Karl Rove headed to Prison???

[SuperScout]

If the prosecutor knows, as was reported, that Rove was the source of the alleged leak, why hasn't he jumped forward with an indictment or any other legal process? What's he waiting for, other than more face time before the cameras, or allowing more time for such silliness by Conyers or other whiners to write their silly little letters? yada, yada, yada.....................

[Gimpy]

All you had to was ask SuperFella!

Looks like you just may get your "wish" by late this week or next week!

###START###

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Rove indictment "late this week or early next"

by Josh Frank at The Voice:
Occasionally I get emails from Washington folks who work on the Hill claiming to possess juicy insider digs on our public servants and their corporate paymasters. I usually delete said emails, as I don't want to be responsible for propagating dirty rumors or false information that can't be corroborated. I'd rather let Judith Miller and the New York Times do that. Nonetheless, in the past 24 hours I have been contacted by three separate congressional Democrats in Washington, by email and later phone, who all say the same thing: Karl Rove is about to be indicted.

All this comes on the heels of events that transpired over the weekend, as two different individuals, journalist Michael Isikoff and political commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, both claimed that Karl Rove was responsible for leaking the identity of an undercover CIA officer's identity to Marc Cooper of Time magazine. As Isikoff of Newsweek wrote on July 3:

?The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with Newsweek, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article.?


If what Isikoff and O'Donnell claim is indeed true, it still does not necessarily mean that Rove was also Robert Novak's inside guy, although it surely raises suspicion. The indictment, as I am told, will most likely be of felony weight. In fact, Karl Rove may be accused of perjury, as Bush's top strategist told a grand jury that he was not responsible for leaking Plame's identity to Time. So the charge may not be for leaking top-secret information to the press, but for perjuring himself.

Sources also all say that this indictment is likely to come down either late this week or early next week. Of course Rove's lawyer denies that his client ever ?knowingly? handed over classified information to the media, or is the ?target? of any investigation. Perhaps Rove ?unknowingly? leaked the information, and he's the ?subject? rather than a ?target? of an investigation. Time will tell.

###END###

What is so sickening, repugnant and revolting is the fact the Preznit Iniquitously Spewing Shit (or P.I.S.S. for short) had gone before the American public shortly after Kriminal Karl had done his dirty little "deed" and said he (Preznit) would MAKE CERTAIN the "culprit" was brought to justice!

Guess that was another of his memory "lapses" of how he (Preznit) was gonna bring HONOR & INTEGRITY back to the Whitehouse, huh?? :cd: :cd: :cd:

[SuperScout]

This may be slightly off-target, but I wonder if Bill Israel would be writing the same thing about the Daniel Ellsburg disclosure of Secret material during the Vietnam war. His conditional and subjective defense of the 1st Amendment makes me wonder.

A basic psychological question: Gimpy, were you properly potty trained as either a child or as and adult? You seem to have this ongoing fetish for toilet "humor" that I wonder about your mental conditon.

Rather than asking some tired, resentful old bellyacher about the restoration of Honor and Dignity to the White House, why not ask our current or former crop of warriors?

[Gimpy]

Originally posted by SuperScout This may be slightly off-target, but I wonder if Bill Israel would be writing the same thing about the Daniel Ellsburg disclosure of Secret material during the Vietnam war. His conditional and subjective defense of the 1st Amendment makes me wonder.

You'll have to ask him. But, it really dosen't matter one way or the other, does it? ----Gimp

A basic psychological question: Gimpy, were you properly potty trained as either a child or as and adult? You seem to have this ongoing fetish for toilet "humor" that I wonder about your mental conditon.


Only in that pseudopsychoANALytic vacumn located above your shoulders that habituately employs unscrupulous, unprincipled and maliciously maligned methods to impugn, vilify, defame and slander whomever you happen to engage in debate that offers opposite or different arguements other than your own shortsighted, biased, and hate filled conclusions!-----Gimp

Rather than asking some tired, resentful old bellyacher about the restoration of Honor and Dignity to the White House, why not ask our current or former crop of warriors?

