President Bush has pledged to fire anyone who helped leak undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the press. Now we know that the person responsible was Karl Rove. Please join our petition to the President to keep his promise now at:


Dear MoveOn member,

On Sunday, Newsweek magazine revealed that Karl Rove, the President's key political advisor, was responsible for disclosing the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.1 Rove's lawyer has confirmed that he was involved.2

Last year, President Bush promised that anyone at the White House involved in the leak would be fired.3 We believe that the President should stick to his word. That's why we're calling on him to fire Karl Rove.

Sign the petition to Bush right now at:
http://www.moveonpac.org/firerove/?id=5782-5791921-VL47vBTkiMPCu2VXydiJ.g=1 <http://www.moveonpac.org/firerove/?id=5782-5791921-VL47vBTkiMPCu2VXydiJ.g&t=1>

Valerie Plame was an operative working on stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—the most important beat at the CIA and one of the most important jobs in the country.4 Rove revealed her identity and destroyed her network of connections to settle a political score. He weakened America's national security. For that alone, he deserves to be fired.

But as it turns out, that's also the White House's official position. Press Secretary Scott McClellan told the press in September of 2003, when the story first broke, that anyone at the White House who was involved would be fired "at a minimum."5 And when asked on June 10th, 2004, if he would "stand by your pledge to fire anyone found" to have leaked the agent's name, President Bush responded, simply, "Yes."6

Of course, in the past the White House has strenuously denied that Rove had anything to do with it. In 2003, McClellan said that he'd asked Rove if he was involved, and Rove had said he wasn't.7 "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved."8 "I've made it very clear, he was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was."9 Asked again if Rove was involved, McClellan responded, "That's just totally ridiculous."10

So what did McClellan have to say about the clear discrepancies between what the President Bush and he had said in 2003 and what Newsweek reported on Sunday? Nothing. Here's an excerpt from the transcript:

Q: Do you want to retract your statement that Rove, Karl Rove, was not involved in the Valerie Plame expose?

A: I appreciate the question. This is an ongoing investigation at this point. The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, that means we're not going to be commenting on it while it is ongoing.

Q: But Rove has apparently commented, through his lawyer, that he was definitely involved.

A: You're asking me to comment on an ongoing investigation.

Q: I'm saying, why did you stand there and say he was not involved?

A: Again, while there is an ongoing investigation, I'm not going to be commenting on it nor is ... .

Q: Any remorse?11

It's worth noting that both Bush and McClellan have commented on the case repeatedly since 2003.12

Republicans claim that the furor over this case is just politics as usual. But what Rove did has serious ramifications. Here's the story in a nutshell: In 2002, former Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent by the CIA to investigate rumors that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger. Wilson found nothing, and wrote about it in a New York Times op-ed column on July 6, 2003 after President Bush used the claim as part of the case for war. Wilson was married to Valerie Plame, an undercover operative, who was revealed shortly thereafter by conservative columnist Robert Novak. Novak cited "senior administration officials" as his source that Plame was an operative.13

Why out Plame? While we don't know the full story, there are a couple of reasons to do so: to exact revenge on Wilson for refusing to toe the Administration line, and to send a message to would-be whistle-blowers that they should keep their mouths shut.

In any case, Plame's work was important, and by exposing her identity, the leaker destroyed ten years of covert relationship-building and could have jeopardized the lives of other covert agents in the field. At best, it was recklessly irresponsible; at worst, it was malicious; and either way, the leaker undermined our national security.

That's why we, like the President, believe it's time to fire anyone who was involved with the leaking of Plame's name. And now we know that means firing Karl Rove.

Sign our petition now at:
http://www.moveonpac.org/firerove/?id=5782-5791921-VL47vBTkiMPCu2VXydiJ.g=2 <http://www.moveonpac.org/firerove/?id=5782-5791921-VL47vBTkiMPCu2VXydiJ.g&t=2>

And thanks for everything you're doing.

Sincerely,
—Eli, Jennifer, Wes, Matt and the MoveOn PAC Team
Tuesday, July 12th, 2005

FOOTNOTES:

1. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek
2. http://www.moveon.org/r?r=776
3. http://www.moveon.org/r?r=777
4. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002374617_leak12.html
5. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/print/20030929-7.html
6. http://www.moveon.org/r?r=777
7. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/11/politics/12rove-quotes.html?pagewanted=print
8. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/11/politics/12rove-quotes.html?pagewanted=print
9. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/11/politics/12rove-quotes.html?pagewanted=print
10. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/11/politics/12rove-quotes.html?pagewanted=print
11. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071100991.html
12. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101284.html 13. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/printrn20030714.shtml

PAID FOR BY MOVEON PAC
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Posted on Tue, Jul. 12, 2005

White House turns silent on leak, Rove

Democrats call for adviser’s firing

By Pete Yost

Associated Press


WASHINGTON – For the better part of two years, the word coming out of the Bush White House was that presidential adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak of a female CIA officer’s identity and that whoever did would be fired.

But Bush spokesman Scott McClellan wouldn’t repeat those claims Monday in the face of Rove’s own lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledging the political operative spoke to Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, one of the reporters who disclosed Valerie Plame’s name.

McClellan repeatedly said he couldn’t comment because the matter is under investigation. When it was pointed out he had commented previously even though the investigation was ongoing, he responded: “I’ve really said all I’m going to say on it.”

Democrats jumped on the issue, calling for the administration to fire Rove, or at least to yank his security clearance. One Democrat pushed for Republicans to hold a congressional hearing in which Rove would testify.

“The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “I trust they will follow through on this pledge. If these allegations are true, this rises above politics and is about our national security.”

The investigation into the 2003 leak had largely faded into the background until last week, when New York Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail rather than reveal who in the administration talked to her about Plame.

Cooper also had planned to go to jail rather than reveal his source but at the last minute agreed to cooperate with investigators when a source, Rove, gave him permission to do so. Cooper’s employer, Time Inc., also turned over Cooper’s e-mail and notes.

One of the e-mails was a note from Cooper to his boss in which he said he had spoken to Rove, who described the wife of former U.S. Ambassador and Bush administration critic Joe Wilson as someone who “apparently works” at the CIA, Newsweek magazine reported.

Within days of the July 11, 2003, e-mail, Cooper’s byline was on a Time article identifying Wilson’s wife by name – Valerie Plame. Her identity was first disclosed by columnist Robert Novak.

The e-mail did not say Rove had disclosed the name, but it made clear that Rove had discussed the issue.

That ran counter to what McClellan has been saying. For example, in September and October 2003, McClellan’s comments about Rove included the following: “The president knows that Karl Rove wasn’t involved,” “It was a ridiculous suggestion,” and, “It’s not true.”

Reporters seized on the subject Monday, pressing McClellan to either repeat the denials or explain why he can’t now.

“I have said for quite some time that this is an ongoing investigation and we’re not going to get into discussing it,” McClellan replied.

Asked whether Rove committed a crime, McClellan said, “This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation.”

McClellan gave the same answer when asked whether the president has confidence in Rove.

Rove declined to comment Monday and referred questions to his attorney. Last year, he said, “I didn’t know her name and didn’t leak her name.”

The Rove disclosure was an embarrassment for a White House that prides itself on not leaking to reporters and has insisted that Rove was not involved in exposing Plame’s identity.

The disclosure also left in doubt whether Bush would carry out his promise to fire anyone found to have leaked the CIA operative’s identity. Rove is one of the president’s closest confidants – the man Bush has described as the architect of his re-election.

Rove’s conversation with Cooper took place five days after Plame’s husband suggested in a New York Times op-ed piece that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq. Wilson has since suggested his wife’s name was leaked as retaliation.

The e-mail that Cooper wrote to his bureau chief said Wilson’s wife authorized a trip by Wilson to Africa. The purpose was to check out reports that Iraq had tried to obtain yellowcake uranium for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson’s subsequent criticism of the administration was based on his findings during the trip that cast doubt on the allegation that Iraq had tried to obtain the material.

Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, said his client did not disclose Plame’s name. Luskin declined to say how Rove found out that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and refused to say how Rove came across the information that it was Wilson’s wife who authorized his trip to Africa.

As the BuSh cookie crumbles.......... :N

Put the crack pipe down guys.

#1) The NY Times has not revealed the source even though they were given immunity. Instead they are letting one of their reporters sit in jail which leads one to believe that ROVE is NOT the source.

#2) I listened to the woman who wrote the current law forcing journalists to reveal their sources in a criminal investigation and she said that what she knows of the conversations with ROVE and the reporters, it does not fall to the level of criminal wrongdoing. Rove did NOT reveal the name. The Operative was NOT undercover at the time in any operation.

Get the facts straight before you look silly. The Bush administration has rope-a-doped you guys every single time and you still haven't learned your lesson.

The question you should be asking is why is the New York Times is willingly and criminally violating the law? They are impeding an investigation. They are the ones at fault here. Not the heresay conversation of one Karl Rove with several reporters.

Accuse and then convict. That is the new Democratic Party. Who cares what the truth is. It is only the seriousness of the accusation that counts anymore for the Democrats. Go away please.

Once again it looks like 'ol dumb Bush is going to have his way with you. Bend over and grab the vaseline.

How do you like your crow Bryan?

