly fired an employee. That employee’s name was Clarence B. Cain: http://nyti.ms/HueZsa. In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out. For now, it is important only to again acknowledge that joining them was a sincere and well-intentioned gesture on my part, but in retrospect a foolish one. That lack of judgment is mine and mine alone, and I apologize again for it."

Mr. Olbermann's exit has been rumored since January, when, due to his dissatisfaction with Current's technical capabilities, he "declined" to cover the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Olbermann left Countdown's previous home, MSNBC, abruptly in January of 2011, after clashing with network executives. With any luck, this pattern of interpersonal problems will be further elucidated by The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's new HBO project based on Mr. Olbermann.

Mr. Spitzer's first foray into TV, CNN's Parker Spitzer, was also plagued by infighting until the network dropped co-host Kathleen Parker. Parker Spitzer's one-man iteration, In the Arena, was canceled in a line-up shuffle last summer.

Update (6:44 pm): A source with knowledge of the situation told us Mr. Spitzer began talking with Current last November as tensions mounted between Mr. Olbermann and the channel's owners. Mr. Olbermann was reportedly angry about the channel's low production values compared to his former home, MSNBC. Despite these tensions, our source said no deal was made to bring Mr. Spitzer to the network because Mr. Gore, was desperate to keep him.

"Gore just tried to kiss Keith's ass," our source said. "It was like the geek trying to impress the cool kid in high school."

Mr. Gore's attempts to placate Mr. Olbermann were clearly unsuccessful.

Toby Harnden writes for The Daily Mail, in a just-published report:

Last weekend, Breitbart told friends he was in early talks with CNN about a Crossfire-style show in which he would argue from the Right alongside former US House representative Anthony Weiner taking him on from the Left.

Breitbart was, of course, responsible for breaking open the scandal that took Rep. Weiner down. He appeared at the press conference to hijack it (one Observer reporter noted at the time: "This is like when The Joker takes over Gotham").

A spokeswoman for CNN told Harnden that the network had no comment. So: Not a denial. UPDATE: Dylan Byers at Politico gets the denial from CNN that Harnden couldn't (or didn't):

"It's totallly false," CNN's Edie Emery said. "CNN was not in discussions."

For context, networks have talks all the time about potential projects, and CNN—which hasn't exactly performed well as a network over the last few years compared to its cable news rivals—probably talked about quite a few possibilities, some of them as extreme (and insane) as this.

Then again, they did put a once-scandalized New York governor on their network, and one of his first guests turned out to be Henry Blodget, someone Spitzer had taken down during his time as New York's A.G. Another guest on Spitzer's first show?

Andrew Breitbart, of course.

Also, West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, who—in an incredibly bizarre coincidence—Toby Harnden also spoke to about Breitbart:

Sorkin told me via email: "I e-mailed Andrew last Friday because the episode of The Newsroom I'm currently writing takes place during the week the Anthony Weiner photos were in the news.

"Andrew and I had struck up a friendly e-mail relationship and so I reached out to ask him if he could give me a timeline of the events from his point of view. I got a quick response -'I'm in' - and we were supposed to meet for coffee at the end of the day today [Thursday]."

Sorkin said that the coffee would have been "about Andrew shedding any new light on the Anthony Weiner incident" and "we'll likely see shards of Andrew during his various appearances that week" in news footage from that time.

The entire thing is odd, and—if true—demonstrates at least two of the three entities in question's potential desperation to get back into the spotlight.

Which is to say: Andrew Breitbart's involvement in the potential for this show is undoubtedly the most unsurprising element of it.

CNN: Breitbart-Weiner show 'totally false' [Dylan Byers/Politico]
Andrew Breitbart was 'in talks with CNN' over new show with Anthony Weiner [Daily Mail]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The lawsuit accuses Mr. Spitzer of knowingly acting with "actual malice" against former Marsh & McLennan executive William Gilman by writing a column for Slate entitled 'They Still Don't Get It.' The column, published one year ago, today, doesn't mention Mr. Gilman by name.

When Eliot Spitzer was New York's Attorney General, he opened an investigation into Marsh, which resulted in eight indictments, an $850M settlement from Marsh to the State of New York, and 21 guilty pleas for various offenses stemming from the investigation. Mr. Gilman, a former marketing director for Marsh, was found guilty of a felony antitrust charge in 2008; in July 2010, his conviction was overturned due to new evidence in the case.

Mr. Spitzer penned the column for Slate on August 22, 2010. In it, he took on the Wall Street Journal's opinion section over a column they wrote entitled "Eliot Spitzer's Last Admirer," regarding then-Attorney General and soon-to-be-governor Andrew Cuomo's defense of Mr. Spitzer's prosecutorial legacy. From the column, the accused offending passage:

The Journal's editorial also seeks to disparage the cases my office brought against Marsh & McLennan for a range of financial and business crimes. The editorial notes that two of the cases against employees of the company were dismissed after the defendants had been convicted. The judge found that certain evidence that should have been turned over to the defense was not. (The cases were tried after my tenure as attorney general.) Unfortunately for the credibility of the Journal, the editorial fails to note the many employees of Marsh who have been convicted and sentenced to jail terms, or that Marsh's behavior was a blatant abuse of law and market power: price-fixing, bid-rigging, and kickbacks all designed to harm their customers and the market while Marsh and its employees pocketed the increased fees and kickbacks.