I have..............It's running about 70% to 30% that he (GEE-W) has FAILED MISERABLY to "restore" these items as he promised. Maybe YOU should get "out" more and attempt to follow your OWN advice? May surprise you what you actually find out.----Gimp

[Gimpy]

Joe Conason


The New York Observer

07.07.05

Bush remains mum on Wilson smear
Will Bush press for the truth?


Even as Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of The New York Times both face prison time for protecting their White House sources, a question arises that the indignant Washington press corps seems to have forgotten to ask: Why hasn't the President of the United States tracked down the officials who leaked the C.I.A. identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, fired them and turned them over to the special prosecutor?


George W. Bush hasn't been obliged to answer that difficult question because the media -- understandably preoccupied by the prosecutorial challenge to the essential practice of shielding sources -- has obscured the central issues of the Wilson case. Observing the media coverage, as the prison gates dramatically swing open, it would be easy to forget the events that led to this confrontation between the two news organizations and prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Those events do not flatter the Bush administration.


For two years, Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller have protected high-ranking sources who sought to use the news media to punish a real whistle-blower, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson III. Those sources, aptly called "nefarious" by Judge David Tatel in his opinion upholding the subpoenas, sought to harm the former ambassador by exposing and smearing his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson.


Mr. Wilson had committed the offense of speaking and writing freely about the embarrassing lies and errors in the White House brief for invading Iraq. At the request of the C.I.A., he had undertaken a mission to Niger, the African nation that the President later identified in his State of the Union address as a potential source of enriched uranium for Iraqi nuclear weapons. Mr. Wilson knew that the President's assertion was wrong -- and that the administration knew likewise -- and said so in an article for The New York Times.


The leaks about Ms. Wilson's C.I.A. identity began within days, and within a week emerged in a column by Robert Novak that wrongly suggested she had somehow arranged her husband's trip to Niger. (Even if she had, by the way, so what? He performed that task as unpaid public service, and he has been proved correct.)


By exposing her identity -- protected for two decades as she worked undercover to prevent nuclear proliferation -- the White House ruined her career and endangered American national-security interests.


The C.I.A. asked the Justice Department to investigate the leaks, which may have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a statute signed by George H.W. Bush, the current President's father.


Attacking her husband was an ugly bit of skullduggery, too. He served the nation with brave distinction as acting ambassador in Baghdad during the months before the first Gulf War. He protected American lives and interests at considerable risk to his own safety and earned a grateful commendation from the first President Bush.


The courageous public service of the Wilsons brings us to the subject of Karl Rove, the Presidential counselor who is their nemesis and moral opposite.


While there is yet no proof that he played a central role in the plot to smear them, the evidence of his involvement is beginning to emerge. His lawyer has acknowledged that Mr. Rove spoke with Mr. Cooper about Ms. Wilson, although the attorney insists that his client didn't "knowingly" expose her classified status.


That qualifying term is meant to protect Mr. Rove from prosecution under the intelligence identities law, which is narrowly delineated to prevent prosecution of honest error. He could only be indicted under that law if he knowingly revealed the identity of an undercover agent whom the C.I.A. had taken steps to conceal.


But Washington buzzes with speculation that Mr. Fitzgerald is seeking to prosecute someone for perjury or obstruction. To indict an alleged perjurer requires at least two witnesses -- which could explain the prosecutor's zeal in demanding the reporters' testimony.


Mr. Rove appeared in the grand jury, under oath, at least twice. And if he did participate in this disgusting episode, he would have had ample reason to mislead the prosecutor, even if he thought he had committed no crime.


Back in September 2003, when the White House was still resisting the appointment of a special prosecutor, the President reportedly told his aides, including Mr. Rove, "I want to get to the bottom of this." His press secretary told the country that the President considered the leak to be "a very serious matter" and said that anyone responsible would be fired. "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration," said Scott McClellan, speaking for Mr. Bush.
Specifically exonerating Mr. Rove, he said: "There's been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement."


