Karl Rove And The Case Of The Missing Email
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Law, The War On TerrorismSounds like a case for the Hardy Boys, right? Well, it’s actually the title of a new article from Newsweek.
Heh.
So then, the Architect has been called to testify before the grand jury again, and it appears that a faulty keyword search for an email could be to blame.
From Newsweek:
The White House’s handling of a potentially crucial e-mail sent by senior aide Karl Rove two years ago set off a chain of events that has led special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to summon Rove for a fourth grand jury appearance this week.
What does this mean? Well, Rove has told his lawyer that Cooper pushed him about the Niger investigation and if it was hurting the President. Rove reportedly didn’t take the bait. However, the email Rove sent to deputy national-security adviser Stephen Hadley on July 11th, that spoke about not taking the bait, wasn’t found until intially.
Why?
The lawyer says it’s because an electronic search conducted by the White House missed it because the right “search words” weren’t used.
You know why this argument is HIGHLY suspect? Because most modern email clients allow you to not only search for keywords, but also search a specific date the email was written. Going through the emails from that week would hardly be a large undertaking, because they could have searched for all the emails Rove sent that week and all emails Hadley received that week.
Does this mean that Rove is lying? No. But to think that people couldn’t figure out how to search by date either says something about the people working in the White House or the type of technology the White House is using.
So why exactly is the email so important?
…[L]awyers close to the case, who asked not to be identified because it’s ongoing, say Fitzgerald appears to be focusing in part on discrepancies in testimony between Rove and Time reporter Matt Cooper about their conversation of July 11, 2003. In Cooper’s account, Rove told him the wife of White House critic Joseph Wilson worked at the “agency” on WMD issues and was responsible for sending Wilson on a trip to Niger to check out claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. But Rove did not disclose this conversation to the FBI when he was first interviewed by agents in the fall of 2003â€â€?nor did he mention it during his first grand jury appearance, says one of the lawyers familiar with Rove’s account.
Oh, and Judith Miller recently discovered some notes about a conversation she had with Scooter Libby.
What a mess…
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October 9th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
Grand Jury testimony of Karl Rove leaked by Rove-ing reporter (fictional). Please keep my identity a secret. Double super Secret. I could call in and have my voice disguised and/or my face blocked out. Please send me an email if you plan to use this. Thanks.
Middle-aged, Middle-of-the-road, Mid-Westerner
MnMnM50@hotmail.com
Testimony of Karl Rove, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff (of the United States) [COSTUS]. How much will COSTUS cost us?
It is posted at: http://rovesayswholeakedfirst.blogspot.com/
October 17th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
FWIW – the DoJ made a document request in late September 2003 – White House aides were:
directed to provide to the Counsel’s
Office, by no later than 5 p.m. on October 7, 2003, copies of
the following documents, created during the time period February 1,
2002, through September 30, 2003, inclusive:
1. All documents that relate in any way to former U.S. Ambassador
Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife’s
purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency; and
2. All documents that relate in any way to a contact with any
member or representative of the news media about Joseph C. Wilson,
his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife’s purported
relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency; and
3. All documents that relate in any way to a contact with any
or all of the following: reporters Knut Royce, Timothy M. Phelps,
or Robert D. Novak, or any individual(s) acting directly or
indirectly on behalf of them.
Clearly, the Rove-Hadley e-mail qualifies under (1) or (2), now that we know what is was about. However, here is how the AP described it:
“Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he’s got a welfare-reform story coming,” Mr. Rove wrote Mr. Hadley, who since has risen to the top job of national security adviser.
“When he finished his brief heads-up, he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him, I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.”
No apparent mention of Wilson; Niger is a red flag, but the 16 Word controversy was raging (Tenet took the fall later that same day), and there may have been many, many e-mails that mentioned Niger in that context, rather than as part of the Wilson trip.
Whatever. Fitzgerald took over the case, and issued a new round of subpoenas in Jan 2004. He specifically asked for correspondence amongst the WHIG, and extended the list of relevant reporters to include Cooper.
And this time, the e-mail was found, since it mentioned Cooper, and was between two members of the WHIG.
Not a great story, but not absurd, either.