“Do you know who I am? I’m Mo Green, I made my bones when you were going out with Cheerleaders.” — Mo Green in The Godfather.
A new Newsweek story fingers Bush political right-hand-man Karl Rove as at least one person who told a reporter that Joe Wilson’s wife worked as a CIA agent.
But now the prevailing question is: did Rove’s alleged role and the way he allegedly played it fall under the detailed law or will this be a case of something that may be politically reprehensible — but not actually unlawful. And, if that’s the case, what (if anything) will President George Bush do in light of his own previous comments?
At issue is Michael Isakoff’s latest now-it-can-be-told piece. A few key sections:
It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. “Subject: Rove/P&C,” (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation …” Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, “please don’t source this to rove or even WH [White House]” and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.
Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute “personal consent” from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court….
So it would appear some newspaper and analysts’ speculation was on-the-dime: Cooper likely heard from Rove who told him to go ahead with his tesimony. Would Rove agree to THAT if he felt he was possibly heading to the slammer….or is it more likely his top lawyer gave him good news?
But the most damning part of the Newsweek story is this:
In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson’s criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time’s editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine’s corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a “big warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson.” Rove told Cooper that Wilson’s trip had not been authorized by “DCIA”—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, “it was, KR said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.” Wilson’s wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: “not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger … “
Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame’s name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak’s column appeared; in other words, before Plame’s identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. “Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper,” Luskin told NEWSWEEK.
A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was “absolutely no inconsistency” between Cooper’s e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. “A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame’s identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false,” the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson’s trip to Africa.
It almost sounds as if we’ve come full circle, back to the era of the highly-derided (particularly by Republicans) “it all depends on what is is.”
And it’s possible there’s enough “wiggle room” so that “is” in this case really “ain’t” and it won’t mean penalties under the law.
But if it indeed comes out — definitively — that Rove was a participant (either just him or several others) it will be absolutely fascinating to see President George Bush wiggle out of this Feb. 11, 2004 story:
President Bush said Tuesday he welcomes a Justice Department investigation into who revealed the classified identity of a CIA operative.
“If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. “If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.
“I welcome the investigation. I am absolutely confident the Justice Department will do a good job.
“I want to know the truth,” the president continued. “Leaks of classified information are bad things.”
He added that he did not know of “anybody in my administration who leaked classified information.”
Bush said he has told his administration to cooperate fully with the investigation and asked anyone with knowledge of the case to come forward.
So: if Rove did tell Bush, how WAS Rove “taken care of?” There wasn’t the slightest carefully couched comment from the President’s p.r. team that Rove might have been involved in this in anyway. Was he “taken care of” by admonishment? Was he punished by being forced to listen to Tom Cruise lecture him on psychiatry? Or something a bit less severe than that?
If he didn’t tell Bush, then that would mean he has mislead the President. Shouldn’t Rove then take the honorable path and decide it’s time to “move in another direction” or accept some nice, big, fat offer in the private sector?
Or will the argument be “well, he didn’t really violate the law — so there!” implying that Rove’s alleged role was perfectly OK. If so, then it would suggest that this kind of behavior sets the political bar at a new (low) level and a future Democratic administration has the go-ahead to use the same tactics.
Some additional thoughts:
- Since this is a complex law (and we will leave government and weblog lawyers to write more about that) we won’t venture to say how we think the case itself will come out. But it does appear as if it is possible (and likely given Copper’s message from his source to go ahead) that Rove will not be prosecuted.
- No matter what happens, it boldly underlined Rove’s role as what analysts in the 1960s used to call a “political hatchet man,” a hands-on operative who will seek to overtly and, even moreso, covertly discredit and destroy anyone who stands in the way of his boss’ objectives.
- The country could be faced with a situation where Rove’s role is confirmed, Bush’s comments above are never addressed or justified with lawyerly parsing, and Rove does NOT resign but continues with absolutely no legal, political or personal consquences.
If we’d have to bet money, we’d bet on that outcome, simply because of the way politics seems to operate in the 21st century, where past rules of the game involving ethics and propriety are seemingly changed according to the circumstance and power to do so. If that happens, look for Democrats to be outraged, Republicans and talk show hosts to quickly adjust and hammer away with whatever defense arguments their team offers — and the actual situation remain unchanged.
Except for one thing.
Credibility.
If Rove played a prominent role, it’ll raise one more question about veracity.
Swing voters, centrists and even some Republicans would not be unaware of the disconnect if Karl Rove was involved and those who had indigantly blasted the honesty of the Clinton adminstration felt this is really no big deal…because he’s Karl Rove.
