Broken

If true, Rove would be guilty of outing a CIA agent, at minimum. I suspect it would be rather hard to take Rove down, though.

MSNBC Analyst Says 2nd Source Confirms Karl Rove as Plame Leaker

By Greg Mitchell

Published: July 02, 2005 1:00 PM ET

NEW YORK Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source. Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, now claims that at least two sources have confirmed that the name is--top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

O'Donnell first offered this report Friday night on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show. Today, he went beyond that, writing a brief entry at the Huffington Post blog:

"I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's e-mails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

"McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

"Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow."

Here is the text of what O'Donnell said on Friday:

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury--the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other McLaughlin Group panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper.

Besides his career at a TV journalist, O'Donnell has served as a producer and writer for the series "The West Wing."

According to published reports, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, has interviewed President Bush and Vice President Cheney and called Karl Rove, among others, to testify before the grand jury.

"The breadth of Fitzgerald's inquiry has led to speculation that it has evolved into an investigation of a conspiracy to leak Plame's identity," the Chicago Tribune observed on Friday, "or of an attempt to cover up White House involvement in the leak."

Editor and Publisher

Semper Fi

If they found pictures of Karl Rove at Homosexual Orgies in Washington he still would get off the hook. Bush ain't going to let nothing happen to his dear buddy Rove.

Leader

Let's wait until the truth comes out before we start the beheading.

__________________

Confed999

More "some guy says" stuff. Be an interesting twist if it could be proven well enough to get a conviction.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Broken

Very true, since Lawrence O'Donnell leans strongly Democrat. However, Newsweek just came out with more details on the Time documents: .

The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.

Nothing damning there yet, but as the article notes:

But one of the two lawyers representing a witness sympathetic to the White House told NEWSWEEK that there was growing "concern" in the White House that the prosecutor is interested in Rove.

By the way, this article was written by none other than Michael Isikoff.

Bluesman

We were all waiting for 'more'?

HERE is more, courtesy of Little Green Footballs:

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Broken

I doubt if littlegreenfootballs or Rove's lawyer are any more credible than Lawrence O'Donnell or Michael Isikoff. I do find it interesting that the prosecutor's attention seems to be dwelling on Rove. On the otherhand, Wilson believes his wife was outed by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

I find the whole process rather bizarre. Robert Novak obviously knows who leaked him the information on Plame. If he has cooperated with the Justice department, the leaker is known. If Novak has not cooperated, why are two other reporters (neither of whom outed Plame) sentenced to jail time for not divulging the source of a story they did not report on, but Novak is off the hook?

Bluesman

Matt Miller has just caved. He'll testify, and we're all about to find out what he knows about who leaked The Worst Kept Secret in Washington: Plame was a CIA employee.

Bluesman

This story is about to get hot. Tomorrow we're going to see some STUFF, man.

The source, whoever it turns out to be, has just let Miller off the hook, and has released him from any and all obligations to maintain confidentiality. WHY? If that source is Rove - and his lawyer has explicity said he's NOT - then he must feel VERY secure that nothing that will come from Miller's testimony can send him to jail.

I smell a Rove trap. I think the MSM and certain Dems are getting WAY out on a limb, and is that a saw I see behind Karl's back?

I've been thinking this over, and I see several ways that this breaks well for the administration:

1) A chilling effect on 'anonymous sources', something this White House HATES having to try to fight, from Day One of the FIRST term, and they haven't warmed to it much since then. It may very well serve to have leakers self-plug, in order to keep from being the next one named in notes that a media outlet meekly gives to a prosecutor when they're ordered to.

2) The MSM is going all pit-bull on this story, and if it turns out to be not much, they're going to look as much the fool as they did when the Rathergate scandal broke, further eroding their influence, and increasing the relative power of the GOP Message Machine. It will become increasingly clear to Americans that their media gets as much wrong as it gets right, and it will ALWAYS aggressivly go after a story that has a possibility of damaging this particular President.

3) One piece of the MSM in particular is going to end up looking simultaneously a) unreasonably aggressive toward the Administration and biased, and b) craven and gutless for caving in when they could have made a case for defense of Freedom of the Press, which would have made them heroes to their natural allies on the Left. TIME Magazine, a formerly influential and powerful franchise in the liberal media, has, for some reason, simply gone meekly along with an order that seems to be antithetical to their interests. WHY? Could it be that they hoped for a certain result of the legal process, such as - oh, I don't know - 'Karl Rove being frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs' (in Joe Wilson's very quotable imagery)?

ALL of these things seem to be an excellent result from Rove's point-of-view, and I think he has, once again, finely calibrated and brilliantly executed a long-term plan that used the MSM's Bush Derangement Syndrome to bait them into making yet another very foolish but full-throttle pursuit of a phantom that took 'em all right over the cliff.

dalem

Speaking of the ol' Rover, this is too funny to not share. Anyone reading the Corner today has already seen it of course...

-dale

dalem

And B-man, I can see it now:

Rummy: "Karl, make the MSM go after me and trip."
Cheney: "No, me!"
Rice: "Aw c'mon you pansies, it's my turn."
Karl: "Actually I think it's about time I had some fun myself..."

Maybe it'll be a Day by Day soon.

-dale

Bluesman

HAH!

Seriously, am I being too Machiavellian, or do you think I've got the bubble, here?

dalem

I haven't followed the Plame story enough to say one way or the other, but I wouldn't necessarily bet against your idea. Mr. Rove does seem to be one smart and timely cookie.

Plus, the administration's opponents are so amateurish these days. Easy to get them to say what you want them to say, or just wait for them to say it on their own.

-dale

Bluesman

With everything else that happened yesterday, there has been no news on the story. I'm REALLY interested in seeing this play out.

troung

Rove Spoke With Reporter About CIA Agent
No Indication Bush Aide Used Operative's Name or Knew Covert Status

WASHINGTON (July 10) - Top White House advisor Karl Rove was one of the secret sources that spoke to reporters about a covert CIA operative whose identity was leaked to the media, Newsweek magazine reported in its latest edition.

The magazine said Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove talked to Time magazine about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Luskin said Rove recently gave Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper permission to testify about the conversation to a grand jury investigating the 2003 leak, according to Newsweek.

A U.S. federal judge ordered Cooper, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, to testify and reveal their confidential sources.

Last week Cooper avoided a jail sentence for contempt of court by agreeing to testify in the case. Miller refused to testify and was jailed.

The case has become an important test involving freedom of the press and has pitting the media's traditional use of anonymous sources against the efforts of a federal government prosecutor to investigate a possible crime.

It is illegal to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent.

Although Rove has made statements about the Plame leak, he has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about the CIA agent.

Rove has carefully chosen his words when questioned about the leak. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," he told CNN last year when asked if he had had anything to do with it.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been leading a two-year investigation into the leak amid questions about whether it came from White House as part of an attempt to discredit Wilson after he contradicted President Bush's assertions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying he had been sent by the CIA in 2002 to investigate the Bush administration's claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa -- a claim that the administration used to justify going to war in Iraq. Wilson said he found no evidence to support the claim.

The Newsweek article said an e-mail Cooper sent his bureau chief after briefly talking with Rove stated that "it was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd (weapons of mass destruction) issues who authorized the trip."

The e-mail did not suggest that Rove used Plame's name or that he knew she was a covert agent, the article said.

"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.


07/10/05 18:33 ET

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So I'll just sit back and watch the spin from everybody...