WASHINGTON (AP) -- Karl Rove testified to a grand jury for the fourth and final time Friday, smiling as he emerged from hours of questioning about his possible role in the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that statements in the summer that Rove retained the president's confidence remained true. However, McClellan declined repeatedly to utter words of confidence outright.
Prosecutors had warned Rove before his latest grand jury appearance that there was no guarantee he would not be indicted. The grand jury's term is due to expire October 28.
"Karl continues to do his duties as deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to the president," McClellan said. "What I said previously still stands."
Rove spent about four-and-a-half hours inside the federal courthouse, and left without commenting to reporters.
His lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, said Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald "has not advised Mr. Rove that he is a target of the investigation and affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges. The special counsel has indicated that he does not anticipate the need for Mr. Rove's further cooperation."
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Since I have been so busy with the project in Guatemala, I have not had time to focus much on news or politics. The continued interest in Rove, does not bode well for the White House.
It has been a week since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, leveled New Orleans and left hundreds of thousands of Americans homeless. We saw the best of America during that time—millions of people stepped forward to offer help. Meanwhile, the Bush administration failed at their most important job: keeping America safe. The federal effort was too little, too late and it is now becoming obvious that hundreds or even thousands of people died as a result.
Then, starting Friday, in a Karl Rove-led campaign, the White House started to blame state and local officials and even the victims who were stranded without transportation when the Hurricane arrived. Sign our petition demanding that the Bush administration stop blaming victims, including state and local officials, and focus on helping them.
Timeline
Friday, Aug. 26: Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency in Louisiana and requests troop assistance.
Saturday, Aug. 27: Gov. Blanco asks for federal state of emergency. A federal emergency is declared giving federal officials the authority to get involved.
Sunday, Aug. 28: Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. President Bush warned of Levee failure by National Hurricane Center. National Weather Service predicts area will be "uninhabitable" after Hurricane arrives. First reports of water toppling over the levee appear in local paper.
Monday, Aug. 29: Levee breaches and New Orleans begins to fill with water, Bush travels to Arizona and California to discuss Medicare. FEMA chief finally responds to federal emergency, dispatching employees but giving them two days to arrive on site.
Tuesday, Aug. 30: Mass looting reported, security shortage cited in New Orleans. Pentagon says that local authorities have adequate National Guard units to handle hurricane needs despite governor's earlier request. Bush returns to Crawford for final day of vacation. TV coverage is around-the-clock Hurricane news.
Wednesday, Aug. 31: Tens of thousands trapped in New Orleans including at Convention Center and Superdome in "medieval" conditions. President Bush finally returns to Washington to establish a task force to coordinate federal response. Local authorities run out of food and water supplies.
Thursday, Sept. 1: New Orleans descends into anarchy. New Orleans Mayor issues a "Desperate SOS" to federal government. Bush claims nobody predicted the breach of the levees despite multiple warnings and his earlier briefing.
Friday, Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins Bush administration campaign to blame state and local officials—despite their repeated requests for help. Bush stages a photo-op—diverting Coast Guard helicopters and crew to act as backdrop for cameras. Levee repair work orchestrated for president's visit and White House press corps.
Saturday, Sept. 3: Bush blames state and local officials. Senior administration official (possibly Rove) caught in a lie claiming Gov. Blanco had not declared a state of emergency or asked for help.
Monday, Sept. 5: New Orleans officials begin to collect their dead.
Those are the facts. State and local officials BEGGED for help as people in their city suffered. The Bush administration didn't get the job done and when their failure became an embarrassment they attacked those asking for help.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Karl Rove and White House communications director Dan Bartlett "rolled out a plan...to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina." The core of the strategy is "to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana."
This is the same pattern of smearing that the Bush political machine has used for a decade. John McCain and John Kerry had their war records smeared. The CIA cover of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was blown after he criticized the Bush Iraq policy. Now, Hurricane victims are attacked when the Bush administration failed to do their duty to help them.
It isn't just the Bush administration. Republican Senator Rick Santorum blamed victims in a TV interview and House Speaker Dennis Hastert suggested New Orleans should not be rebuilt.
I don't have much to say about this. I mean expressions of outrage just seem to bounce off the walls these days. These people are truly disgusting in their ability to play politics with disaster, and to put it simply... LIE. That there are people out there who still, after all this, refuse to deal with the truth is Frankly MIND BOGGLING!
SOME WHITE House sympathizers have attempted to portray Karl Rove's role in the Valerie Plame scandal as that of a statesman, seeking to provide President Bush with the best information possible on Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions so that Bush could set policy based on facts. This has been met with deserved skepticism. Rove's career, even before he became Bush's deputy chief of staff, is rich with reasons to think his motives in helping to identify Plame as a CIA agent were far darker.
After all, Plame's identity was revealed in a Robert Novak column on July 14, 2003, just eight days after her husband, Joseph Wilson, had embarrassed Bush over his Iraq war rationale. And Rove had talked with Novak on July 9.
As John Roberts, the Supreme Court nominee and federal appeals court judge, wrote last month in another context, the fact that ''sometimes dogs do eat homework" is no reason to ignore more-logical explanations.
Rove's record has been consistent. Over 35 years, he has been a master of dirty tricks, divisiveness, innuendo, manipulation, character assassination, and roiling partisanship.
He started early. In 1970, when he was 19 and active as a college Republican -- though he didn't graduate from college -- Rove pretended to volunteer for a Democratic candidate in Illinois, stole some campaign stationery, and used it to disrupt a campaign event. Later, in Texas, he gave testimony in court that was embarrassing to an opponent of one of Rove's clients, even though it was not true, according to the book ''Bush's Brain," by two veteran Texas newsmen, James Moore and Wayne Slater.
Negative attacks have often been the center of Rove's strategies. In a race between Texas Governor Mark White and his Republican opponent, Bill Clements, Rove wrote in a memo: ''Anti-White messages are more important than positive Clements messages."
Often Rove has skated on the edge of being identified with certainty as the author of dirty tricks. In 1986, the discovery of a planted listening device in Rove's own office was widely publicized, damaging the Democrats. Many suspect that the source was Rove himself. This was never proven, but Moore and Slater say, ''Karl Rove remains a prime suspect." In 1989, Texas populist Jim Hightower was damaged by grand jury leaks for which, Moore and Slater say, ''Rove remains the most likely source."
Again, most of the personal slurs against candidates who had the temerity to run against Rove's clients have not been pinned on Rove personally, but they follow a pattern. George W. Bush ousted Ann Richards from the Texas governor's office in 1994 after a whisper campaign focused on a small number of Richards appointees who were lesbians and even suggested that Richards was gay. Bush himself stoked the fire, saying some Richards appointees "had agendas that may have been personal in nature."
The Rove issue has been pushed off the front page by recent news and by Cindy Sheehan, but this commentary may be evidence that the issue may be out of sight, but not, "out of mind," for the mainstream media.
Reversing their earlier decision
to keep the unburied corpse of Novak on the air, CNN executives have
announced that the zombie propagandist's decaying flesh will be
"temporarily" entombed in a lead-lined refrigerated crypt at the
Hanford Nuclear Energy Reservation in Washington State.
Network executives acted Thursday after Novak's body staggered to
its feet in the middle of a joint interview with the mummified remains
of James Carville, and vomited a noxious heap of its own decomposed
organs directly into the lap of CNN host Ed Henry. The reanimated
corpse then lurched off the set, leaving a trail of wriggling maggots
and liquified fecal matter behind it.
"It was just the usual stuff," said one CNN producer present in the
studio at the time. "Henry's had all his shots, and the steam hoses
were ready. But when the suits found out that Novak said 'bullshit' on
camera, they totally lost it. The promotional contract specifically
required him to call it 'high-grade organic fertilizer from a naturally
abundant bovine source.' The ad department was furious."
Novak woke up one morning, stretched, guzzled the blood of some innocents, scratched, got a cackling call from fellow-Sith Lord Karl Rove, transcribed the story, ignored CIA warnings to do no such thing, ate a sensible dinner, put on his jammies, and went to bed. All in a day's work. Then, a few weeks later, there's a heavy knock on the castle door, and Igor limps in talking about some prosecutor and subpoena papers. Now, suddenly, Novak's the story. All the world's political thinkers are poring over his utterances, waiting watching finding slip-ups and inconsistencies, malapropisms and missteps. Novak reports this sort of news, he doesn't make it. So when Carville goes at him, it's just the last straw.
One of the things the General learned while working as a beertender
was how to spot someone who's approaching their limit of 3.2 beer. It's
an important skill to have in a small Utah town, because taverns rank
somewhere between brothels and coffeehouses as the fastest routes to
Hell in the minds of the local populace. The Beehive State's dramshop
laws are among the toughest in the country. Woe be unto any rural
beertender who allows a customer's blood alcohol content to reach 0.08%.
Mr.
Novak looked liked he had reached that point long before he walked off
CNN's Inside Politics, yesterday. All the signs are captured in this video.
Watch it, and see for yourself. He's slurring his speech, stuttering,
and moving his head in the same manner I've seen hundreds of drunks
move theirs right before they announce that they could kill me with
their bare hands (you'd be surprised how often small town Utah
beertenders hear that).
In the meantime, Paul has taken over at Wizbang, to try and explain the whole Who's Who thing... He is not doing much better than Kevin did, but it must be reassuring for Kevin to have one of the Most Respected Voices in the Rightsphere backing his argument... Things that make me shake my nappy Cotton Pickin' Head.
Update: Looks like Lord Pablo of the Sith has deleted my trackback to his Wizbang Post. Oh I am so hurt. Eh, there is a little thing called Technorati Paul, and believe it or not, it gets more exposure than Wizbang, so not to worry, people will still read the post. Revisionist History does not work nearly as well as it used to.
It's amazing... Truly amazing... Kevin at Wizbang, who has posted:
Update 2: More on Novak and Plame later, but
perhaps the raging debate in the comment section can dissect what
effect, if any, Novak's piece would have had if he used Valerie Wilson
instead of Valerie Plame? Also do you think Novak, on hearing of the
wife's involvement got her name from Who's Who and stuck with it OR
found the Who's Who reference to backup his source(s)?
*** Evidently one cannot even make a snarky remark about the Plame
affair without having to explain oneself ad nauseum. OK here goes...
I'm over generalizing here, but it seem like there wasn't an outing
of an agent until two non-secret bits of information were
combined.Joseph Wilson's wife's maiden name, most would now agree, was
not a secret. That Wilson worked at the CIA was not widely known, but
it was hardly a secret [See Cliff May at NRO and Just One Minute].
That Wilson's wife was (or had been) a covert operative was only known
to (if reports are to be believed) the Cuban government and perhaps
those receiving information form Aldrich Ames, but it was still a
secret. Novak puts two pieces of non-secret information together and
gets this flashpoint.
But how did that combination "out" a covert agent? I turns out the
the Valerie Plame name (remember, according to many commenters her
name's no big deal) was her cover. If her cover name was Valerie Jones
how exactly would Novak's column as it was written have "outed" her?
It's wouldn't have. As former federal prosecutor Joesph DiGenoa contends it sure looks like the CIA didn't exactly bust a nut to "take every conceivable step to protect this person's identity."
to his misguided latest attempt to defend the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, has had it blow up in his face. He is getting hammered in his comments by "The Reality Based Community," who has apparently just had enough and called "Bullshit!"
The Right Wing efforts to defend Rove, Novak and the other co-conspirators in the treasonous act of outing an undercover CIA agent have gotten so ridiculous, that they don't even pass the smell test for some on the Right. Novak cracking under the pressure is just another example of things starting to unravel in the disciplined Bush Spin apparatus. This all started a while back with the unraveling of the Armstrong Williams scandal, followed by countless others. The recent Downing Street revelations, The exposure of the ACVR as a disgusting front for Partisan GOP Politics, and countless other mini-scandals, have demonstrated to any RATIONAL thinking person, that this administration is rotten to the core, and that the Emperor Indeed has no clothes.
That Wizbang, (A blog that based on comments on this blog demonstrate), has been discredited even among rational members of the Right (See RINOS), continues to spin the unspinnable, is no surprise. That they would do so with such completely ridiculous arguments, (even for them), is....
Apparently Kool Aide rations are running low, because more and more Right Wing Blogs seem to be changing their tone these days, subtly acknowledging that their Party has been hijacked by an extreme element that wants to impose a dogmatism on them that they never expected and don't support.
Many people on the Right voted for Bush last year for one reason. They saw him being stronger on Terrorism. These one issue voters are seeing religious dogmatism shoved down their throat. They are watching in horror as, "The man who would bring honor back to the White House," does anything but. They are alarmed.
There are those on the Right who absolutely believe the garbage that is coming from the Administration. And there are others who shamefully just cant stomach the idea that they made such a monumental mistake. Perhaps out of embarrassment, perhaps out of a vain hope that they are right, they will continue to defend the indefensible.