What crow????


A federal grand jury is still investigating; the Bush White House isn't commenting; but Democrats and liberal interest groups have heard enough to demand that Bush either fire top adviser Karl Rove or suspend his security clearance. "Karl Rove and his high-priced lawyers might disagree, but the truth is Rove betrayed the identity of an undercover officer fighting on the front lines in the war on terror. These actions are particularly egregious in a time of war," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean in a statement released Monday evening. Dean said President Bush should demonstrate his commitment to the war on terror by holding Rove "accountable." Rove mentioned a CIA agent during a July 2003 conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper -- but it's still not clear if he leaked her name to columnist Robert Novak. Rove has long been a favorite target of liberal wrath



I will say this...If you ever actually do come up with something to hang your hat on, I know I won't be looking forward to that day. I can just imagine how unbearable it will be. Oh, man. (keeps my fingers crossed)

Put the crack pipe down guys.

#1) The NY Times has not revealed the source even though they were given immunity. Instead they are letting one of their reporters sit in jail which leads one to believe that ROVE is NOT the source.

#2) I listened to the woman who wrote the current law forcing journalists to reveal their sources in a criminal investigation and she said that what she knows of the conversations with ROVE and the reporters, it does not fall to the level of criminal wrongdoing. Rove did NOT reveal the name. The Operative was NOT undercover at the time in any operation.

Get the facts straight before you look silly. The Bush administration has rope-a-doped you guys every single time and you still haven't learned your lesson.

The question you should be asking is why is the New York Times is willingly and criminally violating the law? They are impeding an investigation. They are the ones at fault here. Not the heresay conversation of one Karl Rove with several reporters.

Accuse and then convict. That is the new Democratic Party. Who cares what the truth is. It is only the seriousness of the accusation that counts anymore for the Democrats. Go away please.

Once again it looks like 'ol dumb Bush is going to have his way with you. Bend over and grab the vaseline.


Im alittle confused here, Rove didnt say a name, but he gave more then enough info. for them to get that name. If Operative was NOT undercover at the time in any operation, I dont see the point there? Sure it would be alot worse if they were undercover at the time, but now that they are out in the open as a being 1, do you think they can go out and go undercover again?

In your statement you made it seem like there was somebody else to blame, but from what ive read it was clearly obvious that what Rove said would give them the name of the operative with ease.

I mean they knew her husbands name it was in the open, then if Rove says she apparently works for the CIA, and authorized her husband for the trip to Africa, how hard is it to figure out her name? They just need to find who he is married to.

I dont think he should be fired yet, but imo if its found out for sure he said that, I think he should go. After all , The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in the administration.

ReRead my post in relation to the New York Times and the jailing of their reporter. They were allowed immunity to reveal their source yet they failed to do so. So I guess a NYT employee is protecting Rove huh. Very interesting. Why isn't the media up in arms over the NYT snubbing its nose at US law? They are the ones in violation here. They are the ones that need the scrutiny, not Rove. Once again the left has it wrong. It is like a broken record. Wrong, wrong, wrong, on EVERY issue.

ReRead my post in relation to the New York Times and the jailing of their reporter. They were allowed immunity to reveal their source yet they failed to do so. So I guess a NYT employee is protecting Rove huh. Very interesting. Why isn't the media up in arms over the NYT snubbing its nose at US law? They are the ones in violation here. They are the ones that need the scrutiny, not Rove. Once again the left has it wrong. It is like a broken record. Wrong, wrong, wrong, on EVERY issue.

Bryan, I see now that the reason you are like you are is that you are snorting that repug red koolaid powder instead of mixing with water before consuming! I think the reporter refused to reveal her source, despite the ok of that source, to stand up for the "journalistic integrity" of not revealing their sources. She is paying the price, she is in jail. But your statement that she, not Rove deserves scrutiny is idiotic. Revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative is a crime akin to treason. Some argue that Plame was not working undercover at the time her name was revealed, but that does not lessen the severity in my eyes. I seem to recall that a foreign operative she had dealt with was murdered shortly after she was outed. Revealing her identity also precludes her ever working undercover again. Loss of an intelligence resource, violation of US law all for payback against her husband, who spoke out against a wrong being committed by Shrub's boys? That, by far, is the greater wrong here. :slam

to stand up for the "journalistic integrity" of not revealing their sources.Snort, snort. It is now AGAINST THE LAW to withhold a source during a criminal investigation. "Journalistic Integrity" LMFAO. Biggest stretch I've ever heard you offer up. The NYT put their own rope around their own neck and the pussies high up in the chain of command there are willing to let one-of-their-own suffer to save their own asses. That is what this is all about. NYT pussies. Come on NYT. Put up or shut the f up. The NYT has never had any journalistic integrity, and now suddenly they have a crisis of conscience?! Snort.

The Bush Administration Adopts a Worse-than-Nixonian Tactic:
The Deadly Serious Crime Of Naming CIA Operatives




By JOHN W. DEAN

On July 14, in his syndicated column, Chicago Sun-Times journalist Robert Novak reported that Valerie Plame Wilson - the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and mother of three-year-old twins - was a covert CIA agent. (She had been known to her friends as an "energy analyst at a private firm.")

Why was Novak able to learn this highly secret information? It turns out that he didn't have to dig for it. Rather, he has said, the "two senior Administration officials" he had cited as sources sought him out, eager to let him know. And in journalism, that phrase is a term of art reserved for a vice president, cabinet officers, and top White House officials.

On July 17, Time magazine published the same story, attributing it to "government officials." And on July 22, Newsday's Washington Bureau confirmed "that Valerie Plame ... works at the agency [CIA] on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity." More specifically, according to a "senior intelligence official," Newsday reported, she worked in the "Directorate of Operations [as an] undercover officer."

In other words, Wilson is/was a spy involved in the clandestine collection of foreign intelligence, covert operations and espionage. She is/was part of a elite corps, the best and brightest, and among those willing to take great risk for their country. Now she has herself been placed at great - and needless - risk.

Why is the Administration so avidly leaking this information? The answer is clear. Former ambassador Wilson is famous, lately, for telling the truth about the Bush Administration's bogus claim that Niger uranium had gone to Saddam Hussein. And the Bush Administration is punishing Wilson by targeting his wife. It is also sending a message to others who might dare to defy it, and reveal the truth.

No doubt the CIA, and Mrs. Wilson, have many years, and much effort, invested in her career and skills. Her future, if not her safety, are now in jeopardy.

After reading Novak's column, The Nation's Washington Editor, David Corn, asked, "Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?"

The answer is plainly yes. Now the question is, will they get away with it?

Bits and pieces of information have emerged, but the story is far from complete. Nonetheless, what has surfaced is repulsive. If I thought I had seen dirty political tricks as nasty and vile as they could get at the Nixon White House, I was wrong. The American Prospect's observation that "we are very much into Nixon territory here" with this story is an understatement.

Indeed, this is arguably worse. Nixon never set up a hit on one of his enemies' wives.



Leaking the Name of a CIA Agent Is a Crime



On July 22, Ambassador Wilson appeared on the Today show. Katie Couric asked him about his wife: "How damaging would this be to your wife's work?"

Wilson - who, not surprisingly, has refused to confirm or deny that his wife was a CIA operative - answered Katie "hypothetically." He explained, "it would be damaging not just to her career, since she's been married to me, but since they mentioned her by her maiden name, to her entire career. So it would be her entire network that she may have established, any operations, any programs or projects she was working on. It's a--it's a breach of national security. My understanding is it may, in fact, be a violation of American law."

And, indeed, it is.

The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act of 1982 may both apply. Given the scant facts, it is difficult to know which might be more applicable. But as Senator Schumer (D.NY) said, in calling for an FBI investigation, if the reported facts are true, there has been a crime. The only question is: Whodunit?


The Espionage Act of 1917


The Reagan Administration effectively used the Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute a leak - to the horror of the news media. It was a case that was instituted to make a point, and establish the law, and it did just that in spades.

In July 1984, Samuel Morrison - the grandson of the eminent naval historian with the same name - leaked three classified photos to Jane's Defense Weekly. The photos were of the Soviet Union's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which had been taken by a U.S. spy satellite.

Although the photos compromised no national security secrets, and were not given to enemy agents, the Reagan Administration prosecuted the leak. That raised the question: Must the leaker have an evil purpose to be prosecuted?

The Administration argued that the answer was no. As with Britain's Official Secrets Acts, the leak of classified material alone was enough to trigger imprisonment for up to ten years and fines. And the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed. It held that the such a leak might be prompted by "the most laudable motives, or any motive at all," and it would still be a crime. As a result, Morrison went to jail.

The Espionage Act, though thrice amended since then, continues to criminalize leaks of classified information, regardless of the reason for the leak. Accordingly, the "two senior administration officials" who leaked the classified information of Mrs. Wilson's work at the CIA to Robert Novak (and, it seems, others) have committed a federal crime.


The Intelligence Identities and Protection Act


Another applicable criminal statute is the Intelligence Identities Act, enacted in 1982. The law has been employed in the past. For instance, a low-level CIA clerk was convicted for sharing the identify of CIA employees with her boyfriend, when she was stationed in Ghana. She pled guilty and received a two-year jail sentence. (Other have also been charged with violations, but have pleaded to unrelated counts of the indictment.)