No doubt the disturbing facts are at last being brought to their attention. The President should require Mr. Rove to own up to his actions, reveal what really happened, and prevent the jailing of the reporters who have felt obliged to protect this nefarious misconduct.
***
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer and Salon.com, and is the author of Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth.
***

####END####

[Gimpy]

in the ongoing saga of Kriminal Karl!

######

July 11, 2005
Why Bush Has To Fire Rove


In a weekend posting I asked if it was time to get ready for the Karl Rove frog-march? The question was prompted by a Newsweek article by reporter Michael Isikoff that disclosed the first documentary evidence showing that Rove revealed to a reporter that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

In a July 11, 2003 email that Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper sent to his bureau chief, Cooper noted he had spoken to Rove on "double super secret background" and that Rove had told him that Wilson's "wife...apparently works at the agency on wmd issues." "Agency" means CIA. This is not good news for Rove and the White House.

The email--which Time had turned over to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the Plame/CIA leak--may not be enough to prompt Fitzgerald to indict Rove. Under the narrowly written Intelligence Identities Protect Act, Fitzgerald would have to show that Rove knew Valerie Wilson (a.k.a. Valerie Plame) was working at the CIA under cover--that is, as a secret employee--which she was.

But Fitzgerald still could build such a case upon other evidence. And Rove also could be in legal peril if his previous testimony to Fitzgerald is contradicted by this email--or the other material Time surrendered, over Cooper's objections, to Fitzgerald or by Cooper's forthcoming testimony to Fitzgerald's grand jury. (Last week, Cooper declared his source, presumably Rove, had given him permission to testify before the grand jury.)


But let's put aside the legal issues for a moment. This email demonstrates that Rove committed a firing offense. He leaked national security information as part of a fierce campaign to undermine Wilson, who had criticized the White House on the war on Iraq. Rove's overworked attorney, Robert Luskin, defends his client by arguing that Rove never revealed the name of Valerie Plame/Wilson to Cooper and that he only referred to her as Wilson's wife. This is not much of a defense . If Cooper or any other journalist had written that "Wilson's wife works for the CIA"--without mentioning her name--such a disclosure could have been expected to have the same effect as if her name had been used: Valerie Wilson would have been compromised, her anti-WMD work placed at risk, and national security potentially harmed.


Either Rove knew that he was revealing an undercover officer to a reporter or he was identifying a CIA officer without bothering to check on her status and without considering the consequences of outing her. Take your pick: in both scenarios Rove is acting in a reckless and cavalier fashion, ignoring the national security interests of the nation to score a political point against a policy foe.

This ought to get Rove fired--unless he resigns first.


Can George W. Bush countenance such conduct within the White House? Consider what White House press secretary Scott McClellan said on September 29, 2003, after the news broke that the Justice Department was investigating the leak. McClellan declared of the Plame/CIA leak, "That is not the way this White House operates. The president expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. No one would be authorized to do such a thing."

Apparently, it is how the White House operated--or at least how Rove operated. If he violated White House rules (and presidential expectations) that prohibit such skullduggery, he should be booted.

McClellan also maintained at the time that "the president knows " that Rove wasn't involved in the leak. And he said that the allegation that Rove was involved in this leak was "a ridiculous suggestion" and "it is simply not true."

McClellan was wrong. Did that mean that Rove had lied to McClellan about his role in this? That Rove had also lied to Bush? Or was McClellan knowingly misinforming the public? If the latter, then there should be two resignations.


Days later, Bush took a clear stand on the Plame/CIA leak. He said: "There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there's leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."


According to Cooper's email, Rove did leak classified information, wittingly or not. Did he share that fact with Bush? If McClellan can be believed, Rove did not. If that's true, Bush should dismiss Rove for holding out on him. But it Rove did talk to Bush about his participation in the leak, what did he tell Bush? And what actions did Bush take? Did Rove tell Bush how he had come to know about Valerie Wilson's position at the CIA? Did he disclose to Bush who else knew about it? Did he tell his boss whether anyone else was passing this information to reporters? In the first column that disclosed Valerie Wilson's CIA identity, Bob Novak referred to "two" senior administration officials? So who in addition to Rove might have revealed this information to Novak?