As a side note, while he has gotten a lot fewer comments, Rob has gotten slammed too.
"Bob Novak's behavior on CNN today was inexcusable and unacceptable," a CNN spokeswoman said. "Mr. Novak has apologized to CNN, and CNN apologizes to its viewers for his language and actions. We've asked Mr. Novak to take some time off." CNN Spokesperson, referring to Novak loosing his cool during yesterdays taping of Inside Politics.
In my humble opinion, Novak's behavior has been inexcusable for a long time, not the least of which was knowingly blowing a CIA Agents cover.
The incident led to new spin attempts on the Right to excuse Novak's exposure of Valerie Plame, this time by pointing out that Ms. Plame's name is in Who's Who, as the wife of Joe Wilson. I have carefully scanned the Who's Who Article, and don't find a reference to her CIA role, so I am a bit confused as to the relevance of the Who's who article, especially in light of the fact that Novak has already acknowledged that a White House official gave him the information...
As
the investigation tightens into the leak of the identity of covert CIA
operative Valerie Plame, sources tell TIME some White House officials
may have learned she was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson
weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the
Administration. That prospect increases the chances that White House
official Karl Rove and others learned about Plame from within the
Administration rather than from media contacts. Rove has told
investigators he believes he learned of her directly or indirectly from
reporters, according to his lawyer.
Who has plans for a kinky celebration following Administration Perp Walks! Hehe...
Recent news has taken Rove off the front page and off our minds for a few days. Time to get back on the job!
Meanwile scumbag Novak admitted today that he outted Valerie Plame, even after the CIA asked him not to. Sounds like the Wizbang and the Boys meme that Plame was an unprotected assett is starting to fall apart.
This is some devastating Stuff! Is a lot of it conjecture, yeah it is, but it is brilliant conjecture. Read the whole thing here.
Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official
story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr,
sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.
But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times,
raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and
"twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who
has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in
the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the
pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the
war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that
intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility.
So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is
this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on
the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified
a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed
government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does.
The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The
story gets out.
This is why Miller doesn't want to reveal her "source" at the White
House -- because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from
someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in
Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too) but,
in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up
in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it. This also
explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal
wasn't to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on
Wilson's motives. Which Novak did.
As a string of foes from John McCain to Richard Clarke can attest, Karl Rove has never been shy about using personal attacks for political gain. But as the Valerie Plame scandal rages on, the Bush administration's in-house bulldog may be forced to endure a taste of his own medicine.
Last Sunday, in a blistering column in the New York Times, Frank Rich charged that around the time the White House was leaking Plame's undercover CIA status to friendly reporters, Rove's office was publicly "outing" Jeffrey Kofman after the gay ABC correspondent reported on the flagging morale of American troops in Iraq. Rich angrily charged the Republican rumor-monger with fostering a "pervasive culture of revenge" in Washington. Now, in the same spirit, Rove’s critics are forcing the married pol to fend off a politically motivated campaign that focuses on his own personal life.
For years, political insiders in the Lone Star State have whispered about Rove's close friendship with lobbyist Karen Johnson, a never-married, forty-something GOP loyalist from Austin, Texas. The two first became close when Johnson sat on the board of then-Governor George W. Bush's Business Council over a decade ago. Their friendship reportedly deepened after Bush appointed Johnson, a little known spokesperson for the Texas Good Roads Association, to a seat on his Transportation Department transition team in 2000. The plum appointment enabled Johnson's lobbying firm, Infrastructure Solutions, to snare such high-paying clients as Aetna and the City of Laredo. Sources say Johnson now frequently travels between Washington D.C. and Austin, where she frequently appears at Rove's side at parties and unofficial functions.
Although there is no evidence that their relationship is anything but professional, the close association between the married White House aide and the comely lobbyist has long raised eyebrows in conservative Texas circles. Asked about the pair, a prominent political journalist who has written extensively about Rove says, "I've heard the stories, but I would never write about Karl and Karen. If you want to keep your job as a reporter in Texas, you make believe you don't see them together."
I went and read Goldstien's post, and found the usual garbage, but what I found interesting was the criticism of the officers who complained about the Plame Outing.
Since when does one's political slant keep them from having a position or perspective on current events. Goldstein went on a two day rant recently when I invoked the Yellow Elephant meme against those on the Right who support the war, but chose not to fight in it. The gist of his arguments were that anyone should be able to comment on any subject, regardless of their level of participation in the cause being advocated. The response to the Plame outing is just another example of the rabid hypocrisy of some on the Right. Regardless of Political Leanings, the CIA officers who have taken issue with Plame's outing are FAR more qualified to do so, than those on the Right who chose to cheer lead a war without contributing anything to it.
Today, CNN has a compelling post with another CIA operative criticizing the administration. It will be interesting to see how Goldstein and others spin this one, since this guy is a registered Republican. Of course Goldstein slams him on an article he wrote Four Years ago, where he wrongly stated that Islamic Terrorism was on the decline. Nevertheless, this does not damage his bonifides as a Republican who voted for Bush in 2000.
(CNN) -- A former CIA intelligence official who once worked with Valerie Plame blasted President Bush and his administration for their response to the role of top White House aides in allegedly leaking Plame's identity as a CIA operative.
Speaking on behalf of Democrats in the party's weekly radio address Saturday, Larry Johnson said, "The president has flip-flopped on his promise to fire anyone in the White House implicated in a leak."
Johnson, a registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000, said he and Plame have been friends since they began their training at the CIA in 1985.
Her name was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak, who is also a contributor to CNN, in July 2003 -- days after her husband, Joe Wilson, a former ambassador, questioned part of President Bush's justification for invading Iraq in a New York Times op-ed piece.
Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper said last week that Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told him Wilson's wife worked for the CIA but did not say her name. Cooper said also that Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, confirmed that piece of information.
In reference to the investigation, Bush told reporters last week that "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."
That statement shifted from his previous comment on his response to the reported leak. When asked in June 2004 whether he stood by his promise to fire whoever was found to have leaked Plame's name, Bush replied, "Yes."
A federal grand jury is investigating whether a crime was committed.
Read the whole CNN article, and listen to the Radio Broadcast, (available free on the same page at CNN), then make up your own mind.
Josh Marshall has boiled the entire sordid Plame/CIA affair down to a basic truism: Joe Wilson's a liar.
I have taken to reading Michael's Blog lately and overall I think it is pretty good for a Conservative. But "Dayum," Michael... How the hell did you spin what Marshall said into, "Joe Wilson is a liar?"
It's late, and my brain's a bit fried from working on an RFP response. What I got out of Josh's post was, "Both Joe Wilson and Karl Rove are childish brats and political hacks, but Karl Rove is a scumbag who probably broke the law. Even if he didn't, what he did was immoral. You want to try to explain to me how you got what you got?
I realize that you probably read too many of your posse's blogs, but Brother you lost me....
Another Republican Talking Point Goes down in Flames!
Eh... But she wasn't in the field.... Republican Meme
The Reality:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Eleven former intelligence officers say the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity may have damaged national security and the government's ability to gather intelligence.
The former officers made their views known in a three-page statement to congressional leaders.
They said the Republican National Committee has circulated suggestions for officials to deal with the Plame case by focusing on the idea that Plame was not working undercover and legally merited no protection.
Thousands of U.S. intelligence officers work at desks in the Washington area every day whose identities are shielded, as Plame's was when her identity was leaked by Bush administration officials, the 11 former officers said.
Read it all... And while you are at it, READ THIS, it says it all.
It might not seem on its face like Karl Rove and SCOTUS nominee John Roberts have much in common, but there's one very important attribute they both share, they're both political hacks. They've served their GOP master in different ways, but in the end, neither of them is any more than a political operative who fulfills a certain ideological role within the party. I could tell you all about Roberts' history with the Republicans, but what difference do specifics make? He's been a judge for two years, and the rest of his career has been spent in the pockets of GOP power players. This is, in the end, just more of the same from Bush & Co.
And could we really have expected any different? Of course not.
There will no doubt be plenty of debate across the blogosphere over the next few days about whether Rove or Rogers should command our collective attention, but it's not really an either-or proposition. Whether it's the Downing Street Memos revealing that the administration was fixing facts and intelligence around the policy, or senior administration officials using their media operatives to discredit a critic (and compromising national security in the process), or an announcement of a GOP hack SCOTUS nominee politically timed to distract from an official investigation of the administration's misdeeds, it's all part of the same ugly picture. Our country's leadership is corrupt. They place ideology before truth, before international law, before national security, before justice. It's just more of the same.
There is no question in my mind what the priority needs to be. If, as it has been suggested by many, the acceleration of the nomination process was designed to take Rove off the front page, it will not work for some of us...
I don't know enough about Roberts to have a strong opinion one way or the other. I have heard through various news sources tonight that he is against the Roe vs. Wade decision. If that is the case, I am sure that there will be a loud outcry across the country from Pro Choice advocates regarding his nomination. I am likewise sure that if he is "out of the mainstream," that there will be a battle in the confirmation hearings.
I for one believe it is important that we continue to push for answers on the Plame outing. And we stop, ONLY when those answers are forthcoming.
I just love the Republican talking points that try to paint Rove, Master of Smear, as a victim of a smear campaign. It is becoming clearer every day, who smeared who, and it does not look good for the administration.
In public, he was masterminding President Bush's reelection and brushing off suggestions he had played any part in an unfolding drama: the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame. In private, the senior White House adviser was meeting, on five occasions, with federal prosecutors to tell what he knew about the matter.
The story he would tell prosecutors did not seem to square with the White House's denial that it had played any role in one of the most famous leaks since Watergate. Rove told prosecutors he had discussed Plame in passing with at least two reporters, including the columnist who eventually revealed her name and role in a secret mission that would raise questions about Bush's case for war against Iraq. At the same time, other White House officials were whispering about Plame, too.
It is now clear: There has been an element of pretense to the White House strategy of dealing with the Plame case since the earliest days of the saga. Revelations emerging slowly at first, and in a rapid cascade over the past several days, have made plain that many important pieces of the puzzle were not so mysterious to Rove and others inside the Bush administration. White House officials were aware of Plame and her husband's potentially damaging charge that Bush was "twisting" intelligence about Iraq's nuclear ambitions well before the episode evolved into Washington's latest scandal.
But as the story hurtles toward a conclusion sometime this year, there are several elements that remain uncertain. The most important -- did anyone commit a crime?
This article, based on interviews with lawyers and officials involved in the case, is an effort to step back from the rapidly unfolding events of recent weeks and clarify what is known about the Plame affair and what key factors are still obscure. Those people declined to be identified by name because special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked that closed-door proceedings not be discussed.
It all started in the early days of 2002 with Joseph C. Wilson IV, a flamboyant ex-diplomat who had left government for a more lucrative life of business consulting. Wilson was a veteran of the diplomatic wars of Iraq and Africa, so it seemed logical to some in the CIA, including his wife, Plame, to send him on a secret mission to Niger. Wilson's task was to determine if Iraqis had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Africa to build nuclear weapons.
To a Bush administration intent on selling the American public on war based on the threat posed by Iraq's weapons program, the yellowcake was no small deal. The White House would soon cite it as evidence that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons.
Wilson spent a week in Niger chatting with locals about the allegation, coming to the conclusion that the yellowcake charges were probably unfounded. He reported his findings to the agency -- but they never made their way to the White House.
The story might have ended there, but Bush, Vice President Cheney and other officials decided to make the yellowcake charges a central piece of the administration's evidence in arguing Hussein had designs on a dangerous program of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs. On the march to war, Bush officials rebuffed concerns from some at the CIA and included in his January 2003 State of the Union the now-famous 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Wilson was floored, then furious.
Wilson set out to discredit the charge, working largely through back channels at first to debunk it. He called friends inside the government and the media, and told the New York Times's Nicholas D. Kristof of his findings in Niger. Kristof aired them publicly for the first time in his May 6, 2003, column but did not name Wilson. This caught the attention of officials inside Cheney's office, as well as others involved in war planning, according to people who had talked with them.
The White House, hailing the lightning-quick toppling of Hussein, suddenly found itself on the defensive at home over its WMD claims. It was not just Wilson, but Democrats, reporters and a few former officials who were publicly wondering if Bush had led the nation to war based on flimsy, if not outright false, intelligence.
Administration officials set out to rebuff their critics, Wilson in particular. By the time The Washington Post published Wilson's allegation questioning the intelligence (but not citing his name) on the front page on June, 12, 2003 -- one month before the Plame affair was public -- Wilson was on the administration's radar screen.
The more Wilson pushed, the more the White House was determined to push back against a man they regarded as an irresponsible provocateur.
Read the whole thing, makes a facinating piece of reading...
The funny thing is that I don't even think the people spouting this crap believe it any more.
