Michael Isikoff has a piece in Newsweek’s Periscope (which you all remember from Koran flushing infamy) shedding more information on why Rove is going before Fitzgerald again:
But Rove did not disclose this conversation to the FBI when he was first interviewed by agents in the fall of 2003—nor did he mention it during his first grand jury appearance, says one of the lawyers familiar with Rove’s account. (He did not tell President George W. Bush about it either, assuring him that fall only that he was not part of any “scheme” to discredit Wilson by outing his wife, the lawyer says.) But after he testified, Luskin discovered an e-mail Rove had sent that same day—July 11—alerting deputy national-security adviser Stephen Hadley that he had just talked to Cooper, the lawyer says. In the e-mail, Rove said Cooper pushed him on whether the president was being hurt by the Niger controversy. “I didn’t take the bait,” Rove wrote Hadley, adding that he warned Cooper not to get “far out in front on this.” After reviewing the e-mail, Rove then returned to the grand jury last year and reported the Cooper conversation. He testified that the talk was initially about “welfare reform”—a topic mentioned in the e-mail—and that Cooper then changed the subject. Cooper has written that he doesn’t recall a discussion of welfare reform.
Your guess is as good as mine, and I will just let Tom Maguire do all the heavy lifting on this one.
Jeff Maier
I wouldn’t even try to handicap what is going on in this investigation. At the least, one can surmise that Fitzgerald is serious and pretty thorough.
Other than that, I’ll just wait and see what comes out from the grand jury.
Harlan James
It is getting to the point where you have to wonder if anybody takes anything coming out of the Bush administration seriously these days. Even the right has begun to recognize that Bush’s prounouncements on just about any topic is just a boxcar full of bullshit.
This week Rove and the boys all declared that they had absolutely nothing to do with the Plame leaks. Translation? They’re guilty as hell, they are going to be indicted and end up doing some very hard time.
Polls from this week that show the country has pretty much had it with this decidedly weird administration:
http://http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9622843/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/06/opinion/polls/main924485.shtml
DougJ
It will be very interesting to see what happens if Rove gets indicted. I also think that there has been too much emphasis on this possibility. How do we know that he isn’t ratting Scooter Libby out?
I would not be at all surprised if we see no indictment for Rove but we do see indictments for Libby and Hadley. Rove may be an evil person, but it is entirely possible that he was just a bit player in this and that the real conspiracy, if there was one, came out of Cheney’s office.
jobiuspublius
No, it’s a boxcar full of salami, or whatever it’s called. I wouldn’t stand next to that boxcar. When that boxcar opens it’s doors, there will be an avalanche of salami, or whatever it’s called.
Horshu
Question is: if Rove gets indicted, is Fitzgerald going to be painted in the same way as Ronnie Earle? I would expect that the cannons are aimed and loaded if so, with Drudge’s first breaking story of whom Fitzgerald voted for in ’92 and commercials already produced (it’d be funny if it was the Tom DeLay/sharks commercial with “Patrick Fitzgerald” and “Karl Rove” spliced into the soundtrack
jobiuspublius
I can’t wait for convictions, then the pardon’s. The outrage should be exquisite. Better than the finest salami, or whatever it’s called.
Slide
Well, I think so far Rove is the one we have the most indication will be indicted. We KNOW that Rove talked to Cooper regarding the Wilson matter. Rove did not mention this fact when he talked to the FBI or when he testified at the Grand Jury the first time. His excuse. He forgot. Right.
Then we are told that his lawyer FOUND an email that disputed Rove’s ignorance of this conversation with one of the reporters everyone was talking about. Question: How did Rove’s attorney “find” this email? Perhaps he “found” this incriminating email when Fitzgerald told him they had a copy?
So at the very least we have obstruction of justice, perhaps perjury on this alone, unless one believes that Rove just plum forgot.
Another interesting piece: Judy “finding” notes NOW. Huh? lol. Please give me a break, a reporter like Judy also just plum forgot talking to Libby in June and that she had notes? Strains credulity. Again, perhaps Fitzgerald is a very good investigator and “suggested” to little Judy that he may have had independent evidence of her little talk to Libby that she failed to disclose.