Via an Associated Press report, this is where Mr. Gilman takes umbrage:

In his complaint, Gilman said Spitzer defamed him in writing, stating that "Marsh's behavior was a blatant abuse of law and market power: price-fixing, bid-rigging and kickbacks all designed to harm their customers and the market while Marsh and its employees pocketed the increased fees and kickbacks."

Gilman also said Spitzer defamed him in writing by stating that "many employees of Marsh" have been "convicted and sentenced to jail terms," when none had.

Mr. Spitzer has declined to comment on the case to Bloomberg and the Associated Press. Slate and The Washington Post Company—which owns Slate—are also named as defendants in the suit.

Last summer, then-Observer media reporter John Koblin wrote about the ongoing issues plaguing the pursuit of libel lawsuits, which are dwindling in numbers. The standard for libel lawsuits—New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)—created the contemporary standard for what remains the general litmus test of libel to this day: a standard of "actual malice," wherein something is published with "reckless disregard" for the truth. A high burden is placed on plaintiffs to prove this, which prevents everyone from suing everyone over anything published anywhere at any point in time. From last year's Observer piece, 'The End of Libel?':

In the most recent study, the Media Law Resource Center found that libel trials in the 2000s were down more than 50 percent from the 1980s. In the 1980s, the center found 266 trials; in the ’90s, that number dropped to 192; in the past decade it dropped to 124. In 2009, only nine surfaced.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

NYO: You've emphatically noted in the past intentional deception as what distinguishes being wrong from lying or from fraud. Much of the outrage directed at S&P when they downgraded American debt was: they failed to downgrade the CDOs and other toxic assets that assisted the 2008 crash, their credibility is shot, ergo, how dare they downgrade our debt. It’s pretty clear that—among the other reasons—they failed to downgrade these products because they’re paid to rate them by the people creating them. From a prosecutorial standpoint, is there an inherent deception in the system?

ELIOT SPITZER: Deception's a strong word to use without actual proof of intent to deceive. When you look back at all the cases [the New York Attorney General's office] made, we actually had that proof. There were actual deceptive acts taken. I just want that as a backdrop.

NYO: But again, we’re talking about deception on a systemic scale.

ES: Right. There’s a structural flaw and has been forever in the way [ratings agencies] have been paid that’s led to a failure of hard analysis underlying many of their ratings. There should have been prosecutions in the past, there should’ve been a deeper analysis of those conflicts and the tensions that led to very poor analysis.

NYO: How would they’ve been prosecuted, though? It doesn’t seem like there’s an existing statute...

ES: Sure there is, the same way we brought the ratings case against the analysts. All you need is a common law fraud concept that people—and you go back to the emails, just as we did in the analyst case—and again, I’m not saying “let’s relive the past” This is a more theoretical matter. Go through the emails, and you would’ve seen—“this isn’t a triple-A, but they’re a good client, and we’re gonna...”—that tension between what ratings were put on a product, and one’s belief or recognition that they may not deserve it. There are many theories about what would be there, but you have to get the evidence, to state the obvious. I don’t want to say "gee, they should’ve been prosecuted.” But there should’ve been greater scrutiny over the years, and the structure has always been problematic. It was next on our hit parade, if I had been there for that.

NYO: Is there any way to effectively reform this system?

ES: The best answer—and I think the marketplace is moving to this—is to essentially tell the ratings agencies: “You’ve got to earn your credibility.” Let’s remove from them the position they had for many years, which was the government saying “You are designated as agencies to which we ascribe a certain elevated position. And you have been given this power by the government without having earned it.“ There’s no reason for that. And now I’m going to sound like a freemarketeer.

NYO: Haven’t they earned it, though? There are only ten ratings agencies certified by the government.

ES: They haven’t earned it based upon their performance.

NYO: ...On the merit of their ratings.

ES: Right. In other words, when I say “earn it,” I mean “earn it” in terms of establishing to the marketplace that your ratings actually mean something.

NYO: Somehow, this hasn’t already happened.

ES: No. [There’s a] notion that there are no straight lines in the world, and what most people do—and understandably—is presume that lines continue in perpetuity. Rating agencies have been uniquely bad at spotting inflexion points, and that is, of course, what you’re paying them to do.

NYO: Not just that, but they’re being paid to be bad.

ES: Anybody can extend the line in the direction in which it has been moving. The hard part is saying “Wait a minute. There’s too much securitized mortgage debt out there, and therefore there’s a problem.” Quality control is lagging, and that’s what we’ve picked up by actually digging into the underlying mortgages.

NYO: That...is what the short-sellers picked up.