Comments from Conservative Commenter on a post yesterday referencing the ongoing furor over "Plamegate."
Wishful Thinking....
"Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, said the White House senior adviser Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was a C.I.A. officer, according to a first-person account in this week's issue of the magazine.
The account also stated that Mr. Rove said Mr. Wilson's wife had played a role in sending Mr. Wilson to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq.
The article, a description of Mr. Cooper's testimony last Wednesday to a federal grand jury trying to determine whether White House officials illegally disclosed the identity of a covert intelligence officer, offered the most detailed account yet of how a White House official purportedly did not merely confirm what a journalist knew but supplied that information.
Mr. Cooper said in his article that Mr. Rove did not mention the name of Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, or say that she was a covert officer. But, he wrote: "Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes.
"Is any of this a crime? Beats me."
The details in Mr. Cooper's article about his conversation with Mr. Rove are largely consistent with the broad outlines of Mr. Rove's grand jury testimony about the conversation as portrayed in news accounts.
But Mr. Cooper's article, a rare look inside the deliberations from a prime participant in this political and journalistic drama, is likely to add fuel to a political firestorm over whether there was a White House effort to disclose Ms. Wilson's identity as payback for her husband's criticism of the administration.
Mr. Rove's allies have said that he did not initiate any conversations with reporters and that he was merely warning them off what he said was faulty information. But White House statements over the past two years have left the impression that administration officials were not involved in identifying Ms. Wilson."
"The emerging GOP strategy -- devised by Mehlman and other Rove loyalists outside of the White House -- is to try to undermine those Democrats calling for Rove's ouster, play down Rove's role and wait for President Bush's forthcoming Supreme Court selection to drown out the controversy, according to several high-level Republicans."
The Washington Post
How any American, even Conservatives who supported and voted for this administration, can stomach this kind of lack of respect for the American People, is just incredible to me.
Mehlman, who said he talked with Rove several times in recent days, instructed (italics mine) GOP legislators, lobbyists and state officials to accuse Democrats of dirty politics and argue Rove was guilty of nothing more than discouraging a reporter from writing an inaccurate story, according to RNC talking points circulated yesterday.
"Republicans should stop holding back and go on the offense: fire enough bullets the other way until the Supreme Court overtakes" events, said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.).
I don't think the American people are going to be so easilly distracted this time.
KING: I want to move on to the debate and the controversy over Karl Rove and his involvement, alleged involvement, in the CIA leak investigation.
I want to begin by using a quote from Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, to set the parameters of our discussion. Let's listen, this is the White House press secretary on September 29, 2003, talking about the standards Mr. Bush sets for those who serve in his administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president has set high standards, the highest of standards, for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.
(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: Senator Hatch, you're an attorney. You're on the Intelligence Committee, the Judiciary Committee. You just refused to talk to me about whether there was even a plan, a potential covert plan, to get involved -- the United States -- involved in the Iraqi elections.
We now know that Karl Rove spoke to at least two reporters. And he continued a conversation that involved a CIA operative. Now, he says he broke no laws. In his training, should not a red flag have gone up the minute somebody mentioned CIA, said, "Can't talk to you about that; got to go"?
HATCH: He may not have even known that some thought she was a covert agent.
KING: She's a CIA -- this is a CIA operative.
HATCH: Be that as it may, I said from the beginning that I did not think she qualified as a covert agent. First of all, she hadn't been outside of the country in the last five years, and there's a real question whether she even deserved that status. Some out there are political and may have thought that she did, but not under the law does she deserve that status. So that shouldn't even be a question.
But secondly, Rove did not disclose her name. He did not do it with -- he did not say Joe Wilson's wife with malice. He certainly was not trying to break the law. And I don't think he even intended to. And he said it on background to this reporter. But he also gave everybody authority to, through the grand jury process on through, to use whatever he'd said.
So, you know, I think this is a tempest in the teapot. And you know why I think that? I think that a lot of Democrats and a lot of anti-Bush people, knowing that Karl Rove is one of the most effective people we've ever had in Washington, knowing he's an ebullient, straightforward, decent, honorable guy, they want to get rid of him. And they want to damage the president in the process.
And that's what this is all about. It isn't about covert action or the wife of Joe Wilson.
In fact, if you look that over, it's an unsavory affair from their standpoint, too, because Joe Wilson didn't tell the truth on a number of occasions. I was on the Intelligence Committee. We heard the information. The Intelligence Committee basically came out and said he was dishonest in some of the comments he made.
KING: Senator Biden, I want to let you into this conversation, I promise. I want you first to listen to a comment by your leader, Harry Reid, on the Senate floor just this past Friday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MINORITY LEADER: This is a cover-up, it's abuse of power, and it's a diversion. They have no interest, my friends, in coming clean and being honest with the American people. And the American people are seeing through this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Now, Senator Biden, the floor is now yours. But as you speak, I'd like to ask you, one, talk about what Senator Hatch said. And two, there's an old rule in politics that if your enemy's on fire, why throw more fuel on it? Just let your enemy burn. Why don't the Democrats just stay out of this? If Karl Rove has a problem, we'll find that out.
BIDEN: You know, we can look at this from a political standpoint, and we can look at this from a standpoint of what this is all about in fact.
Politically, it's above my pay grade to know what's the best way to deal with this if you're looking about political gain.
But practically, you know, you've got to ask yourself, is there no honor here? I mean, look, anybody who's ever made a mistake in this administration has never paid at all. Everyone who has been right in this administration has been fired.
You know, this is so much bigger than Karl Rove. This is about the question -- remember the underlying issue here is, whether or not Joe Wilson said things rightly or wrongly, he was right, flat right, that Niger was not selling yellow cake to Iraq, which was a justification for going to war.
Remember how that was being brought up at the same time that the vice president was on shows like this, on one Sunday when I was on, saying that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons.
This was all about -- this is all about whether or not those who had access to intelligence information in this administration used it appropriately, not just whether or not the agency was right.
But with regard to Karl Rove, I mean, one thing no one has ever argued, starting with John McCain and what happened in South Carolina, is that Karl Rove doesn't play the hardest hardball attack politics of anyone that I have known in my 34 years of elective office.
He's entitled to do that, but let's not turn this guy into the honorable, straight-shooting, you know, guy. This is the guy's job. The guy's job is to torpedo the opposition. He did it with John in South Carolina, and he tried to do it with Joe Wilson here.
And the real issue is, it's just unsavory. I mean, we should just get on with this. I think the president -- well, I'm not going to say anymore.
KING: We're out of time for this segment, but Senator Hatch wants to say something.
So I want to give you 15 seconds, sir, and Senator Biden 15 seconds, and we'll have to close this up. HATCH: Well, the fact of the matter is that the Intelligence Committee report said that what he did in Niger was not accurate. The Butler report, the British report, said that, if anything, you know, he was certainly not accurate, and that the matter of yellow cake was more serious than people have thought.
And last but not least, look, Karl Rove -- I've known him for all these years -- he was raised in Utah in part. And I can tell you one thing, he's a straight shooter, but he is a tough player, and he has to be to be at that level. And I think that's what's involved here. They want to get rid of him.
But, you know, they can't make a case, in my opinion, that this was a covert action person who was disclosed. And even if they could, it was on background that he gave this information, to try and get the reporter to not misreport. And last but not least, there certainly was no intent to disclose an agent at the CIA. And I think it's an over-reach for the Democrats to try and make that case.
KING: Last word, Senator Biden, quickly?
BIDEN: Middle-class people can smell a phony when they see it. This is phony.
HATCH: Well, he's not one of them, I'll tell you that.
KING: All right. Senator Biden of Delaware, Senator Hatch of Utah, gentlemen, we thank you. We wish we had more time.
You got to give it to the Republicans, they have studied their talking point(s). Problem is, they cant seem to decide which ones to use. But Hatch calling Karl Rove decent... That is a stretch, and a big one, even for Hatch. I wonder what the Mormon Church thinks about lying for political reasons? Hehe...Read on...
King goes on to literally take Ken Mehlman's Rove Defense appart:
KING: It is, to say the least, turning into a politically explosive summer here in Washington, with President Bush's deputy chief of staff and long-time friend and political adviser Karl Rove at the center of the drama.
Republicans are fiercely defending Rove against suggestions he leaked the identity of a CIA operative to journalists about two years ago.
Joining us now to talk about that and more is the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a close Rove friend, Ken Mehlman.
Welcome to "LATE EDITION."
KEN MEHLMAN, RNC CHAIRMAN: How are you?
KING: I'm doing fine. How are you?
MEHLMAN: Thanks for having me on.
KING: I want to begin first by, let's set the parameters of our discussion, first by listening to the president of the United States. This is back in September 2003, just as this investigation was getting under way. Let's listen to the president.
MEHLMAN: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it and will take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: That's the president from September 2003.
Now I want you, Ken Mehlman and our viewers, to listen to Matt Cooper, one of the reporters, of course, at the center of this investigation, Matt Cooper of Time magazine earlier today on CNN's "Reliable Sources."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEW COOPER, TIME: Before that conversation, I had never heard about anything about Joe Wilson's wife. After that conversation, I knew that she worked at the CIA and worked on WMD issues.
But as I made clear to the grand jury, I'm certain Rove never used her exact name and certainly never indicated she had a covert status.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Matt Cooper says Karl Rove never used her exact name, but the first he learned that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the CIA was from a conversation with Karl Rove.
You say Karl Rove has been vindicated by everything out in the last few days. How does that vindicate Karl Rove? MEHLMAN: Well, I think it starts with what you opened with: The president of the United States said we need an investigation, we need to see, was someone responsible for leaking classified information?
Pat Fitzgerald, a career prosecutor, is looking into it. The process is going forward. Karl Rove is cooperating fully and truthfully with the process.
And this past week, two things came out, both of which vindicate Karl and say he was not the source of a leak of classified information.
First, Bob Novak's story, according to Friday's newspaper, suggests that he had another source of the information, that Karl Rove found out, actually, from Bob Novak.
And secondly what Matt Cooper said was, Karl Rove told him, correctly, to watch out for some of what Joe Wilson was saying, and he told him that because much of what Joe Wilson has said has turned out to be misleading and false, but did not reveal her name or her undercover identity.
So, I think what we've seen this past week, unfortunately, has been a partisan smear campaign. And it's unprecedented. Look, politics gets tough in this town, particularly in the summer sometimes, but to have someone who is cooperating fully and truthfully with an investigation smeared by the Democrat leader in the Senate, by John Kerry, a candidate for president of the United States, a former first lady, to say this guy should lose his job and lose his security clearance is outrageous, and it's unprecedented.
KING: There is the political debate, but there also is the record. The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, coming into the briefing room on several occasions, not just saying nobody broke the law, but saying he specifically went to Karl Rove and he had nothing to do with this, nothing to do with this. Did the White House not have a responsibility, once it realized that Karl Rove had some involvement in this, perhaps nothing illegal -- we don't know that, and we should be very clear we do not know that, and, as you suggest, the record so far indicates nothing illegal. But the White House press secretary went before the American people and said, nothing to do with this.
When he learned that that was -- that some might say that's not true, did he not have a responsibility to fill out the record?
MEHLMAN: The most important thing the White House has a responsibility to do, in my opinion, is to cooperate fully and truthfully with this investigation and say and do nothing that could impede it.
That's what's so important about what Karl Rove is doing and what Scott McClellan is doing. Scott is a friend of mine. He's a smart guy, and he's an honest guy. He'd love to be out here, talking and explaining himself. But unlike some administrations, this White House is totally focused on cooperating truthfully, and it doesn't want to comment, because it worries it could undermine or in some way hinder the investigation.
KING: Well, it did comment, Ken Mehlman, a number of times, up until this point, when it decided that perhaps it was in its interests or perhaps it got another admonition from the prosecutor. But the president himself and Scott McClellan on a number of occasions have commented.
I want you to listen to this from Scott McClellan. This is October 7, 2003. Scott McClellan had said a number of things about Joe Wilson's story, because the White House says some of his story is simply not true. I want you to listen to what Scott McClellan says about setting the record straight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCLELLAN: Now, that is perfectly acceptable, when you're talking about setting the record straight. It's perfectly acceptable, when someone makes statements that aren't based on the facts, to correct that information. And this White House will vigorously work to set the record straight when facts -- when information is presented that is not based on the facts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Ken Mehlman, why, then, if the White House worked so vigorously to set the record straight on what it believed were inaccuracies presented by Joe Wilson, why did it not work so vigorously to set the record straight when they found out -- everyone at the White House had to turn in their e-mails that had anything to do with this investigation.
It turns out Karl Rove wrote an e-mail to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley, saying he had a conversation with Matt Cooper in which this subject came up.
