Almost forgot:
Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.
Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit.
“It’s history,” Mr. Mosbacher said last week in a brief telephone interview. “I commented on it at the time, and I have nothing to add.”
But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime.
But it does give a clue to Mr. Rove’s frequent and complimentary mentions over the years in Mr. Novak’s column, and to the importance of Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak to each other’s ambitions.
“They’ve known each for a long time, but they are not close friends,” said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.
Consider this the day’s flame warfare thread.
ppGaz
What?!?!
You mean this matter won’t be decided in the blogosphere?
Cobble
I think this is part of why everyone already believes they know what happened. It has happened before, and the same instinct that tells your the petty thief claiming the coppers got it wrong this time tells you, well, Rove’s done it before, and (arguably) this time stepped over a legal line.
Hell, even if I hadn’t been following this one, a great barometer of stupid Republican behaviour is to read The Corner. If they joke about it, it wasn’t a big deal. If they attack the victim or a semi-involved Democrat, the Repubs probably fucked up. (Bonus theory: if Podhoretz disagrees with Ponnuru, K-Lo will always post non-sequiter liberal bashing in between. While there is a substantial body of data supporting this theory, the underlying mechanisms of causation are not yet understood.)
DougJ
Look, all the information Rove provided was in Who’s Who. Case closed.
The American people are going to be very angry with the Dems for raising such a fuss when the real truth comes to light. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Reid and Pelosi give a televised apology to the White House.
ppGaz
Yes, the case is closed on your argument, Doug. You’re wrong, for the reasons already stated. Who’s Who did not blow Ms. Wilson’s cover. They don’t do that. Somebody else did. Stay tuned, and you’ll find out who that was.
Do even get that Wilson’s wife name was not a secret, it’s her job that was a secret?
No, I don’t think you do.
Stormy70
Her job for the CIA was so secret, she drov through the front gate at Langley. Hope all the foreign governments photographing the workers going in and out of the place missed her. Plus, when the CIA sent Wilson, Niger would have done an extensive background check on him (standard procedure) and found out his wife worked at the CIA. I thought nepotism at the CIA was against the rules. She drew attention to herself by putting up her own husband to go, then lets him leak all over, landing at the NYT.
ppGaz
You mean, just like a lot of other people with secret jobs do?
That has nothing to do with her status, or the legal issues surrounding that status. Nothing whatever.
I cannot believe that you say things like that. Are you putting us on?
skip
If Stormy were right, Fitzgerald would have shut it down month ago.
Any fair-mined person would assume that there is game afoot. Why else bother putting Judith Miller in jail?
In the meantime I propose putting Stormy on a “boondoggle” to Niger–just in time for the famine. Starving does wonders toward concentrating the mind
on essentials.
In this case the essentials mean the fate of Plame’s cover company, and the likely origin of the yellowcake apocrypha.
SD
Stormy70
Fitzy hates Judy Miller, since she blew a terrorim case he was in charge of at the time.
Oh goody! The personal attack will win this argument for you, although this is the Plame Flame thread, so carry on.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Stormy, please explain exactly how would the government of Niger’s (alleged) background check have detected that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA, and even further that she had previously been an undercover operative? Is Karl Rove’s cell number common knowledge in Niamey?
Ken Hahn
There need to be serious consequences here. Whatever idiot hired Valerie Plame at the CIA and whatever idiot hired Joe Wilson at the State department should be immediately fired.
Mike S
I love the way people stick to the defending points that have been debunked.
“She drove to the CIA.”
Quite a few CIA people have said that many covert people go to the CIA.
“She wasn’t covert.”
The CIA spokesman who spoke directly to Novak has said that she was covert.
“Novak got the name from Who’s who.”
Novak wrote early on that they gave him the name, he didn’t dig it out.
I think my favorite is still that the Wilson trip was a boondoggle and/or they should have sent someone who could have gotten the truth. This one willfully ignores the fact that Wilson actually got the truth.
Rome Again
Stormy, do you even investigate what the other side discusses? If you did, you’d know that all these things have been debunked.
By the way, any barring of nepotism at the CIA doesn’t account for the fact that Joseph Wilson worked for the State Department!
I got an idea, how about we stop nepotism in the Oval Office?