The Act reaches outsiders who engage in "a pattern of activities" intended to reveal the identities of covert operatives (assuming such identities are not public information, which is virtually always the case).

But so far, there is no evidence that any journalist has engaged in such a pattern. Accepting Administration leaks - even repeatedly - should not count as a violation, for First Amendment reasons.

The Act primarily reaches insiders with classified intelligence, those privy to the identity of covert agents. It addresses two kinds of insiders.

First, there are those with direct access to the classified information about the "covert agents." who leak it. These insiders - including persons in the CIA - may serve up to ten years in jail for leaking this information.

Second, there are those who are authorized to have classified information and learn it, and then leak it. These insiders - including persons in, say, the White House or Defense Department - can be sentenced to up to five years in jail for such leaks.

The statute also has additional requirements before the leak of the identity of a "covert agent" is deemed criminal. But it appears they are all satisfied here.

First, the leak must be to a person "not authorized to receive classified information." Any journalist - including Novak and Time - plainly fits.

Second, the insider must know that the information being disclosed identifies a "covert agent." In this case, that's obvious, since Novak was told this fact.

Third, the insider must know that the U.S. government is "taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." For persons with Top Secret security clearances, that's a no-brainer: They have been briefed, and have signed pledges of secrecy, and it is widely known by senior officials that the CIA goes to great effort to keep the names of its agents secret.

A final requirement relates to the "covert agent" herself. She must either be serving outside the United States, or have served outside the United States in the last five years. It seems very likely that Mrs. Wilson fulfills the latter condition - but the specific facts on this point have not yet been reported.


How the Law Protects Covert Agents' Identities


What is not in doubt, is that Mrs. Wilson's identity was classified, and no one in the government had the right to reveal it.

Virtually all the names of covert agents in the CIA are classified, and the CIA goes to some effort to keep them classified. They refuse all Freedom of Information Act requests, they refuse (and courts uphold) to provide such information in discovery connected to lawsuits.

Broadly speaking, covert agents (and their informants) fall under the State Secrets privilege. A federal statute requires that "the Director of Central Intelligence shall be responsible for protecting intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure." It is not, in other words, an option for the CIA to decide to reveal an agent's activities.

And of course, there's are many good reasons for this - relating not only to the agent, but also to national security. As CIA Director Turner explained in a lawsuit in 1982, shortly after the Intelligence Identities Act became law, "In the case of persons acting in the employ of CIA, once their identity is discerned further damage will likely result from the exposure of other intelligence collection efforts for which they were used."


The White House's Unusual Stonewalling About an Obvious Leak


In the past, Bush and Cheney have gone ballistic when national security information leaked. But this leak - though it came from "two senior administration officials" - has been different. And that, in itself, speaks volumes.

On July 22, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked about the Novak column. Offering only a murky, non-answer, he claimed that neither "this President or this White House operates" in such a fashion. He added, "there is absolutely no information that has come to my attention or that I have seen that suggests that there is any truth to that suggestion. And, certainly, no one in this White House would have given authority to take such a step."

So was McClellan saying that Novak was lying - and his sources were not, in fact, "two senior administration officials"? McClellan dodged, kept repeating his mantra, and refused to respond.

Later, McClellan was asked, "Would the President support an investigation into the blowing of the cover on an undercover CIA operative?" Again, he refused to acknowledge "that there might be some truth to the matter you're bringing up." When pressed further, he said he would have to look into "whether or not that characterization is accurate when you're talking about someone's cover."

McClellan's statement that he would have to look into the matter was disingenuous at best. This ten-day old column by Novak had not escaped the attention of the White House. Indeed, when the question was first raised, McClellan immediately responded, "Thank you for bringing that up."

As David Corn has pointed out, what McClellan did not say, is even more telling than what he said. He did not say he was trying to get to the bottom of the story and determine if it had any basis in fact. He did not say the president would not tolerate such activities, and was demanding to know what had happened.

Indeed, as Corn points out, McClellan's remarks "hardly covered a message from Bush to his underlings: don't you dare pull crap like this." Indeed, they could even be seen as sending a message that such crimes will be overlooked.

Frankly, I am astounded that the President of the United States - whose father was once Director of the CIA - did not see fit to have his Press Secretary address this story with hard facts. Nor has he apparently called for an investigation - or even given Ambassador and Mrs. Wilson a Secret Service detail, to let the world know they will be protected.

This is the most vicious leak I have seen in over 40 years of government-watching. Failure to act to address it will reek of a cover-up or, at minimum, approval of the leak's occurrence - and an invitation to similar revenge upon Administration critics.


Congressional Calls For Investigation Should Be Heeded


Senator Dick Durbin (D - IL) was the first to react. On July 22, he delivered a lengthy speech about how the Bush Administration was using friendly reporters to attack its enemies. He knew this well, because he was one of those being so attacked.

"Sadly, what we have here," Durbin told his colleagues, "is a continuing pattern by this White House. If any Member of this Senate - Democrat or Republican - takes to the floor, questions this White House policy, raises any questions about the gathering of intelligence information, or the use of it, be prepared for the worst. This White House is going to turn on you and attack you."

After Senator Durbin set forth the evidence that showed the charges of the White House against him were false, he turned to the attacks on Ambassador and Mrs. Wilson. He announced that he was asking the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate this "extremely serious matter."

"In [the Administration's] effort to seek political revenge against Ambassador Wilson," Durbin said, "they are now attacking him and his wife, and doing it in a fashion that is not only unacceptable, it may be criminal. And that, frankly, is as serious as it gets in this town."

The House Intelligence Committee is also going to investigate the Wilson leak. "What happened is very dangerous to a person who may be a CIA operative," Congressman Alcee Hastings (D - FL), a member of the Committee, said. And the committee's chairman, Porter Gross (R- FL), a former CIA agent himself, said an investigation "could be part of a wider" look that his committee is taking at WMD issues.

In a July 24 letter to FBI Director William Mueller, Senator Charles Schumer (D -NY) demanded a criminal investigation of the leak. Schumer's letter stated, "If the facts that have been reported publicly are true, it is clear that a crime was committed. The only questions remaining to be answered are who committed the crime and why?"


The FBI, too, has confirmed that they are undertaking an investigation.


But no one should hold their breath. So far, Congress has treated the Bush Administration with kid gloves. Absent an active investigation by a grand jury, under the direction of a U.S. Attorney or special prosecutor, an FBI investigation is not likely to accomplish anything. After all, the FBI does not have power to compel anyone to talk. And unless the President himself demands a full investigation, the Department of Justice is not going to do anything - unless the Congress uncovers information that embarrasses them into taking action.

While this case is a travesty, it won't be the first one that this administration has managed to get away with. Given the new the nadir of investigative journalism, this administration has been emboldened. And why not? Lately, the mainstream media has seemed more interested in stockholders than readers. If Congress won't meaningfully investigate these crimes - and, indeed, even if it will - it is the press's duty to do so. Let us hope it fulfills that duty. But I am not holding my breath about that, either.

Bryan, I think you need an intervention!!!
By the way, the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act of 1982 was pushed by GHWB as VP at the time, but also a former head of the CIA.

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July 12, 2005, 4:26 p.m.
Lawyer: Cooper “Burned” Karl Rove
Rove’s attorney talks to NRO.

The lawyer for top White House adviser Karl Rove says that Time reporter Matthew Cooper "burned" Rove after a conversation between the two men concerning former ambassador Joseph Wilson's fact-finding mission to Niger and the role Wilson's wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, played in arranging that trip. Nevertheless, attorney Robert Luskin says Rove long ago gave his permission for all reporters, including Cooper, to tell prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about their conversations with Rove.

In an interview with National Review Online, Luskin compared the contents of
a July 11, 2003, internal Time e-mail written by Cooper with the wording of a story Cooper co-wrote a few days later. "By any definition, he burned Karl Rove," Luskin said of Cooper. "If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame."
First the e-mail. According to a report in Newsweek, Cooper's e-mail to Time Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy said, "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation..." Cooper said that Rove had warned him away from getting "too far out on Wilson," and then passed on Rove's statement that neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor CIA Director George Tenet had picked Wilson for the trip; "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip." Finally — all of this is according to the Newsweek report — Cooper's e-mail said that "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly that there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger..."

A few days after sending the e-mail, Cooper co-wrote an article headlined "A War on Wilson? (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,465270,00.html)" that appeared on Time's website. The story began, "Has the Bush administration declared war on a former ambassador who conducted a fact-finding mission to probe possible Iraqi interest in African uranium? Perhaps."



The story continued: Some government officials have noted to Time in interviews (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched to Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore, sometimes referred to as yellow cake, which is used to build nuclear devices.

Plame's role in Wilson's assignment was later confirmed by a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation.

Luskin told NRO that the circumstances of Rove's conversation with Cooper undercut Time's suggestion of a White House "war on Wilson." According to Luskin, Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling. According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are "indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out."

"Look at the Cooper e-mail," Luskin continues. "Karl speaks to him on double super secret background...I don't think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the name of Wilson's wife."