Why didn't the White House come forward, Scott McClellan come forward and say, "I told you once he had nothing to do with this, nothing. Now I have learned he did have a conversation with a reporter. We believe that was completely appropriate, but I wanted to set the record straight vigorously"?
MEHLMAN: I think you're prejudging what may or may not have been seen by people within the White House.
Look, here's what we know. There are two different issues.
One is the issue of the things Joe Wilson said. Joe Wilson misled the American public about who sent him to Niger. He misled the American public about what he found when he was there.
He misled the American public about which documents he did or did not look at. He misled the American public about who at the White House or in the administration may or may not have seen his documents.
When asked to explain himself, he said he sometimes used literary flair. He then appeared in a big spread in Vanity Fair magazine. And talking about this, he said, "I'm wondering who's going to play me in a TV movie."
This is not somebody who's got a good record of being a source of accurate information.
KING: I think it is, to use the term...
MEHLMAN: But separate and apart from that, separate and apart from that, is the question of how should the White House respond when it's being investigated.
And I think it's actually quite admirable and not in its immediate interest, and certainly not in its political interest, that this White House, rather than defend itself, says, "We're not going to comment so this investigation can go forward, and so that nobody can say..."
KING: But that is a selective decision, Ken Mehlman, the timing of the White House deciding it won't comment anymore.
MEHLMAN: Certainly right now it would be in the White House's interest to comment.
KING: To use a term overused in this investigation, it is perhaps fair game for you to say everything you're saying about Joe Wilson, to question his story. You have that right; you certainly do.
My point is you have a man who works for a president who promised to restore honesty and integrity to Washington, who promised to have a higher standard than the administration he succeeded, who came into the briefing room and said Karl Rove has absolutely nothing to do with this.
He then does not have an obligation to come back into the room and say, "Look, we are still confident. No laws were broken. Everything we did was appropriate. We had every right to rebut what we believe to be inaccurate information. But I wanted to be clear with you, because I said 'absolutely nothing,' Karl Rove did have a role."
MEHLMAN: The ultimate definition of that higher standard we're talking about is the fact that Scott McClellan is not out there defending himself. Again, this is an honest man, he's a good man, he's a smart man. He'd love to be out defending himself.
KING: But he has...
MEHLMAN: Listen, the president appoints the attorney general who is responsible for overseeing a special prosecutor. And the fact they're not commenting is only because they believe it could impede the investigation or create an appearance of impropriety. What you are mentioning, the fact that Scott doesn't defend himself, the fact that they allow the other side to be out there with these smears and not respond to these smears, is exactly what we're talking about when we say the higher standard.
And the fact we're seeing this on the other side, this kind of a smearing campaign, the fact they're trying to pre-judge, makes you first question if they don't have confidence in this process and in Mr. Fitzgerald. And second of all, what it shows, I think, is they're trying to have short-term political gain and smear a good man. And it's wrong, and they should apologize for it.
KING: I want to note for the record, since you are voicing so much confidence in the special prosecutor, that the White House initially resisted a special prosecutor and thought the Justice Department under General Ashcroft should handle this investigation.
But let me -- we talk about loyalty. And you call Scott McClellan a good man. I agree with you. A little dangerous for me. I'm supposed to be objective here.
(LAUGHTER)
He is a good guy. He has one of the toughest jobs in Washington. I've been in that briefing room during questions like this in this administration, questions like this in the Clinton administration.
He has, if you watch, fairly or unfairly, suffered some damage in that room. His credibility is at question with the people who cover the president every day because of this.
So you're essentially saying that it is a fair price, Scott McClellan, a man who has been loyal to this president back to his days as governor of Texas, his credibility is a fair price to defend Karl Rove?
MEHLMAN: What I'm saying is that Scott McClellan and Karl Rove and George W. Bush are less worried about personal credibility than they are about a process. They want to get to the bottom of this. They want to make sure that justice gets done.
And the way justice gets done is not to have the White House and president making comments from the podium about an investigation of the White House.
And so I think what he is doing is, frankly, very admirable, and I think the fact that he's willing to put himself second and put the process first is exactly what we talk about when we say somebody who's coming to Washington to serve rather than worry about themselves.
KING: I want to move on to another issue, but I want to button it up with this then. Let me accept for the sake of this conversation that you need to wait because of the sensitivity of all this. Do you think that Karl Rove needs to sit down with reporters and have a free- for-all and answer all these questions once it's over, once the special prosecutor says, "I'm done, going home"? MEHLMAN: Look, I'm an attorney, and the way I've approached this is that it's always wrong to prejudge how an investigation's going to come out. And it's always wrong for us to say this one ought to do this or that one ought to do that when the investigation (inaudible).
Let's let the process move forward. Let's see what happens. Let's see what comes out. And let's please allow the other side, including the leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate, including the former Democrat nominee for president last time, including the former first lady of the United States, to not be out there smearing and trashing people and showing a lack of confidence in an investigation. That is outrageous. It is wrong.
There was a terrible overreach this week. And it's time that people put partisanship second and follow the example the White House is showing, which is full cooperation and allowing Mr. Fitzgerald to do his job
.
What is amazing to me is the continuing attempts to "victimize Karl Rove." Few people, even some of the hard core political bloggers from the Right, will go so far as to call Rove decent. As for the message... It has become some convuluted that I am not even sure they know what defense to mount at this point. The BS about Plame not being a covert operative? If she wasnt, why did the CIA demand an investigation. Not using her name? That is probably the most dissengenous argument of all.
My view? This weeks Spin attempts have been a miserable failure...
Ken Melman of the RNC just got exposed on Late Edition for the hypocrisy of the Administrations position, and inconsistencies in the Spin. Transcripts available later today.
In the interim, Matt Cooper of Time Magazine, appeared on Reliable Sources this morning. After viewing the show, or reading the transcripts below, it is clear that Rove was the one engaged in a smear campaign, AND that he exposed Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA operative.
Looks like the Republican celebrations over the last couple of days were premature and highly optimistic, considering the facts.
It will be interesting to see if there is an adjustment to the spin based on today's events. Melman did NOT do well today...
I'm Howard Kurtz. Ahead, a special interview on the subject with Bob Woodward.
But first, Judith Miller of "The New York Times" remains behind bars for refusing to testify in the CIA leak case involving Valerie Plame. And my first guest came within hours of joining her in jail.
The disclosure that White House adviser Karl Rove served as a source for "Time" magazine's Matt Cooper, as well as for columnist and CNN commentator Robert Novak, has boosted the story into the media stratosphere this week, with Rove on the covers of both "Time" and "Newsweek" just out this morning.
And the disclosure forced White House spokesman Scott McClellan to abandon his earlier denials that Rove was in any way involved. Let's look at McClellan then and now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It is totally ridiculous. I've known Karl -- I've known -- I've known Karl for a long time, and I didn't even need to go ask Karl, because I know the kind of person that he is.
Our policy continues to be that we're not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: And joining me now in his first cable news interview since testifying before a grand jury in the Plame case on Wednesday is Matthew Cooper, "Time's" White House correspondent. Welcome.
MATT COOPER, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Hey, thanks, Howie.
KURTZ: You laid it all out in this week's issue of "Time" magazine. "Time," of course, owned by CNN's parent company, Time Warner.
Now, I want to go back to last week. Hours before you were expecting to go to jail -- you'd left home, you've said good-bye to your 6-year-old son -- you got a last-minute waiver from Karl Rove of your pledge of confidentiality about your conversation. How did you feel when that news came through?
COOPER: Well, I felt a good deal of relief. I didn't -- you know, I was never looking forward to going to jail, and I think, you know, I felt comfortable that the source can -- had released me from the pledge.
You know, my principle throughout this two-year court battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and even after "Time" magazine, over my objections, handed over my notes and e-mails and outed my source, my principle had always been, only the source can relieve me of this obligation.
(CROSSTALK)
KURTZ: ... the so-called blanket waiver, where Rove and other White House officials say, any reporter who dealt with me on this can go ahead and testify. But you say that's not voluntary? Is it any more voluntary to get a last-minute waiver negotiated through lawyers when you're about to go off and be in jail?
COOPER: Well, I think things have changed significantly, Howie. For two years, under the advice of my lawyers and also "Time" editors, I didn't approach Rove about any kind of waiver. They thought it was inappropriate, and might be, you know, lead to legal issues. In any event...
KURTZ: You might have to testify about any conversations you had with him?
COOPER: Yes, exactly.
KURTZ: Right.
COOPER: Now, that morning in "The Wall Street Journal," the same morning I thought I was going off to jail, my lawyer saw a quote from Mr. Rove's lawyer that said, Karl waives all confidentiality about these conversations. If Matt Cooper's going to jail, he's not going to jail for Karl Rove.
We took that as a kind of invitation. My lawyer contacted his lawyer, and over the next couple of hours, they worked out an agreement, which is, you know, specific to me, it was run by Karl Rove, it has signatures. And it gives me a specific waiver for conversations with me in July 2003. That had a degree of specificity and personalness to me that I was comfortable enough accepting.
KURTZ: Can you understand why there seems to be relatively little public sympathy for the journalists involved in this case -- you, Judith Miller -- because you are seen -- you were seen as protecting not whistle-blowing sources, not sources uncovering wrongdoing, but sources who appeared to be doing partisan work, trying to spread the word about Joe Wilson, a prominent administration critic, and saying that his wife, Valerie Plame, had been a covert operative for the CIA?
COOPER: Yeah. I can understand that, I'd say a couple of things to that. First, I don't think we as journalists can sort of pick and choose which sources and which obligations we're going to honor, and say, well, this source doesn't seem to have good motives, I'm not going to take his. I think even as we saw in Deep Throat, Mark Felt, who emerged as Deep Throat, had his own motives, and he had been involved in things that were not so great too. But you know, I think you have to honor your pledge. And my principle all along had been that no court, no corporation could break that pledge from me, but you know, if the source wanted it waived, I would testify.
KURTZ: Turning now to your grand jury testimony on Wednesday. You recalled that conversation back in 2003 with Karl Rove. You were new to the beat as a White House correspondent. He gave you kind of a terse warning about Wilson. What did he say to you?
COOPER: Yeah. Well, in fact, to just put it in context, there was a big hullabaloo that week about the president's State of the Union address and in it, which he had...
KURTZ: The 16 words about...
COOPER: Right, the 16 words...
KURTZ: ... about uranium...
COOPER: ... about Saddam Hussein trying to get uranium in Africa to make nuclear weapons. The White House that week said it may be true, but it was not checked out well enough to merit it being in the State of the Union address. So there was a big controversy on that. And I called Rove with that on my mind.
And he did indeed give me a warning, saying don't get too far out on Wilson, which I took to mean don't lionize Wilson, don't believe everything you hear about Wilson.
KURTZ: Now, you also say, let's read from the article, put it up on the screen -- "This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife. Rove never once indicated to me that she had any kind of covert status."
What was his tone? Did you have the impression he was trying to disparage or undermine Joe Wilson, to influence the tone of your article?
COOPER: I thought it was disparaging towards Wilson. I thought it was sort of guiding and spoken with great confidence. And as I said, before the -- in "Time" this week, as I said -- and I told the grand jury -- before that conversation, I had never heard about anything about Joe Wilson's wife. After that conversation, I knew that she worked at the CIA, and worked on WMD issues. But as I made clear to the grand jury, I'm certain Rove never used her exact name and certainly never indicated she had a covert status.
KURTZ: But at the end of that conversation, he said something that was a little bit cryptic. What was that?
COOPER: Well, he said, "I've already said too much."
KURTZ: What do you think he meant?
COOPER: Well, at the time I thought, well, maybe he meant he had been indiscrete and had said something important. Later I thought, well, maybe it was actually more benign, like "I've said too much, I've got to get to a meeting."
So I don't really know what he meant, but I do know the memory of that line has stayed with me for a couple of years now.
KURTZ: A lot of people have picked up on your description in the memos to your bureau chief of that conversation -- "It was on double super secret background." What did that mean?
COOPER: Well, Howie, I can now reveal that it was a joke. Karl Rove, when we had the conversation, wanted it to be on deep background, which I took to mean I could use the material but not quote it directly, and certainly not attribute it, that I had to protect the identity of my source. When I wrote the note to my bureau chief, just moments after the conversation with Rove, in a slightly playful way, I echoed the line in the movie "Animal House," where John Belushi's wild fraternity is put on double secret probation. So it was a little bit of humor, and...
KURTZ: You also testified -- actually, you testified last year about your conversation with Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. You had repeated what you heard from Rove about Wilson's wife working for the CIA, and what did Libby say?
COOPER: He said words to the effect of, yeah, I've heard that, too.
KURTZ: OK. I am told you had a third administration source, a policy person in Africa. Did the grand jury ask you about anyone else you talked to on this?
COOPER: Well, I don't want to get into all the sources for this article. I'll just say that what I told the grand jury is in "Time" this week, and anything I talked about in the grand jury I had a waiver for.