Bush also said at the time that any government official with knowledge of the leak should "come forward and speak out." Rove certainly did not follow that presidential order. He should be pink-slipped for that, too.


But before Rove is cast out of the White House, Bush ought to demand that he come clean and--if he has not done so--tell Bush everything that happened with this leak. Then Bush should "come forward and speak out" and share the details with the American public. And an apology to Valerie and Joseph Wilson would be a nice touch.


Fitzgerald is handling the Plame/CIA leak as a criminal matter, as he should. That's his job. But the leak--whether a crime or not--was serious wrongdoing. The White House has taken no steps to address that in the two years since the leak occurred. But it need not wait for Fitzgerald to conclude his investigation. Rove may end up not guilty of a crime, but he is guilty of significant misconduct. With the disclosure of this smoking email, Bush has no excuse for inaction . Newspaper editorial boards and members of Congress (okay, Democratic members of Congress) ought to be howling for a White House response to the news that its current deputy chief of staff revealed national security information to a reporter in order to discredit a critic. The only appropriate response for such a thuggish infraction of White House policy and common decency would be to send Rove back to Texas.


###############


July 10, 2005
We're Not in Watergate Anymore
By FRANK RICH


When John Dean published his book "Worse Than Watergate" in the spring of 2004, it seemed rank hyperbole: an election-year screed and yet another attempt by a Nixon alumnus to downgrade Watergate crimes by unearthing worse "gates" thereafter. But it's hard to be dismissive now that my colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.

To start to see why, forget all the legalistic chatter about shield laws and turn instead to "The Secret Man," Bob Woodward's new memoir about life with Deep Throat. The book arrived in stores just as Judy Miller was jailed, as if by divine intervention to help illuminate her case.

Should a journalist protect a sleazy, possibly even criminal, source? Yes, sometimes, if the public is to get news of wrongdoing. Mark Felt was a turncoat with alternately impenetrable and self-interested motives who betrayed the F.B.I. and, in Mr. Woodward's words, "lied to his colleagues, friends and even his family." (Mr. Felt even lied in his own 1979 memoir.) Should a journalist break a promise of confidentiality after, let alone before, the story is over? "It is critical that confidential sources feel they would be protected for life," Mr. Woodward writes. "There needed to be a model out there where people could come forward or speak when contacted, knowing they would be protected. It was a matter of my work, a matter of honor."

That honorable model, which has now been demolished at Time, was a given in what seems like the halcyon Watergate era of "The Secret Man." Mr. Woodward and Carl Bernstein had confidence that The Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Graham, and editor, Ben Bradlee, would back them to the hilt, even though the Nixon White House demonized their reporting as inaccurate (as did some journalistic competitors) and threatened the licenses of television stations owned by the Post Company.
At Time, Norman Pearlstine - a member of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists, no less - described his decision to turn over Matt Cooper's files to the feds as his own, made on the merits and without consulting any higher-ups at Time Warner.

That's no doubt the truth, but a corporate mentality needn't be imposed by direct fiat; it's a virus that metastasizes in the bureaucratic bloodstream. I doubt anyone at Time Warner ever orders an editor to promote a schlocky Warner Brothers movie either. (Entertainment Weekly did two covers in one month on "The Matrix Reloaded.")

Time Warner seems to have far too much money on the table in Washington to exercise absolute editorial freedom when covering the government; at this moment it's awaiting an F.C.C. review of its joint acquisition (with Comcast) of the bankrupt cable company Adelphia. "Is this a journalistic company or an entertainment company?" David Halberstam asked after the Pearlstine decision. We have the answer now. What high-level source would risk talking to Time about governmental corruption after this cave-in? What top investigative reporter would choose to work there?


But the most important difference between the Bush and Nixon eras has less to do with the press than with the grave origins of the particular case that has sent Judy Miller to jail. This scandal didn't begin, as Watergate did, simply with dirty tricks and spying on the political opposition. It began with the sending of American men and women to war in Iraq.