Nor, says Luskin, was Rove trying to "out" a covert CIA agent or "smear" her husband. "What Karl was trying to do, in a very short conversation initiated by Cooper on another subject, was to warn Time away from publishing things that were going to be established as false." Luskin points out that on the evening of July 11, 2003, just hours after the Rove-Cooper conversation, then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement that undermined some of Wilson's public assertions about his report. "Karl knew that that [Tenet] statement was in gestation," says Luskin. "I think a fair reading of the e-mail was that he was trying to warn Cooper off from going out on a limb on [Wilson's] allegations."

Luskin also shed light on the waiver that Rove signed releasing Cooper from any confidentiality agreement about the conversation. Luskin says Rove originally signed a waiver in December 2003 or in January 2004 (Luskin did not remember the exact date). The waiver, Luskin continues, was written by the office of special prosecutor Fitzgerald, and Rove signed it without making any changes — with the understanding that it applied to anyone with whom he had discussed the Wilson/Plame matter. "It was everyone's expectation that the waiver would be as broad as it could be," Luskin says.

Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller have expressed concerns that such waivers (top Cheney aide Lewis Libby also signed one) might have been coerced and thus might not have represented Rove's true feelings. Yet from the end of 2003 or beginning of 2004, until last Wednesday, Luskin says, Rove had no idea that there might be any problem with the waiver.

It was not until that Wednesday, the day Cooper was to appear in court, that that changed. "Cooper's lawyer called us and said, "Can you confirm that the waiver encompasses Cooper?" Luskin recalls. "I was amazed. He's a lawyer. It's not rocket science. [The waiver] says 'any person.' It's that broad. So I said, 'Look, I understand that you want reassurances. If Fitzgerald would like Karl to provide you with some other assurances, we will.'" Luskin says he got in touch with the prosecutor — "Rule number one is cooperate with Fitzgerald, and there is no rule number two," Luskin says — and asked what to do. According to Luskin, Fitzgerald said to go ahead, and Luskin called Cooper's lawyer back. "I said that I can reaffirm that the waiver that Karl signed applied to any conversations that Karl and Cooper had," Luskin says. After that — which represented no change from the situation that had existed for 18 months — Cooper made a dramatic public announcement and agreed to testify.

A few other notes: Luskin declined to say how Rove knew that Plame "apparently" (to use Cooper's word) worked at the CIA. But Luskin told NRO that Rove is not hiding behind the defense that he did not identify Wilson's wife because he did not specifically use her name. Asked if that argument was too legalistic, Luskin said, "I agree with you. I think it's a detail."

Luskin also addressed the question of whether Rove is a "subject" of the investigation. Luskin says Fitzgerald has told Rove he is not a "target" of the investigation, but, according to Luskin, Fitzgerald has also made it clear that virtually anyone whose conduct falls within the scope of the investigation, including Rove, is considered a "subject" of the probe. "'Target' is something we all understand, a very alarming term," Luskin says. On the other hand, Fitzgerald "has indicated to us that he takes a very broad view of what a subject is."

Finally, Luskin conceded that Rove is legally free to publicly discuss his actions, including his grand-jury testimony. Rove has not spoken publicly, Luskin says, because Fitzgerald specifically asked him not to.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++
I guess when you're public enemy #4 behind Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, any liberal media wonk will try to twist your words to make up a fantasy story.

But your statement that she, not Rove deserves scrutiny is idiotic. Revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative is a crime akin to treason. Some argue that Plame was not working undercover at the time her name was revealed, but that does not lessen the severity in my eyes.

"Just because you say it doesn't make it so."

- Tom Sawyer

I predict that GW will cover (or pardon if he has to) Rove's rear, or he'll get off on some weasle technicality ("didn't use her name" BS). But if no crime has been comitted by Rove, they why is Judith Miller is in jail?? Bush should pardon her as well for trying to cover Rove's ass.

Typical GOP tactics........... double standards............ living above the law........... what applies to you pesants doesn't apply to us elites.
:bsflag:

But if no crime has been comitted by Rove, they why is Judith Miller is in jail??Because the NYT are the criminals in this case. Please do some research and you will see why Judith Miller is in jail, and it has nothing to do with the Bush Administration or Karl Rove, in fact, quite to the contrary. Get informed.

Because the NYT are the criminals in this case. Please do some research and you will see why Judith Miller is in jail, and it has nothing to do with the Bush Administration or Karl Rove, in fact, quite to the contrary. Get informed.

Actually your only guessing, you dont know what they are thinking, and it would take that to know whats goin on. Sure they are impeding the investigation, but you dont know if its to protect Rove or anyone else in the Bush adminitstration. It could be to protect someone else also, but no one really knows but them?

Because the NYT are the criminals in this case. Please do some research and you will see why Judith Miller is in jail, and it has nothing to do with the Bush Administration or Karl Rove, in fact, quite to the contrary. Get informed.

Whooosshhhh.............. went right over your head.

Let me try this again, as simplistic as I can make it for you.

Miller is in jail for interferring with a criminal investigation.

That criminal investigation is to find out WHO leaked the identity of a CIA operative, a federal crime under the Espionage Act of 1917, and a threat to our national security.

Now we know WHO leaked the identity.

Now the BuSh administration is claming that person is not guilty of any crime.

No crime, no criminal investigation, no interferrence thereof. Miller should be freed.

Understand?
*owned*

You screaming libs can just read this and weep.


With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...


Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2005 12:06 a.m. EST
Ex-Prosecutor: Plame Leak Not Illegal

The former prosecutor who helped draft the law that Democrats say was violated when someone in the Bush administration leaked a CIA worker's name to columnist Robert Novak now says that no laws were broken in the case.

Writing with First Amendment lawyer Bruce Sanford in the Washington Post recently, former Assistant Deputy Attorney General Victoria Toensing explained that she helped draft the law in question, the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Story Continues Below




Says Toensing, "The Novak column and the surrounding facts do not support evidence of criminal conduct."
For Plame's outing to have been illegal, the one-time deputy AG says, "her status as undercover must be classified." Also, Plame "must have been assigned to duty outside the United States currently or in the past five years."

Since in neither case does Plame qualify, Toensing says: "There is a serious legal question as to whether she qualifies as 'covert.'"

The law also requires that the celebrated non-spy's outing take place by someone who knew the government had taken "affirmative measures to conceal [the agent's] relationship" to the U.S., a prospect Toensing says is unlikely.

Other signs that no laws were broken include the fact that after Plame was outted, the CIA's general counsel took no steps to prosecute Novak, as has been done to other reporters under similar circumstances.

Neither did then-CIA Director George Tenet or his deputy pick up the phone to tell Novak that the publication of her name would threaten national security and her safety, as is also routinely done when the CIA is serious about prohibiting publication.

In fact, the myth that laws were violated in the Plame case began to unravel in October 2003, in a column by New York Times scribe Nicholas Kristof, who explained that Valerie Plame had abandoned her covert role a full nine years before.

"The C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given [Plame's] name [along with those of other spies] to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons."

Kristof also noted that Plame had begun making the transition to CIA "management" even before she was outted, explaining that "she was moving away from 'noc' – which means non-official cover ... to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having 'C.I.A.' stamped on her forehead."

Noted the Timesman: "All in all, I think the Democrats are engaging in hyperbole when they describe the White House as having put [Plame's] life in danger and destroyed her career; her days skulking along the back alleys of cities like Beirut and Algiers were already mostly over."

So why – with a special prosecutor now threatening to toss Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail if they don't give up their sources in the Plame case – aren't their lawyers invoking the "no laws were broken" defense?

Explains the National Review's Rich Lowry: The Miller-Cooper defense hasn't made this argument because it would be too embarrassing to admit that the Bush administration's "crime of the century" wasn't really a crime at all, especially after a year and a half of media chest-beating to the contrary.

"It was just a Washington flap played for all it was worth by the same news organizations now about to watch their employees go to prison over it," says Lowry.

"That's the truth that the media will go to any length to avoid."

That doesn't change the fact that BuSh is a friggin liar. He said that he would fire anyone that leaked any information. Period.

BuSh has no credibility now. His numbers have fallen again. Repugs are jumping ship.

I love the smell of impeachment in the morning.

"Worst President Ever"

That doesn't change the fact that BuSh is a friggin liar. He said that he would fire anyone that leaked any information. Period.

BuSh has no credibility now. His numbers have fallen again. Repugs are jumping ship.

I love the smell of impeachment in the morning.

"Worst President Ever"

Now, now, calm down, I know you don't want to taste your tears in your beer. I know you really wanted to GET somebody on the Bush team, ANYBODY, even someone who doesn't really matter like Karl Rove, but it didn't work out for you guys, again. But keep trying. It just demonstrates for the rest of the world how desperate you all are. You know your circle of power is shrinking. You know that people don't trust the lib media anymore. You know you are losing elections. You know you will lose Supreme Court nominations. You can see it coming and it infuriates you. I understand how it feels. I lived for 8 years with Slick Willie. So I sympathize. But act like a grownup and get over it.

Talk about growing up.

"Worst President Ever"

Byron York is nothing but a cry-baby, mr "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy", commie sympathizer, right-winged whacko. He looked like an idiot last night on Fox attempting to tip-toe around the facts, making excuses, deflecting blame and attention and perverting the intent of the law. Its so entertaining to watch these clowns like him and Carl Limbacher come out of the woodwork everytime something un-flattering about the BuSh administration is revealed. Their asses must be getting sore from squirming so much.