ES: That’s what the short-sellers picked up. That’s the sort of analysis the rating agencies should have done, if in fact they had been worth their mettle.

NYO: It’s not exactly a trenchant observation, but isn’t the inherent problem facing rating agencies as they stand that if one takes their bad products to a ratings agency, and they don’t rate it triple-A, you can just take it to the next guy? The free market!

ES: It’s why the rating agencies need to make a determination: either they will maintain their integrity, and they will be paid because people will value them in the marketplace, or you need to come up with a different payment mechanism. I’m not saying any of this is easy. “Who’s going to pay for honest research?” becomes a very difficult question.

NYO: Doesn’t honest research benefit these companies in the long-term?

ES: I’d think so. You need a payment mechanism to those who are going to do the real analysis that will not taint it or, if it’s tainted, let the marketplace know it.

NYO: What do you mean by ‘payment mechanism’? For the government to pay them?

ES: Well, look: I never wanted that. Remember, way, way back, we tried to come up with all the different permutations that were out there. We wanted to have independent research. And who’s gonna pay for it? There was a notion—and this caused a hullabaloo when it was floated; it wasn’t even my idea, but conceptually there’s nothing wrong with it—that the stock exchange would have research. The stock exchange as a not-for-profit would say: “Look, you guys go out there and do research” sort of as an academic exercise. But the question is, in this day and age, how can you derive a revenue stream from research whether you’re an analyst in the tech sector of a Morgan Stanley or you’re Fitch doing bond analysis. Because the information? Once it’s out there you can’t protect it very well. And if you put a negative rating, who’s going to pay for it? These are real problems. But what we do know is that as a consequence of this, the bond ratings—much like the analysts that we pursued—were uniformly and excessively positive.

NYO: The consequences of these excessively positive ratings have greater implications on the world beyond the private sector. You’ve said that “only government can take the steps necessary to overcome market failures.”

ES: Well, one type of intervention might just be: Take away all the government imprimatur that the rating agencies have and say ‘These guys are no better than what you have made of them in the past. They really haven’t spotted anything important. And you’ve got to do your own work.”

NYO: What was your reaction when you saw the S&P downgrade of American debt?

ES:  I thought it was...interesting. It wasn’t an economic analysis.

NYO: It was a political analysis.

ES: It was a political analysis. The one thing we’ve thought there might be some modicum of skills retained by these companies was economic analysis. We haven’t ever viewed them as being political barometers. So now, in a way, they’re putting on an entirely different hat saying as a political matter, they’re downgrading our debt.

NYO: Are they out of their depth?

ES: I don’t think they are. But I don’t think they have any unique skills either. They’re smart people, and I think they reached the same conclusion that many folks have reached: our government has been somewhat—or greatly—dysfunctional dealing with macroeconomic issues, and that we’re kicking the can down the road both in terms of the deficit and in terms of what I view as the more important issue, job creation. But we don’t need S&P to tell us that. In other words: this wasn’t a very sophisticated analysis of debt exposure, where they picked up something we hadn’t seen about some pension obligation, and said “A-ha! Now we see where you’re hiding it. Hence: we’re downgrading you.”

NYO: What’s interesting about it, though, is that they actually did go out on a limb and distinguish themselves from the other agencies. And it feels like they’re being punished for it.

ES: They were not wrong in their political analysis. They’re wrong in their economic analysis. The risk of a default, having watched this exercise, is actually lower than it was in the past. In a sense, you could say that even with the Tea Party there, at the end of the day everybody said “We will not tolerate a default.” We know that. At that point I don’t think the downgrade makes sense, when you look at where we now stand in comparison to other government and private sector entities. Having said that, there was some criticism that this was sort of a finger back in the eye of government saying “Okay, you want to give us a tough time for missing the sub-prime debt? We’ll show you we still have some cards to play.” You know, look: I don’t want to challenge motive. Frankly, the market, to a great extent, has ignored their downgrade.

NYO: Funny how that nebulous “market” will take the ratings agencies’ stamps of approval when it wants them, but ignore them otherwise. Are they just totally useless right now?

ES: The rating agencies have provided a legal and emotional backstop for entities that have to make certain decisions and need to rely upon something. It’s somewhat akin to opinion letters in a takeover context. You need something that gives you the legal foundation to act. So if you’re a board of directors or an investment committee you can say “here’s our portfolio, and we’ve done our due diligence. Here are the rating agency’s statements.” You don’t really think that they’re worth that much. On the other hand, you also know that you don’t have the internal capacity to analyse the bonds out of some tiny sewer department that’s issuing the debt in the tiny county in some state out in the Midwest. To that extent, they provide some sort of baseline utility.

NYO: Allow us a moment of total, wide-eyed naivety: As someone who’s navigated the ridiculous thoroughfare of government bureaucracy, what are the odds that any legislator anywhere would take significant action on the systemic issue of ratings agencies?

ES: Probably slim.

NYO: Why? Because it seems like something that...

ES: Should have been done a long time ago? Or any prosecutor for that matter. I mean, there hasn’t been any meaningful effort to take a hard look at it.

