Was Karl Rove the Plame Source?

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19 Responses to “Was Karl Rove the Plame Source?”

1. Mark in Mexico says:
   

   It wasn’t Karl

   The New York Post Online Edition reports this morning that the Plame case special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, assured Karl Rove’ lawyer in October, 2003 and then again just last week that Rove is not a target of his investigation.

   July 3rd, 2005 at 10:50 am
2. Chris Austin says:
   

   Perhaps not yet, but he can always say later on that new information obtained forced him to change direction. The objective is to determine who leaked the story, and with Novak seemingly less of a part of the investigation than these two reporters who hadn’t written anything…on a high level it would appear that strings were being pulled. Let’s say it turns out that Rove lied under oath.

   Prosecutors don’t like that…not unless it’s a cop doing it in a drug trial w/ a minority defendant.

   In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak’s column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson’s wife was “fair game.” But White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was “totally ridiculous.” On Oct. 10, McClellan was asked directly if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with any reporters. McClellan said he had spoken with all three, and “those individuals assured me they were not involved in this.”

   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8445696/site/newsweek/

   Seems to be a few more reasons for them to take Newsweek down a peg when they did. Perhaps the Koran story was allowed to blow through the Pentagon review process so easily becuase they wanted to stem this tide…ironically for Rove doing the same thing that the magazine was slammed for…putting the troops at risk.

   This one is juicy…you can tell there’s been something the White House has wanted to hide since day one with this story. More to come…

   From TPM Cafe:
   Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff is probably writing more meticulously than ever, for obvious reasons, and surely Karl Rove is getting his lawyer money’s worth with Robert Luskin. So note this language in Isikoff’s latest: “Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove ‘never knowingly disclosed classified information’ and that ‘he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.’ Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details.’

   Consider especially that delicate “knowingly,” which points to a weaseling operation on Rove’s part. And since Luskin does admit that Rove did converse with Cooper, might it have been on the subject of Joseph Wilson’s disconcerting liberal tendencies, or something else that catches special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s special attention, enough so as to make him think it worthwhile to send Cooper to jail?

   Presumably something interesting will turn up in TIME’s (damnable, I should add) document dump to Fitzgerald. The suspense is killing me.

   http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/3/115153/1109

   I agree about the use of the word ‘knowingly’. My question would be, ‘what’s your point?’ That outing a CIA agent is alright as long as you didn’t ‘knowingly’ blow an ongoing investigation???

   July 3rd, 2005 at 5:44 pm
3. karl says:
   

   If this turns out to be true, it will be official Bush is a lame duck. Having his chief of staff indicted would be the end of his agenda, coupled with the Cunningham scandal and Delay’s problems and the repubs will be on the defensive for at least a few years.

   One thing that will be interesting is how this effects the supreme court nomnations.

   July 4th, 2005 at 1:53 am
4. Chris Austin says:
   

   I don’t see it having much of an impact, but you’re right about Bush being a lame duck if it comes out that his people went this far to suppress information about WMD.

   Bolton’s role in the administration, kind of a bully, slaming down any information they didn’t want out…his confirmation is sure to become that much more difficult, because this goes straight to the heart of why the Senate needs to see those intercepts they’ve asked for now, for at least a month now.

   The administration has a lot to hide. I think that much is clear.

   July 4th, 2005 at 3:13 am
5. karl says:
   

   My last post probably had a little wishful thinking in it.

   Have a great 4th and thx for a great web site.

   July 4th, 2005 at 9:25 am
6. Right Thinker says:
   

   Cunningham scandal

   What is the Cunningham scndal? Was Ritchie hanging out with the Fonz again?

   July 4th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
7. karl says:
   

   The end of happy days

   Taken from talkingpointsmemo.com:

   “With so much DOJ heat coming down on Duke Cunningham you’d almost think he was a Democrat.

   Late word has it that twenty federal agents raided Duke’s

   place in Rancho Santa Fe this afternoon. Just so you can keep track, that’s the place he bought with Mitch Wade’s cash, not the place he sold Wade. And that comes on the heels of the raids earlier in the day at MZM headquarters and down at the Yacht Club on the Duke Stir.

   One other point to note: In each of these raids, on hand have been personnel from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

   As you’d expect from the title, those are the DOD’s cops, specifically, the investigative arm of the Pentagon Inspector General’s office. They’re not there because some backbencher like Duke got paid too much for his house. Almost certainly, they’re there because of military contracting fraud, or the suspicion thereof.

   And tell me this isn’t related to the Pentagon decision earlier this week to halt all new work for MZM, Inc. Just a new interpretation of some obscure contracting, right?

   July 4th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
8. Brandon Brewster says:
   

   Nice article Chris. I posted something briefly about it on MA as well:

   http://modernamerica.blogspot.com/2005/07/elephant-wars-turd-blossom-strikes.html

   July 4th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
9. Right Thinker says:
   

   “With so much DOJ heat coming down on Duke Cunningham you’d almost think he was a Democrat.