#1) The NY Times has not revealed the source even though they were given immunity. Instead they are letting one of their reporters sit in jail which leads one to believe that ROVE is NOT the source.


It leads one to believe nothing about Rove. It leads one to believe only that the reporter and the NY Times are standing up for the principal that a reporter shouldnt HAVE to reeal their confidential sources.


#2) I listened to the woman who wrote the current law forcing journalists to reveal their sources in a criminal investigation and she said that what she knows of the conversations with ROVE and the reporters, it does not fall to the level of criminal wrongdoing. Rove did NOT reveal the name. The Operative was NOT undercover at the time in any operation.


um, in her OPINION. And the next questions then becomes, if her opinion is valid, why is the reporter still in jail?



The question you should be asking is why is the New York Times is willingly and criminally violating the law? They are impeding an investigation. They are the ones at fault here. Not the heresay conversation of one Karl Rove with several reporters.


Wouldnt the testamoniy just be heresay also? You keep speaking in contridictions.. Either the testamony is important or it isnt. Which is it? And if the reporter comes back and says it WAS Roce, then what? Will you advocate for his dismissal then Bryan?



Accuse and then convict. That is the new Democratic Party. Who cares what the truth is. It is only the seriousness of the accusation that counts anymore for the Democrats.


Oh please, spare me. This game is played by BOTH parties. Kenneth Starr, remember him? How about Reagan who 'forgot' what happened, not to mention Nixon and his whole little group.

They ALL play this garbage. They all make mountians out of molehills, or molehills out of mountians.

um, in her OPINION. And the next questions then becomes, if her opinion is valid, why is the reporter still in jail?
Because she and the NYT CONTINUE to break the law! Or is the law only for the people on the right and the common man? I understand the whole elite left-wing media makes up its own rules thing. Just more legislating from the bench. We'll make up the rules as we go along mentality and for whatever serves our purpose.



Wouldnt the testamoniy just be heresay also? You keep speaking in contridictions.. Either the testamony is important or it isnt. Which is it? And if the reporter comes back and says it WAS Roce, then what? Will you advocate for his dismissal then Bryan?It if was proved and the person was convicted, of course I would be one of the biggest advocates for dismissal. We are not two-faced on the right. We always strive to do what is right.


They ALL play this garbage. They all make mountians out of molehills, or molehills out of mountians.That may well be true but it is obvious the Democrats and the media have perfected this ploy.

Byron York is nothing but a cry-baby, mr "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy", commie sympathizer, right-winged whacko. He looked like an idiot last night on Fox attempting to tip-toe around the facts, making excuses, deflecting blame and attention and perverting the intent of the law. Its so entertaining to watch these clowns like him and Carl Limbacher come out of the woodwork everytime something un-flattering about the BuSh administration is revealed. Their asses must be getting sore from squirming so much.

Ok, smart guy, what about Michael Goodwin? He hasn't hesitated to criticize anybody at any time, including the President. Here's his latest article:





Civil War, D.C.-style - By Michael Goodwin





It's a civil war in Washington. The combatants have an eye-for-an-eye mentality. The partisanship is heated and nasty.

Republicans versus Democrats? Nah. This one pits the media against the White House.

It's a war the media can't win, and shouldn't wage.

The intense grilling that White House reporters inflicted on presidential spokesman Scott McClellan Monday over whether political guru Karl Rove leaked the name of a CIA operative was no ordinary give-and-take. It was a hostile hectoring that revealed much of the mainstream press for what it has become: the opposition party.

Forget fairness, or even the pretense of it. With one of its own locked up - Judith Miller of The New York Times - much of the Beltway gang has declared war on the White House.

Reporters apparently have decided Democrats aren't up to the job. Can't blame them. With Dems reduced to Howard Dean's rants and Hillary Clinton's juvenile jab that President Bush looks like Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, somebody has to offer a substantive alternative. The press has volunteered.

That the mainstream media are basically liberals with press passes has been documented by virtually every study that measures reporters' political identification and issue positions. But bias has now slopped over into blatant opposition, a stance the media will regret. Instead of providing unvarnished facts obtained by aggressive but fair-minded reporting, the media will be reduced to providing comfort food to ideological comrades.

Already held in lower esteem by the public than lawyers and Congress, the press risks looking like a special interest group. Its claims to represent "the American people," as one McClellan inquisitor did, are easily ignored when it serves as an echo chamber for the anti-Bush.

Indeed, as soon as Monday's bash-by-press session ended, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) called on Rove to resign. If everybody resigned when Kerry demanded it, Washington would be empty.

In fairness, the media have many reasons to feel frustrated. The Bush White House has not only restricted information, but has aggressively moved against traditional press privileges. In the past year, about 25 reporters have been subpoenaed or questioned in courts about their sources, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

The most famous case has seen The Times' Miller sent to prison for up to four months after she refused to disclose who in the government talked to her about CIA agent Valerie Plame.

A federal prosecutor is probing whether a crime was committed by someone who blew Plame's secret status. Rove has emerged as the latest press suspect; his lawyer denies any wrongdoing.

Miller - a former colleague of mine - has taken her punishment with grace. Her husband, book editor Jason Epstein, told Editor & Publisher magazine, "She was quite prepared to take the consequences and the judge had no choice, she understood that." Epstein said Miller believed she had to protect her source, even if that meant jail. "I don't see how it could have been avoided because the law is the law," he said. "She exhausted her appeals and had no place left to go." What a refreshing, adult point of view. Here's hoping it spreads. Then the press can get back to reporting on the President instead of fighting him.






Here's the link in case you think I made it up.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/327526p-279954c.html

[QUOTE=Joeychgo]Oh please, spare me. This game is played by BOTH parties. QUOTE]

You just admitted that your side is playing a game.

De-Spinning the Save-Rove Spin

I'm getting tired of de-spinning the Rove scandal. And I'm starting to think I prefer the silence-is-golden strategy of the White House to the lie-and-mislead approach of the Rove-backers who take to the airwaves and spout disinformation. At least, we don't have to factcheck Scott McClellan's remarks this week on the Rove matter.

I do wish I could keep track of all the bad info being peddled by Karl's Keystone Kops. But then I'd probably end up needing a nice room in a sanitarium. Here's a very unscientific sampling of what I've come across. (I've already debunked the top-priority spin of GOPers who insist that Rove did not leak classified information and that he is in no legal jeopardy because he did not actually ID Valerie Wilson by name to Matt Cooper. See two items below.)

* Yesterday, I was on a Colorado radio show with Tucker Eskew, a former Bush White House official. Eskew kept saying the Rove affair was a summer sideshow orchestrated by Democrats. Funny, I thought it was a criminal investigation being mounted by a special prosecutor--Patrick Fitzgerald--who was suggested for his job as US attorney in Illinois by then Senator Peter Fitzgerald, a Republican (no relation). Patrick Fitzgerald has targeted both Ds and Rs in the Land of Lincoln. Yet Eskew kept saying this was a trivial matter only being kept alive by partisan Democrats. Tell that to Fitzgerald. And, hey, doesn't the White House say no one should "prejudge the investigation." It's a clash of talking points! Shouldn't Bush, the titular head of the GOP, tell all those Republican mouthpieces to stop all the prejudging?

* On NPR's Diane Rehm Show this morning, David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, said that Rove could not be prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act because it's only a crime if a government official discloses the name of a covert agent "with the intent to impair national security." Wrong. There is no intent provision of that kind as the law applies to government officials like Karl Rove. To violate the law, one must intentionally reveal information that identifies an undercover intelligence officer and one must be aware that the officer is working under cover. But the motive is not relevant. Keene was not telling the truth. He also said, "It's clear from the documents that no law was violated." Then seconds later, he said, "We don't know all the facts." Moments after that, he asserted, "I don't think there's a legal pardon here." Well, which is it? If we don't know all the facts, how can we say no law was violated? It's amazing that when a veteran spinner like Keene spins, his head doesn't explode into very tiny pieces.

* Last night, I was on an NPR show with Representative Jack Kingston, a Republican. He claimed that no crime was committed in the Plame/CIA leak matter unless the leaker disclosed her identity "maliciously." I hope this guy is no lawyer. The law says nothing about malicious intent. He also noted that Joseph Wilson had donated money to the John Kerry campaign. I was confused by this. Does that mean it was okay to disclose the CIA identity of his wife? Kingston forgot to mention that Wilson also gave money to George W. Bush during the GOP presidential primary campaign in 2000. Wilson has repeatedly said he regrets doing so.

* Conservative columnist Byron York was also on that NPR show. He's one of the more reasonable rightwing reporters I know. But he, too, parroted the pro-Rove spin, saying, in his mild manner, that it was unclear to him whether Valerie Wilson was undercover in any significant way. From the start of this controversy, conservatives have been insinuating that Valerie Wilson was not under serious cover. their point: this leak was no biggie. In the early days of the controversy, Clifford May, a former New York Times reporter who went on to become a GOP spokesperson, maintained that it was widely known throughout Washington that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA. Since then, there's been absolutely no evidence to support May's claim. But back to York's observation. Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA under what's called "nonofficial cover." She was a NOC. This means that when she worked overseas she did not have a diplomatic passport and did not pass herself off as an embassy official. If anything happened to her, she'd be in mucho trouble. And she worked with a front group that was set up to give her--and maybe other CIA officials working in the field of WMDs--cover as energy analysts. When the leak occurred, she was indeed at a desk job at the CIA. But NOCs can come and go from CIA headquarters. They maintain their cover so they can return to the field if necessary and to protect the operations they previously worked on and the people (sources, agents, fellow officers) they previously worked with. Outing a NOC can endanger more than the particular person.

