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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / More Rove

More Rove

by John Cole|  July 2, 20054:00 pm| 36 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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Newsweek now has published the story about the possible Plame/Rove nexus that was previously mentioned by Lawrence O’Donnell. The story was penned by none other than Michael Isikoff, who no doubtedly will be served a fresh new heap of shit sandwich for being a ‘liberal hack:’

Now the story may be about to take another turn. 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…

Initially, Fitzgerald’s focus was on Novak’s sourcing, since Novak was the first to out Plame. But according to Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, Rove spoke to Cooper three or four days before Novak’s column appeared. Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove “never knowingly disclosed classified information” and that “he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.” Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details. He did say that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury “two or three times” and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him. “He has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else,” Luskin said. 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. Fitzgerald declined to comment.

In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak’s column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson’s wife was “fair game.” But White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was “totally ridiculous.” On Oct. 10, McClellan was asked directly if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with any reporters. McClellan said he had spoken with all three, and “those individuals assured me they were not involved in this.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    Jimmy Jazz

    July 2, 2005 at 4:19 pm

    White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was “totally ridiculous.”

    Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler dismissed the affair as a “third-rate burglary”. Though the burglary occurred at a sensitive time, with a looming presidential campaign, most Americans initially believed that no President with Nixon’s advantage in the polls would be so foolhardy or unethical as to risk association with such an affair.

    The more things change…..

    well, Woodward has become a pod person, so there’s that.

  2. 2.

    Tim F

    July 2, 2005 at 4:28 pm

    If the Cooper docs provide enough info to wrap things up then Fitz could announce indictments on tuedsay. Treason, exposure of vital intelligence assets in a time of war, perjury. That’ll frame the whole SCOTUS fight nicely.

  3. 3.

    Jimmy Jazz

    July 2, 2005 at 4:34 pm

    A nice Gore Vidal quote from 2003, via Americablog via Digby:

    Yet you saw in the ’60s how the Johnson administration collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. Likewise with Nixon. And now with the discontent over how the war in Iraq is playing out, don’t you get the impression that Bush is headed for the same fate?

    I actually see something smaller tripping him up: this business over outing the wife of Ambassador Wilson as a CIA agent. It’s often these small things that get you. Something small enough for a court to get its teeth into. Putting this woman at risk because of anger over what her husband has done is bitchy, dangerous to the nation, dangerous to other CIA agents. This resonates more than Iraq. I’m afraid that 90 percent of Americans don’t know where Iraq is and never will know, and they don’t care.

  4. 4.

    John Cole

    July 2, 2005 at 4:45 pm

    And those who accuse me of rhetorical over-reach should take note of the previous two comments.

    If Rove is found guilty of anything, it will be perjury.

    If even that.

  5. 5.

    KC

    July 2, 2005 at 4:45 pm

    It is time to see how this plays out. This episode has always concerned me more than other stuff (with the exception of the lousy post-war preparations) because it seems so stupid. Maybe Rove or whoever it was that leaked didn’t break the law in the action of outing Wilson’s wife, but they sure did something pretty goddamned unwarranted. We can attempt to reason away the actual effect of the leak, it may or may not have fubbed our intelligence gathering capabilities, but it’s still something that shouldn’t have been done. Clearly, the CIA was concerned about it. More to the point, it was also a pretty malicious thing to do.

  6. 6.

    Tim F

    July 2, 2005 at 4:57 pm

    You’re not supposed to overreach John. Christ, if you overreached the average liberal poster then you might as well hand in your GOP card and pick up your MoveOn brain chip at our convenient Morgantown outlet.

  7. 7.

    KC

    July 2, 2005 at 4:58 pm

    Isikoff’s piece seems straight up to me–nothing in it I can find to quibble with–so it’d be funny to see him hand back that shit sandwich to its maker/s.

  8. 8.

    JWeidner

    July 2, 2005 at 5:00 pm

    If Rove is found guilty of anything, it will be perjury.

    If even that.

    You’re probably right. We’ll see how it plays out, but I wonder how loudly the Repubs would have been howling if it were a Dem who was suspected of the leak. They call liberals traitors now just for voicing displeasure with the course of the war…just imagine if it had been someone on Sen. Clinton’s staff…

  9. 9.

    Tim F

    July 2, 2005 at 5:02 pm

    Who remembers the ’16 words’ excuse-making by the right when it turned out that president Christ’s 2002 SOTU speech lied about Niger uranium? It seems that you might hear from our friends in the Fitzgerald jury about that case as well.

    Perjury will be nice of course, but you’re optimistic if you think that’s it or Rove is the only one involved.

  10. 10.

    Rick

    July 2, 2005 at 5:14 pm

    Treason, exposure of vital intelligence assets in a time of war, perjury.

    Vital assets. Now there is overreach. Like at FreeRepublic in 1998.