KURTZ: OK. Now, turning now to just days before you got this last-minute waiver...
COOPER: Yeah, sure.
KURTZ: ... we just talked about, from Karl Rove, and as you referenced earlier, Time, Inc. editor in chief Norman Pearlstine made the decision to turn over your notes and e-mails -- or at least your e-mails -- after trying to get the Supreme Court to hear the case, and he says that journalists are not above the law.
You objected to that decision. Did you feel that Time, Inc. -- you've been fighting for two years, risking jail -- had just pulled the rug out from under you?
COOPER: Well, I thought Time, Inc. had made the wrong decision. I thought Norm Pearlstine, the head of all the "Time" magazines, had done it in a thoughtful and honorable way, but I really disagreed with it, because I thought we were fighting for an important principle and I thought there would be a lot of fallout from handing over the notes. And I think events have borne that out.
KURTZ: You must have been upset.
COOPER: Well, I was, absolutely. And, you know, but I also, you know, respected the way he made the decision. But I was upset. I disagreed with it, and I've been saying so ever since.
KURTZ: Now, at that point, before this waiver from Rove, your wife, Mandy Grunwald, told me that your friends and even your lawyers said, you would now be crazy to go to jail, because they've got the notes. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, knows who your sources are, and even was threatening through your lawyer to charge you with criminal contempt, which meant you could have spent up to a year in jail or even more. Why at that point were you still willing to go to jail, after "Time" had surrendered basically your sources?
COOPER: Well, you're exactly right, Howie. A lot of people, including a lot of journalists, said to me, look, the confidence has been broken. You can't protect a source who has been outed essentially by your employer, by the handing over of these notes and e-mails.
I considered that, but I thought, in the end, that only the source could release me from my obligation, that a court couldn't do it, a corporation couldn't do it, that really I needed to get it personally from the source. And frankly, the idea of getting it from the source was not on my mind until that morning. I mean, I just assumed I was going to jail and I had resigned myself to that.
KURTZ: So even though Pat Fitzgerald knew at this point you talked to Rove, you talked to Libby, he had the notes, he had the e- mails, you still felt that you needed a personal reassurance in this case from Karl Rove, otherwise you were going to spend some time behind bars?
COOPER: Yeah. I mean, I wasn't even looking for the personal reassurance until that morning, when my lawyer called me, reading this quote from Rove's lawyer, essentially inviting us to go and, you know, seek a waiver. But you know, until then, I had basically resigned myself that I was going to have to do some time.
KURTZ: Now, unlike "Time," "The New York Times" has stood firm in this case. Judith Miller now finishing her second week in an Alexandria jail. I asked "The Times" executive editor Bill Keller about the impact of what "Time" did and what "The New York Times" was doing. Let's take a look at that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL KELLER, "NEW YORK TIMES" EXECUTIVE EDITOR: I imagine, you know, that the next occasion that Matt Cooper is in talking to a confidential source of his and promises to, you know, not to betray a person's identity, I can imagine that source saying, sure, I trust Matt Cooper, but do I trust "Time" magazine?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Are you worried about that?
COOPER: Well, let me just correct the way you set that up a little bit, because the situations aren't entirely analogous. Judith Miller was under subpoena, but "The New York Times" was never under subpoena, too. So they, you know, they...
KURTZ: They didn't face the same decision as a corporation.
COOPER: They didn't face the same decision as "Time."
KURTZ: But Keller's point is that next time you've got a source, look, I'll protect you, you've got to tell me this sensitive information, they may trust you but they may not trust "Time."
COOPER: Well, you know, that's possible as a fallout from this decision. I think, you know, if you look at the record that "Time" did take it all the way to the Supreme Court, that this was, you know, kind of an anomalous case, to say the least...
KURTZ: But two other "Time" correspondents, as you know, brought some e-mails from their sources to a meeting with Norm Pearlstine, the sources saying we don't know if we can cooperate with "Time" in the future.
COOPER: Well, this is one of the things I was concerned about when I argued for, you know, holding out, because I thought that there might be fallout like this. But you know, I think, you know, I think "Time" reporters themselves will take it upon themselves to put less in e-mail, you know, to put less in electronic form that the company owns and protect things better. And I think, you know, "Time" will continue to rely on confidential sources. And I think their wariness will ease with time, at least I hope so.
KURTZ: Matt Cooper, you have had a two-year battle on this. I'm sure it's been very draining. You've testified now before the grand jury. You've avoided going to jail, which looked like a very real prospect. How do you cover the White House now? Can you talk to Karl Rove? Can you talk to Lewis Libby? Can you have conversations with them that aren't on the record?
COOPER: Well, I've got to step back and see about all that after all this. It's been a weird two years. You know, I'm used to being a reporter and not in front of microphones and such, and I'd like to get back to that. And that's why this week, after talking to the grand jury, I felt very comfortable getting back into the role of reporter, and simply, since grand jury rules don't prohibit me from telling my story, I just told the readers of "Time" what I told the grand jury, and hopefully that will put this chapter behind me.
KURTZ: Well, we appreciate you talking to us, and not on double super secret background.
COOPER: Never for you, Howie.
KURTZ: Matt Cooper, thanks very much for joining us.
This post has been bumped by the stupidity and racism of another blogger, who I think should be run out of the blogsphere!
"I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. they are in my view the most insidious of traitors."
George Herbert Walker Bush
41st President of the United States
"If there is a Leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is."
George W. Bush
When first questioned about the Plame Leak
Well Mr. President, you KNOW now who it was... What are you going to do about it?
Lefty Blogs continue to function on logic, while the Conservasphere madly spins whatever is dished to try and excuse Rove's actions. I found this little gem today via Technorati:
THE SMELL TEST Consider, for a moment, the tactics of the GOP propaganda machine over the last several days.
The slime operation began on Monday: Joe Wilson was smeared, environmental factors were blamed, and amazingly, Karl Rove was held up as some kind of hero for his role in outing Valerie Plame:
Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize.
But in the face of this full court press, interest in the story continued to build. So late Thursday, a strange thing happened. The Republican talking points were shelved.
A new line emerged: Rove hadn't (heroically) exposed Plame after all. In fact he had nothing to do with her outing. Instead, he'd learned about her from an unnamed media source--one whose identity he's since forgotten. Only after this initial heads-up did he learn Plame's name--in a conversation with columnist Robert Novak.
That this storyline contradicted earlier pronouncements was unimportant. That it failed to exculpate Rove for his role in spreading classified information was beside the point. The key thing was that it cast Rove in the role of inadvertent accomplice rather than evil mastermind--a shift that would be sure to turn down the heat on the story.
(That the New York Times was willing to swallow this spin and serve it up as an A1 scoop--sourced only to a single "person [who] discussed the matter in the belief that Mr. Rove was truthful" was, I suppose, chalked up by the Bushies to old fashioned good luck.)
Great post... Read the whole thing. It will be interesting to see if the pressure continues, what the next spin will be. My personal opinion... It's getting kind of silly at this point. Rove may or may not be guilty of committing a crime. What is clear is that he was up to his usual dirty tricks, and this is the essence I think of the public outrage.
It is also pretty clear, at least to me... That there was a coverup involved in all this. And there continues to be one. The only real surprise to me, and I am not sure why... Is that these people actually believe that the American People are so stupid.
Read the following OP/ED Piece by Paul Krugman, it pretty much says it all.
Karl Rove's America
By PAUL KRUGMAN
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.
Despite despertate attempts to spin Rove free of his dirty doings, it appears more and more that the "chickens have come home to roost."
Every attempt to spin this, to excuse it... Only makes it worse.
Editor and Publisher Today:
(July 15, 2005) - Today, July 15, 2005, may go down in history as the day when what has previously been known as the "Plame Affair" or "the CIA leak scandal" or even, lately "Miller/Cooper/Rove," finally gets that most coveted of scandal slugs: Plamegate.
And with the blockbuster reports today from The New York Times, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post detailing Karl Rove's conversation with Robert Novak, six days before he wrote his fateful outing column, we are suddenly into "what-did-the-president-know-and-when-did-he-know-it" territory.
Plamegate. It's about time. Think about it: We had a Liddy then and a Libby now. Though we should be happy that in 1972 Democratic headquarters was not located in a different, nearby, Washington, D.C. complex. Then we might have to call it PlameHoJo.
The New York Times' new duo on this case -- David Johnston and Richard Stevenson -- raised the specter of Watergate in one paragraph today when they noted that the latest news puts front and center the issue the White House "has never addressed": The president's knowledge of any of this.
If the Times pair stay on the case, will they be the new Woodward & Bernstein? Somehow Johnston & Stevenson doesn't have quite the same ring to it, though it is early, and other candidates may apply (Allen & Leonnig? Gannon & Guckert?).
And as in 1972 and 1973, a story that seemed fairly well contained, and threatening to become old hat, suddenly may spread, like an octopus, as testimony gets leaked, the press wakes from its torpor, and allegations appear that the White House may have been engaged in some kind of "coverup" as bad as the possible crime at the center of he story.
It's far from proven so far, but: Is there a cancer on the presidency?
These Watergate links may seem like stretching the point, but you will have to forgive me: In a column about Rove today, John Dean, Mr. Cancer on the President himself, cites a recent E&P column on the case.
Who knows, we may even be ready for a re-make of one old early 1970s hit under a new title: "The Night They Rove Old Dubya Down."
For in the 2000s, everything old is new again, or is it vice versa? Two years ago, when I was one of the first journalists to predict that the conflict in Iraq could become another Vietnam, I was laughed at. The analogy was never precise, and still isn't, yet: who is laughing now? Certainly not Messrs. Bush, Rumsfeld, or Cheney, or the tens of thousands of U.S. troops still languishing over there, not to mention their dead comrades, and the deceased Iraqis.
In any event, the next few weeks should be riveting. Now that we know that Rove was one of Novak's sources, and that he had two of them, surely speculation will center on the office of Vice President Cheney and his aide "Scooter" Libby. What kind of name is "Scooter" anyway?
But more than anything, the question that will be asked today and this weekend is: What did the president know etc.?
Did Rove fill him in on his conversations with Novak and Cooper (and possibly others) a long time back? If he did and the president did nothing, should that be taken as a sign of approval, and what would that mean? If Rove didn't tell him, and this is all news to Bush, does that deserve a prompt dismissal? Or is it possible the entire smear-Wilson campaign originated in the Oval House, or the veep's chambers?
What is interesting is the almost palatable desperation in the air in the Conservative Blogsphere. There is a sense of everyone running around trying to come up with something... ANYTHING, to make this story go away. To make it irrelevant. First there was splitting hairs over whether Rove used her name... (Maribell Anderson is David Anderson's wife guys), then it was all Wilson's fault. He lied after all. Wilson effectively DESTROYED that meme yesterday. Now they desperately attempt to define Plame's Secret Agent Credentials and Status. (I would think that logic would dictate accepting the CIA's own classification of their agent. And one would assume that since they asked for this investigation, they considered her status protected... Ya think...
In the meantime, the plot thickens, as Bob Novak is suspected of ratting out other journalist, perhaps to save his own hide. As I said earlier today, it is odd that Novak is not in jail...
But the bottom line is clear... No amount of spin will eliminate the stench emanating from Washington at the moment, nor will it seemingly quell the thirst of a press that suddenly has red meat, or stem to massive bleeding that Bush's public perception is taking right now. Viva Plamegate.
Okay, so the RightSphere is in a mid orgasmic frenzy today over the news that members of the press allegedly told Rove about Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation...
Not that logic is the strong suit of some on the Right, but I have two questions.
1. If the story is true and someone from the Press first told Rove about Plame, isn't it just as bad to confirm it to another member of the Press? I would think that the DOUBLE SUPER SECRET thing to do in such cases would be to say, "I cant discuss that as it is an issue of National Security," but what the hell do I know. I am just a gringo trying to make a buck in Latin America.
2. If the story makes what Rove did okay, why did it take the White House a WEEK of getting hammered to come up with this latest excuse?
In this post...
But I have to emphasize that THIS VIDEO, for many of us, perhaps based on the most recent polls on confidence in the President, the majority of us, gets right to the heart of the matter on Rove.
Carefully watch what they say, because ambiguity is the name of the game
On 9/27/04, I had had it with the way the Bush administration said what they meant, but only in a language where those who spoke it with them would understand it clearly. It's hard to explain, but read part of my post first.
That wascally elusive thing called the Truth
While attempting to read an article in my Sunday paper called "Bush's faith," I was assaulted with this paragraph:
Before President Bush addressed a Knights of Columbus convention last month in Dallas, the audience of 2,500 conservative Catholics watched a documentary film about a woman who chose to die rather than end a pregnancy that threatened her life. Then the president gave a speech in which he called Pope John Paul II "a true hero of our time" and used the pope's phrase "culture of life" three times.