Another morsel: Jeff Gannon. Yes, fucking Jeff Gannon interviewed Wilson PRIOR to Wilson’s articles about his trip to Niger. Gannon referred to a memo that said Wilson’s wife sent him on the trip. Now, this was classified information. How did the gay prostitute get this info? Pillow talk perhaps.
I would not be surprised to see not only Rove and Libby indicted but there is an outside possibility that Ari Fleisher, Steven Hadley, Jeff Gannon and even little Judy might be indicted when all is said and done.
My heart beats faster with anticipation.
jobiuspublius
That would be awesome. Look what that got DuhHammuh, more indicments.
DougJ
That’s the $64,000 question. I think it would be crazy for them to do that. I think if they fight that way, there’s a real possibility that Bush won’t survive politically — I mean that he won’t be able to serve out his term.
My guess is that they don’t fight it and that Bush just bumbles along with a 35% approval rating until 2008. The Republicans of conscience feel emboldened to attack him constantly and the whole dynamics of the Republican party changes radically, in a way that makes the party much weaker politically but much healthier morally.
Slide
Please, I beg of you all, a moratorium on salami references.
DougJ
I really hope that little c**ks**r — in every sense of the word — Gannon gets it. I can’t stand that guy.
Libby seems oddly sympathetic to me, though I think he’s the guy that’s really going down. That early meeting with Miller is bad, bad news for him.
CaseyL
Thanks for the link to Macguire’s site. Some of those comments are instant classics: I’d heard wingers cherished a fantasy that Fitzgerald would be indicting Wilson and Plame, but this was the first time I read the Rube Goldberg-like scenario the wingers have come up with to support their fantasy.
The premise seems to be that Wilson/Plame planned to discredit the Bush Administration long before the Niger trip, for unknown reasons, and cleverly arranged everything, from the trip itself to Rove/Libby/et al’s disclosures to pet reporters. Amazing, how the Bush Admin played into their nefarious hands at every step! Amazing, how Plame and Wilson were able to predict, with uncanny accuracy, exactly how every member of the Bush Admin would react!
Amazing, that none of the wingers who create this fantasy, or who believe in it, have ever heard of Occam’s Razor.
Slide
Without question they will attack him. Perhaps not as being a partisan but as Mort Kondracke said on Brit Hume’s show, “we may have an out of control prosecutor”. They will paint him as out of control… ambitious… over reaching… etc. etc. They ALWAYS attack the messenger.
ppGaz
Cheese it on the salami? That’s balogna.
Your request doesn’t cut the mustard.
An way you slice it, that was a cold cut, amigo.
DougJ
You know what’s funny (to me at least). I was going to go around and do parody posts as right-winger suggesting this.
Slide
Whats really great about the Wilson investigation is that there is so much we don’t’ know. A real mystery and everyone loves a good mystery. We have very selected pieces of information leaked by interested parties. Fitzgerald and his team have been remarkably closed lipped. So its like the blind men groping different parts of an elephant and trying to figure out what we got. A real page turner.
ppGaz
….is that the righties have gone silent on it. Where is all their bluff and bluster today?
Slide
the Miers nomination has sucked the air out of their lungs. I think a lot on the right are starting to realize what those of us on the left have been saying for a long long time… and that is that Bush is an incompetent, unethical, arrogant, lightweight that doesn’t even have the strength of his convictions. Its hard to man the barricades for a guy like that.
CaseyL
That’s what made it so difficult to tell whether you were serious when you were playing Wacky Winger: it’s just not possible to be OTT enough to out-do the real thing.
I do wish Tom Lehrer was still performing. He once said political satire died the day Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize. I can’t imagine what he thinks of today’s political landscape,.
Tim F
Hunter Thompson said all that needs to be said when he shot himself. Fake crazy isn’t crazy enough anymore.
stickler
Re: smearing Fitzgerald. Yes, it would be crazy — near suicidal — for Team Bush! to try this while facing a raft of indictments. But they’ll do it anyway, because this is all that they know how to do.
Even if it breaks the GOP. Their policies have already driven moderates away, and the Republican party is on life support in New England, Illinois, and the West Coast. War hysteria helped mask the deep and troubling problems the Texas Republicans have brought the party. But the papier mache is coming off in the rain.