NYO: It seems like now more than ever, this could be a win-win situation for somebody both in terms of political capital, and in terms of the climate required for one to actually succeed in that situation. And yet—again, this is knowingly naive—but nobody’s going through with it.

ES: It’s hard to finally close that loop. The institutional presence of the rating agencies—not to be excessively cynical...

NYO: It seems excessive cynicism is the realistic approach, here.

ES: Well, the status quo has its own momentum. Think how many localities and entities have received rating agencies work that have permitted them to access the markets. They receive the triple-A. They show up on Capitol Hill saying “Don’t take away this stamp of approval. We would never be able to get the teachers pension fund from Alabama to buy us, if we didn’t have this stamp of approval. So we need it.”

NYO: Enter lobbying dollars.

ES: Yeah, yeah. But it’s a shame. ‘Cause I think the reliance on the rating agencies was—as we all now know—one of the critical errors that permitted the bubble to inflate.

NYO: After the bubble inflated and popped, and after S&P recieves scrutiny over their sovereign debt rating, do you think, moving forward, that the mistakes made in the past could be repeated again with the ratings agencies?

ES: The mistakes inevitably will be repeated again.

NYO: Taking a different form.

ES: In a slightly different form. And it’s just a question of how long until it happens again.

NYO: Like Mark Twain says: “The past doesn’t repeat itself but...

ES: ...it rhymes.” The best little book on this ever was Galbraith’s A Short History of Financial Euphoria. Galbraith gets it right. We keep doing it historically ‘cause debt and leverage are so addictive. As a narcotic, they get into our blood stream. We can’t get rid of them. So we’ve learned the lesson. The metaphor I used to use is that it’s like getting a speeding ticket. You learn the lesson for some period of time but then 20 miles down the road, 30 miles down the road, your foot starts going back down on the accelerator. It’s a question of for how long we’ve learned the lesson.

NYO: Is this something just inherent in human nature that can’t be controlled? On one hand, controlling it would really be sticking a deep hand in the free market, but on the other hand, if you leave it unattended to do this again, the only people we have to blame are ourselves.

ES: Which I think we know. The regulatory structure worked pretty well from the Depression until the mid-’80s, when we did have a slightly more aggressive approach to regulating leverage in those sectors that could cause enormous harm. Not without problems here and there. The answer is when we have some brake that can be applied to leverage and risk in that regard, we can do okay. When we take our foot off that brake, inevitably the bubbles re-emerge.

NYO: It seems like the foot’s coming off the break again. It’s only been two years.

ES: Well, let’s see what happens. It’s what makes life interesting, right? It’s what keeps a journalist in business. It’s what keeps prosecutors in business. 'Makes it more fun.

Eliot Spitzer (Patrick McMullan)

The Post recently asked Eliot Spitzer if he were planning a run for office, and he replied in part: "'Those who know don't say, and those who say don't know.' So I wouldn't rely on anything anybody has told you." Perhaps the reason the line is in single quotes is because it's taken from the Tao Te Ching. Has Mr. Spitzer been studying Eastern religions? Those who know don't say!

(The line is also featured in the rapper Akbar's song "Those who say," which further includes the lyric "Remember when I stomped ya like in concert? / With the rugged raw I came, I saw and I conquered," but it's unlikely that Mr. Spitzer has been listening to this on vacation at tennis camp in Vermont.)

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Journalists from newsrooms, magazine offices and studios across the country digested the information, repackaged it appropriately for their readers and viewers and moved on to the next order of business. For a select few, that meant planning for the weekend's events, the most high profile of which was the annual White House Correspondents Dinner--a tradition begun in 1920 that brings together the press and the people they purportedly cover for an evening of entertainment, shmoozing and, as the name implies, dinner. It is the nexus of a series of events, mostly cocktail parties and a few selective brunches, that extend throughout the weekend and are hosted by various media organizations and attended by Washington insiders, journalists--and increasingly, California-based attendees with a presumed interest in public policy, like Kim Kardashian and the Jonas Brothers--some of whom are invited as guests to the dinner by media organizations represented there.

At 4:52 p.m. on Thursday afternoon,  The Observer emailed The New York Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, to ask whether the dinner--an affair wherein journalists who are tasked with covering beltway power spend an evening socializing with it--is at worst, an outright conflict of interest, and at best, well ... a bit unseemly. Former New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who recently left the paper to become a columnist for New York magazine, had criticized the paper's attendance at the event and was said to be influential in curtailing its official appearances a few years prior. (Mr. Rich, who was out of the country, did not respond to The Observer's requests for comment.) The Observer wondered whether Mr. Rich's departure changed the paper's thinking on the issue. "GROAN," Mr. Keller responded via e-mail. "SUCH a done subject. Why don't you try Dean Baquet in the Washington Bureau? I'm sure he'd LOVE to answer your questions."