Unfortunately, this was the first paragraph. I honestly tried to read the rest of the article with a clear and open mind, but I couldn't finish it. After starting out with such a shocking introduction paragraph where the president gives a nod of approval to the needless death of an innocent woman and then shows his support for a man who harbors a culture of child molestation, the author then tries to say that nobody knows if President Bush's religious beliefs are moderate or hardline and, in fact, nobody really knows what Bush believes.
Perhaps the author should read his first paragraph over again. I think he stated pretty clearly the religious beliefs of this president in that passage before ruining his article by questioning whether or not Bush believes all abortions should be illegal, what his stance on evolution is, etc. Before the pungent stench of bullshit caused me to cease reading, I remember the author noted that Bush's speechwriters are very careful in choosing what the president says about his personal religious beliefs, purposely leaving his stances as ambiguous because, I assume, they fear that his beliefs could be used against him in a political campaign.
I thought of this post today because of the comments from Karl Rove, aired in this Daily Show segment, were fresh on my mind. How Karl Rove told a report that he didn't give any reporter Valarie Plame's name. He never said that he didn't identify her, he just said that he didn't give out her name. A non-deinal deinal, if you will. So, of course, the Republican who will defend this administration until it's dying dies, no matter what actions it commits, will point to Rove's comments and say, "See? He never lied!"
Just like the Republicans will swear up and down that Bush never said "Mission Accomplished" when he made his speech in 2003 announcing an end to major combat operations in Iraq. The world's largest banner with the words "MISSION ACCOMPISHED" superimposed over the US flag was erected behind Bush while he made his speech, but since he didn't say it, then we can't attribute those words to him. So says the Right.
And just like in that 9/27/04 article I found during the campaign, the reporter couldn't say that Bush was for or against abortion. Despite the fact that his party's political has a plank which says that abortion should be criminalized via a Constitutional amendment, and despite the fact that he allowed a movie glorifying a mother's decision to die during child birth rather then get an abortion play before he spoke to an anti-choice gathering. After all this, the reporter still couldn't go on the record and say that Bush was against abortion since, well, he didn't come right out and say it.
This is getting ridiculous. It's about time that the media refuses to take the Bush administration at their word. Yes or no questions, as Jesse prescribed on Loaded Mouth a couple days ago. Mr. Rove, did you talk with any reports about Valarie Plame before Robert Novak's column outing her went to press on 7/14/03, yes or no? Mr. Rove, did you identify Valarie Plame to any reporters you talked to, yes or no?
No more excuses. No more non-deinal deinals. It's time for the press to do it's job and force this administration to tell the country what it means and stop being so ambiguous.
Seeing that the Joe Wilson spin did not work, and may have in fact backfired, the new story is that the Media did it!
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Chief presidential adviser Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of a CIA officer but that he originally learned about the operative from the news media and not government sources, according to a person briefed on the testimony.
The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.
Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame's identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story.
The conversation eventually turned to Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration's use of faulty intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the person said.
Rove testified that Novak told him he planned to report in a weekend column that Plame had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Niger, according to the source.
Novak's column, citing two Bush administration officials, appeared six days later, touching off a political firestorm and leading to a federal criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's identity. That probe has ensnared presidential aides and reporters in a two-year legal battle.
Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson's wife from another member of the news media but he could not recall which reporter had told him about it first, the person said.
or perhaps it's the OLD SPIN, or just the lie told to Investigators. The question I have right now is, WHY isn't Bob Novak in jail?
I caught this interview this afternoon on CNN. This is the CNN Transcript. Read it.
BLITZER: We're joined here in Washington by Ambassador Joe Wilson.
Mr. Ambassador, welcome back to CNN.
JOE WILSON, FORMER AMBASSADOR: Nice to be with you, Wolf.
BLITZER: You saw this RNC, Republican National Committee, briefing paper that has been released today: Joe Wilson's top worst inaccuracies and misstatements. Basically, they accuse you of lying on a bunch of various issues related to this case. We're going to go through some of them.
But what do you make of the effort to smear you right now?
WILSON: Well, it strikes me that it's typical of a Rove-type operation. "Slime and defend" is what it's been called in the past.
But the fact of the matter is, of course, that this is not a Joe Wilson or Valerie Wilson issue. This is an issue of whether or not somebody leaked classified information to the press, who then published it, thereby putting covert operations and a covert officer at some risk.
BLITZER: All right. Let's go through some of the charges that have been made against you. For example, on Tuesday I interviewed Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican Party, and he said that -- let me reed to you specifically what he said:
"I think, according to what we learned this past weekend, I think what Karl Rove said turned out to be right. Joe Wilson's story was not accurate. It was based on a false premise and he tried to discourage the writing of an inaccurate story based on the false premise," that false premise being that Vice President Dick Cheney asked you to go to Niger to investigate these charges of enriched uranium shipments going to Iraq.
WILSON: Well, of course, if you look back at the original article I wrote, I said it was the Vice President's Office who expressed an interest in following up on this particular matter.
The vice president himself later said that he himself had asked about it. I've never said it was the vice president who sent me. It's clear in the article and, indeed, it's clear in an interview that you did with me last year. And if you run the tape on that, you'll see that what the statement that they used was chopped out of the...
BLITZER: But, basically, you still hold to the notion that the whole idea of sending someone to Niger originated in the Vice President's Office?
WILSON: No, no, no, no, no. The idea of sending someone to Niger originated in response to a request from the Office of the Vice President. That's how I was briefed. That required an answer.
The decision was made by the operations people at the CIA, after a meeting that I had with the analytical community, to ask me if I would go and help answer some of the questions that still remained so that we would better understand the situation.
And let me also say that raising the question was perfectly legitimate. Indeed, it was an important question to raise. The vice president would have been derelict in not raising it.
Had, in fact, there been evidence of uranium sales from Niger to Iraq, it would have demonstrated conclusively that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. The fact that there wasn't evidence to that effect should have reassured the U.S. government that, at least on this side, there was no evidence.
BLITZER: All right. So at least you agree -- and I know you have in the past as well -- that the vice president never directly asked you to go or asked that anyone go, namely his staff just wanted some answers and it was the CIA's decision to then send -- dispatch -- someone to try to get some firsthand information?
WILSON: That's correct. And I've said that in my op-ed, and I've said it in an interview here, and I've said it every time since.
BLITZER: Now, the Senate Intelligence Committee report, as you well know, suggested this and I'll read to you what they say: "Interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip" -- Counterproliferation Division over at the CIA.
And you've denied that your wife was the one who came up with the idea to send you
WILSON: It's not so much that I've denied it. It was the CIA itself that denied it a week after the Novak article came out, well before I was ever in a position to acknowledge that my wife worked for the CIA.
And indeed, regrettably, the staff at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence did not call the CIA to find out their official position. But a year before, Newsday reporters, Knut Royce and Tim Phelps did, and this is what the CIA told them:
"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.
"They -- the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story -- "were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising. There are people elsewhere in the government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up for some reason. I can't figure out who it would be."
BLITZER: You wrote a separate letter, which we've read, to the chairman, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, making these points.
Did you ever get a response to them? Because their conclusion was very hard and fast, that it was your wife who came up with the idea.
WILSON: One of the things I asked them to do was go out and re- interview an officer who they had quoted as saying that she had dropped my name into the hat or she had suggested me. He went to see her and said that he had not said that and he wished for an opportunity to correct the record. As far as I know, they never did.
But the response to your direct question...
BLITZER: What would have been so bad if your wife would have recommended you to go to Niger for this investigation.
WILSON: Of course, from my perspective, it wouldn't have been bad at all. This was a legitimate request to answer a national security question. I was well qualified to do so. Indeed as the Senate Select Committee report says, I had made a trip in 1999 to Niger to look into other uranium-related matters, so I was well known to the CIA.
BLITZER: I want you to take a breath, because we're going to take a breath ourselves. We're going to take a quick break. We have more questions to ask Ambassador Joe Wilson. He's sticking around. Please stay with us.
Also coming up, the man who played a major role in planning the Iraq War, the undersecretary of defense. Doug Feith, he is standing by as well. He'll be my guest.
And later, closing in on al Qaeda in Iraq. Coalition forces say they've nabbed two key aides to Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
And rescued from the rubble. Firefighters dig brick by brick by brick to save a baby trapped when a wall collapses. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Welcome back.
And we're back with the former U.S. ambassador, Joe Wilson. His wife is the former CIA operative whose name was linked to reporters, possibly illegally.
Let's talk a little bit about the politics of this. On September 30th, 2003, you were quoted in The Washington Post as saying, "at the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."
That's almost two years ago you were saying Karl Rove should be arrested. On the basis of what were you saying it then?
WILSON: Well, it was a statement that I'd made at a meeting in Seattle. And as my wife later told me, she thought I'd gone a little over the top, so I took the handcuffs off. But I believed then and I believe now that -- and I know that Karl Rove was, in fact, engaged in pushing the Novak story, including calling a reporter and saying, "Wilson's wife is fair game."
I find that to be an outrageous abuse of power from a senior White House official, certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House. In handcuffs? Probably not. Out of handcuffs? Certainly.
BLITZER: But you don't want to name that reporter who told you that?
WILSON: It was Chris Matthews of "Hardball."
BLITZER: He said that he had spoken with...
WILSON: He called me up as soon as he got off the phone. He called me up and he said, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says your wife is fair game."
BLITZER: Do you believe that Karl Rove committed a crime?
WILSON: I don't know. That's in the hands of the special counsel. Clearly, the CIA, in referring it to the Justice Department, believed that a possible crime needed to be investigated. And that is what set off the investigation and that is where we are now.
Two years later, after the president had said he wanted everybody to cooperate with the Justice Department investigation, we've had to go up to the Supreme Court to get the release of the confidentiality waiver for a journalist. We've got one journalist who has been through agony before he was released and we have another journalist languishing in jail. It is time for those sources to step forward and accept responsibility for what they've said to these journalists.
BLITZER: You know, you're being accused of being a political hack, a Democrat, a supporter of John Kerry, someone who is simply seeking to score political points.
WILSON: Well, let me tell you, I reserve the right to participate fully in the selection of my country's leaders. That's a right that every American has.
Let me make a couple of points.
One, I was a George Herbert Walker Bush ambassador.
Two, I made my trip out to Niger because I was asked to investigate a national security matter.
Three, my trip out to Niger took place eight months before I ever spoke out on the Iraq war.
And four, when I did speak out, in an article in October of 2002, I acknowledged that weapons of mass destruction were the thereat. I offered my views based on my two and a half years in Iraq, including as charge d'affaires in Baghdad during the first gulf war.
And as a consequence of the article I wrote, I received a letter from the first President Bush. Let me just read part of it to you, if I may.
BLITZER: This was a letter you received when?
WILSON: I received this on October 25th, 2002, at the very beginning of the serious debate on what U.S. policy toward Iraq should be, eight months after I made a trip to Niger, and eight months before my wife's identity was compromised.
He says, "Dear Joe: I read your fascinating article, and I agree with a lot of it. I am not sure Saddam Hussein will back down in the face of this latest challenge, but I certainly hope he will. Further, let me conclude by saying thank you very much for your letter. Further, I have great respect for you and for your service to our country. I hope you know that. Warm regards, George Bush."
BLITZER: But the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife, who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.
What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you.
WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.
BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?
WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.
She was not a clandestine officer at the time that that article in Vanity Fair appeared. And I have every right to have the American public know who I am and not to have myself defined by those who would write the sorts of things that are coming out, being spewed out of the mouths of the RNC...
BLITZER: Who did you vote for in 2000?
WILSON: In 2000? I voted for Al Gore. In 1992, I voted for George Bush.
BLITZER: The first President George...
WILSON: That's correct.
BLITZER: But you gave money to both campaigns.
WILSON: I believe passionately in the right of citizens and the responsibility of citizens to participate in the choice of their political leaders. I believed that...
BLITZER: Valerie, your wife, still has a job at the CIA.
WILSON: She has gone back to it.
But let me go back to this. I also contributed to the Bush- Cheney campaign in 2000, because I believed that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney would make better Republican leaders than Mr. McCain. I regret that decision. I'd like to get my money back. But I voted for Al Gore.
BLITZER: One final question: What's going to happen, in your opinion, when all the dust settles?
WILSON: Well, I believe that the special counsel will have the last word on this. And I have full faith in the institutions of our government and in the personal qualities of Pat Fitzgerald and of the FBI team that is working to support him.
BLITZER: So if -- and this is the final question -- if there are no charges leveled against Karl Rove, will you apologize to him?
WILSON: I believe Karl Rove should be fired. I believe Karl Rove should be fired because I believe it's an outrageous abuse of power for somebody sitting in an office next to the president of the United States to be personally engaged in a smear campaign against citizens of this country.
