I have a hard time guessing what exactly Judith Miller knows, and why she is in jail. I still can not reconcile the Miller role in all of this, so, if you lean towards the “Rove Did It” camp, Kevin Drum might be closer to the truth than he realizes:
Here’s the latest spin from the White House: a lawyer involved in the Plame case says that Karl Rove did talk to Robert Novak about Valerie Plame, but only after Novak brought it up first! Today’s rather carefully orchestrated story claims that Novak called Rove and told him about Plame, after which Rove is alleged to have said innocently, “I heard that, too.”
And how is it that Rove was able to confirm Novak’s story? The Washington Post, working from the same source, says Rove heard it from a reporter. “I don’t think that he has a clear recollection,” the lawyer said. “He’s told [investigators] that he believes he may have heard it from a journalist.”
Well, maybe so. Maybe he heard it from Judith Miller. Who knows?
That would make a great deal of sense, if true and if Rove really is behind all of this. Miller had been a reporter many on the left view as little more than a flak for the administration, and her reliance on Ahmad Chalabi and frequent (as the left describe it) parroting of administration talking points are pointed to as evidence. Thus, this possible scenario:
Rove learns about Plame. He starts with a friendly reporter (Miller), and starts the Plame bit. Either he gave the name, or Miller finds it out on her own. Miller tells Novak about this, and Novak contacts Rove.
Seems feasible. This could also incorporate the Toensing ‘Martha Stewart’ theory, in that Fitzgerald thnks Rove has perjured himself in the Grand Jury. Miller is taking the hit to keep Rove out of trouble on the leak issue, but Fitzgerald is on to the perjury and what is going on between the two. In other words, Miller is protecting Rove, and Novak is playing things straight. The only problem is that Novak claims his first source was from someone he stated was an administration source, and if the reports today are to be believed, someone who is not a ‘partisan gunslinger.’
Also possible is that Libby or someone else was the one who spoke to Miller, Miller spoke to Novak, Novak to Rove (who confirmed it), etc.
One thing is clear- the left seems to be rejecting the “Novak told Rove” defense pretty uniformly:
So suddenly Plamegate — which no one at the White House will talk about on the record, because it might get them indicted . . . I mean, because it might compromise Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation — has sprung a whole shitload of leaks.
And whaddya know! They’ve all appeared on the same day (document dump Friday, no less), they all help shore up Karl Rove’s alibi, and they all seem to have come from either Justice Department officials who’ve been “briefed” on case, or from attorneys who are very familiar with Karl Rove’s defense.
Funny how that works.
KC
I think I’m going to go on a Rove investigation vacation.
Rick Moran
Why would Rove then sign a waiver that releases reporters from confidentiality agreements? That waiver has been out there since Rove testified before the Grand Jury – the same waiver that Cooper confirmed last week before he testified.
If Miller is the journalist in question why should she cover for Rove?
Maybe they’re sleeping together.
John Cole
I have no idea.
John
Isn’t the official story that some unnamed reporter (Miller?) told Rove (not Novak) about Plame? At any rate, I’m not sure what to make of this story, both because it’s so obviously a pro-Rove plant, and because we know so little about what Fitzgerald is up to, and what he has up his sleeve.
At any rate, I’m deeply distrustful of any non-sourced self-interested leaks…
Randolph Fritz
Rove has a history of ruining critics like, say, Wilson; this sure looks like another damn smear. And if this is valid, why not bring it out at the first?
Smells like day-old fish, it does.
KC
I think this story is just getting lost in the spin game now. Ultimately, I think we’re going to get a lot of speculation from the Left and a lot of intriguing defenses from the Right. No doubt, we’ll also get tales from amphorous sources trying to push the story in a different direction. And honestly, this story just smells really fishy to me. It appears in the AP, NYTimes, and Post at the same time. The source in neither of these three stories can be identified, but in one, is said to be sympathetic to Rove’s testimony. All indicate that their source has been briefed on the Plame testimony. All sort of contradict Novak’s earliest statements on the matter, including his original article. My speculation is that something is either wrong with what we’ve been told in the past or something’s wrong with what we’re being told now. So much for my Plame investigation vacation.
Catfish N. Cod
Rick: not while Miller’s in jail, she isn’t. However, isn’t it time someone in the media stopped defending Miller’s sainted source confidentiality and investigate Miller?