Seven minutes later,  The Observer received an e-mail from Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet. "Here is the deal," Mr. Banquet wrote. "We are not being holier than thou, or criticizing anyone who chooses to go. But we came to the conclusion that it had evolved into a very odd, celebrity-driven event that made it look like the press and government all shuck their adversarial roles for one night of the year, sing together (literally, by the way) and have a grand old time cracking jokes. It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game. It feels uncomfortable."

An hour earlier, in the Situation Room of the White House, senior intelligence advisers explained to the president that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance Osama bin Laden had been located in a compound in Pakistan that the C.I.A. had been scouting for months, and the president needed to decide whether he would move ahead with an air strike or a ground strike, or if he would wait to gather further intelligence.

Around 7 p.m. that evening, Mr. Baquet followed up: "I don't want to trash the small and medium size papers that really care about this. It's just the way we feel." (For the record,  The Observer is a small-size paper, and does not officially attend the dinner.) 

It was Friday morning at 8:28 a.m. in New York and  The Observer scanned news of the Royal Wedding in London, which attracted approximately 22 million viewers in the U.S. As we prepared to head to D.C. to further inspect the Correspondents Dinner attendees up close, a meeting was taking place in the White House Diplomatic Room. Before boarding a helicopter to Alabama to survey flood damage, the president called his senior aides in and told them: it would be a helicopter strike. Security Adviser Tom Donilon; his deputy, Denis McDonough; and counterterrorism advisor John Brennan decided to move forward with Operation Geronimo, scheduled to take place on Saturday.

That evening in the W Hotel lobby, one of the first of the weekend's various parties had begun. Around 8:30 p.m. Hilda Solis, dressed in fuchsia, was ushered past New Yorker party security. "Secretary of Labor," her handler said to a young man with earpiece and iPad. Secretary Solis bounced in place to the elevator music. Forty-five minutes later editor David Remnick rested a plate of sushi on a table and debriefed The Observer. "Do you know about Mike Kelly?" In 1987, Kelly, then a  reporter, set the precedent for outrageous escorts by bringing Fawn Hall, Iran-Contra femme fatale. Kelly was killed reporting in Iraq in 2003. Asked about the decision by his former employer, The Washington Post, to bring Donald Trump as its guest of honor, Mr. Remnick replied, "Well, that should be interesting because I just ripped his ass. I'll have to stop by and say, 'Hi'."

About an hour later, The Observer intercepted the dinner's emcee, Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers, who provided intelligence on the impending roast of the president, a tradition of the annual dinner. Mr. Meyers was not nervous, "healthy butterflies," he said. "It's easier to make fun of a politician you do like," he said. "It comes off as less angry."

Saturday morning. Operation Geronimo had been rescheduled due to weather.

The weather was just fine at Tammy Haddad's annual Garden Brunch--held at the former home of the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, which is now owned by venture capitalist Mark Ein--the weekend's festivities now in full swing. The Observer spotted New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich, who is reportedly working on a book about the incestuousness of beltway culture. Also in attendance were Olympic snowboarder Shaun "The Flying Tomato" White, Morgan Fairchild and Chace Crawford. Rupert Murdoch was ushered from the living room to the patio after being approached by reporter Gabriel Sherman, known to be working on a book about Fox News. Actor Tim Daly, in beard, shades and a threadbare velvet blazer, went largely unrecognized and explained to another guest that he wanted to meet Buzz Aldrin, who was being wheeled around the patio. He played [astronaut] Jim Lovell in the HBO series, he explained. Rosario Dawson, a guest of CNN, made sure to note that she was invited because of her advocacy work and not her celebrity status.

Mid-afternoon, REM bassist Mike Mills convinced an unidentified suit to submit to the powers of magician Gerard Senehi. "Mentalist," Mr. Senehi corrected. "If you call me a magician again, I'll kill you." Mr. Senehi correctly guessed the foreign word the suit has written on the back of his MSNBC business card. It was already written on Mr. Senehi's own business card, which he extracted from his wallet, to Mr. Mills' delight.

The Palin family arrived surrounded by photographers and clamoring fans and a TV producer was seen bragging about having given Sarah Palin his card.

Later that evening in the reception room of the Washington Hilton, a throng of people, including Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Piven, began moving toward the main hall of the hotel for the White House Correspondents Dinner. Greta Van Susteren engaged Donald Trump as a crowd looked on.  The Observer asked Mr. Trump who he was excited to meet at the dinner. "Everyone. Everyone," he said.  A Washington Times reporter thrust her comically oversize microphone at him: "Mr. Trump, what do you have to say about the rumor that Kim Kardashian will be your running mate?" He answered without looking at her: "That's, uh, I can't, that's not true." She persisted: "What about Khloe?" Trump and the throng trudged forward: "No, no." The reporter grinned as she turned away, pleased with her line of questioning.

At approximately 8:30 p.m., the president arrived at the dinner. Shortly thereafter, he left the dais, following Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' lead. As revelers continued to sip their Champagne, the president was informed the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi's son had been killed by a NATO airstrike.

