Thread: Rove on the Hotseat?

Won't Defend? Then Attack!
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, July 13, 2005; 12:54 PM
How do you defend Karl Rove? The way he himself has so effectively defended President Bush over the years, of course. You attack.
The White House yesterday officially stayed mum regarding Rove's role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, its only concession being a generic expression of confidence in all who serve the president.

And this morning , asked directly if he had spoken to Rove about the matter and whether he felt Rove's conduct was improper, Bush simply refused to say, citing the ongoing criminal investigation.
"I will be more than happy to comment on this matter once this investigation is complete," he said, joining in the White House stonewall that began on Monday.
But Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman yesterday began a pro-Rove media charge. His message, summed up by these talking points , is not as much a defense of Rove against the various charges leveled against him as it is an attack on the credibility of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV -- Plame's husband, and the person who Rove was trying to discredit when he mentioned Plame in the first place.
Mehlman won't say whether he talked to Rove about his approach, but either way, his methodology is tried and true Rovian genius.
As I wrote in my June 24 column , back when some Democrats were calling on Rove to apologize for describing the liberal approach to national security as being weak and possibly even treasonous: "Rove has a brilliant and so far unbeatable strategy when it comes to political warfare." He doesn't defend, he doesn't apologize, he attacks.
But there are some warning signs this time.
For example, not everyone in the Republican Party is playing along. An awful lot of senior members of Bush's party are sitting this one out for now.
And Rove and the White House face adversity on three fronts:
· There's a possible criminal charge looming.
That would explain why Novak isn't in jail.
But, Waas reports, the prosecutors don't necessarily believe what Novak told them, which is why they want to talk to other reporters about what Novak's sources told them.

The GOP Strategy


Jim VandeHei writes in The Washington Post: "The emerging GOP strategy -- devised by Mehlman and other Rove loyalists outside of the White House -- is to try to undermine th[e] 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. . . .
"Mehlman, who said he talked with Rove several times in recent days, instructed 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."
As for what's going on behind closed doors: " 'No one has asked him what he told the grand jury. No one has deemed it appropriate,' said a senior White House official, who would discuss the Rove case only on the condition of anonymity. 'What you all need to figure out is, does this amount to a crime? That is a legitimate debate.' Still, some aides said they were concerned about the unknown. 'Is it a communications challenge? Sure,' the official said."
Edwin Chen and Warren Vieth write in the Los Angeles Times: "The White House's strategy appears to be a textbook example of trying to change the subject by shifting the focus.
" 'The RNC is trying to get the attention off the White House,' said David Gergen, a Harvard University government professor who has worked for presidents of both parties. 'A week ago, this was all about the press. Now it's back to the White House, which is not what they want.' . . .
"The RNC's aggressive stance in the face of mounting Democratic criticism suggests that Republicans hope the public will dismiss the complex controversy as a partisan 'food fight,' in the words of one Republican senator's chief of staff, who requested anonymity. 'They're trying to dilute the matter,' the aide said. . . .
"Later in the day, a senior administration official said only: 'We've lived with the investigation for two years, and we're not changing approach or focus now.' "
David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "Current and former White House officials who know both men say they have no doubt that as long as Mr. Rove faces no serious legal charges -- and so far he has yet to be charged with anything, and may never be -- Mr. Bush will defend him. . . .
"It is impossible to know whether any closed-door conversations have begun in the White House about whether to find a graceful way for Mr. Rove to exit partially, or as one former official said, to 'get the benefit of the brain without the proximity of the body.' "
John King had this to say on CNN: "Rove tells friends he is certain he broke no laws and is not a target of the investigation. And he also tells those friends he's quite confident this storm will pass when the investigation comes to a close.

"But some Republicans are getting more than a little nervous. And as one close Rove associate put it after spending time with him this week, quote, 'He knows he's going to be a pinata for a while here.'
"If Rove take as political beating, it ultimately may have less to do with the leak in question and more to do with the administration's changing statements about it."
Mehlman's Message


Mehlman spoke about Rove with Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday: "The fact is, this is someone who serves our president, serves our country incredibly well. It's incredibly unfortunate that there are other people out there, while he fully cooperates with the investigation, that try to smear him and thereby smear the investigation."
Blitzer asked if he'd talked about the matter with White House officials, and Mehlman wouldn't say. "My conversations today have been focused on CAFTA, on judges," Mehlman said, inconclusively.
Blitzer gave Mehlman credit for coming on camera: "You had the guts to come out and speak on these sensitive issues, but at the White House, they seem to be putting up this stonewall. They're not answering any questions."
And yet here are some of the questions Blitzer asked that Mehlman didn't answer:
· "When you say the story was false, is there any evidence Niger was sending uranium, enriched uranium to Iraq?"
· "Were you called before a grand jury?"