Stormy70
Yes, and no, they have not been debunked, and the news media lawyers filed an amicus brief claiming no law had been broken. There is no way to know what is really going on until Fitzy comes out with his report.
Andrew J. Lazarus
the news media lawyers filed an amicus brief claiming no law had been broken.
Which position the Court rejected. Heaven knows, there are some amicus briefs from 2000 claiming we should hand-count all those Florida ballots (like they hand-counted the Ohio ones this week!) and the country would be better off if we had, but citing rejected amicus briefs is a pretty flimsy style of argumentation.
You might double-check what the Court said, too.
ppGaz
That doesn’t stop you from making the same wrong announcements about in a regular basis, though. Announcements that are nonsensical on their face.
Stormy70
Same goes for everyone of you. You guys think it is all Rove, he’s guilty. No proof, though. I don’t defend Rove because I don’t know what he did, and when the report comes out I can make my decision based on the facts of the case.
I do know that Wilson was outed as a liar, even that dimwit Kerry dropped him from his campaign. I know you guys think he’s credible, but he is not. He’s a liar.
ppGaz
Please produce a post of mine which says such a thing.
As opposed to what you are doing now? Daily misstating and misprepresentation of the facts, even after being corrected?
ppGaz
Really? So there was a nuclear threat in the works over at Saddamville in 2003?
When will this news break? Will we see you on Press the Meat tomorrow morning?
Mike S
Your boy Rove and the rest of the WhiteHouse said all along that Rove had absoutely nothing to do with the leak. But then that doesn’t matter to you.
I also find it quite funny how the GOP’s darling of a reporter, J/J Guckon, is where you get so much of this.
link
Stormy70
Gannon? The gay guy the left is up in arms over? Oh my God, you are joking. I got it from the Senate report and the Washington Post. You guys keep saying you are proving me wrong , but I don’t see the evidence that he did not lie to the NYT.
Plus, a covert super secret spy lets her spouse go write an oped for the NYT, and lets him lie about it? She didn’t think the media or the Administration couldn’t find out how his name got put into the pot? Please, I’m not buying the routine. When their mugs hit Vanity Fair, I stopped believing they were torn up about her “outing”.
Stormy70
Oh, I forgot, THE GAYCOCK WEB OF LIES IS EXPOSED!!!!
h/t Protein Wisdom
Mike S
Willfully ignorant or lying?
The fact that Roberts put in that BS line has been pointed out to you numerous times, yet you use it consistantly as well as continually saying that someone else should have been sent to “get the truth.”
Are you incapable of honesty? Of course that’s the hallmark of the new Republican party. Too bad there’s so few people from the old party left.
Stormy70
The Senate report was bipartisan and he was discredited. The British still stand by their intelligence report. Wilson is not credible, and you are cherry picking “facts” that do not agree with you. Fine, I’m sure we all do that, and this issue can’t be resolved without the report. Bringing Gannon into makes you look like a Kos nutter type, why are you bringing this guy up. It reeks of lefty conspiracy theories.
ppGaz
DougJ, where are you?
Wasn’t it you, just the other day, bemoaning a moral decline in the country, and touting increases in crime and teen pregnancy?
As stated by that well-known liberal lie-monger, David Brooks, this weekend in NYT.
Back to you …
Mike S
Earth to Stormy. My link ties specifically to parts about the partisan section you keep talking about. Notice the part saying that the full committee refused to sign onto that line.
I could care less about Gannert’s sexuality. I do still find it funny that the right defends a man with 0 journalism experiance, no backround checks and an all access pass to the white house. I’d say, funny as in strange, but the right has proven that they will defend the White House no matter what. So it’s more funny ha ha.
Sinequanon
Right.
If Rove such an innocent, why this:
Bush is going to go around Fitzgerald on PlameGate by putting an old Skull and Bones pal in place who can control Fitzgerald or over rule him.
Yeah, Rove is about as innocent as his rear end is a virgin.
Sinequanon
Mike,
I have found it useless to respond to Stormy. “It” always asks for your links and proof even though you provide evidence and links, makes “it’s” own remarks, or quips or……..yet never provides a link to proof for “it’s” own attacks and remarks.
Best to ignore.
S-