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Sunday, July 10, 2005

"Double Super Secret Background"
Posted by Jill | 8:19 AM

Matt Cooper's notes have hit the press, and sure enough, his source was Karl the Pigboy Rove himself. No surprise there, but what is moderately amusing is the positively Dean Wormer-ian language in these notes:

"Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.

[snip]

Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... "


This makes it pretty clear that Rove is going to try to weasel out of this one by claiming that he never used the name "Valerie Plame", but instead referred to "Wilson's wife" -- and indeed he may yet get away with it. But if he does, I don't want to hear about "parsing the definition of 'is'" ever again. But regardless of whether Rove mentioned "the name" or not, it's clear that he was willing to take a chance on national security SOLELY for the purpose of getting back at Joseph Wilson, who refused to toe the party line. Is this the kind of guy we want at the right hand of the president; one who will put Americans at risk for petty vindictiveness?

David Corn puts the risk of minimizing the importance of Rove being at the center of this leak in context:

On September 27, 2003--after the news broke that the Justice Department, responding to a request from the CIA, was investigating the Plame/CIA leak--White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of the Plame/CIA leak, "That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing." He also declared that the allegation that Rove was involved in this leak was "a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true." Days later, Bush issued a straightforward statement about the Plame/CIA leak:

There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there's leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.


Perhaps Bush won't have to "take care of" Rove if this new evidence does not lead to a prosecutable violation of the law. But Bush also called on any government official with knowledge of the leak to "come forward and speak out." Has Rove done so? No. So it seems he violated a presidential command. Would Bush be obliged to fire him for insubordination? And there's another key point to consider: whether Rove told the truth when he testified to Fitzgerald's grand jury. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, has acknowledged that Rove appeared before the grand jury, and Luskin has said that Rove did speak to Cooper prior to the publication of the Novak column. But what did Rove tell Fitzgerald and the grand jury about this conversation with Cooper? And--here's the big question--does Rove's account jibe with the new documentary evidence that Newsweek is scheduled to disclose. If it does not, Fitzgerald would have a good start on a perjury charge against Rove.


And John Aravosis details why in a just country (which admittedly we don't live in), whether Rove used Plame's name or whether Plame was undercover shouldn't matter:

1. Whether he said "Valerie Plame" or "Wilson's wife" is irrelevant. It's the same thing, and if Bush tolerates this "definition of 'is'" garbage from Rove, well, then we really have a story.

2. Bush said he wanted to get to the bottom of this over a year ago. Why then did we have to waste all this money on a special prosecutor and a grand jury if Rove knew from day one that he was the guy who leaked Plame's identity? If Rove was so innocent, why didn't he just come forward immediately and say "yeah, it was me, but I didn't realize she was undercover"? Did he tell the president it was him? And if so, why didn't the president go public and put this investigation to an end? Or did Rove refuse the president's request and NOT come forward a year ago? And if so, what is he still doing working in the white House?

3. Perhaps it's legally relevant if Rove "knew" Plame was undercover or not, but it's not relevant in terms of him keeping his job. Rove intentionally outed a CIA agent working on WMD, it is irrelevant whether he did or didn't know if she was an undercover agent. First off, he knew she wasn't THAT public about her identity or there'd have been no need to "out" here - everyone would have known her already.

Second, the very fact that he appears to be claiming that he did NOT know about her undercover status is reason enough to fire him now. How dare the top political aide to the president out a CIA agent and not even think of checking whether she's undercover? I have worked before with CIA agents at several points in my career. The FIRST thing you learn is NOT to out them, period. If you don't know that they have some public CIA job, like spokesman, then you know from day one that you do NOT tell ANYONE who they are. It is totally unbelievable that Rove didn't know this simple fact about Washington - you don't tell people who is and who isn't CIA. Rove knew that, and he chose to out an agent working on WMD. The man should be fired.


I repeat -- if this had been Mack McLarty revealing the name of a CIA agent, you know perfectly well that the Republicans would be screaming from here to Labor Day. So let their "leader" be held to the same standard. Sorry, folks, but when it comes to national security, the IOKIYAR rule should not apply.

But here's the question: Rove has been nothing if not loyal to the Bush family. We know that the Bush family reveres loyalty above all else. What Rove did was clearly designed to protect George W. Bush against accusations back then of cooking up evidence to justify a war he'd already decided to fight. On the other hand, the Bush family has never hesitated to jettison anyone who interferes with them holding on to power. So what do they do with a pathologically loyal hanger-on like Rove, who has done them a fair amount of damage (and would have done more had the London attacks not taken place next week)? Do they rally behind him because he's loyal, or jettison him because he's a threat? This is about as close to a moral dilemma as this bunch gets.
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