Moreover, the CIA thought the leak justified an investigation. It requested that the Justice Department pursue the matter. The Justice Department eventually handed the case to Fitzgerald, and he has seen reason to mount a fierce inquiry. And several federal judges who have reviewed his court filings--in the cases involving Matt Cooper and Judith Miller--all supported Fitzgerald's claim that the leak amounted to a serious breach. True, we still don't know exactly what Valerie Wilson did as a NOC. But York's gentle suggestion that her CIA identity was a minor and not-all-that-important secret is contradicted by the public record.

* Today's Washington Post reported this: "Victoria Toensing, who helped write the [Intelligence Identities Protection Act], has said that there is likely no such evidence [that could convict the leaker] in this case, because the statute was designed to have a high standard and requires proof of intent to harm national security." Well, I would respectfully suggest that Toensing--a good Republican lawyer and commentator, which is not how she is identified in the Post, who is always willing to talk to me--should go back and review the law she helped write. It reads:

Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Where's the part that says the leaker has to leak purposefully to harm national security? There is no such standard. Perhaps the Post reporters should also read the law.

There's a thing called due process in this country. How's about we let that happen...

It doesn't matter how guilty or not guilty anyone thinks he is. If there's sufficient evidence he will be charged.

Hell, Bin Laden hasn't been charged with masterminding 9\11. But he will...just give it time.

If Karl Rove is guilty I hope he is punished within the boundries of the law. But using this situation as some sort of witch hunt is just plain silly...

I would remind you that Karl Rove hasn't even been named as a target in this investigation.

I heard an interesting comment today about thos controversy. Dick Morris (helped Clinton win in '92/'96, same position as Rove had), anyway, he said all of this hubris came up in 1993. If Bush had not won the election in 2004, would we be talking about it now? You can bet your sweet bippy we wouldn't be. That says it all as far as I am concerned. Just a witch-hunt is all it is. And I have to laugh. Rove isn't even a part of the investigation at this point.

Bryan,

Rove may not have committed any crime. In that case the President has no obligation to get rid of him. However, If indeed he did reveal an agent's identity in revenge for criticism is that not a major moral infraction? Rove has been referred to as "Bush's Brain". Should that person be advising our CIC?

Bryan,

Rove may not have committed any crime. In that case the President has no obligation to get rid of him. However, If indeed he did reveal an agent's identity in revenge for criticism is that not a major moral infraction? Rove has been referred to as "Bush's Brain". Should that person be advising our CIC?

No, if you look back on it, Rove was trying to keep a reporter from printing a false story. That's why he told the reporter to leave the story alone.

Why would it matter? If you read Joe Wilson's book, his wife-to-be (Valerie Plame) told him she was a secret CIA agent while on their third date several years ago. And he outed her in his book anyway. This doesn't sound like the actions of people who are fastidious about keeping secrets.

Here is an excerpt of some pretty good questions that need to be answered.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/29/160443.shtml
With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff For the story behind the story...


http://www.newsmax.com/images/spacer.gif Thursday, April 29, 2004 4:02 p.m. EDT

Joe Wilson's Book: Questions That Need to Be Asked

The White House is said to be bracing for Uraniumgate accuser Joe Wilson's new book, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity" - set for release on Friday. [snip]





You said the White House put your wife's life in danger when it revealed she worked for the CIA. But then you allowed a photo of her - disguised only by sunglasses and a headscarf - to be splashed all over the centerfold of Vanity Fair magazine. Didn't that further put her in danger?

<LI>In your comments to Vanity Fair, you reveal that your wife told you she was a CIA agent during what you said was "a heavy make-out session" on your "third or fourth date." If she was in the habit of telling her dates that she worked for the CIA, was her identity really all that secret?

<LI>If her identity was indeed that sensitive, did your wife violate CIA secrecy rules by telling you who she worked for?

<LI>Former CIA agent Larry Johnson told PBS in October that your wife has been an undercover CIA agent for three decades. Yet the Washington Post has reported that she's just 40 years old, which would mean she was 10 when she joined the agency.

How long did your wife spend undercover and was she still truly undercover at the time she was outed?

<LI>In October, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported: "The C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name [along with those of other spies] to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994."

At the time, Kristof noted, your wife was brought home for safety reasons and "was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from 'noc' – which means non-official cover."

If true, how could she have still been undercover when she was outed?



<LI>Doesn't some of the harsh rhetoric you've directed toward the Bush White House also call into question your objectivity? For instance, well before your wife was outed, you wrote in The Nation magazine that under George Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness."

Then, according to Slate magazine, after she was outed you called the Bush White House a bunch of "f--king a--holes and thugs." By publicly expressing such vitriol, haven't you thoroughly compromised your credibility?

<LI>You've repeatedly said there's no evidence that Iraq purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger. But President Bush never claimed it did. What Bush said was "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Are you saying there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, especially since it purchased hundreds of tons of yellowcake from Niger in the 1980s?

<LI>You and other Bush critics have repeatedly said that British intelligence on Iraq's attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium was based on forged documents. But Tony Blair has specifically said his intelligence relies on separate information that has nothing to do with the forged documents. How can you say that there's no evidence unless you know what evidence Tony Blair has? If Mr. Russert asks Wilson even a few of the above questions, we suspect that the Uraniumgate scandal - along with sales of Wilson's book - will collapse like a house of cards.

So Barry, if Rove is exonerated, will you apologize?

Ok, guys, it's over. Rove has been exonerated. Read article from none other than the New York Times. In fact, if anybody should be investigated at this point, it's the liar Joe Wilson.

So, libs, WHO'S NEXT?

Ok, guys, it's over. Rove has been exonerated. Read article from none other than the New York Times. In fact, if anybody should be investigated at this point, it's the liar Joe Wilson.

So, libs, WHO'S NEXT?
The Justice department is conducting the investigation, not the NYTimes. You right wingers are always saying the Times is a liberal rag, now you're jumping to them to exonerate Shrubs brain?

Here is an excerpt of some pretty good questions that need to be answered.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/29/160443.shtml
With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff For the story behind the story...


http://www.newsmax.com/images/spacer.gif Thursday, April 29, 2004 4:02 p.m. EDT

Joe Wilson's Book: Questions That Need to Be Asked

The White House is said to be bracing for Uraniumgate accuser Joe Wilson's new book, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity" - set for release on Friday. [snip]





You said the White House put your wife's life in danger when it revealed she worked for the CIA. But then you allowed a photo of her - disguised only by sunglasses and a headscarf - to be splashed all over the centerfold of Vanity Fair magazine. Didn't that further put her in danger?

<LI>In your comments to Vanity Fair, you reveal that your wife told you she was a CIA agent during what you said was "a heavy make-out session" on your "third or fourth date." If she was in the habit of telling her dates that she worked for the CIA, was her identity really all that secret?

<LI>If her identity was indeed that sensitive, did your wife violate CIA secrecy rules by telling you who she worked for?

<LI>Former CIA agent Larry Johnson told PBS in October that your wife has been an undercover CIA agent for three decades. Yet the Washington Post has reported that she's just 40 years old, which would mean she was 10 when she joined the agency.

How long did your wife spend undercover and was she still truly undercover at the time she was outed?

<LI>In October, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported: "The C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name [along with those of other spies] to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994."

At the time, Kristof noted, your wife was brought home for safety reasons and "was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from 'noc' – which means non-official cover."

If true, how could she have still been undercover when she was outed?



<LI>Doesn't some of the harsh rhetoric you've directed toward the Bush White House also call into question your objectivity? For instance, well before your wife was outed, you wrote in The Nation magazine that under George Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness."

Then, according to Slate magazine, after she was outed you called the Bush White House a bunch of "f--king a--holes and thugs." By publicly expressing such vitriol, haven't you thoroughly compromised your credibility?

<LI>You've repeatedly said there's no evidence that Iraq purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger. But President Bush never claimed it did. What Bush said was "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Are you saying there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, especially since it purchased hundreds of tons of yellowcake from Niger in the 1980s?

<LI>You and other Bush critics have repeatedly said that British intelligence on Iraq's attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium was based on forged documents. But Tony Blair has specifically said his intelligence relies on separate information that has nothing to do with the forged documents. How can you say that there's no evidence unless you know what evidence Tony Blair has? If Mr. Russert asks Wilson even a few of the above questions, we suspect that the Uraniumgate scandal - along with sales of Wilson's book - will collapse like a house of cards.



Seems pretty one sided to me, bryan. Where are wilsons responses to the questions?

Go to Original

Rove Leak is Just Part of Larger Scandal
By Daniel Schorr
The Christian Science Monitor

Friday 15 July 2005

Washington - Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was misled into that war.