Specifically, it began with the former ambassador Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003, account on the Times Op-Ed page (and in concurrent broadcast appearances) of his 2002 C.I.A. mission to Africa to determine whether Saddam Hussein had struck a deal in Niger for uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons. Mr. Wilson concluded that there was no such deal, as my colleague Nicholas Kristof reported, without divulging Mr. Wilson's name, that spring.


But the envoy's dramatic Op-Ed piece got everyone's attention: a government insider with firsthand knowledge had stepped out of the shadows of anonymity to expose the administration's game authoritatively on the record. He had made palpable what Bush critics increasingly suspected, writing that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Up until that point, the White House had consistently stuck by the 16 incendiary words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The administration had ignored all reports, not just Mr. Wilson's, that this information might well be bogus. But it still didn't retract Mr. Bush's fiction some five weeks after the State of the Union, when Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced that the uranium claim was based on fake documents. Instead, we marched on to war in Iraq days later.


It was not until Mr. Wilson's public recounting of his African mission more than five months after the State of the Union that George Tenet at long last released a hasty statement (on a Friday evening, just after the Wilson Op-Ed piece) conceding that "these 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."


The Niger uranium was hardly the only dubious evidence testifying to Saddam's supposed nuclear threat in the run-up to war. Judy Miller herself was one of two reporters responsible for a notoriously credulous front-page Times story about aluminum tubes that enabled the administration's propaganda campaign to trump up Saddam's W.M.D. arsenal. But red-hot uranium was sexy, and it was Mr. Wilson's flat refutation of it that drove administration officials to seek their revenge: they told the columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson had secured his (nonpaying) African mission through the nepotistic intervention of his wife, a covert C.I.A. officer whom they outed by name.


The pettiness of this retribution shows just how successfully Mr. Wilson hit the administration's jugular: his revelation threatened the legitimacy of the war on which both the president's reputation and re-election campaign had been staked.


This was another variation on a Watergate theme. Charles Colson's hit men broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, seeking information to smear Mr. Ellsberg after he leaked the Pentagon Papers, the classified history of the Vietnam War, to The Times. But there was even greater incentive to smear Mr. Wilson than Mr. Ellsberg. Nixon compounded the Vietnam War but didn't start it. The war in Iraq, by contrast, is Mr. Bush's invention.


Again following the Watergate template, the Bush administration at first tried to bury the whole Wilson affair by investigating itself. Even when The Washington Post reported two months after Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed that "two top White House officials" had called at least six reporters, not just Mr. Novak, to destroy Mr. Wilson and his wife, the inquiry was kept safely within the John Ashcroft Justice Department, with the attorney general, according to a Times report, being briefed regularly on details of the investigation.

If that rings a Watergate bell now, that's because on Thursday you may have read the obituary of L. Patrick Gray, Mark Felt's F.B.I. boss, who, in a similarly cozy conflict of interest, kept the Nixon White House abreast of the supposedly independent Watergate inquiry in its early going.


Political pressure didn't force Mr. Ashcroft to relinquish control of the Wilson investigation to a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, until Dec. 30, 2003, more than five months after Mr. Novak's column ran. Now 18 more months have passed, and no one knows what crime Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating. Is it the tricky-to-prosecute outing of Mr. Wilson's wife, the story Judy Miller never even wrote about? Or has Mr. Fitzgerald moved on to perjury and obstruction of justice possibly committed by those who tried to hide their roles in that outing? If so, it would mean the Bush administration was too arrogant to heed the most basic lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.


"Mr. Fitzgerald made his bones prosecuting the mob," intoned the pro-Bush editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, "and doesn't seem to realize that this case isn't about organized crime." But that may be exactly what it is about to an ambitious prosecutor with his own career on the line. That the Bush administration would risk breaking the law with an act as self-destructive to American interests as revealing a C.I.A. officer's identity smacks of desperation.

It makes you wonder just what else might have been done to suppress embarrassing election-season questions about the war that has mired us in Iraq even as the true perpetrators of 9/11 resurface in Madrid, London and who knows where else.