Take home point: Miller is protecting her source, Source M (who may or may not be Rove and may or may not be Novak’s First Source, but cannot be all three) from charges that he or she released classified info, a possible IIPA and/or Espionage Act violation.
Take home point: Miller could be Source M (i.e., she is protecting herself) but she cannot be First Source because she is not with the Administration. And, of course, she cannot be Rove.
Take home point: There is no evidence that Miller is Rove’s first journalist but Occam’s Razor suggests it.
Take home point: Whether Novak told Rove or not does not exonerate Rove from possible IIPA or Esp Act violations, as Plame’s status was still classified as of 11 July 2003. (In other words, on 11 July the CIA would not officially answer questions about Plame.)
neil
Novak-told-Rove is an obvious cover story, and does not address the key issue which is that SOMEONE in the administration burned Plame.
It may affect the legal case but it does not affect the ethical case. And I’m personally much more excited by the prospect of the American voters rejective Roveism than the prospect of Rove going to jail on a technical foul.
I don’t believe that if you kill the head, the body will die.
neil
Here’s another thing. If Rove really found out from Novak, why did he have to go to Cooper on double-super-secret-no-tagbacks background? Cooper had access to the wires too. He could’ve just said “When you get a chance, read the latest column by Novak, it’s got something in it you should know.”
adk46er
There’s way too much spinning going on both from the left and right… I have a novel idea; instead of speculating what might have happened why not just wait for the facts to come out? Some of the things we didn’t know yesterday we know today and most likely there are things we don’t know today that we’ll know tomorrow.
p.lukasiak
One thing is clear- the left seems to be rejecting the “Novak told Rove”, either because it is false or because it does not allow the Rove castigation to continue.
it doesn’t take Rove off the hook for spreading the story to Cooper, et. al, and for confirming the story to Rove.
Its entirely possible that Miller was involved in this…but I doubt if she told Novak unless it was her intention to discredit Wilson.
Here is a far more likely scenario…
Wilson publishes his piece. Miller talks to Rove and/or Libby, and mentions that Plame is CIA and married to Wilson. Rove tells Libby (or vice versa). Libby tells Novak, Novak calls Rove and gets it confirmed.
Right now, the person who is really on the “hot seat” is Miller, because Rove is claiming he got his info from a journalist, but is also claiming he doesn’t remember who it was, or when he got it.
The latter part is highly unlikely, and may be the basis for the “obstruction/perjury” charges, especially if Miller told him about Plame in the days immediately following the publication of Wilson’s piece.
Fitzgerald really has to drag Miller in front of the grand jury, and make it clear that he was going to ask questions only about information that Miller had imparted to others, rather than what those others had told her. And if Miller refuses to answer, send her to jail for a couple of decades for obstruction of justice.
Mr Furious
p luke–I love it! Makes sense to me, and you finish it up with a bang.
ken
Novak’s second column on this story said that the second person confirming responded to his (Novak’s) talking aboutt he story. So Rove was probably the second. And Novak told us way back when.
But I’m sure that is a little too “orchastrated” for Mr. Drum.
KC
The funny part about being a reporter is you are always writing things that can be documented, and for famous reporters you’re also often being asked questions and being quoted. It seems as if Novak’s big mouth and prior arrogance (thinking retribution was impossible) may ultimately become a key in this case.
This new leak (story, spin, whatever you want to call it) is a perfect example. Stance is Novak told Rove. So when Novak said this in 2003:
Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me,” he said. “They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.”
So unless Novak was lying then or is lying now, this means there are 2 White House Administration officials that are not Karl Rove that specifically exposed Plame by name to Novak. Oh Bobby, what a tangeld web you weave.
Andrew J. Lazarus
I believe Plame was known to Scooter Libby and others as a CIA expert on WMD, because she had briefed them (or been present at a briefing). Now, whether they knew to connect her with Wilson, I can’t say. But it’s certainly possible that Rove had no need of getting these data from outside journalists, he might have known (or been told) already, and the current story is just a smokescreen. (It certainly isn’t the least bit consistent with the previous story.)
sidereal
Well, I’m not really the left, but I’m not putting a lot of stock in the report yet because a) the idea of a reporter providing state secrets to a highly placed administration insider with a security clearance for kicks is so colossally backwards that I’ll need some corroboration beyond anonymously sourced hearsay. and b) it’s so precisely timed that it’s clearly orchestrated. Of course, b) doesn’t make it false. . damage control leaks can still be true. . but it does make it suspicious.
aaron pacy
p.lukasiak……”Here is a far more likely scenario…
Wilson publishes his piece. Miller talks to Rove and/or Libby, and mentions that Plame is CIA and married to Wilson. Rove tells Libby (or vice versa). Libby tells Novak, Novak calls Rove and gets it confirmed”
How does Miller know she is CIA?
