Rove Says He Didn’t Leak…
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Bad Decisions, General Politics, The War On Terrorism…but he admits to doing everything else. Sure, this is politics, but it’s particuarly dirty if you think that it’s an entire Administration and their PR team against one man and his wife.
From The American Prospect (emphasis mine):
President Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel’s investigation of the matter.But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.
And then you have fantastic posts like this one from JustOneMinute that explore the whole affair, but unfortunately completely miss the point.
…if Matt Cooper had a similar experience, maybe Rove merely confirmed a Plame/Wilson connection that Cooper had gleaned elsewhere. In which case, Rove didn’t exactly “out” her, did he? Hmm…
Whoa. You should be a barber the way you split hairs, JustOneMinute.
Here’s still more questionable reasoning:
Did the various editors at the Times, the WaPo, and Time magazine really sit on evidence that would have incriminated Karl Rove all through last fall’s campaign? What happened to the public’s right to know? And if they were worried about being subpoenaed by Fitzgerald, Sydney Blumenthal explained the solution years ago - leak the “Rove is a criminal” scoop to some anti-Bush papers (gee, could they find one?), and pick up the story from there.Either they are awfully dumb (possible!), or the story is not there. Or both.
OR, they were reporters and wanted to protect their sources. Even though I think the Supreme Court made the right decision to hold Miller and Cooper in contempt, I still think they have the right to protect their sources. That’s the cornerstone of the whistleblower ethos.
Thoughts?
This entry was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2005 and is filed under Bad Decisions, General Politics, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