"Why can't you tell us if you've been asked to testify?"

· "Do you believe Judy Miller should be sitting in jail right now?"
· "As far as you know, are other White House officials being investigated right now as a potential source for this leak?"
Luskin Speaks


Byron York got Rove lawyer Luskin to open up more than he has before.
York writes that Luskin "addressed the question of whether Rove is a 'subject' of the investigation. Luskin says Fitzgerald has told Rove he is not a 'target' of the investigation, but, according to Luskin, Fitzgerald has also made it clear that virtually anyone whose conduct falls within the scope of the investigation, including Rove, is considered a 'subject' of the probe. 'Target is something we all understand, a very alarming term,' Luskin says. On the other hand, Fitzgerald 'has indicated to us that he takes a very broad view of what a subject is.' "
For the record, according to the United States Attorneys' Manual : "A 'target' is a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant. . . .
"A 'subject' of an investigation is a person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury's investigation."
Subjects, unlike ordinary witnesses, face possible indictment. So, for instance, targets and subjects get their rights read to them before they testify before grand juries.
Luskin complained to York about how Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper used Rove's statements about Plame. " 'By any definition, he burned Karl Rove,' Luskin said of Cooper. 'If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame.' "
Also: "Luskin declined to say how Rove knew that Plame 'apparently' (to use Cooper's word) worked at the CIA. But Luskin told NRO that Rove is not hiding behind the defense that he did not identify Wilson's wife because he did not specifically use her name. Asked if that argument was too legalistic, Luskin said, 'I agree with you. I think it's a detail.' "
Speaking of Subjects


Richard Keil and Holly Rosenkrantz write for Bloomberg: "Rove is not the only potential subject for Fitzgerald's probe. . . .
"People familiar with the inquiry say Fitzgerald also is reviewing testimony by former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, though it is not clear whether the prosecutor is focusing on him or seeking information about higher-ups. Fleischer last night refused to comment.
"Other Bush aides who have testified to the grand jury or been questioned by prosecutors include [White House press secretary Scott] McClellan; Rove; former Deputy Press Secretary Adam Levine; Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff; and Dan Bartlett, a Bush communications adviser.
"Bush himself was questioned by Fitzgerald in the Oval Office on June 24, 2004."
Novak Spoke?


Investigative reporter Murray Waas writes in his blog: "Columnist Robert Novak provided detailed accounts to federal prosecutors of his conversations with Bush administration officials who were sources for his controversial July 11, 2003 column identifying Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to attorneys familiar with the matter. . . .
"Novak had claimed to the investigators that the Bush administration officials with whom he spoke did not identify Plame as a covert operative, and that use of the word 'operative' was his formulation, and not theirs, according to those familiar with Novak's accounts to the investigators. . . .
"Federal investigators have been skeptical of Novak's assertions. . . . That skepticism has been one of several reasons that the special prosecutor has pressed so hard for the testimony of Time magazine's Cooper, and New York Times reporter Judith Miller. . . .
"Also of interest to investigators have been a series of telephone contacts between Novak and Rove, and other White House officials, in the days just after press reports first disclosed the existence of a federal criminal investigation as to who leaked Plame's identity. Investigators have been concerned that Novak and his sources might have conceived or co-ordinated a cover story to disguise the nature of their conversations. That concern was a reason -- although only one of many -- that lead prosecutors to press for the testimony of Cooper and Miller, sources said."
McClellan: Beaten Like a Dusty Rug