An hour later, the New York Times reporter Peter Baker won the Aldo Beckman Award for his "deep insight about how Obama operates, from his response to the terrorist threat to his struggles to contend with what the president himself called our 'big, messy democracy.'"

At 10:22 p.m. Seth Myers was well into his routine for the evening. "People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush," said Myers, "but did you know that every day from 4 to 5 he hosts a show on C-SPAN?" The president laughed heartily. Myers later noted: "I am, of course, contractually obligated to attend the MSNBC party. Everyone knows how the MSNBC party works: President Obama mixes the Kool-Aid, and everyone drinks it."

An hour later, The Observer was at the Italian embassy for the MSNBC party, where Rachel Maddow mixed drinks and tended bar below a sign that glows in cursive, pink-neon lettering: RACHEL'S BAR." The Observer asked her if she thought the dinner was a little too cozy. "I don't go to the dinner, I just go to this," she said. "What are you asking me is too cozy? That thing that I didn't go to that I don't know anything about? You should ask me about something else. I didn't go!"

The Observer asked MSNBC president Phil Griffin how the evening was going for him: "It gets better because, you know, we're making a statement," he said. "An event like this, we're letting everybody know, we're here. We're in Washington, a place for politics, we should be celebrated on a night like tonight. It's a night to let all the issues be put aside for one moment to step aside and enjoy yourself. O.K.?"

Eliot Spitzer entered the party. "I thought journalists weren't working tonight," he told The Observer.

At 1 a.m., Cee-Lo took the stage. The Observer squeezed its way over to Sarah Palin, holding court with the largest crowd at the party. Sean Penn was sitting across the room at a table with four other people, including REM's Michael Stipe. Ms. Palin, for her part, was vocal about the role of the press in such proximity to the president. "Well, I still would like the White House Press Corps to ask our president a bit tougher questions about where he really wants to go with this economy and does he understand and believe in free markets or does he really believe in government's ability to plan our economy for us? So I want the press corps to ask those questions!"

The next morning, the weather was nice in Pakistan--nice enough that Operation Geronimo received another green light. In Washington, it rained, but President Obama was reported to have played nine holes of golf.

Just after mid-day in the Hay-Adams Hotel Penthouse , the Reuters-McLaughlin Group Brunch was filling up; on the terrace, attendees noted a spectacular view of the White House. Inside, a caterer spilled an entire dish of butter onto The McLaughlin Group's Eleanor Clift.

Around 2 p.m., the president met with the core Operation Geronimo team before the final "go" order was given.

A few minutes before at the brunch, the Financial Times New York editor Gillian Tett was cornered by anti-tax lobbyist Mark A. Bloomfield, the president and CEO of the American Council for Capital Formation. Post-business-card exchange with Mr. Bloomfield, she talked to The Observer about her table's guests: "We had both the chairman of the S.E.C. and the chairman of the F.D.I.C. We weren't expecting to get both and they both said yes immediately. You know what's brilliant about the whole evening? Most of the time all these people would be at loggerheads, and at this, they're all relaxed."

"When you put them all in a room together and it's 3,000 people and it's all the show-business stuff, it looks kind of icky," said FT columnist John Gapper. "But actually, the reality is: How am I not supposed to not ever have lunch or talk with these people? You get a story out of it."

But the story was happening elsewhere. At 3:45 p.m. EST/12:45 a.m. PKT, explosions were heard by locals in Bilal Town, a suburb of Abbotabad.

An IT guy Abbotabad noted over Twitter: "A huge window shaking band here in Abbotabad Cantt. I hope it's not the start of something nasty :-S"

At 3:50 p.m.: Osama Bin Laden was "tentatively identified as dead."

At 7:01 p.m.: Osama Bin Laden was positively identified.

At 8:30 p.m.: President Barack Obama was given a final briefing on the operation.

And at 9:45 p.m., every major television network interrupted its broadcast with an update that the president would be briefing the nation. The Apprentice was cut short before America could find out who had been fired.

11:35 p.m.: News of the operation had already leaked out through unofficial outlets on Twitter feeds, some of which had been formerly sprinkled with the Correspondents Dinner's preferred cutesy moniker for itself: "#nerdprom." At 10:24 p.m., Donald Rumsfeld's Chief of Staff and Navy Reserve intel officer Keith Urbahn tweeted, "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn."

Then the president addressed the nation. Nearly ten years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden was dead.

The biggest story of 2011--the behind-the-scenes workings of which had happened within single-digit miles of the elite of the nation's press corps, in closer mass proximity to the president than they are at nearly any other time of the year--had broken.

And it had not leaked. Except perhaps at 10:24 to Urbahn, and via Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock. "Just got word that will shock the world - Land of the free... home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!"