Mike Jones
I don’t see how “Novak told Rove” gets Rove off the hot seat. It doesn’t seem to me that being the confirming source for a leak like this is terribly different from being the original source. Ethically speaking, at least; the legality may bey very different. Of course, recall Bush’s brave talk about expecting people in his Administration to “adhere to the highest ethical standards”. Sounds like Rove could have used a second coating of glue on that one.
Catfish N. Cod
Aaron: close, but note that everyone agrees that “everyone know Joe Wilson’s wife was CIA. It was an open secret in Washington”. Note further that they knew her as Valerie Wilson, not Valerie Plame. As long as Valerie did discreet things, such as avoid people from countries where she’d worked undercover, she could avoid being recognized as Valerie Plame, mild mannered analyst at Brewer-Jennings Associates.
So “everyone knew” about Wilson’s CIA connections. What was *not* public knowledge was that:
a) Plame was Wilson and Wilson was Plame, she was the walrus, goo goo g’joob —
(i) with the ambiguity making it possible for her to go undercover again if necessary, but probably more importantly because
(ii) maintaining the fiction that Valerie Plame and Valerie Wilson were different people maintained the cover of Brewer-Jennings Associates.
b) Plame had been involved in the selection of Wilson —
(i) at least as far as writing a memo touting Wilson’s resume;
(ii) with the disputed possibility that she actively encouraged the recruitment, a possibility alleged repeatedly by White House and Republican partisans and denied or minimized by Wilson, CIA personnel, and Democratic partisans.
Part (a) might — might — have been deducible from publicly available data, especially with a Source M whispering ideas to Miller in a subterranean basement in Rosslyn. But (b) had to be the result of a leak, as the only ways to find out (b) are:
(i) To speak with someone involved in the selection process;
(ii) To speak with someone who saw a (classified, obviously) CIA document detailing the selection process;
(iii) To have read the classified INR memo that detailed the selection process.
Any of these are unauthorized releases of classified memos for purposes other than whistleblowing, which means they are prosecutable violations of the Espionage Act.
So Miller doesn’t have to mention that Plame is CIA to Rove and Libby; they know that. The pieces of forbidden fruit being passed around are the name “Plame” (the only bit of her cover identity still standing) and the fact that she had been involved in Wilson’s selection.
I think it is quite likely that Source M and/or First Source (who may be the same people) will be the people indicted under the IIPA and/or Espionage Act; charges against Rove are more likely to be perjury or obstruction, as Toensig has theorized.
This comment got so long I’m going to cross-post it to my blog, heh heh…
Stormy70
Cue the black helicopters.
Doug
Whatever the spin, the Dems are idiots for not bringing up yellowcake every time they open their mouths. Because whatever the truth is about Rove, Bush looks like an ass for the nukes from Niger comments in the State of the Union then for coming after Wilson for publicly disagreeing.
Charlie
Kevin Drum might be closer to the truth than he realizes . . .
Kevin Drum couldn’t find the truth with both hands, even if it hit him like the broad side of a barn.
Charlie
P.S. Doug – the President said “Africa” in the SOTU Address – and if the British government stands by the report (bolstered by the Senate Intelligence Committee report), who exactly looks like an ass?
http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html
Bruce Moomaw
If Rove’s conversation with Cooper was as innocent as he is now making out, I find it rather peculiar that he didn’t tell Bush about it and Bush didn’t tell the people about it. I mean, Bush WAS so intensely concerned about getting to the bottom of the leak scandal, as he assured us at the time. (And, as Mike Jones points out, how does the fact that Rove at least confirmed and further spread the knowledge of Plame’s covert identity to an additional reporter or two get him off the hook from the legal offense?)
And to Charlie: if the White House was really just saying that Saddam was looking for uranium somewhere in “Africa” and not in Niger specifically, then why were they so frantic to discredit Wilson? The person who looks like an ass is, of course, you.
This looks more and more like Watergate II — except that this time, the huge offense that the White House is frantically trying to conceal by covering up the original little “third rate” crime is the fact that it deliberately peddled fake evidence to get us into a war, out of its overconfidence that the war could be won easily. And since, this time, the GOP’s control of Congress is also at stake, this is going to be a much more explosive affair than the original.