BLITZER: And his argument that he was simply trying to correct the record, that Matt Cooper was going down the wrong trail when -- Matt Cooper of Time magazine -- when he was suggesting that Vice President Cheney recommended that you go on the trip...
WILSON: If you go back and you take a look at what he was suggesting, he was suggesting that -- he was saying that more information would be forthcoming.
The information that came out of the White House the day after my article appeared, and a week after Rove apparently leaked to Cooper, was that the 16 words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address.
The following week, Stephen Hadley -- coincidentally -- happened to find two faxes and a memo of a telephone conversation, which caused him to offer his resignation, because they had put those 16 words in the State of the Union address.
There's two irrefutable facts. The 16 words in the State of the Union address, and my wife's identity was compromised. And Joe Wilson was not responsible for either of those.
BLITZER: All right. We'll leave it at that.
Joe Wilson, the former ambassador to a couple countries in Africa and the former acting ambassador in Iraq.
Thanks for joining us.
WILSON: Thanks, Wolf, very much.
I find it no less than incredible that the Republicans are continuing to repeat their talking points when they are so easily discredited. The fact that these points are lies are so well documented, that anyone repeating them is either an idiot, or is simply so Partisan that they can not see the forests for the trees. You be the judge.
While surfing Technorati I found this excellent answer to the Republican Talking Points:
Excerpt:
CLAIM: White House Can't Comment While Investigation Is Ongoing
McClellan: "While that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it."
FACT: White House Has Repeatedly Commented During the Ongoing Investigation
McClellan had previously cited that same investigation and
then gone on to answer the questions as they pertained to Rove. For
example, on October 1, 2003,
he said, "There's an investigation going on ... you brought up Karl's
name. Let's be very clear. I thought - I said it was a ridiculous
suggestion, I said it's simply not true that he was involved in leaking
classified information, and - nor, did he condone that kind of
activity." Similarly, on October 10, 2003,
McClellan said, "I think it's important to keep in mind that this is an
ongoing investigation." But he then added with regard to a question
about Rove's involvement, "I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed
out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this."
CLAIM: Rove Didn't Leak The Name So He's Not Guilty
Rove: "I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name." Rove attorney Robert Luskin said "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."
FACT: National Security Law Says Identifying Covert Agent Is Illegal
Rove at the very least identified Plame as "Wilson's wife." Under section 421 of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the disclosure of "any information identifying [a] covert agent" is illegal.
CLAIM: White House Didn't Push The Story
Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin claims
Cooper manipulated what Rove said to him "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 report negative information
about Plame."
FACT: There Was An Organized Campaign To Push Leak Info
First, Robert Novak admitted:
"I didn't dig it out [Plame's identity], it was given to me... They [the
White House] thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I
used it." Second, Rove told Chris Matthews that Plame's identity was "fair game." Third, Time magazine reported
the orchestrated campaign against Wilson in October 2003: "In the days
after Wilson's essay appeared, government officials began to steer
reporters away from Wilson's conclusions."
A Blogger running political talking points unedited and without comment. Just acting as a shill for his/her political masters.
What is worse is that the very talking points misrepresent the very words that were spoken. Bookmark this page, and go back to it later today. Ambassador Wilson did a great job of DESTROYING these lies today on Wolf Blitzer. Give the transcript a read when it becomes available, push the Koolaide asside, and decide for yourself!
Coming this afternoon - Transcripts of Joe Wilson on Wolf Blitzer
The man absolutely DESTROYS Republican Talking Points attacking him. He even whipped out a letter from George Bush senior, congradulating and thanking him for his trip to Niger. I will post the transcripts as soon as they are available...
I've made it very clear, [Rove] was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was.
Was The Official White House stance on the Plame affair this:
That is not the way this White House operates. The president expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. No one would be authorized to do such a thing.
Anderson Cooper Nails the Republican Talking Points
You know it is bad for the administration when the Press is no longer buying the talking points. Today I watched Anderson Cooper from CNN hand a Republican Hack his HAT on the Rove Leak. This is the complete section of the transcript from todays 360, that dealt with the issue. Pay special attention to the italicized comments.
(Begin Bush Video)
BUSH: I have instructed every member of my staff to fully cooperate in this investigation. I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports. We're in the midst of an ongoing investigation. And I will be more than happy to comment further, once the investigation is completed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: That was President Bush speaking earlier today. And as our White House correspondent Dana Bash reported at the beginning of the program, some people were surprised by the president's remarks that he didn't defend Karl Rove more vocally.
Well, there is certainly a lot of angles to this story. And as often happens in Washington, opinions are clearly divided along political lines. Earlier I spoke to Terry Holt, a former spokesman for the Bush/Cheney campaign, and Paul Begala, a CNN political analyst and former adviser to President Clinton.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Paul, were you surprised that the president didn't come to a stronger defense of Karl Rove?
PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I think it's -- I don't want to read too much into the tea leaves -- but, look, there's clearly some there, there. And it could well be that Karl -- we know that Karl misled the country and misled Scott McClellan. He said he had I had nothing to do with this. It might have been that Karl walked into his boss and said, Mr. President, I didn't have anything to do with this. And misled him. If that's the case, then Bush should have fired him right away.
COOPER: Terry, is there some there, there?
TERRY HOLT, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I'm not sure it's all that nefarious. The president is in a tough spot with respect to an ongoing investigation. And what he said today is just factually true, that he's in the middle of an ongoing investigation, one that the White House has cooperated with for over a year.
COOPER: But this has been an ongoing investigation for some two years. And the White House has made comments about it in the past. Why no comments now?
HOLT: Well, the comments that they made out the outset, obviously. But I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing today that we were talking about two years ago in 2003 when this came up. We were talking at that time about a CIA leak of Valerie Plame's name. That's not happened here. The White House -- Karl Rove called a reporter to warn them off of a story that now has been prove untrue. Joe Wilson said a bunch of things that just turned out not to be the case. He lied.
COOPER: You made a lot of statements there. Paul, I want to you respond to that. There are a lot of different things to respond to.
BEGALA: I feel like Roy Rogers, whoa, Trigger!
HOLT: Go, man, go.
BEGALA: You're getting way out there, Terry.
Look, Ambassador Wilson, in fact, told the truth. The president in his State of the Union told the country...
HOLT: He said that Vice President Cheney...
(CROSSTALK)
BEGALA: The president told the country that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellow cake uranium in Africa. Now that turned out not to be true. Mr. Wilson went and investigated it.
COOPER: Terry, you're saying that Karl Rove was simply trying to warn a reporter of a false story. Beyond whether or not the story was false, wasn't -- I mean, the other side of it is he was he was really trying to discredit Joe Wilson by just saying: Yes, this is a guy whose wife sent him to Africa. Isn't that kind of one interpretation?
Any senior-level official in this town deals with reporters every day and I think that all of us understand that when you're talking to reporters, you're talking to the media, you're talking about how stories develop and what's true and what's not true and giving guidance, you have off-the-record conversations like this clearly was. If he was out to discredit Joe Wilson, why in the world wouldn't he let the reporter use the information? I mean, that'...
BEGALA: He did. He just didn't want his fingerprints on it...
HOLT: No.
BEGALA: ... And in fact, there was a lot of coverage. It's continuing tonight in this interview of people trying to smear Joe Wilson, Terry.
HOLT: Paul. He said double secret background. I mean that's our euphemism for "off the record."
BEGALA: No, it's not a euphemism for off the record. The White House tried to smear Joe Wilson.
HOLT: It sure is.
BEGALA: That was what has happened here, is that -- now, we also know in the process of smearing Joe Wilson, the name of a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction trying to protect from us the terrorists, her name was revealed and the undercover company for which she worked.
HOLT: She was a Langley bureaucrat.
BEGALA: ... was revealed. No, this did enormous damage, Terry.
COOPER: Wait a minute.
Terry, wait a minute. Let me just jump in here. I mean, whether or not you think this was a high-level CIA officer, she was a CIA officer. You know, this is a war time. This is an undercover operative who has put their life on the line to serve our country...
HOLT: I'm not sure that she is an undercover operative.
COOPER: Isn't it a little disingenuous for Republicans now to basically be de-feigning her and saying: You know, she was a bureaucrat. She was nothing? If a Democrat had done this...
HOLT: I'm not saying that.
COOPER: Wouldn't you be saying this is treasonous?
HOLT: I'm not saying that, Anderson. I'm just saying that according...
COOPER: You just said she's a bureaucrat.
HOLT: That's right.
COOPER: She's a woman -- she's dedicated. I mean whether or not if she's good or not or high level or not, she's serving her country.
HOLT: But a bureaucrat isn't necessarily a negative word. You might take it that way, but the fact of the matter is, that in order for this law to be broken, this person has to be a covert, undercover operator. They have very, very high standard for braking this law.
COOPER: She works with the deputy director of operations. She has an undercover position.
HOLT: But at the same time -- at the same time, was the United States actively trying to keep her cover secret? We don't -- we need to find out what's going on with this investigation. If there's a crime, that's one thing, but if there's no crime, then this story is all about politics.
COOPER: Terry Holt, thank you. Paul Begala, thanks.
HOLT: Thanks.
BEGALA: Thanks, Anderson.
I think the Republicans have grown accustomed to people swallowing this crap whole. Well it seems that the press has finally woke up. Or perhaps they just smell blood in the water... Whatever the case, no one is buying this crap anymore. Immorality is out of vogue.
CNN has been running a clip all day with some Republican woman blandly quoting the talking points... What is funny is that it is obvious she is doing a scripted spiel, and even funnier... She did not even seem to believe it. Reading the pathetic attempt by Rob at Wizbang to spin this is almost funny, if it wasn't so sad. Sad how people will put the welfare of the country, common sense and even basic morality, behind political partisanship.
Be sure to read the comments to this post. Hillarious how not only are the FACTS about what Joe Wilson said about his trip to Niger ignored, but its all about insults to the left. Some of these people have NO idea how to discuss an issue.
Let's not let the truth get in the way of spin shall we?
This is David Gregory, the pittbull from NBC news that has made Scott McClellan's life a pure hell the last couple of days.
I thought about David when I read this comment on Billmon's Blog tonight:
"I am watching the press briefing with beam me up Scotty Mc and David Gregory hammered the hell out of him again and basically said this is not going away in a very threatening way as in 'I'm going to dog your sorry fucking ass every fucking day no matter what you say asshole.' I think the press is ready to dog these guys bad.
As said above, a reporter said it was no excuse not knowing someone was an undercover agent. Scotty had the wind taken out of his sails right away and he's had his tail between his legs the whole way. He even made the statement that he's had some of hiney taken off in the last couple days. He's feeling sorry for himself.
I say tie him to the yard iron, whip him, and then make him walk the plank."
-end quoted text-
David has been all over Scotty the last three days, and I think he should be congradulated for doing what most of the press corps has not had the balls to do for the last 5 years.
I dont have the mans email address. If anyone does, please leave it in comments. Drop him a line, send him candy, tickets to a ball game, a fruit basket, whatever. This man is doing the JOB!
Poor Scottie McClellan. It may be a long time before he looks like this again. For the third straight day, Scottie was hammered by a rejuvenated Press Corps.
Excerpt Todays Press Conference
Q Scott, some White House advisors expressed surprise that the President didn't -- did not give a warm endorsement to Karl Rove when he was asked about him at the Cabinet meeting. They had expected that he would speak up. Can you explain why the President didn't give a -- express confidence?
MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. He wasn't asked about his support or confidence for Karl. As I indicated yesterday, every person who works here at the White House, including Karl Rove, has the confidence of the President. This was not a question that came up in the Cabinet Room.
Q Well, the President has never been restrained at staying right in the lines of a question, as you know. (Laughter.) He kind of -- he says whatever he wants. And if he had wanted to express confidence in Karl Rove, he could have. Why didn't he?
MR. McCLELLAN: He expressed it yesterday through me, and I just expressed it again.
Q Well, why doesn't he?
MR. McCLELLAN: He was not asked that specific question, Terry. You know that very well. The questions he were asked -- he was asked about were relating to an ongoing investigation.
Q But, Scott, he defended Al Gonzales without even being asked --
MR. McCLELLAN: I'll come to you in a second. I'll come to you in a second. Go ahead.
Q Yes, he defended Al Gonzales without ever being asked. (Laughter.) Ed brings up a good point. Didn't he?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I think he was asked about the Attorney General.
Q Scott, you know what, to make a general observation here, in a previous administration, if a press secretary had given the sort of answers you've just given in referring to the fact that everybody who works here enjoys the confidence of the President, Republicans would have hammered them as having a kind of legalistic and sleazy defense. I mean, the reality is that you're parsing words, and you've been doing it for a few days now. So does the President think Karl Rove did something wrong, or doesn't he?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, David, I'm not at all. I told you and the President told you earlier today that we don't want to prejudge the outcome of an ongoing investigation. And I think we've been round and round on this for two days now.