    Cordially…

  11. 11.

    Profbacon

    July 2, 2005 at 6:03 pm

    He can only be guilty if he got the information. I don’t see how the Presidents Senior Political Advisor could have gotten EXTREMELY sensitive national security information.

    This story doesn’t make any sense. Rove couldn’t have known the identities of our spys. I feel much less safe knowing Karl Rove knows the identities of our agents.

    Whoever told Karl about Valerie Plame is truely to Blame.

    Oh, he made the the call from Air Force One. Well, that’s certainly interesting…

  12. 12.

    Jimmy Jazz

    July 2, 2005 at 6:50 pm

    If Rove is found guilty of anything, it will be perjury.

    It’s not the crime John, it’s the coverup. It all gets back to the Original Sin, the Big Lie: using a domestic psyops campaign to sell a war that couldn’t have been sold for the “real reasons” and which is now resembling a gigantic clusterfuck. I think Vidal’s point is, and it’s the right one: these things tend to snowball when there is general dissatisfaction with the administration and the direction of the country.

  13. 13.

    Bob

    July 2, 2005 at 8:14 pm

    Lest we forget, we’ve got a male prostitute twisting slowly in the wind… He’s got Rove’s fingerprints on him too. There’s more there, too.

    Somewhere in the bowels of National Security there are people who don’t like BushCo, and the fall will come. The skids are greased. Rove and his puppet weren’t half as smart as they thought they were.

    Hopefully, it’ll take down a whole shitload of them.

  14. 14.

    Mike S

    July 2, 2005 at 8:21 pm

    If Rove is found guilty of anything, it will be perjury.

    Now if he committed perjury about a blowjob we might be able to get congress to do something about it. Anyone know if Matt Cooper has a blue dress?

  15. 15.

    AL Maviva

    July 2, 2005 at 8:31 pm

    Listen to yourselves.

    The pack of you sound more hysterical and paranoid than the average Clinton hater in the Summer of ’97. Jeebus. It’s pathetic. For a bunch of people who are awfully quick on the draw to call the other guys paranoid, y’all are a sight.

    Why don’t you ask the Vince Foster theorists. They can probably give you some insight. They probably have a few paranoid, grandiose Unified Theory of All Conspiracies blueprints lying around you could borrow for a week or two.

    Next Week In Liberal Fantasies All Over America: Bush Jaywalks, Gets Impeached.

    Pathetic.

  16. 16.

    p.lukasiak

    July 2, 2005 at 8:31 pm

    The real question is: What did the President know, and when did he know it?

  17. 17.

    Mike S

    July 2, 2005 at 8:51 pm

    Why don’t you ask the Vince Foster theorists.

    The comical thing about this comment is that the Foster “theorists” were taken so seriously that Kenneth Starr had to investigate it. I’m sure Al was in the forefront of the Republican attempt to stop the rediculous attacks on the Clintons.

  18. 18.

    miscreant

    July 2, 2005 at 9:04 pm

    What else in mentioned in the memos between Cooper and his editors? Who were his other sources on the Wilston trip to Niger. It’s conceivable the memos make no specific reference to Plame but only that Cooper spoke with Rove on 3-4 occasions. If they’re going to leak one name, leak them all.

  19. 19.

    Compuglobalhypermeganet

    July 2, 2005 at 10:17 pm

    Who remembers the ’16 words’ excuse-making by the right when it turned out that president Christ’s 2002 SOTU speech lied about Niger uranium? It seems that you might hear from our friends in the Fitzgerald jury about that case as well.

    That would be funny, especially since both a Senate Committee and a British report both have already investigated and concluded that the 16 words were well-founded. Remember, the 16 words only said that the British government thought that Iraq sought to broker deals for Niger uranium… not that the US knew that Saddam had uranium in his pants pockets. Nice try, though.

  20. 20.

    Sojourner

    July 2, 2005 at 10:22 pm

    Let’s not forget the Downing Street memos, which, interestingly enough, are consistent with the observations of Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill.

    Imagine that.

  21. 21.

    Jimmy Jazz

    July 2, 2005 at 11:12 pm

    The pack of you sound more hysterical and paranoid than the average Clinton hater in the Summer of ’97.

    Yes, because those huge caches of WMD removed all suspicion of the motivations for the war.

    Oh, oh wait, the in depth investigations as to the bad intelligence and firing of those responsible removed all suspicion of the motivations for the war.

    Oh, oh wait, the indisputable links between Al Queda and Saddam removed all suspicion of the motivations for the war.

    Oh, oh wait…

    Yeah, gee, it’s really a stretch to connect the outing of one of the CIA’s top WMD experts to the fact that the CIA wasn’t on board with an invasion of a country that turned out not to have WMDs.

    Crazy liberals.

  22. 22.