Charlie
For instance, c.f. Mr. Drum’s latest piece of crap logic.
Number of pages (and year of publication), per Tom Clancy book (proving he learned said “lesson” as well):
The Hunt for Red October (1984) 387 pages;
Red Storm Rising (1986) 656 pages;
Patriot Games (1987) 540 pages;
The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988) 544 pages;
Clear and Present Danger (1989) 704 pages;
The Sum of All Fears (1991) 798 pages;
Without Remorse (1993) 639 pages;
Debt of Honor (1994) 766 pages;
Executive Orders (1996) 874 pages;
Rainbow Six (1998) 740 pages;
The Bear and the Dragon (2000) 1028 pages;
The Red Rabbit (2003) 656 pages;
The Teeth of the Tiger (2004) ONLY 496 pages – so there!!
Charlie
I beg to differ, Bruce Moomaw : )
Bob
Common sense says that if Bush somehow didn’t know about leaking Plame beforehand that he knew all of it, every sordid detail, immediately after. That is, unless there was an attempt to do something illegal (out Pleame) by his underlings and then to insulate him from the initial crime and the coverup.
So is Bush fully informed, is he deliberately and consensually out of the loop on this bit of treason, or is he just that stupid and lack the curiosity to ask?
Even verifying leaked classified information is a crime, by the way. So if everybody knew Plame was CIA no one was saying.
By the way, if you did know Plame was CIA, please send a note to the special prosecutor. He’d like to know how you found out.
Charlie
Bob:
So is Bush fully informed, is he deliberately and consensually out of the loop on this bit of treason, or is he just that stupid and lack the curiosity to ask?
Bush IS fully informed now, and since he doesn’t think any crime was committed, he is (appropriately) waiting for the investigation to be completed before commenting.
scs
How would Rove or Miller know in the first place that Plame recommended her husband? Does Rove get regular classfied reports? I wouldn’t think so, given that he is only a political advisor, not say, a national security advisor. And plus the fact that a women recommended her husband is too insignifigant to be put on any circulated report anyway. I think the original source had to come from the CIA, who was either asked by Rove or Miller about why Wilson was chosen and Miller is protecting that CIA source. A likely candidate would also be a liason between the CIA and the administration, like the national security team. Condoleeza Rice? Maybe Richard Clarke- was he still around then? Well just kidding on those. But anyway, who else outside the CIA would know about that?
scs
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the original source is not Richard Clarke, who resigned in Feb, 2003. (The Niger trip was in late 2002).
This is what John wrote: The only problem is that Novak claims his first source was from someone he stated was an administration source, and if the reports today are to be believed, someone who is not a ‘partisan gunslinger.’
Who else in Bush’s administration was “not a partisan gunslinger” ? Everyone is Bush’s admin is a ‘partisan gunslinger’, except for Clarke whom Bush inherited. He would have been in the perfect position as a national security guy to know about goings on at the CIA, yet still be a part of the administraton. Just a guess, but maybe I’ll go to Vegas on it.
Jimmy Jazz
Someone at CNN is doubtful of this theory. LOL, wait for Lou to finish introducing Danna Bash.
scs
Byt the way, just saw that Judith Miller was the reporter at the New York Times who covered Richard Clarke after he resigtned in 02/03 and when he wrote his book in 03/04. Sounds like a personal relationship there – ey?. The plot thickens..
Bob
Personal relationship between Miller and Clarke, eh?You’re dreaming.
How about Miller and Fitzgerald as long as we’re spinning here. From the NY Post in late September 2004:
Bob
Charles, of course Bush was fully informed, two years ago. The only question is whether he’s part of the coverup or part of the original leak.
scs
Seee?! Richard Clarke told Judith Miller about it I bet! If you do a search in the Times, you see a mile long list of stories done by Judith Miller about Richard Clarke. After all, it makes sense, he was the terrorism guy and she was the terrorism reporter. Why wouldn’t they get to know each other over the years?
He’s the only non-partisan guy in the administration that I can think of who would have access to this kind of information. After all, we know it can’t be a CIA person, as they have to be in the adminstration, but then it would have to be an admistration person with access to CIA info -and that’s the National Security Team, and it sure wasn’t Condoleeza.
I’ve cracked it wide open! Okay, spinning, but this is fun.
scs
Never mind, I take it back. More likely Powell after I saw the latest info.