BUT THAT’S JUST OUR VIEW. THERE ARE OTHERS AND HERE’S A CROSS SECTION:
—Wizbang
The fact that Plame sent Wilson on the trip to Nigeria was an important part of debunking Wilson’s report. This was no political smear, it was the pointing out of nepotism which further supported the idea that Wilson’s trip was politically, not factually, motivated. If keeping Plame’s identity a secret was such a top priority then maybe she and her husband shouldn’t have gotten involved with the phony trip to Nigeria. If anything, these revelations are far more damaging to Plame and her husband than they are to Rove.
—Matt Sheffield:”The gossip spread more widely and rapidly after Wilson went public with his mission in a New York Times op-ed blasting the Bush admin and the war in Iraq (a National Review contributor disclosed in 2003 that he knew about Plame before Novak’s column). Eventually, several reporters heard about the gossip, but only Novak and Cooper decided to pass it along. Like many of the kerfuffles created by Clinton foes in the 90s, the Plame game seems to be another scandalous non-scandal.”
—Americablog:”Meanwhile, we still have to see whether or not crimes were committed. Rove doing the perp walk is still a real possibility. Besides that, there should be ramifications for Rove. So, you have your leaker now, George Bush, what are you going to do about it? And, it would be really, really great if this week, if the White House Press Corps asked some questions about Rove…or maybe they are have kind of double super secret background, too.”
—Captain Ed:
So far, this lead has gone nowhere in the Plame leak. Patrick Fitzgerald has done nothing but embarrass himself by jailing a reporter and turning her into a martyr over something that probably doesn’t amount to a prosecutable crime in the first place. It will be damned difficult to generate any outrage on behalf of a CIA agent who sent her husband on a public mission to undermine the American government during a time of war, mostly through lies and half-truths, and who now wants to hide behind a covert status that no one can actually establish applied at the time. Fitzgerald needs to close the case and let Judith Miller out of jail.
He goes into more detail in this follow up post, arguing the left will make a fuss over it but in the end its a non-scandal.
—Andrew Sullivan:”The salient fact is that Rove appears to have told Cooper about Wilson’s wife working at the CIA before the Novak column appeared. Rove was clearly coordinating a message to discredit Wilson by linking him to his wife, and implying that Wilson had no real authorization from the senior levels of the administration. Rove may not be guilty of a crime, if he did not disclose her name and did not know she was undercover. He is guilty of sleaze and spin. But then that’s also hardly news, is it?”
—Pejmanesque:”There is–I am sure–more information that will come out regarding this story. But for now, there is not enough to “frog march” Karl Rove out of the White House. Not nearly enough.”
—Laura Rosen:”Isikoff confirms that Rove is the source who gave Cooper direct permission to testify last week at the last minute. I find it fascinating that Rove was not only campaigning to discredit Wilson, but that he was pushing so hard to legitimate the bogus Iraq- Niger uranium information, just days before the administration capitulated and said it shouldn’t have used that language in Bush’s SOTU.”
—Mahablog:
Bush won’t do anything about that, of course, unless it occurs to him that Rove is a bigger political liability than he is an asset. Bush doesn’t care about national security or the law or anything other than himself. As long as Bush wants to keep Rove around, the Right will form a solid wall of denial, built mostly on narrowly constructed legalisms (e.g., Rove didn’t know she was an operative, so he didn’t commit a crime, so he didn’t do anything wrong, and liberals stink) and misdirection (shifting the story from White House lies about uranium to who authorized Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger).
—Peking Duck thinks it is a smoking gun:
It’s going to be a fun second term for our war-time president. Every success he claims — No Child Left Behind, the War on Terror, the war in Iraq, tax reform, Medicare reform, Clear Skies (!), et. al. — every one is propped up by sloganeering, photo ops, deception, deceit and outright lies. They’re built on sand, and once the tide rises they’ll come crashing down, one by one. Karl Rove’s fall will almost certainly help raise the tide.
—Cookie Jill at skippy has links to a July 14 Novak column that suggest KR may not get presents from Santa this year:”so…rove knows and is circulating information on 11 july that he obtained from an article published on 14 july. wonder where rove hides his crystal balls.
—Digby:
The big question that was swirling wasn’t who sent Wilson on the trip, for gawds sake. It was whether they knew the Niger documents were forgeries and spread it around anyway. Karl’s little phone call was an effort to cover-up the fact that the administration had lied its ass off making the case for war — Valerie Plame was a pawn they used to try to taint Wilson as some kind of hen-pecked househusband when he exposed an element of their bogus evidence. Regardless of whether Rove knew she was an NOC, and this doesn’t prove it one way or the other, it proves he was a scumbag who was engineering a cover-up. One thing we know for sure is that Wilson was right.