John Roberts had this to say on the CBS Evening News last night: "The White House has got to come up with something other to say on this, politically at least, than just: 'We're not going to talk about an investigation.' Because for the last two days, the press secretary has just been hung up on a clothesline and beaten like a dusty rug."
Here's the transcript of yesterday's briefing.
"Some of you asked a couple of questions about does the President still have confidence in particular individuals, specifically Karl Rove," McClellan said. "I don't want to get into commenting on things in the context of an ongoing investigation. So let me step back and point out that any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the President. They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they didn't have the President's confidence."
But that was about all he would say on the matter.
Blogger Wonkette wrote: "The live White House feed included an engineer calibrating the cameras by holding up a blank sheet of paper. In the movies they call this 'foreshadowing.' "
Odds and Ends


Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was Live Online yesterday:
Q: "What odds would you give at this point that this will lead to Rove's firing?"
Milbank: "My predictions are often comically off, but here goes: This is Karl Rove's town, and the rest of us -- President Bush included -- are just living in it."
Tim Russert had this to say on NBC's Today show yesterday: "As one Republican said to me last night, if this was a Democratic White House, we'd have congressional hearings in a second."
FishbowlDC blogger Garret M. Graff chatted with members of the White House press corps yesterday: " 'You don't want to be in trouble in the summertime,' one veteran White House correspondent said. 'There's something about a scandal in the summer that people don't generally survive.' "
Opinion Watch


Wall Street Journal editorial: "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 -- perhaps the next iteration of the 'Truth-Telling' award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud."
John Podhoretz in the New York Post: "Karl Rove didn't 'out' Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to intimidate Joe Wilson. He was dismissing Joe Wilson as a low-level has-been hack to whom nobody should pay attention. He was right then, and if he said it today, he'd still be right."
Michael Goodwin in the New York Daily News: "The intense grilling that White House reporters inflicted on presidential spokesman Scott McClellan Monday over whether political guru Karl Rove leaked the name of a CIA operative was no ordinary give-and-take. It was a hostile hectoring that revealed much of the mainstream press for what it has become: the opposition party."
New York Times editorial: "Mr. Rove could clear all this up quickly. All he has to do is call a press conference and tell everyone what conversations he had and with whom. While we like government officials who are willing to whisper vital information, we like even more government officials who tell the truth in public."
Harold Myerson in The Washington Post: "Rove did not become George W. Bush's indispensable op only because of his strategic smarts. He's also the kind of ethically unconstrained guy Bush has wanted around when the going gets tough -- when the case Bush is making is unconvincing on its own merits, when he needs to divert attention from himself with a stunning attack on somebody else. . . .
"You can go pretty far with this kind of modus operandi, particularly if the press is complaisant. Sometimes, you can go too far, as Joe McCarthy discovered when he leveled his woozy allegations against the Army. As Karl Rove is discovering, with ever clearer indications that in his zeal to bring down Wilson he went after a CIA agent, too."
Cragg Hines in the Houston Chronicle: "If Bush attempts to temporize or to protect Rove by parsing legalisms, he will be no better than Bill Clinton dancing around what 'is' means."
San Jose Mercury News editorial: "McClellan's credibility has been shredded. Consider this assertion Monday: 'No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.'
"Really? Has the president talked with Rove?"
Bob Ray Sanders in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "[I]f the president doesn't get this fox out of the White House, he may find a few wolves at his own door."
Financial Times commentary: "The dust-up over Karl Rove's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair has the usually docile White House press corps smelling blood. . . .
"It was left to Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the Washington press corps and usually the toughest of McClellan's interrogators, to throw a rare softball. 'Has Karl Rove apologised to you?' she asked. McClellan would not comment."
Chris Lehmann in the New York Observer: "Hounding a suit as empty as Mr. McClellan's into submission is far from a ringing vindication of the press' power. Indeed, like virtually everything else in the ghastly, backwards-spooling Plame saga, it exposes the press' sallow, retiring weakness in affairs of state."
The Miller Puzzle


So, why is Judy Miller, alone among all the reporters, in jail?
Other reporters have spoken to prosecutors after receiving explicit releases from Libby and Rove -- and, in the case of The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, Libby and someone else but we don't know who.
So is Miller's source someone else? Is that person not willing to provide the explicit release? Has she asked?
Or was Miller, who critics have accused of carrying water for war hawks before and during the war, spreading the news about Plame herself?
Just a few days before the Plame leak, Howard Kurtz wrote in The Washington Post about several ways in which Miller's conduct was unusual for a reporter. For instance: "[A] half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a middleman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi."
Now John Podhoretz writes in National Review's blog: "What if -- and here's where it gets really interesting -- what if the real object of interest where Fitzgerald's investigation is concerned is now none other than the jailed Judith Miller of the New York Times? What if she let it all slip and in the giant game of telephone around the nation's capital, Miller was the original source of the 'Plame's in the CIA' info?"
Bush Calls For Jailed Reporter's Release