All these guys have is the image of being ruthless. It’s a facade, but without it, they have nothing to fall back on. If Bush suddenly tries to play statesman, fires whoever gets indicted, he has no Team B to go to. He will look weak.
So, they’ll gut it out and try the only tool in their toolbox: the Smear Gun.
DougJ
Actually, what they’ll do is this: the White House itself was stay quiet and they’ll get Peter “Karl Rove deserves a medal” King and others like him to smear Fitzgerald.
ppGaz
You guys should trust your president and commander in chief.
Trust Me
srv
Whatever Maquire’s readers are smoking, it isn’t salami.
Slide
the white house wont’ do it directly of course, they will use surrogates. They will Swift Boat Fitzgerald. You know – have some law school buddies claim they saw him shooting heroin while engaged in some satanic S/M sex rituals.
Or something like that.
p.lukasiak
The real question is “who is the ‘other source’, and is s/he co-operating with Fitzgerald.
This “other source” is apparently the person that supplied Novak (and Pincus, and possibly Cooper and Miller) with Plame’s name. Best guess is that its Hadley, although Rice is a possibility, and there is an outside chance that its Bolton (the odds are against it being Bolton, because he wasn’t a “White House official” at the time of the leak.)
Doubtless Fitzgerald has enough evidence to nail ‘the other source’s” ass to the wall, and I personally think that the source is co-operating with Fitzgerald and saying that there was a conspiracy involving Rove, Libby, etc. to discredit Wilson that involved outing his wife as a CIA employee without any regard for what that disclosure might entail…
Pb
Apparently one theory over at FreeRepublic was that HILLARY was behind it all…
Yeah, you know, because that’s just so hard to believe… Bush and Blair? Lie? About WMD? Bestill my beating heart…
DougJ
PB, that’s annoying that the Daily Kos won’t link to Free Republic. I think it is short-sighted to say “don’t give them the hits because they’re right-wing”. I firmly believe that the blogosphere will save this democracy of ours. We’re all in this together — Kos, FreeRepublic, Balloon Juice, Atrios, Instapunidt, you name it. It pisses me off that Kos would take the opposite attitude.
Pb
DougJ,
I believe that was the policy of an individual diarist, not Kos–although perhaps Kos would do the same, I don’t know. Some people don’t link to rival sites because they don’t want to encourage them, potentially contribute to hits or ad revenue, or show up in their logs. Others don’t care at all. Personally, I make the rounds every once in a while to see what people are saying.
As for “we’re all in this together”–well, most blogs can agree on one or two things, like free speech for blogs, and I do think that having more dialogues (not less) is a helpful thing. However, I wouldn’t even try seriously posting anything on Free Republic–they aren’t interested in what I have to say. The same, of course, goes for any militant, die-hard Freepers posting over on Daily Kos. Different flavors of kool-aid just don’t mix. So in that sense at least, I think the Kos diarist was doing the Freepers a service by not linking to them.
Andrew J. Lazarus
A very clear explanation of what to pray for is here.
kenB
You can find out here.
Oh,Boy.Stupidity!
Oh, yeah, Plamegate. Gosh, thank God Joe Wilson kept hush-hush about his trip to Niger by writing the NY Times Op-ed piece. And that double-secret Vanity Fair photo shoot.
How come no one here ever mentions that Matt Cooper’s wife is a DNC bigwig? I guess that’s that not nearly as important as making up stuff about Rove, huh?
So I thought covert CIA agents had a 5 yr. limit. If they’re not out in the field for more than 5 years, I thought covert status was stripped away. And hasn’t Plame been behind a desk, by both her and her husband’s admission, been raising two kids in DC since 97? Hmm…. let’s see 2003 – 1997 = 6 years!
Com Con
Yup, that’s why this probe isn’t what it seems. It’s not really an effort to indict Rove, Libby, and the other boogeymen of the lefties, but an investigation of Joe Wilson. I’m going to be laughing when Wilson, Plame, and Matt Cooper are behind bars and Rove and Libby are free!