Q Even if it wasn't a crime? You know, there are those who believe that even if Karl Rove was trying to debunk bogus information, as Ken Mehlman suggested yesterday -- perhaps speaking on behalf of the White House -- that when you're dealing with a covert operative, that a senior official of the government should be darn well sure that that person is not undercover, is not covert, before speaking about them in any way, shape, or form. Does the President agree with that or not?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, we've been round and round on this for a couple of days now. I don't have anything to add to what I've said the previous two days.
Q That's a different question, and it's not round and round --
MR. McCLELLAN: You heard from the President earlier.
Q It has nothing to do with the investigation, Scott, and you know it.
MR. McCLELLAN: You heard from the President earlier today, and the President said he's not --
Q That's a dodge to my question. It has nothing to do with the investigation. Is it appropriate for a senior official to speak about a covert agent in any way, shape, or form without first finding out whether that person is working as a covert officer.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, you're wrong. This is all relating to questions about an ongoing investigation, and I've been through this.
Q If I wanted to ask you about an ongoing investigation, I would ask you about the statute, and I'm not doing that.
MR. McCLELLAN: I think we've exhausted discussion on this the last couple of days.
Q You haven't even scratched the surface.
Q It hasn't started.
MR. McCLELLAN: I look forward to talking about it once the investigation is complete, as the President does, as well. And you heard from the President earlier today.
Q Can I ask for clarification on what the President said at Sea Island on June 10th of last year, when he was saying that he would fire anybody from the White House who was involved in the leak of classified information? What were the parameters for those consequences? Was it --
MR. McCLELLAN: I appreciate your question.
Q Was it a knowing leak with the intent of doing damage? I'm just wondering when he talked about that, what those parameters were?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I've nothing to add on this discussion, and if we have any other topics you want to discuss, I'll be glad to do that.
Go ahead, David.
Q Scott, when the President asked that question at Sea -- was asked that question at Sea Island, and, in fact, when you made your statement that Karl had had nothing to do with this, was there an ongoing investigation at that time?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, we've been through this for two days now, and I've already responded to those questions.
Go ahead, April.
Q I'm going to give you another --
Q I'm sorry, I wasn't here yesterday, so could you refresh my memory? Was there an ongoing investigation --
MR. McCLELLAN: The briefings are available online.
Q -- at the time that you answered previous questions on this issue?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I responded to those questions the past couple of days. Go ahead.
Q The answer is, yes.
Q I'm going to go to another question, somewhat on the same subject, but a different vein. Let's talk about the Wilson family. Is there any regret from this White House about the effects of this leak on this family?
MR. McCLELLAN: We can continue to go round and round on all these --
Q No, no, no, no. This has nothing to do with the investigation. This is about the leak and the effects on this family. I mean, granted there are partisan politics being played, but let's talk about the leak that came from the White House that affected a family.
MR. McCLELLAN: And let me just say again that anything relating to an ongoing investigation, I'm not going to get into discussing. I've said that the past couple of days.
Q This is not -- this is about -- this is a personal -- this is not about the -- I mean about the investigation. This is about the personal business of this family, an American family, a taxpaying family, a family that works for the government of the United States. And the executive branch -- someone in the executive branch let this family down in some kind of way, shape, or form. Is there any regret from the White House that this family was affected by the leak?
MR. McCLELLAN: It doesn't change what I just said.
-End Excerpt-
My predictions:
1. Bush will expedite his Supreme Court Nomination to try and change the subject.
2. Failing to succeed with that, and if the pressure continues, Rove will resign.
Classic Post on Karl Rove and the Plame Leak! And another great blog makes my blogroll!
Hiya kids.
It looks like George Bush is finally beginning to smell the rancid political winds. Somebody light a match.
You can tell that the RNC talking points on Karl Rove are pure, unadulterated BS. They're emphasizing the false premises that Joe Wilson had political motives when he reported on his trip to Niger, that the flippin' sweet uranium gig was given to him by his wife, Valerie Plame, that he wasn't sent to Niger by Cheney (Wilson never said he was), that nothing Wilson came back with changed anybody's mind, etc. etc. etc. It's really rather pathetic. I almost gagged yesterday when I heard Republican after Republican repeating these tidbits verbatim. It was especially hard listening to Ken Mehlman on "Inside Politics," when he said [and I paraphrase, as usual] that if Bill Clinton were the president now and one of his aides were in Rove's position, Republicans wouldn't be waging this political smear campaign. I had to go out and check on the color of the sky to make sure it wasn't the ominous tint of freshly processed yellowcake.
"Well, I keep trying to figure out exactly what Karl Rove did, and I just can't seem to come up with it. Neither can the media, but that isn't stopping them or Democrats from attempting a royal hatchet job on Rove and the President."
1. Maybe you should lay off the Koolaide
2. Read something other than The Washington Times, Wizbang and Captains Quarters.
3. There are more News Sources than Fox
Try those three and get back to us. I am sure that you will eventually figure it out, if the voices in your head dont kill you first.
Someone says, David Anderson's wife is a FILL IN THE BLANKS, and anyone who really wants to know, just needs to look. The spin that Rove did not mention her name is perhaps the lamest and most disengenious piece of crap I have ever heard.
I mean have folks on the Right become so jaded with their successes at spin, that they actually believe the American public is going to swallow this?
The same people who were arguing whether a sitting President of the United States should be thrown out of office over his definition of "sex," are now having the ardasity to present this defense, comeon guys, you don't even believe this one yourself!
And if that spin doesnt work:
"some of us are pretty incensed at the idea of a supposedly undercover CIA operative sending her own husband to Niger to dredge up fake facts in an attempt to smear a sitting President."
In the January 28 speech, Bush claimed that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That assertion was similar to claims madepreviously by administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell (CBS Evening News, 12/19/02), that Iraq had sought to import yellowcake uranium from Niger, a strong indication that Saddam Hussein's regime was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
In fact, the Niger story, as documented by journalist Seymour Hersh (New Yorker, 3/31/03) and others, was based on crudely forged documents. In addition, the administration's own investigation in March 2002 concluded that the story was bogus. As one former State Department official put it, "This wasn't highly contested. There weren't strong advocates on theother side. It was done, shot down" (Time, 7/21/03).
Bush's use of the Niger forgeries has received considerable media attention in recent days. Much of this reporting has been valuable, and some outlets have broadened the inquiry beyond one passage in a speech. The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, for example, suggests (7/16/03) that the uranium claim remained in the State of the Union address because "almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq."
John Kerry sent a letter today with a link to this petition site titled Fire Karl Rove. I say give Bush's Brian the Pinky. Here's the letter from John Kerry to George Bush:
Dear President Bush,
In
the days following the 9/11 attacks, you movingly spoke of the unity of
purpose emanating all across America. Now, Karl Rove, your top
political aide, wants us to believe that you weren't telling the truth
-- that Americans were offering "therapy and understanding to the
attackers." You cannot remain silent as your most senior advisor
purposely twists the truth about a great moment of American unity for
political gain.
It isn't the first time Karl Rove has crossed
the line. It needs to be the last. I call on you to thoroughly reject
his cheap, divisive efforts to challenge the patriotism of your
political opponents. It's time to fire Karl Rove.
The Republican Leadership, as usual is on message. What Karl Rove did was not a bad thing. No, the bad guy is Joe Wilson. This is a classic case of, "change the subject," but it is not working. Watching Scott McCullen sweat in the Press Room, makes it almost worth it. The truth of the matter is that the Administration lied. They lied about Saddam's African Connection, and they lied about Rove being involved. Now, they are attempting to spin their way out of a BIG problem.
Raw Story writes about Republican efforts at spin:
RAW STORY has obtained an exclusive copy of Republican talking points on Bush adviser Karl Rove's leaking the name of a CIA agent to a reporter, circulated by the Republican National Committee to "D.C. Talkers" in Washington.
The document, emblazoned with the words "Special Edition" and dated Tuesday, seeks to discredit claims put forth by Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife was 'outed' as a covert operative by a conservative columnist. After obtaining copies of emails sent from a Time reporter to his editor, Newsweek fingered Rove as a source for the leak which disclosed the agent's identity.
The talking points mirror a release by Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman earlier Tuesday, in which he declared the attacks on Rove were spawned by the 'MoveOn' wing of the Democratic Party. MoveOn later accused the White House of a'cover up.'
Is Rove guilty? Dunno. Do I care? Not really. What Rove did was not treason as the lunatics over in the head-up-their-asses community are so fond of pontificating. Criminal? Maybe, in that everything-inside-the-beltway-that-some-pencil-neck-finds-offensive-is-illegal way, but not treason or anything even smacking of treason.
Anyway, it's time for Rove to go. Last time I checked we were in a f*cking shooting war and the last thing the Commander-in-Chief needs is a low-life political opportunist in his inner circle. If for no other reason he should go because his actions are creating a political scandal. And it's not like were talking about the Secretary of Defense here, Rove is a pollster and a political strategist for crying-out-loud. So, Bush finds another low-life political opportunist to replace him--but one that knows to keep his mouth shut. Alright, easier said than done but, really, who really gives a rat's ass about Karl-freaking-Rove?
Oh and congradulations Rusty on making CNN's Inside the Blogs.
Some of the denials, other comments, at media briefings by White House spokesman Scott McClellan when asked by reporters whether President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was involved in the leak of a CIA officer's identity:
Sept. 29, 2003
Q: You said this morning, quote, "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved." How does he know that?
A: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. ... I've said that it's not true. ... And I have spoken with Karl Rove.
Q: It doesn't take much for the president to ask a senior official working for him, to just lay the question out for a few people and end this controversy today.
A: Do you have specific information to bring to our attention? ... Are we supposed to chase down every anonymous report in the newspaper? We'd spend all our time doing that."
Q: When you talked to Mr. Rove, did you discuss, "Did you ever have this information?"
A: I've made it very clear, he was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was.
___
Oct. 7, 2003
Q: You have said that you personally went to Scooter Libby (Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff), Karl Rove and Elliott Abrams (National Security Council official) to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Why did you do that? And can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked?
A: Unfortunately, in Washington, D.C., at a time like this there are a lot of rumors and innuendo. There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that's exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They are good individuals. They are important members of our White House team. And that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt with that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it's accurate before I report back to you, and that's exactly what I did.
___
Oct. 10, 2003
Q: Earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?
A: I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands.
Q: So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?
A: They assured me that they were not involved in this.
Q: They were not involved in what?
A: The leaking of classified information.
I am just filled with confidence that everything else the White House is telling us is true as well, arent you?
So Rob at Wizbang is in full tilt mode defending Rove... Nothing NEW or unexpected there... But read this quote from his post:
Nobody has even been indicted for a crime in this matter yet, much less convicted, yet already the left and the media are framing the debate over the Plame affair as though Rove had undoubtedly broken the law. Its almost as if they're all scrambling to make as much political hay out of these accusations as possible before the grand jury makes its decision and possibly exonerates Rove.
You know what's even more amazing? I bet that if you checked the record you'd find that not many of the people who are Rove's loudest critics now spoke out against Joe Wilson and his fraudulent trip to Niger. I'll bet that not one of the people who are now calling for the removal of Karl Rove's security clearance called for the removal of Valerie Plame's security clearance after her involvement with her husbands smear mission came to light.
You want a matter that is about national security? How about a supposedly undercover CIA operative sending her own husband to Niger to dredge up fake facts in an attempt to smear a sitting President?"
Now lets take a look at this....
First off, I am pretty sure that Rove will not be convicted of anything. The SPIN machine is in overdrive to point out that "he did not have sex with that woman," eh I mean he never mentioned "that woman by name." And despite the fact that he knew she was a CIA analyst on the WMD desk, he of course, "Did not know she was a secret operative." So he will likely get away with, "soiling the blue dress," of the nation. What the media and the left are doing, are asking for accountability, something it would seem ANY American would want.
But what I find MIND BLOWING, is how all of a Sudden Ambassador Wilson is the bad guy:
"dredge up fake facts in an attempt to smear a sitting President?"
Eh... fake facts? Does Rob know something we dont? I don't think so. The facts are that there was NO AFRICAN connection in Iraq. And the only thing fake was the "fixed," intelligence used to support the War in Iraq. Spin away boys, the Truth is out there, and I think after two years of LIES, it has finaly started to come out!
Update: Here's a new... eh make that old... spin on how to deal with an uncomfortable issue related to the administration... Point out how outrageous it is to talk about it while there is so much else going on in the world. Kinda like the Wizbang meme of "Nothing important here... move on people."
Un huh... Right.... I wonder what Mark thought of the thousands who died in Rwanda and The Balkans while Republicans obsessed over a blowjob? (Feel free to answer in comments Mark)
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