No, not that one, silly.
Here's Bush's statement .
Nedra Pickler writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush called Tuesday for the release of an Iranian journalist jailed for writing articles linking government officials to murder."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...071301138.html

Karl Rove Will Survive
posted July 13, 2005

I am not sure what happened in the Karl Rove/Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame Affair or subsequent events, but let's look into the hypothetical crystal ball. In the last six years that I have known Karl Rove, I have observed that he never gets caught with his pants down. I will say it again: Karl never gets caught with his pants down.
Here is what has happened. The media has jumped all over Rove, he denies wrong doing and competing camps are becoming established---the resign or don't resign crowd start their vigorous campaigns. The camps are broken down neatly among political lines. There are those either for or against Karl--and unlike local politicians such as Ward Crutchfield or Chris Newton---Rove knows what to do, and when to do it and he will step down on his own accord. Unless there is a criminal indictment, Rove does not have to go anywhere. It makes it hard for people to call for the resignation of an un-indicted official when there are so many indicted officials and party leaders in Tennessee who have remained silent. It must be a hard time to really bite that tongue or there are a lot of hypocrites out there.



Make no mistake if Karl Rove leaked Plame's name and the US Attorney indicts him he should go, and the President needs to keep to his word and remove him. However, there has probably never before been a prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Questions of how Rove got the information initially probably do need to be asked. However, if or when it is proven that Rove really did not do anything wrong. People will scratch their heads and ask themselves why Ol' Joe Wilson went on a trip to Africa to investigate whether Iraq had tried to obtain enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, probably with pre-determined outcomes in mind. The trip may even have been arranged by his wife a CIA weapons of mass destruction specialist or was she at least involved having knowledge in orchestrating it? Wilson and Plame may be true patriots for all we know or political opportunists waiting to cash in.

We do know Wilson had retired in 1998, but was brought back for this 2002 trip. That is a question worth asking by people: who wanted Joseph Wilson to go to Niger? And why? Then after he returns, Wilson for some reason writes a book The Politics of Truth, 528 pages critical of the Bush Administration and American Foreign Policy just in time for the 2004 election and then profits nicely. Who becomes the villain? That in of itself is the story. Glancing at the January 2004 Vanity Fair photo which features both Wilson and Plame, called "the most famous female spy in America," posing in their Jaguar did not endear the couple as victims merely yearning for anonymity on the heel of the book.

Here are a few points the pundits need to remind themselves of: Nobody has ever proven Rove has said Valerie Plame was a covert agent in deep cover. Rove simply warned reporter Matthew Cooper to stay away from the idea that Wilson's trip had been authorized by CIA Director George Tenet or Vice President Dick Cheney. Was Rove right? Again find out who sent Mr. Wilson to Niger.

If Rove was not to blame and is in fact correct, neither Tenet nor Cheney were involved think of the damage he prevented by telling Cooper his story was wrong. The media has never tried to go out of their way to make sure the Bush administration was portrayed in the most flattering light. Unfortunately, the media the purveyors of doom and gloom certainly can live with innuendo or outright accusations. By preventing the damage Rove could swing public opinion over to his side. It will mean Wilson and Plume are not
heroes.

If Rove lied to the grand jury investigating this case, I expect Rove himself would have already resigned-because I firmly expect President Bush to terminate him, rightly so. But I expect Karl Rove was truthful before the Grand Jury. After all Rove gave the media, Matt Cooper and assumedly Judith Miller, permission to give his name to the grand jury as a source. Yet he really did not reveal anything damaging so he comes out of this
incident cleanly. And remind yourself Rove had no problems with Cooper testifying. And why not you may ask? Because Cooper's own emails suggest that Rove didn't reveal the name of Joe Wilson's wife.

There is a world of difference in saying look you are going to screw this article up, you are going to blame the wrong people unjustly and unfairly and oh by the way Wilson's wife apparently works at the agency, What Rove did not say was "Hey Matt, did you know Valerie Plame is a covert CIA agent?" The real shocker of this story may turn out to be that Matt Cooper's source for "Valerie Plame" may have been fellow journalist Robert Novak. Yet in the end, the media may just play right into Rove's hand.