Com Con
Another thing, Oh Boy: why isn’t Who’s Who being prosecuted? Everything Novak wrote can be found there.
RonnieEarl
Oh dear, Com, you seem to be taking OBStupid’s name literally.
ppGaz
So Doug, when you do all these handles, you have to post from different IP addresses? Because this POS thing won’t let me pull a DougJ and use a different handle.
Amazing. Just when you thought you’d seen everything.
ppGaz
Yes, I have a dialup account I could use for employing a different handle. A lot of work to satisfy a stupid restriction. My addy is not published, so what difference does it make what handle I use? The whole purpose of the handle is anonymity.
Com Con
ppgaz, you need a different email address for different log-ins/handles — with this, with the NYT, or with whatever you’re doing.
Com Con
He seems to take it literally too.
DougJ
One other thing about that, ppgaz. You shouldn’t use the email that comes with your dial-up because, quite simply, those email accounts blow. Get a gmail account.
ppGaz
Bwahahaha! You are the funny little guy.
First, no, absolutely not. The last thing in the world I need is yet another goddam email address. I will never get a gmail account, for reasons that I will not discuss with you here.
The email address I use here is the same one I have been using for public activity since 1997. It does not “blow” and it is not part of any ISP account. I am a broadband user and keep a dialup only for road work and emergencies. I never use any ISP-supplied email account.
I answer all non-threatening email and I provide my address to almost anyone who asks for it. You might want to do the same, because I still have no real reason to think you are not John Cole having a little fun at our expense, or maybe Charles Manson. No offense, but the Internet is a weird place.
Oh,Boy.Stupidity!
Okay, now that all the childish insults are out of the way, can anyone respond to what I’ve written? I won’t hold my breath.
Snorkel
kenB,
Thanks for the Tom Lehrer link. I really enjoyed that.
Kimmitt
Man, if I were Pete Fitzgerald, I’d have a food taster. An awful lot of Bushy problems go away if he does, and these are not nice people.
Slide
Stupid said:
huh? She was alrady “outed” at this point and her name on every front page in america. Not much of a secret anymore STUPID.
Stupid continues:
Huh? What does Cooper’s wife have to do with anything. Cooper did NOT cooperate with the prosecutor for months and months. What are you trying to say STUPID? That he is going to LIE in front of a zeolous prosecutor because he wife is a Dem? lol.. very STUPID, STUPID.
More STUPID:
And how do you know she was not in the “field” in the prior five years? She has set up a network in Europe over the past 20 years. How do you know if she went there or not in the past five years? Thats the thing about SECRET agents STUPID, their actions are SECRET.
Its all irrelevant anyway what YOU think, the CIA concluded she fit into the statute thats why they requested the investigation. The FBI belives she is covert because the had a preliminary investigation (under Ashcroft) and concluded that a larger investigation needed to go forward. Firtgerald obviously concluded she was covert as well as the members of the grand jury otherwise what were they investigating for two years if no underlying crime had been committed? So STUPID, that issue has been long long ago settled.
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID:
According to the people that should know (CIA employees) it is not unusual to have an undercover operative work in Langley. Hey, I was a cop for 20 years, we had a lot of very very dangerous undercover narcotics officers that regularly went to their office in headquarters. Your post says more about yoru ignorance than anything else STUPID.
Oh, and the fact that MS. WILSON’s name was in Who’s Who, so? The fact that Ms Wilson was married to Mr. Wilson was not the secret. It was part of her cover. The secret was that, rather than working for the cover CIA company, she was really working for the CIA. THAT was the SECRET morons.
DougJ
Stupidity: if what you say is true, then why is there an investigation?
The number one thing about this case I’v heard from CIA people is that people in the general public *know nothing* about the world of CIA operatives. That’s what it means for thing to be *secret*. Get it?
What does Matt Cooper’s wife have to do with anything?
DougJ
Good. That’s the important thing. I know people who do and they change constantly (as their ISP changes).
Cyrus
What will happen to Bush and the administration depends, I guess, on two things: a) if someone in the administration is indicted/charged/prosecuted in the Plame debacle, and b) if someone vulnerable in Plame has dirt – not just gossip but evidence – on people in the administration.
