http://www.buzzflash.com/buzzscripts/buzz.dll/subRove’s temper has always been his weak spot. He cannot seem to control his anger. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote in the New York Times that there was no truth to the allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger, Rove is said to have gone “ballistic.” No one who has known Rove for any period of time doubts that Rove was the one who orchestrated the leak, which “outed” Ambassador Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent. Rove has always made sure that his enemies knew he will strike back, and swing with deadly power.
Rove wasn’t just trying to intimidate Ambassador Wilson. If, as many believe, he is responsible for the leak, Rove wanted to send a message to everyone in the intelligence community that they all needed to keep their mouths shut. As the war was being sold, intelligence cooked, and the media spun, Rove and the White House had informed intelligence operatives and scientists that they were not to publicly repudiate the phony claims about aluminum tubes, which the White House falsely argued were part of an Iraqi gas centrifuge to make enriched uranium. One national reporter told me that calls to scientists and intelligence operatives to ask about the aluminum tubes, which turned out to be rocket bodies, yielded the confession the scientists and intelligence agents had been ordered to say nothing.
“We are not having this conversation,” the reporter was told.
But if he leaked Ambassador Wilson’s wife’s name, Rove was clearly trying to tell everyone in the intelligence community that they needed to toe the line, or they might also end up living at risk. This, of course, is a scurrilous, cowardly, and unpatriotic act. To believe that Karl Rove had no knowledge of this leak, or that he was not involved, it is necessary to ignore his absolute control of all things political in the White House, his Machiavellian nature, and attention to every sparrow flying under the Bush sun.
<snip>
Not surprisingly, “senior White House official” is Rove’s nickname among many reporters because Rove asks that the description be used virtually every time he talks to a reporter.