Meanwhile Supreme Court hearings will dominate until October 2005. The question is will we have one or two? If the Democrats are seen as obstructionist it will hurt them in the 2006 campaign. No offense: the Republicans have Fred Thompson to help them. The Democrats have George Mitchell. Hands down Fred Thompson sells in Tennessee and Fred Thompson sells in America. George Mitchell? He sells in France. Fred Thompson would be a great choice for the job himself. Right after the news coverage of the
Supreme Court nomination, especially if controversial, we will witness the Saddam Hussein trial. The trial could combine the best or worst elements of the OJ, Scott Peterson, Robert Blake and Michael Jackson proceedings. It will be more intense than anything since the Nuremberg Trials. But if Kato Kaelin or McCauley Caulkin show up I suspect viewers will tune out.

Meanwhile the Republicans scrambling for a candidate in 2008, may select the somewhat monotonous, but benevolent Bill Frist and if a freshly exonerated Karl Rove joins his team to manage this campaign, and they recruit and bring in as the VP nominee someone like George Allen, Jeb Bush or Condi Rice for the charisma or any combination of the above the GOP will return in 2008 for an encore. There will be two major issues in 2008: Hillary and Health Care. Provided of course we have a feasible exit strategy in Iraq and a promising democracy there. Who will the Dems pick for VP to go along with Hillary---who really wants to serve as Hillary's running mate and can provide geographic balance? Harry Reid aka "Dr. No" or Howard Dean or the dark horse possibility Phil Bredesen?

Dr. Frist, the noted heart surgeon, a man untouched by scandal, becomes the front runner in 2008 and Rove ends up more powerful than ever. Hillary Clinton can never win on health care issues, look at TennCare for example, which Tennessee Governor Bredesen has not fixed and clearly Frist owns the issue--he is even bucking the President on Stem Cell Research. Hillary is either loved or hated. She has to run against herself. The more Democrats or the media bash Karl Rove the better it is for the Republicans and it keeps the focus off of Iraq, social security, world-wide war on terror, and anything else people deem as important. The media seems overtly eager, perhaps politically motivated, to go after Rove on this issue, yet there is no evidence that he broke the law. This may spark discussion at the corner bar but it will not address real issues confronting our country.

In 2008, we are likely to see Rove versus James Carville. The Ragin' Cajun is exciting, nevertheless Rove wins every time. Carville, he will make you think he is winning. Rove does one thing extremely well and that is: he wins! Think about it, some of the crystal ball is certainly plausible. The old saying, what does not kill you makes you stronger certainly could ring true for Karl Rove. The Democrats would be better served finding a
messenger and getting their message out. What ails Karl Rove will not kill him. In the end, it seems to me like a media generated uproar. The backlash could be felt in 2006 and 2008. Karl Rove should have perhaps exercised better discretion, but Democrats seemed poised to make the same mistake.

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_69430.asp
LOL, I love your press

Originally Posted by parihaka

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_69430.asp
LOL, I love your press

This is an opinion piece. Therefore, it is not an example of bias in "my media."

Originally Posted by Leader

This is an opinion piece. Therefore, it is not an example of bias in "my media."

I love your press not because of any bias, all media has bias, I love it because it feeds off itself. Within a week the original issues will be completely buried in a right/left, liberal/conservative mutual media bashing. They're quoting themselves already

I will say it again: Karl never gets caught with his pants down.

Neither was MJ!

Originally Posted by Ray

Neither was MJ!

From the Washington Post:


"Several people familiar with the investigation said they expect [special prosecutor Patrick J.] Fitzgerald to indict, or at least force a plea agreement with, at least one individual for leaking Plame's name to conservative columnist Robert D. Novak in July 2003," VandeHei and Leonnig write.

"A number of legal experts, some of whom are involved in the case, said evidence that has emerged publicly suggests Rove or other administration officials face potential legal threats on at least three fronts.

"The first is the unmasking of CIA official Valerie Plame, the original focus of special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's probe. But legal sources say there are indications the prosecutor is looking at two other areas related to the administration's handling of his investigation. One possible legal vulnerability is perjury, if officials did not testify truthfully to a federal grand jury, and another is obstructing justice, if they tried to coordinate cover stories to obscure facts."