If (a) happens to some guy with the ridiculous name of “Scooter,” for example, whom no one outside Washington and blogs had ever heard of until now, and (b) doesn’t happen because Scooter is in the dark about Bush & Co. or they really haven’t done anything too illegal, the result will probably be close to the same as if (b) happens and someone knows something but (a) never happens and that someone isn’t forced to talk. In both cases I think what you talked about will happen, more or less – their approval ratings will go down and it would help the country in general. But I doubt it would happen nearly as strongly as you suggest.
If neither (a) nor (b) happens, if anything there might be a backlash helping the administration. People like Stormy would finally have some decent evidence of their position in support of Bush, so we could expect a rain of frogs. /rimshot
Things get really interesting if both (a) and (b) happen or if they happen to the same person like you suggest – the person indicted in (a) is a higher-up, like Rove or Cheney, and has a skeleton in his closet. In that case, it looks to me like Bush would face a tough choice. He could hang them out to dry and act like he’s shocked, shocked I tell you, that anyone working for him would think of outing a CIA agent, and just hope that they don’t produce the pictures of him smoking cigars with bin Laden or something. Or he could pardon them and cement his reputation for cronyism and watch his approval ratings drop to %20 and that split you suggested in the Republican Party would be even worse.
So, to make a long story short, it’s too early to tell what will happen.
Bob
I believe I said here a couple of months ago that Gannon would be more of an embarrassment for the administration before this was all over, that he was dirty regarding his interview with Wilson. I remember at the time that r-wingers suggested he’d gotten the info on the Niger trip from someone in Congress but that story sort of disappeared.
So someone leaked the fake story (that Plame sent Wilson to Africa) to Gannon. Who? Pulling a few more elected Republicans in Congress in front of a judge would be delicious, but my guess is that someone in the White House slipped him the info. A press secretary? Perhaps Rove, under a glass coffee table? George, in that little bedroom off the Oval Office?
I’d like to see more about the GOPUSA Eberle’s relationships with Rove and Bush, so we can better speculate for whom he was pimping when he sent ace reporter Gannon/Guckert to the White House.
Plus, let us not forget the several months that went by until Ashcroft recused himself from this tarbaby. He should hope to hide out in the world of business for a few years until the heat is down.
Bob
kenB, thanks for the Tom Lehrer article. My wife got his collection when we divorced.
DougJ
Cyrus, I don’t see any way this helps the White House. There will be either an indictment or a tough report. Personally, I’d be shocked if there’s no indictments. Rove would have to be out of his mind to go back to the grand jury unless he was pretty sure he was going go get indicted even if he didn’t go back. I also think the newly found notes of Miller are bad news for Scooter and Miller.
I don’t see Bush’s approval rating go down to the 20s, unless they go bananas and try to stop the investigation, which is unlikely. I see them using surrogates to slime Fitzgerald, say Clinton did the same thing and why didn’t he go to jail, and slime Wilson and Plame even more than they already are. I suspect this will work pretty well and they’ll only lose about 5 approval points. I just don’t see Bush going under 35. But if he’s at 35 for six months, the Congress will see which way the wind is blowing and start doing their jobs again.
DougJ
Another big question is here is will principled Republicans, like John Cole, repeat the White House slime about Fitzgerald, Wilson, and Plame. My guess is John Cole won’t. It will be interesting to see what, say, Instapundit does.
Oh,Boy.Stupidity!
There’s no slime because there’s no story.
The whole thing is ridiculous. If Wilson and Plame were so worried about her identity being exposed, thus her life being in danger there would be no NY Times Op-Ed Piece and no Vanity Fair photos. Period.
I love how you guys are trying to tie Gannon in with this, but yet can honestly ask what does Cooper’s Bigshot DNC wife has to do anything to do with this? Maybe nothing, but don’t pretend that it automatically has nothing to do with any of this.
Both she and Wilson were actively campaigning for Kerry.
Oh,Boy.Stupidity!
Oh, and hasn’t Wilson already been caught in a lie? Making reference to a report that was written only AFTER he commented on it.
DougJ
That’s right, Stupidity. No story here. Karl Rove and/or Scooter Libby getting indicted is not news.