IN his original Op-Ed piece in The Times, published two years to the day before Judy Miller went to jail, Mr. Wilson noted that "more than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already," before concluding that "we have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons." As that death toll surges past 1,700, that sacred duty cannot be abandoned by a free press now .

##END##

AMEN to that brother!

[SuperScout]

As the banshees continue to wail, their noise has drowned out some of the obvious. Joe Wilson has been caught in a lie of gigantic proportions, even in the face of the bipartisan report of the 9-11 Commission. He tried to peddle the lie that it was VP Richard Cheney that sent him on his boondoggle to Niger, when in fact, it was his wife who lobbied for him to get the assignment. When the "Time" reporter was going to publish that line of baloney, Rove advised him against it.

On the issue of what constitutes a crime as alleged by al the wailing banshees, the elements are simply not present. To be found culpable of said offense, one must reveal the exact name, that agent must be posted to a covert operation currently underway, and the disclosure must have been made strictly for the purpose of cover-blowing. None of these elements are present. Simply wishing then to be there, as desperately as the banshees wish them to be, doesn't make them real or even present. As my sainted pappy told me frequently, when I wished for something, he said, "Wish in one hand, and sh*t in the other, and see which one gets full first." The banshees definitely have their hands full of brown fecal matter.

[SuperScout]

Prosecutor: Karl Rove Not Target of Probe

Plamegate special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had told top White House advisor Karl Rove that he's not a target of his investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA analyst Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. And Fitzgerald has also asked the top Bush aide not to discuss the case in public.

Speaking to National Review Online's Byron York late Tuesday, Rove attorney Robert Luskin said Fitzgerald "has told Rove he is not a 'target' of the investigation" - despite media reports suggesting otherwise.

Fitzgerald has also made it clear, however, that virtually anyone whose conduct falls within the scope of the investigation, including Rove, is considered a "subject" of the probe, Luskin told York. "'Target' is something we all understand, a very alarming term," he added.

For two days straight, the White House press corps has obsessed over Rove's supposed guilt, pummeling Bush spokesman Scott McClellan with dozens of questions about the top Bush aide's role in the cse.

Former Reagan Justice Department official Mark Levin told York last night that Luskin's revelation made a big difference. "He is not a target, which is quite different from a subject," Levin said on his WABC radio show. "I know what a target is . . . the prosecutors are chasing you."

"If he's not a target, what the hell is the media up to" by making Rove the focus of their questions, Levin asked? Luskin also told York that Rove has not spoken publicly, "because Fitzgerald specifically asked him not to."

[BLUEHAWK]

Even if/when Rove is exgonerated, the banshees will still wail about coverup...

[Gimpy]

Let's hear the rest of the story!

###START###

Posted on Wed, Jul. 13, 2005

Karl Rove's Role in Leak

Editorial | Still waiting for truth



The unraveling of L'Affaire Rove offers two possibilities:

Either presidential adviser Karl Rove wasn't telling the truth to President Bush about his role in revealing the identity of a CIA officer . Or Bush wasn't telling the truth to the public about Rove's involvement. Neither option is defensible.


Rove has been choosing his words carefully on this matter for two years, a parsing that could not have escaped the President's attention. He has said he did not reveal the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, and never even knew her name.


But Rove was involved in giving away her identity ; that much is clear from recent statements by Rove's lawyer and from an e-mail written by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about his conversation with Rove in July 2003. Rove told Cooper that the wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson, who had accused Bush of hyping Iraq's nuclear ambitions prior to the war, "apparently" was a CIA employee specializing in research on weapons of mass destruction.


That would be Plame. So technically, Rove was correct when he claimed he never revealed Plame's name as payback for Wilson's criticism of Bush. But to contend that he had no role in revealing her identity is to engage in goofy posturing worthy of the old TV spy series Get Smart.

And Rove's antics would be funny, except for those 83 stars on a wall in the lobby of CIA headquarters . They represent CIA employees who have died in the line of duty, and they serve as a reminder that exposing agents can have consequences far beyond petty political payback. And this alleged payback involves an equally serious issue - whether this nation was misled into war.