In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli. The weapons of mass destruction theme was not yielding very much until a dubious Italian intelligence report, based partly on forged documents (it later turned out), provided reason to speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy so-called yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger. It did not seem to matter that the CIA advised that the Italian information was "fragmentary and lacked detail."

Prodded by Vice President Dick Cheney and in the hope of getting more conclusive information, the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa hand, to Niger to investigate. Mr. Wilson spent eight days talking to everyone in Niger possibly involved and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium and, anyway, Niger's uranium was committed to other countries for many years to come.

No news is bad news for an administration gearing up for war. Ignoring Wilson's report, Cheney talked on TV about Iraq's nuclear potential. And the president himself, in his 2003 State of the Union address no less, pronounced: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Wilson declined to maintain a discreet silence. He told various people that the president was at least mistaken, at most telling an untruth. Finally Wilson directly challenged the administration with a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed headlined, "What I didn't find in Africa," and making clear his belief that the president deliberately manipulated intelligence in order to justify an invasion.

One can imagine the fury in the White House. We now know from the e-mail traffic of Time's correspondent Matt Cooper that five days after the op-ed appeared, he advised his bureau chief of a super-secret conversation with Karl Rove who alerted him to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and may have recommended him for the Niger assignment. Three days later, Bob Novak's column appeared giving Wilson's wife's name, Valerie Plame, and the fact she was an undercover CIA officer. Mr. Novak has yet to say, in public, whether Mr. Rove was his source. Enough is known to surmise that the leaks of Rove, or others deputized by him, amounted to retaliation against someone who had the temerity to challenge the president of the United States when he was striving to find some plausible reason for invading Iraq.

The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.

Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio.



Go to Original

Rove Tied to Tom DeLay Lobbying Scandal
Campaign for a Cleaner Congress | Press Release

Thursday 14 July 2005

Washington - Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the name of a CIA operative for political advantage during wartime could be just the tip of the iceberg as far as unethical behavior, since his web of influence extends to the most notorious figure of the House Lobbying Scandal.

"It's widely known that Karl Rove has been pulling strings all over Washington for years, obviously not just in the case of the Plame leak," said Peter L. Kelley, manager of the Campaign for a Cleaner Congress.

"What is not widely known, however, is his close connection with Jack Abramoff, who is at the center of the lobbying scandal in which Washington is now embroiled. Rove let archconservative operatives like Grover Norquist call shots at the White House. And just this week, a Texas judge ruled that a former Rove lieutenant must face felony charges of money laundering for Tom DeLay's political operation.

"Without further ethics reforms, the public has virtually no ability to find out what is really going on in Washington these days," Kelley said. "But what we do know is starting to smell, and it offers a starting point for further investigation."

* When Rove got to the White House in 2001, he hired as his personal assistant Susan Ralston, previously Abramoff's personal assistant. Ralston has since become an insider's insider.

* Norquist reportedly made a deal in which Ralston would take messages for Rove at the White House, then call Norquist to tell her whether she should put the caller through.

* John Colyandro wrote direct mail pieces for Rove in the 1980s. When he was hired as executive director of the Texans for a Republican Majority PAC, he was described as a "longtime pal of Rove's." This week, a judge said Colyandro must stand trial for laundering over $600,000 in corporate campaign contributions.

"Could party leaders' abrupt about-face on the Plame case have anything to do with the other ethics scandals that have been grabbing headlines for months now?" said Kelley. "It seems there are more than a few bad apples in this barrel, and they don't like it that the public is starting to find out."

Editorial: Karl Rove/Real issue is the case for war
July 14, 2005 ED0714


Did White House political adviser Karl Rove deliberately reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative? Only two people can answer that question, and neither one is talking: Rove himself and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the question.

Sooner or later, we probably will get an answer. Fitzgerald has been so aggressive in this investigation -- to the point of jailing a New York Times reporter who refused to reveal her confidential sources -- that indictments are reasonably likely.

In the meantime, it's important to look beyond the immediate political spectacle in Washington -- White House spokesman Scott McClellan finally confronted by reporters who feel abused and lied to -- to the reason Rove was talking to a reporter about ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson at all.

The real issue, more serious and less glitzy than whether Bush will stand by his political adviser, is the extraordinary efforts the Bush administration made to protect a case for war in Iraq from all contradictory evidence -- in effect, as the British spymaster Sir Richard Dearlove put it, to "fix" the facts and intelligence so they would support a decision already made.

Enter Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction. As Wilson tells it, a question arose at the CIA early in 2002, prompted by an inquiry from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, about reports that Iraq had purchased uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger, where Wilson previously had served. When someone was needed to travel to Niger, Plame apparently told her superiors that her husband had good contacts there. CIA officials talked with Wilson and decided he should be the one to make the trip.

In late February of 2002 Wilson made the trip, talked with numerous people in Niger, including the U.S. ambassador, and concluded there was nothing to reports of an Iraq-Niger connection. He briefed officials at both the CIA and State Department on his conclusions.

In January 2003, however, President Bush asserted an Iraq-Africa uranium connection in his State of the Union message. Subsequently, it turned out that Bush was indeed referring to Niger. The Niger-Iraq connection became one of the pillars in Bush's case for war with Iraq.

After the start of the war, Wilson wrote a lengthy op-ed piece for the New York Times laying out the facts of his trip and saying he had "little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Five days later, Rove told Time reporter Matt Cooper he should "not get too far out on Wilson." His trip to Niger, Rove said, wasn't approved by Cheney or CIA Director George Tenet. Cooper wrote to his boss, "It was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip."

Three days later, columnist Robert Novak identified Plame as a CIA operative and said two "senior administration officials" told him Plame suggested sending her husband. About the same time, a confidential source also told a Washington Post reporter that the trip was a "boondoggle" arranged by Plame.

This is a classic Rove technique: undercut a critic by planting the notion that he was off to Africa on a lark arranged by his wife. Rove's history as a rough political player is well-documented. But this wasn't about a political campaign; this was about a serious question of national security and the justification for a difficult war.

It also wasn't true. On July 22, Newsday reported that a "senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a directorate of operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment." This senior intelligence officer also told Newsday that it was incorrect to suggest " 'she was the one who was cooking this up.' " Besides, he said, " 'We paid his airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there.' " The CIA always said Plame did not recommend her husband.

It is instructive to remember that the investigation into who revealed Plame's identity was initiated by Tenet, not by administration critics. Remember also that Wilson was correct; ultimately the White House had to retract Bush's State of the Union statement on the Niger connection.

In addition to discrediting critics of the Niger connection, the Bush administration, through the actions of John Bolton -- now nominee to be U.N. ambassador -- sought to intimidate intelligence analysts who objected to conclusions about Iraq's WMD, and to get a U.N. chemical weapons official fired so he wouldn't be able to send inspectors back to Iraq, where they might disprove more of the case for war.

In the scheme of things, whether Rove revealed Plame's identity, deliberately or not, matters less than actions by Rove, Bolton, Cheney and others to phony up a case for war that has gone badly, has cost thousands of lives plus hundreds of billions of dollars, and has, a majority of Americans now believe, left the United States less safe from terrorism rather than more.

That's the indictment which should matter most.

The Justice department is conducting the investigation, not the NYTimes. You right wingers are always saying the Times is a liberal rag, now you're jumping to them to exonerate Shrubs brain?

I only mentioned the Times because I figured even YOU couldn't ignore your own liberal ad agency.

By the way, your latest two over-long postings contain articles that have no credibility since the writers fail to confirm whether or not Joe Wilson is telling the truth. In fact, he will be borne out to be a liar. Interesting how his press conference yesterday only managed to keep the news networks interested for a few minutes. Bo-ring! Nobody takes him seriously. He's the one trying to get press over this. Nobody else cares. Come on, the guy in his pathetic book outed his own wife who outed herself while they were making out on a date. If anything, the press should be interrogating and investigating him.

CAN ANYBODY FIND A SERIOUS WITNESS HERE?

Why isn't anybody wondering why Judith Miller is still keeping her mouth shut? I think the NY Times has something embarrassing to hide.

In addition to discrediting critics of the Niger connection, the Bush administration, through the actions of John Bolton -- now nominee to be U.N. ambassador -- sought to intimidate intelligence analysts who objected to conclusions about Iraq's WMD, and to get a U.N. chemical weapons official fired so he wouldn't be able to send inspectors back to Iraq, where they might disprove more of the case for war.

In the scheme of things, whether Rove revealed Plame's identity, deliberately or not, matters less than actions by Rove, Bolton, Cheney and others to phony up a case for war that has gone badly, has cost thousands of lives plus hundreds of billions of dollars, and has, a majority of Americans now believe, left the United States less safe from terrorism rather than more.

That's the indictment which should matter most.

A-friggin-men! Funny how Bolton has figured into this scandal.

As the Shrub Burns.
:Beer

Can't wait for Bush to stick it up the Dems arses by giving Bolton a Recess Appointment. That'll be great! Yep, Bush, dumb as a fox.

The Plame Game! :bowrofl: Is that appropriate or what?

Man, it seems that everybody but me knew she was a CIA operative. What a big mouth she turned out to be. And her p.o.s. husband is gonna get his handed to him for sure. What a slimeball shill the Dems are backing.