   When you said he took bribes and is corrupt I thought he was a democrat too.

   July 5th, 2005 at 12:43 am
10. Chris Austin says:
    

    I’m starting to think that without the Rove piece being broke on McLaughlin’s program, we’d never have heard about it. Consider for a moment why two journalists were facing jail time, while Novak came out without a scratch on him.

    The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and it’s becoming obvious to me that the fix was in since day one. These two journalists were taking the fall for what’s hopefully going to come out in the next few weeks.

    Let’s hope it’s still not ‘fixable’ – because what happened here was as shitty as it gets. The whole concept of ‘fixed’ intelligence is a black eye for America.

    July 5th, 2005 at 1:14 am
11. Chris Austin says:
    

    While I don’t always agree with Mr. Rall, in this piece, he makes a good point. Calling Plame ‘fair game’ as Rove did a couple years ago is an indication of how all of us are seen by the administration as mere pawns, who’s futures are as arbitrarily negotiable as facts. The details of Plame’s role in the CIA, as well as her seemingly bright future, really should have mattered more to Rove than the upper hand in a temporary political beef.

    They ruined her career. And for what? What did she do to deserve such a thing. Better yet, what right did Rove have to destroy her?

    Rall’s editorial:

    KARL ROVE: WORSE THAN OSAMA BIN LADEN
    By Ted Rall
    Mon Jul 4, 7:00 PM ET

    NEW YORK–In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example. This explains why, at the end of occupations, the newly liberated exact vengeance upon their treasonous countrymen even they allow foreign troops to conduct an orderly withdrawal.

    If, as state-controlled media insists, there is such a creature as a Global War on Terrorism, our enemies are underground Islamist organizations allied with or ideologically similar to those that attacked us on 9/11. But who are the collaborators?

    The right points to critics like Michael Moore, yours truly, and Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who points out the gaping chasm between America’s high-falooting rhetoric and its historical record. But these bête noires are guilty only of the all-American actions of criticism and dissent, not to mention speaking uncomfortable truths to liars and deniers. As far as we know, no one on what passes for the “left” (which would be the center-right anywhere else) has betrayed the United States in the GWOT. No anti-Bush progressive has made common cause with Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or any other officially designated “terrorist” group. No American liberal has handed over classified information or worked to undermine the CIA.

    But it now appears that Karl Rove, GOP golden boy, has done exactly that.

    Last week Time magazine turned over its reporter’s notes to a special prosecutor assigned to learn who told Republican columnist Bob Novak that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The revelation, which effectively ended Plame’s CIA career and may have endangered her life, followed her husband Joe Wilson’s publication of a New York Times op-ed piece that embarrassed the Bush Administration by debunking its claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. Time’s cowardly decision to break its promise to a confidential source has had one beneficial side effect: according to Newsweek, it indicates that Karl Rove himself made the call to Novak.

    One might have expected Rove, the master White House political strategist who engineered Bush’s 2000 coup d’état and post-9/11 permanent war public relations campaign, to have ordered a flunky underling to carry out this act of high treason. But as the Arab saying goes, arrogance diminishes wisdom.

    Rove, whose gaping maw recently vomited forth that Democrats didn’t care about 9/11, is atypically silent. He did talk to the Time reporter but “never knowingly disclosed classified information,” claims his attorney. But there’s circumstantial evidence to go along with Time’s leaked notes. Ari Fleischer abruptly resigned as Bush’s press secretary on May 16, 2003, about the same time the White House became aware of Ambassador Wilson’s plans to go public. (Wilson’s article appeared July 6.) Did Fleischer quit because he didn’t want to act as spokesman for Rove’s plan to betray CIA agent Plame? Another interesting coincidence: Novak published his Plame column on July 14, Fleischer’s last day on the job.

    If Newsweek’s report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson.

    Osama bin Laden, conversely, is loyal to his cause. He has never exposed an Al Qaeda agent’s identity to the media.

    “[Knowingly revealing Plame's name and undercover status to the media]…is a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and is punishable by as much as ten years in prison,” notes the Washington Post. Unmasking an intelligent agent during a time of war, however, surely rises to giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies–treason. Treason is punishable by execution under the United States Code.

    How far up the White House food chain does the rot of treason go? “Bush has always known how to keep Rove in his place,” wrote Time in 2002 about a “symbiotic relationship” that dates to 1973. This isn’t some rogue “plumbers” operation. Rove would never go it alone on a high-stakes action like Valerie Plame. It’s a safe bet that other, higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal–almost certainly Dick Cheney and possibly Bush himself–signed off before Rove called Novak. For the sake of national security, those involved should be removed from office at once.

    Rove and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty.

    I, nor you, have to consider Rove worse than Osama Bin Laden – - – this is the type of over-reaching I generally dislike about Rall’s opinions, but the points he makes in this article in terms of what Rove actually did is entirely apt.