Rove, who has testified three times to a grand jury investigating this matter, hasn't been charged with a crime. Determining whether a crime occurred is up to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, whose only quarry to date has been a New York Times reporter who is in jail for refusing to reveal the name of a source who talked to her about Plame.


For two years, however, Bush and presidential spokesman Scott McClellan have expressed indignation at the suggestion that Rove had a role in revealing Plame's identity. Said McClellan in September 2003, "It was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."


No matter how you define "involved," Rove was . But yesterday, McClellan said Rove still enjoys the President's confidence. "They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they didn't have the President's confidence."


He might as well have told us that the President was shocked, shocked to discover gambling on the premises.


####END####

***START***


Won't Defend? Then Attack!

By Dan FroomkinSpecial to washingtonpost.com

Wednesday, July 13, 2005; 12:54 PM

How do you defend Karl Rove? The way he himself has so effectively defended President Bush over the years, of course. You attack.

The White House yesterday officially stayed mum regarding Rove's role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, its only concession being a generic expression of confidence in all who serve the president.


And this morning , asked directly if he had spoken to Rove about the matter and whether he felt Rove's conduct was improper, Bush simply refused to say, citing the ongoing criminal investigation.

"I will be more than happy to comment on this matter once this investigation is complete," he said, joining in the White House stonewall that began on Monday.

But Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman yesterday began a pro-Rove media charge . His message is not as much a defense of Rove against the various charges leveled against him as it is an attack on the credibility of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV -- Plame's husband, and the person who Rove was trying to discredit when he mentioned Plame in the first place.

Mehlman won't say whether he talked to Rove about his approach, but either way, his methodology is tried and true Rovian genius. ( I call it slimey, snivling subterfuge and treasonus myself-----GIMP)


As I wrote in my June 24 column , back when some Democrats were calling on Rove to apologize for describing the liberal approach to national security as being weak and possibly even treasonous: "Rove has a brilliant and so far unbeatable strategy when it comes to political warfare." He doesn't defend, he doesn't apologize, he attacks.

But there are some warning signs this time.


For example, not everyone in the Republican Party is playing along. An awful lot of senior members of Bush's party are sitting this one out for now.

And Rove and the White House face adversity on three fronts:

? There's a possible criminal charge looming.
? There's a credibility issue based on all the denials that Rove was involved in any way with the Plame case.
? And there's the context in which this took place: Rove, after all, was attacking a report by Wilson that cast doubt on the administration's case against Saddam Hussein's quest for weapons of mass destruction. The White House was at the time desperately -- and effectively -- waving the media away from any doubts about Bush's rationale for war. But Wilson was ultimately proven right on the issue of WMD, and the White House was ultimately proven wrong.

The pro-Rove attacks don't really engage on any of those three fronts -- but rather attempt to open a fourth. Will the public's focus shift so easily? It's an uphill battle.


Meanwhile, the unofficial scuttlebutt from the White House is that the only way Bush will ever jettison his friend and chief adviser is if he is criminally indicted.

But the furor shows no signs of abating. And all sorts of interesting developments that will keep media coverage at a fever pitch just keep on coming.

Among the latest: Byron York of National Review Online's revealing interview with Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin.
Luskin has previously said that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald had told him that Rove was not a "target" of the criminal investigation. All that would mean, however, is that Fitzgerald was at that point not ready to actually declare his intention to indict Rove.

But Luskin has now told that National Review that Fitzgerald identified Rove, among others, as a "subject."


In grand-jury talk a subject -- unlike an ordinary witness -- is someone who faces possible indictment.

And investigative reporter Murray Waas blogs today that his sources tell him that columnist Robert Novak -- the first person to publish Plame's identity -- has in fact spoken at length to prosecutors.

That would explain why Novak isn't in jail.

But, Waas reports, the prosecutors don't necessarily believe what Novak told them, which is why they want to talk to other reporters about what Novak's sources told them.