The Plame Game! :bowrofl: Is that appropriate or what?

Man, it seems that everybody but me knew she was a CIA operative. What a big mouth she turned out to be. And her p.o.s. husband is gonna get his handed to him for sure. What a slimeball shill the Dems are backing.

:I :N :yourock: :headbang:

Whaddya wanna bet Michael Moore tries to make a movie out of this? :bsflag:

Can't wait for Bush to stick it up the Dems arses by giving Bolton a Recess Appointment. That'll be great! Yep, Bush, dumb as a fox.


Then you wont be complaining when the Dems filabuster other appointments - Like Supreme Court nominees...... IMO its no worse then a recess appoointment. Im willing to leave 1 seat vacant on the Supremem court for a few years until someone with a few active brain cells gets into the oval office..

Yup - Dumb as a lame duck.

Then you wont be complaining when the Dems filabuster other appointments - Like Supreme Court nominees...... IMO its no worse then a recess appoointment. Im willing to leave 1 seat vacant on the Supremem court for a few years until someone with a few active brain cells gets into the oval office..

Yup - Dumb as a lame duck.

Then you won't be complaining when the Senate invokes the Constitutional option and overrides the unconstitutional filibuster. A recess appointment is, unlike judicial filibuster, NOT unconstitutional.

Then you wont be complaining when the Dems filabuster other appointments - Like Supreme Court nominees......I'm tired of the Obstructionist Party. I wish Bush would just say to hell with all of you and tell the Senate to use the nuclear option to get his appointments to the Supreme Court and recess appoint however he wants. Ya, that's what Clinton did, didn't he? And you didn't hear all the whining in the press about it, did ya?!

He's not running for re-election anymore and no matter how hard he tries to make the left happy, it will never be good enough. So I would tell Bush to say screw you and Just Do It.

Im willing to leave 1 seat vacant on the Supremem court for a few years until someone with a few active brain cells gets into the oval office..

So you are in favor of the Supreme Court taking away our freedom of property? That's socialism, pal. Because that's just what they did last month. Your favorite liberal judges wiped out the intent of the Constitution of the United States and favored - yep- BIG BUSINESS over the little guy. That's funny, I thought liberals were supposed to be the ones who looked out for the "working families of America." Now any big developer can take away your property at the whim of whatever local government they can suck up to enough, and there's not a thing you can do about it.

By the way, your latest two over-long postings contain articles that have no credibility since the writers fail to confirm whether or not Joe Wilson is telling the truth.

That statement, by far, is one of the most idiotic I've heard out of you yet, and you've had some real winners before. Just how are they to confirm he's telling the truth? Truth serum? Electro-shock? Joe Wilson served in the State department for over 20 years and was posted to countries in Africa and the Middle East. He was well regarded by all the administrations he served, was given commendation by GW 41 for his work at the embassy in Iraq during the first Iraq war. You RWW would rather attempt to destroy the credibility of someone with a distinguished service record than admit that you puppet boy might be wrong. You people truly are sick.

Karl Rove's America
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 15 July 2005

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the CIA for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the CIA for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?



Go to Original

It's Clear the Leakers Knew What They Were Doing
By Josh Marshall
The Hill

Friday 15 July 2005

Strip away all the stress and fury on both sides of the aisle this week and you'll find one key question at the heart of both the legal and political storm surrounding the president's top political adviser.

That is, did Karl Rove and other top administration officials, for whatever reason, knowingly reveal the identity of a covert CIA agent or were they unaware of her covert status? As prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would no doubt tell us if he were at liberty to speak, divining, let alone proving, knowledge and intent in such a case is a very tricky business. But there's a good bit of circumstantial evidence pointing to the conclusion that Rove and others knew exactly what they were doing.

Allow me to explain.

The best evidence for the "they knew" version of events has always been the column that started it all - Robert Novak's July 14 column in which he named Valerie Plame as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

In intelligence jargon, "operative" has a very specific meaning. It means a covert or clandestine officer. Novak's been a journalist for 50 years. So clearly he used that term because he knew Plame was covert. And if he knew, the logical assumption is that he knew because his sources - "two senior administration officials" - told him.

That much seemed clear. But not long after the Plame case stormed onto the front pages almost two years ago, Novak changed his story. He said that he made a mistake when he used the word "operative." He didn't know she was covert, and neither did his sources.

Here's what he told Tim Russert in October 2003:

"The one thing I regret I wrote, I used the word 'operative,' and I think Mr. [David] Broder ['Meet the Press' panelist] will agree that I use the word too much. I use it about hat politicians. I use it about people on the Hill. And if somebody did a Nexis search of my columns, they'd find an overuse of 'operative.' I did not mean it. I don't know what she did. But the indication given to me by this senior official and another senior official I checked with was not that she was deep undercover."

Is that really true? Was it just Novak's laziness or sloppiness that started this whole train running down the tracks? Quite a lot depends on the answer.

There's a good deal of circumstantial evidence - thus far largely ignored - that points strongly to the conclusion that Novak is being much less than honest.

First, consider timing. What Novak told Russert was not only after the story had caught fire in the media but, probably even more important, after it had spawned a Justice Department criminal investigation.

What about what he said earlier? It turns out we have some good evidence for that.

The first newspaper article written about Novak's role in exposing a covert agent was a July 22, 2003, Newsday article by Timothy Phelps and Newt Royce. That's about a week after Novak's column ran and well before the story caught fire in Washington. The article focuses squarely on the controversy over and damage caused by the exposure of covert agent. Phelps and Royce interviewed Novak for the column, too. And he said nothing about any misunderstanding about Plame's status.

What he told them was this: "I didn't dig it out. It was given to me. They thought it was significant. They gave me the name and I used it."

If Novak then thought he or his sources didn't know Plame was covert, he didn't think to mention it. And it was the whole point of the article he was being interviewed for.

Then there's another clue. Novak's story has always relied on the belief that he committed a monumental act of sloppiness or carelessness - a claim hard to credit about a reporter who's been doing this as long as Novak.

As I said above, "operative" has a very specific meaning in intelligence argot. So how does Novak usually use the word?

Not long after Novak's appearance on Russert's show, I used the Nexis database to find all the examples I could in which Novak used the word "operative" in the context of intelligence work or the CIA. Not surprisingly, in every example I found he used the term "operative" to refer to clandestine CIA officers. And that makes sense, since the term has a specific meaning in the context and he's a veteran reporter.

Novak wants us to believe that on this one occasion he lapsed into the colloquial meaning of the word and used it to mean no more than you might if you were referring to a Democratic or Republican "operative." With all due respect to Novak and his decades as a Washington reporter - indeed, precisely because of them - that's just not credible.

There's no way to get inside someone else's mind. But all the available evidence points to the conclusion that Novak's claims on Russert and elsewhere are an after-the-fact attempt to get himself and his sources out of a very uncomfortable bind.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8577190/

POOR DEMS. THE COOKIE CRUMBLES!!!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++
From the A.P. Wires...

"Democrats, however, said that even if Rove wasn't the leaker, someone still divulged Plame's identity and possibly violated the law."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++

I guess it's back to square one. Time to start the witch hunt over. You people on the left make me laugh.

Come on Barry, Johnny, Phil. Speak up. Cat got your tongues?

Bryan,

Don't be naive. This isn't over yet. :F

As far as the accusations placing Rove at the center of the controversy, it certainly is.

Karl Rove's America
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 15 July 2005

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the CIA for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the CIA for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?




Paul Krugman is a liberal bootlicker and has no credibility with me at all. He jumps the gun on Rove with no knowledge of what is being said in the grand jury, only to be proven wrong about Rove's impact on national security. It has now been borne out that Rove in fact did NOT call Novak, in fact Novak called him under false pretenses in order to ask him about Valerie Plame. Krugman has no understanding of ponzi schemes like social security, and in reference to Rove's statement about the responses to 9/11 he assumes that by liberals Rove meant Democrats. Apparently the Democrats assume that also, which, in my opinion, means IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT!

Bryan,

Don't be naive. This isn't over yet. :F

I'm sure the libs will, in their desperation to overturn an election, try to conjure up somebody else to attempt to libel.

Paul Krugman is the BIGGEST little weasel I have ever seen. Virtually every line in that story is a bold face lie. But for Dems, if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. I could take every sentence and add the word lie after the period. The guy thinks he is charming and intelligent but he is vapid and fatuitous at best. I can't stand him.

It's far from over, Repugs!!

Reporter: Cheney Aide Was A Source
(Page 1 of 2)

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2005

Until last week, the White House had insisted for nearly two years that Libby and Rove had no connection to the leak.

(CBS/AP) The vice president's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was a source along with the president's chief political adviser for a Time story that identified a CIA officer, the magazine reporter said Sunday, further countering White House claims that neither aide was involved in the leak.

In an effort to quell a chorus of calls to fire deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, Republicans said that Rove originally learned about Valerie Plame's identity from the news media. That exonerates Rove, the Republican Party chairman said, and Democrats should apologize.

But it is not clear that it was a journalist who first revealed the information to Rove.

A lawyer familiar with Rove's grand jury testimony said Sunday that Rove learned about the CIA officer either from the media or from someone in government who said the information c