    Rick

    July 3, 2005 at 12:20 am

    I’m sure Al was in the forefront of the Republican attempt to stop the rediculous attacks on the Clintons.

    Yeah, Al was there. I saw him–he was riding a unicycle and had on one of those giant puppet heads.

    Cordially…

  23. 23.

    HH

    July 3, 2005 at 1:20 am

    So one reporter having so recently wiped egg off his face begins the apparent rowback from the claims of a pundit who wipes egg off his face as a matter of course.

  24. 24.

    Mike S

    July 3, 2005 at 1:30 am

    Rick

    You need to work on your snark.

    Cordially

  25. 25.

    Tim F

    July 3, 2005 at 7:52 am

    both a Senate Committee and a British report both have already investigated and concluded that the 16 words were well-founded.

    We’re past that dear heart. The question now is who forged those documents for Italian intelligence and why. Neither Senate nor British got nearly that far in their inquiry.

    BTW, for our glib friend ‘Ricky,’ connecting the Plame crime with ‘treason’ comes not from me but from Bush 41. Poppy had a very low opinion of people who expose vital US intelligence assets. It’s unlikely that the prosecutor will find for treason itself, but poppy did see enacted a law that should make it easier to prosecute the case.

  26. 26.

    Rick

    July 3, 2005 at 10:30 am

    Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. I’ve received other well-meant left wing self-help advice urging me to chill, now I’m told to work on it. I like the latter.

    But what say you all to the comment above proclaiming Valerie Plame as a “vital US intelligence asset(s)?” Just being droll? She was no Emma Peel, after all, having been retired from fieldcraft for some years.

    Cordially…

  27. 27.

    Sojourner

    July 3, 2005 at 10:36 am

    Good one, Rick!

  28. 28.

    Krusty Krab

    July 3, 2005 at 12:30 pm

    Bob says:

    Lest we forget, we’ve got a male prostitute twisting slowly in the wind… He’s got Rove’s fingerprints on him too. There’s more there, too.

    Bob, you’re getting just a bit too creepy here. Could you take your meds, please?

  29. 29.

    Rick

    July 3, 2005 at 1:13 pm

    I understand Jeff Gannon was seen off-loading cocaine at the Mena, AR airport, and transferring it to Vince Foster’s trunk.

    By all means, let’s investigate.

    Cordially…

  30. 30.

    Sinequanon

    July 3, 2005 at 8:06 pm

    and here I thought this was an intelligent moderate blog…

  31. 31.

    Rick

    July 4, 2005 at 9:24 am

    Never was, never will be.

    Cordially…

  32. 32.

    Cliff

    July 6, 2005 at 4:18 pm

    It was an “intelligent moderate blog” for a bit, then it seemed too true – so the mudslinging begins and the intelligent minds move on, leaving only the apologists.

    The people who “outed” Valerie Plame violated a law which protects our agents abroad. Novack wrote the article and should now be penning “Letters from Leavenworth”, yet we are here yapping about everyon else. Get him on the truck to a federal pen and I’m sure we’ll hear who told him.

    If Rove told him, they can share a cell, if he didn’t, we can all just shut up about it – hell’s got a hole waiting for him anyway.

  33. 33.

    Cliff

    July 6, 2005 at 4:18 pm

    It was an “intelligent moderate blog” for a bit, then it seemed too true – so the mudslinging begins and the intelligent minds move on, leaving only the apologists.

    The people who “outed” Valerie Plame violated a law which protects our agents abroad. Novack wrote the article and should now be penning “Letters from Leavenworth”, yet we are here yapping about everyon else. Get him on the truck to a federal pen and I’m sure we’ll hear who told him.

    If Rove told him, they can share a cell, if he didn’t, we can all just shut up about it – hell’s got a hole waiting for him anyway.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Arguing with signposts... says:
    July 2, 2005 at 4:53 pm

    O’Donnell, Rove, Plame, now Newsweek

    Via John Cole, the Newsweek story mentioned by O’Donnell is now out at – funny how this is all related – MSNBC.

    The Rove Factor? Time magazine talked to Bush’s guru for Plame story. (Newsweek)
    Now the story may be about to take another turn. The e-…

  2. Mark in Mexico says:
    July 3, 2005 at 12:08 am

    That’s a lie! It’s another lie! That’s a lie! Abso

    Lawrence O’Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, October 22, 2004 in interview on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country,” attacking John O’Neill. Pardon me if I take this one with just a teeny grain of salt.

  3. The Politburo Diktat says:
    July 3, 2005 at 7:20 am

    Rove: A Source on Plame Article

    The Left is already hollering “perjury and treason” and is erecting Rove’s gallows. Brieflt TIME magazine’s Matt Cooper wrote an article on the Niger uranium story in July 2003 that identified Valerie Plame as CIA. Now, Newsweek says: The e-mails surre…

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