Mr. Johnson did not attend the dinner. 

kstoffel@observer.com, fkamer@observer.com

Federal Budget: George Pataki creates new group to push 2012 candidates on debt issues. [Devlin Barrett]

Economy: Bernanke will face the media next week. [Jon Hilsenrath]

2012: Americans Elect party to hold Internent nominating convention next summer. [Greg Lucas]

2012: Editors refer to "Westcheter's own Donald Trump." [Lohud.com]

2012: Will Trump ever drop birther claims? [Jay Jochnowitz]

2012: Trump's claim of having sent PI's to Hawaii was reference to new, investigative book about Obama? [Drudge]

2013: Quinn clashes with Bloomberg on allowing immigration officials to comb through records of inmates at city jails. [Michael Saul]

2013: Spitzer criticizes Cuomo's budget; doesn't rule out mayoral run. [NY1]

Taxes: New study "provides some of the most detailed evidence yet that so-called millionaire taxes have little effect on the movements of millionaires as a whole." [Robert Frank]

Trump's Mail: Birther talk leads Seinfeld to ditch Trump event; Trump sends angry letter. [Page Six]

Bloomberg's Initiative: Enough solar power to supply 50,000 homes. [Henry Goldman]

Bloomberg's Initiative: First update to 4-year-old PlaNYC. [AP]

Same-Sex Marriage: Conference call yesterday with LGBT outlets and progressive bloggers. [Paul Schindler]

Same-Sex Marriage: Cuomo's comma director says "the governor is committed to working with New Yorkers to get the marriage equality legislation passed."

Same-Sex Marriage: Fundraisers explains Cuomo's upcoming campaign event "underscores the governor's pledge to push for the passage of same-sex marriage legislation." [Rica Orden]

Same-Sex Marriage: Republican James Alesi, who voted no is now undeclared. [Joseph Spector]

Poverty: "Are as many as 7 in 10 Kiryas Joel residents really poor?" [Sam Roberts]

Transit: MTA wants to sell their headquarters; price is more than $150 million. [Charles Bagli]

Unions: "Negative retirement incentive" in Cuomo's deal with Council 82. [Casey Seiler]

Fracking: Lobbying money hits nearly $1,600,000 last year. [David King]

Neighborhood Names: Hakeem Jeffries wants to regulate them. [Cara Buckley]

Central Park Jogger: Editors okay with another case to settle any questions. [New York Post]

Rangel: Powell says low voter-turnout keep incumbent in office. [Frank Lombardi]

Member Items: Don't go back to business as usual. [Syracuse Post-Standard]

Photos: Bloomberg, Rahm, and Daly. [Flickr]

Libya: Obama's speech in March "seemed to elevate the absence of a doctrine to a doctrine." [Bill Keller]

2013: "Eliot running as an independent would be an asset to a Republican nominee because it would create a division of loyalty in the Democratic base," says Dick Grasso. [Michael Saul]

2013: Christine Quinn juggles business and progressive constituencies. [Daniel Massey]

2012: Trump said he was "a candidate." [Julie Kay and Maureen Callahan]

2012: Rove says Trump is with the "nutty right" and "now an inconsequential candidate...He's so far out there." [Fox]

2012: "I am certain that the president was born in Hawaii," says Trump adviser, Michael Cohen. [Michael Falcone]

2012: On Obama's two books, Trump says "The difference was like chicken salad and chicken s---." Brags, "I have a very high aptitude. I was a great student. I went to the best schools." [Anthony Man]

Jewish Vote: Should women be allowed to vote for leadership of Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, which gets millions in public funding. [Elissa Gootman]

Muslim Violence: Staten Island borough president has strong words. "They are absolute cavemen." [Tom Wrobleski]

Facts: "If Bloomberg News was as 'accurate' as the Bloomberg administration, the company would have gone bankrupt long ago." [New York Post]

Charlie Rangel: Publisher of New York Carib News admits falsifying documents for a trip that helped lead to Rangel's downfall. [Isabel Vincent and Carl Campanile]

Media: Brooke Gladstone in Cairo; state-run news after Mubarak. [On the Media]

Media: "I have never voluntarily posted anything at Huff. But that doesn't mean I haven't been published there." [Gatemouth]

Cuomo's Lieutenant Gov: Duffy keeps popping up in Rochester. [Democrat and Chronicle]

Cuomo's Looks: Not on People's Most Beautiful list. But Sandra Lee is. [Page Six]

NY Attorney General: Schneiderman goes after fake nun. [Brad Hamilton and Georgett Roberts]

US Attorney General: Eric Holder and brother owed $4,146 in NY property taxes. Paid up, with interest. [Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein]

Anniversary: Central Park Jogger incident 22 years ago Tuesday; 5 wrongfully convicted men still awaiting civil case against city. [Daily News]

Alan Hevesi: Inmate number 11-r-1334. [Ken Lovett]

Alan Hevesi: "[M]ost likely isolated from the general public." [Joe Walker and Susannah Cahalan]

Alan Hevesi: Ethics reform should / could be his legacy. [Jay Jochnowitz]

Lobbying: Local governments spend millions lobbying throughout the state. [Jacob Fischler and Tim Henderson]

Leaks: Who handed an internal Inspector General's report to Jacob Gershman? [Jacob Gershman]