    Is Rove worse than Osama? NO!!!! But that’s not the point I wanted to make in posting this. I hate when my work is snipped and crossposted, so I’m going with the second commandment here…the golden rule if you will, by posting his editorial in it’s entirety.

    Rove is only worse than Osama in a patriotic sense, in that he did wrong by the organization he represents by selling out one of his own.

    Those very same people who want Newsweek to go out of business for the Koran story should consider how hypocritical it would be to look the other way with Rove.

    July 5th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
12. chrisg967 says:
    

    One of my friends has a saying: “I love my country, it’s my government I fear.”

    July 5th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
13. Chris Austin says:
    

    There’s good reason to fear the government right now chris – - – they’re not all that kind.

    July 5th, 2005 at 10:28 pm
14. Chris Austin says:
    

    Rove’s lawyer acknowledges he was Time reporter’s source

    2 hours, 3 minutes ago

    WASHINGTON (AFP) – Top White House aide Karl Rove discussed a former US ambassador and his CIA agent wife with a Time magazine reporter, according to a report.

    The Newsweek weekly quoted Rove lawyer Robert Luskin as confirming that Rove was the source who gave information to Time reporter Matt Cooper under a pledge of confidentiality, and last week released him to testify about that conversation to a grand jury.

    Cooper had been ordered by a US federal judge to testify before the grand jury investigating whether the agent’s identity was illegally leaked.

    Rove, President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson or his wife, Valerie Plame.

    And Luskin told Newsweek last week that his client “never knowingly disclosed classified information” and that “he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.”

    Plame’s was first published in a column by veteran reporter Robert Novak in 2003, which cited senior administration officials.

    Wilson claimed she was outed as punishment for his contradiction of Bush’s assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Africa.

    Miller researched the story, but didn’t write it, and Cooper only mentioned it in passing

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050710/pl_afp/usjusticemediarove_050710203623;_ylt=Ajb5DrqZl3BUTdgL2ywJOXNZJ_wA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

    Alright – so it’s settled. He lied about it several times under oath, and the leaking of this information caused a CIA counter-terrorism effort to fold and cost the life of one person that we know of. The cover of agents across the world who worked under this shell CIA company was blown all at once, with all of them jeopardized…of course, without the luxury of being able to call on the embassy for help.

    This man is pond scum, and this ‘game’ of politics he’s been so celebrated for manipulating over the years…who’s proud of this guy now?

    July 10th, 2005 at 6:41 pm
15. karl says:
    

    I wonder how the right wing spin machine will appraoch this. They will probably attack the source.

    July 11th, 2005 at 12:00 am
16. karl says:
    

    A reader answers my question at TPMCAFE.com:

    By AltHippo
    From: Top Reader Blogs
    I suspect we’ll all be looking into this Washingtpon Post article in more detail tomorrow.

    For now, I’ll quote the lede:

    White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove spoke with at least one reporter about Valerie Plame’s role at the CIA before she was identified as a covert agent in a newspaper column two years ago, but Rove’s lawyer said yesterday that his client did not identify her by name.

    The conventional wisdom is that Rove would put up a defense saying that he didn’t know Valerie Plame was a covert agent for the CIA.

    This is completely different. Rove’s lawyer is saying that he didn’t refer to her by name.

    I’m not one to parse the judicial codes here, but I don’t think anyone is going to see a difference between “Valerie Plame” and “Joe Wilson’s wife, and here’s a phone book if you can’t connect the dots.”

    July 11th, 2005 at 12:08 am
17. karl says:
    

    Meet Roves attorney:

    From talkingpoinstmemo.com

    “One case that jumps out at you is his representation of Stephen A. Saccoccia.

    Saccoccia and his wife Donna were eventually convicted of laundering more than a hundred million dollars for various Colombian drug kingpins. Stephen is currently serving a 660 year sentence. Their racket was laundering drug money through companies which traded in precious metals.

    Saccoccia was convicted in 1993. And Luskin took up his case on appeal.

    Eventually the Feds got the idea that the money Saccoccia had paid Luskin and his other attorneys for their services was itself part of the $137 million in drug money he was ordered to forfeit. Now, on the face of it this seems a bit unfair since under our system everyone is entitled to good representation and how was Luskin to know it was tainted money.

    Well, the prosecutors thought he should have gotten some inkling when Saccoccia started paying Luskin’s attorney’s fees in gold bars.

    Yep, you heard that right. Luskin got paid more than $500,000 of his attorney’s fees in gold bars from his client who was trying to appeal his conviction on charges that he laundered drug money through precious metals dealers. Who woulda thought that was drug money? ”

    I wonder if Rove has to pay with gold bars as swell.

    July 11th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
18. Chris Austin says:
    

    Excellent point!

    July 11th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
19. Right Thinker says:
    

    Is an attorney bad because of who they represent? I don’t get this point of this, should the lawyer not have been paid or does Rove not deserve to have a lawyer?

    July 12th, 2005 at 3:53 pm

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