Broken, I'll bet you $50 that Rove is not indicted on this. You want the action?

Originally Posted by Bluesman

Broken, I'll bet you $50 that Rove is not indicted on this. You want the action?

As I said in the first post in this thread, it will be hard to take down a man as well protected as Karl Rove, so hold on to your fifty. On the other hand, it came out today that Rove had discussed Plame with Novak before Novak cited "two senior adminstration officials" saying that Plame was a CIA agent.

However, Fitzgerald may be casting a net for more fish than just Rove. Evidently, he is tracing the source of a leaked classifed State Department memo which may have ended up in the hands of Jeff Gannon, he of gay-prostitute website fame, who worked at Talon news and had access to White House press conferences without a press pass. Gannon first implied he had read the memo, then denied it. The memo references Plame of the CIA and was leaked just prior to Novak's article outing Plame. Gannon was visited by the FBI shortly after. If Gannon did learn of the memo's contents, who told him?

Who knows where this is going.

Originally Posted by Broken

Who knows where this is going.

Right up Wilson's ass, of couirse.

-dale

Originally Posted by dalem

...Right up Wilson's ass

Lol, these things have a way of traveling full circle, don't they?

In another thread there was a discussion regarding journalists outing intelligence operatives. The consensus was that they should be held accountable and even prosecuted for their actions.
Should not a man like Karl Rove; despite his stature and connections, be held to the same accountability if it is proven that he is the instigator of the leak?

Originally Posted by highsea

Lol, these things have a way of traveling full circle, don't they?

To be honest, my only interest in this whole story is 100% selfish. I mean, after all, there are only 2 options - either Rove broke the law or he didn't. If he did break the law, then he gets fired and I don't care. If he didn't break the law then he doesn't get fired and I still don't care.

But the clamor of the opponents of the Bush administration is hugely entertaining. The Dems, the standard Lefty rags, all of them, are walking out on a very shaky plank - a plank of their own making. If they are right and Rove is guilty then they can creep back to the ship and wipe their brows. But if they're wrong and Rove is not guilty then all this hand waving is going to just push them further toward the end of the plank.

It's just one more datum that shows how not-serious the Dems are about government these days.

And I'm also curious about how they will react if they are shown to be wrong (let alone if the investigation does actually hang Joe Wilson). Already we see the hedging creeping into Broken's previously heartfelt rhetoric. Note that above, in answer to Bluesman's challenge, Broken is already giving ground - Rove is "well-protected" and even if he's guilty he won't be fired. If he is fired will folks like Broken tip their hats? I doubt it. If he is not found guilty then will folks like Broken believe he is guilty anyway? I think so.

So that is what I'm waiting for - the afterglow.

-dale

Originally Posted by Amled

In another thread there was a discussion regarding journalists outing intelligence operatives. The consensus was that they should be held accountable and even prosecuted for their actions.
Should not a man like Karl Rove; despite his stature and connections, be held to the same accountability if it is proven that he is the instigator of the leak?

He absolutely should if he violated the law. However, the story is changing everyday and we won't know the full truth until the special investigator is complete and charges are drawn up from the grand jury process. Here's some newer information from this morning.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20...1257-9887r.htm

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency's headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.
"She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.
"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren't minding the store here. ... The agency never changed her cover status."
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under "nonofficial cover" -- also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson -- also said that she worked under extremely light cover.
In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn't been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.
The distinction matters because a law that forbids disclosing the name of undercover CIA operatives applies to agents that had been on overseas assignment "within the last five years."
"She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids," Mr. Rustmann said. "Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee."
Asked whether his wife had been compromised before the press leak, Mr. Wilson said, "I have no idea," though he said that her work has had to change since the leaks.
"My wife's status is that she is back at work, obviously in a different capacity, and she no longer has the cover that she once held," he said.
One neighbor of the Wilsons, who live in the affluent Palisades community in Northwest, said that he "absolutely didn't know" that Mrs. Plame was in the CIA.
"We understood her to work as an economist," said David Tillotson, a 62-year old lawyer. He said he didn't know that Mrs. Plame commuted to CIA headquarters, but added that "they wouldn't be conducting an investigation if she hadn't been covert."