Unions: How Bloomberg's psychology clashes with them. [Adam Lisberg]

Court Layoffs: Up to 500 statewide warned. [Rick Karlin]

Cop Probe: 400 could be busted in ticket-fixing scam. NYPD denies it's 400; won't say rival figure.[Reuven Blau and Brad Hamilton]

Cop Probe: Early scoop on this by Murray Weiss. [dna.info]

Cop Quots: White Plains police "issued 212,676 tickets in calendar year 2010 - which works out to a rate of a ticket every 2.5 minutes." [Richard Liebson]

Rent: Assembly Democrats seek "radical expansion" of rent protections, to the rich. [Daily News]

Rent: "Nearly a quarter of rent-regulated households earn more than $70,000 a year, showing how random a process it is." [Nicole Gelinas]

Real Estate: Developers want tax assessments capped; say 10,000 subsidized units could be lost. [David Seifman]

NYC Schools: Chancellor Walcott sells Bloomberg's agenda with a smile. [Sharon Otterman]

Changing Superintendents: Is Buffalo's Jean-Cleaude Brizard staying or going? [Democrat and Chronicle]

Trivia: Youngest NYC Mayor was, most likely, Hugh Grant; 30 years old; served 1889-1892.[Michael Pollak]

Dick Grasso, speaking on Staten Island, via Staten Island Advance.

2012: Obama's numbers are soft; he's vulnerable. [Peggy Noonan]

2012: Trump doesn't know the number of congressmen in DC. [Carl Campanile]

2013: Grasso would do it, only if Ray Kelly doesn't and Eliot Spitzer does. [Jillian Taratunio]

2013: "If the man who really should be the mayor, the next mayor of the city of New York, the great police commissioner Ray Kelly, chooses not to run, and if my former adversary does run as an independent in 2013, I will run for mayor of the City of New York," Grasso said. [Michael Barbaro]

Funding Cuomo: Taking over "Priscilla Queen of the Dessert" on June 14 for "biggest fund-raiser yet." [Page Six]

Funeral Protesters: Gillibrand makes it harder to protest at military funerals. [Katie Perkowski]

Scandal: "[T]wo dozen cops could be indicted on bribery, larceny and official misconduct charges in the upcoming weeks." [Daily News"

Deposing Bloomberg: "If you want to take things out of context, just state that you're going to do that." [Adam Lisberg]

School Chancellor: Angry PTA president praises Walcotto's style. [Matthew Nestle and Rachel Monahan]

School Mandates: What exactly are they (Measure student's body mass index; teach about Potato Famine!) and why are they so costly? [Winnie Hu]

Taxi Economy: Administration's "silence essentially gave the bidders the go-ahead to send business for manufacturing and maintaining New York City's cabs overseas." [Bill de Blasio]

Rent NYC: "He has to deliver" Ruth Hassell-Thompson says of Cuomo. [Glenn Blain]

Homeless NYC: Editors critique advocate's study, saying it "ends at June 2010, which means it shows 10-month-old figures that ignore recent positive trends." [New York Post]

Taxes NYS: Why they keep going up in the state. [EJ McMahon]

Federal Budget: Western NY hit, but not as hard. [Jerry Zremski]

Bipartisanship: "I think we have been working well together the past few months," a Republican tells Cuomo. [Robert McCarthy]

Bipartisanship: Fights in DC make Albany look good, says Cuomo. [Times Union]

Redistricting: Editors cast a weary eye at Skelos. [Buffalo News]

Audits: DiNapoli finds local governments flouting fiscal laws. [Michael Gormely]

Mr. Weiner has a similar streak of arrogance. He was quoted recently telling Mayor Bloomberg that he'll rip up the current mayor's bike lanes when he, Mr. Weiner, becomes mayor. This sort of presumption has become the Brooklyn congressman's stock in trade.

About a year ago, Mr. Weiner tried to force his way into the news cycle by denouncing nefarious diplomats who accumulated lots of unpaid parking tickets. Carefully selecting his targets, he complained that diplomats from Yemen, Zimbabwe and Iran were among the offenders. He called their behavior "insulting to all New Yorkers."

Well, he wasn't wrong. Diplomats at the U.N. regularly scoff at the city's traffic laws. Politicians in search of a headline have been complaining about this behavior for decades.

But those who preach ought to be careful about what they practice. It turns out that Mr. Weiner had a pile of unpaid parking tickets in Washington, D.C. A Washington newspaper recently revealed that the congressman owed the district $2,180 in unpaid tickets for an array of violations over a four-year span. The congressman was by far the biggest scofflaw on Capitol Hill-his nearest competitor had just $600 in unpaid tickets. Makes you proud, doesn't it?

Mr. Weiner was quick to make good on his debts after the media got wind of his hypocrisy, and his spokesman said the congressman was happy to "have helped decrease the D.C. budget deficit." Hopefully Mr. Weiner takes this incident a little more seriously than his spokesman did. There's a lesson to be learned here, but it will require Mr. Weiner to get off his high horse.