Karl Rove and others in the White House exposed an undercover CIA agent in order to cover up their lies about Iraq.
In a follow up post, he says Rove should resign, broken law or not. “Wringing our hands and saying nothing will ever happen because he’s Superman is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The dirtiest most devious president in history was brought down by his own paranoia and sloppiness. Karl Rove is no more omnipotent than he was,” he writes.
—Betsy Newmark:
Think about this. Wilson was a has-been, small potatoes diplomat. She’s an obscure worker at the CIA. Why do people like Andrea Mitchell know where she works? You think he was a big a attention-grabber before all this as he was after?
I just think that Rove’s legal innocence will be beside the point. Just wait for Bush to go to Crawford. The whole month of August will be taken up with sides arguing about whether or not Rove should be fired. Every summer of Bush’s presidency except in 2004 there has been some scandalette that the media, for want of any other story, has blown way out of proportion. All we can hope is that they will concentrate more on terrorism threats and the Supreme Court nomination(s) and this brouhaha will be swallowed up by more important stories.
—The Talking Dog (written on July 6 but still relevant in its main point):
If, in fact, Mr. Rove knowingly disclosed the name and identity of a covert American operative, he is guilty of not only the specific felony of doing so, but quite likely treason, and to the extent his deliberate outing of an American covert operative resulted in the death or deaths of field operatives, he should, in all fairness, be facing the death penalty. Understand the principle of “IIOKIYAR”, which most of you understand (but simply means “It’s OK if you are a Republican”). Don’t worry: there’s no limit to what that simple phrase covers, up to and including treason. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will just have to come to that realization himself, if he attempts to actually… you know… do anything to Rove. But that’s the way it is.
—Common Sense Desk:”Unfortunately, of all of the sins that are apparent in this mess I think that the sin of hypocrisy is among the worst. It is one of many such sins committed by this man who is entrusted to advise our president. That is a sacred trust. Whether he has committed an indictable offense or not is irrelevant. He betrayed the American people and our great Republic by playing politics with sensitive information to provide cover, not just for his own despicable ass, but also for the others complicit in the charade that has put us in an untenable position in Iraq and pretty much everywhere else.”
—Powerline details the reasons why its authors (who are lawyers) do not feel Rove has legal problems. Key quote:
It is hard to see how Rove could be indicted for violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and it is very unlikely that he would have been foolish enough to testify falsely before the grand jury about his conversations with journalists. None of this will matter much, though, when it is publicly acknowledged that Rove was one of the sources of the Plame “leak.” (This isn’t, by the way, the sort of communication that is ordinarily referred to as a “leak.”) We can expect a media feeding frenzy or potentially unprecedented proportions.
Rove presumably told the President that he was one of the sources of the Plame information long ago. It is interesting that Bush didn’t take the path of least resistance and ease Rove out of the administration at the end of his first term. The President’s reputation for loyalty to has aides is certainly well-deserved.
–The Kudzu Files:”Assuming the information is correct, if Karl Rove is not fired, and explicitly and completely separated from the Bush Administration, the minute he is positively identified as the source – if George Bush hesitates to dismiss him immediately – then President George Bush should be impeached. This is far, far more serious than oral sex in the White House, or possibly making a few thousand dollars on a twenty-year-old land deal. This is what the issue should have been all along – are the lives of American intelligence operatives worth more than political expediency, or not? George Bush likes clear-cut, black-and-white issues. Mr. President, it doesn’t get more clear-cut than this.”
—Southpaw:”I think that Rove now realizes that there is no way out of this for him short of another Saturday Night Massacre. Fitzgerald has to go, but even with a subservient Congress and librul media, he still needs some political cover before he can order Fitzgerald’s firing……Personally, I think that Rove’s chances of getting away with this are about 50/50. Which is 50% better than they should be. Thanks for going to the tank, American news media. Thanks a lot.”
–A FASCINATING post at Arguing With Signposts, a blog written by a journalism prof. He analyzes this story from the standpoint of sourcing. We’d ruin it by paraphrasing so read it in full yourself.
—JustOneMinute has a meticulous discussion of the Rove issue with lots of links. A tiny part of the conclusion:”My guess – earnest lefties can focus on the existence of the White House Iraq Group and the high probability that a push-back against Wilson was discussed to argue in favor of a conspiracy by the Bush Brute Squad. Others will note that discussing Wilson was entirely reasonable, since his leaks were prompting questions on the Sunday talk shows and merited rebutting.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.