Excellent Article on the Rove Affair Today in Salon

[joemurphy]

"Karl Rove, George W. Bush's chief political strategist, has not been having an especially happy second term. His boss's political fortunes are in the dumps, and nothing Rove plans -- the Terri Schiavo fight, or the Social Security whistle-stop tour, or the president's recent prime-time speech, offering more non-answers on Iraq -- has righted Bush's sinking ship. Now Rove himself has the law breathing down his neck.

The law in this case is Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department a year and a half ago, to determine who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent to Robert Novak, the conservative syndicated columnist. The undercover operative is Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who questioned the veracity of Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa. In the summer of 2003, Wilson wrote an Op-Ed column for the New York Times, revealing that in 2002 he'd been sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate the uranium claim -- and found nothing.

The leak to Novak of Plame's identity looked like an attempt by the White House to punish Wilson for speaking out, and Wilson has accused Rove of being involved in the effort to reveal Plame's identity. In the fall of 2003, the Justice Department opened an investigation into the matter. Since then, Fitzgerald has been quietly assembling his case. But the public has only begun to get some hint of investigation's status in the past few months, as Fitzgerald has pressed two Washington journalists -- Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of the New York Times -- to testify about their conversations with White House sources regarding Wilson's claims. Miller was sent to jail last week when she refused to speak."

*snip*

<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/07/12/rove/index.html>

[TWiley]

1. Now there is a nice piece of journalism.

I thought the art had completely died out.

[Poppyseedman]

2. How does Judith Miller fit in the picture?

I have a hard time believing she would jail time to cover for Rove

Bases on this article's information, there are going to be a lot of very disappointed folks here at DU when this story doesn't actually nail Rove.

[BikeWriter]

3. "When?" Whose shirt pocket have you been in? I would think...

...the results of this are still in question.

[LizW]

4. She sees what she's doing as patriotic

Oliver North thinks he's a patriot, too.

Miller wrote lies in the NYT that led us to an illegal war. She did everything she could to further the Bush administration's plan to go to war in Iraq. She must be a true believer.

Not that being a true believer excuses her, but it explains her actions.

Now, she's protecting Bushco in the ultimate way a reporter can.

Miller's information must be more damaging than Cooper's. Notice that Cooper's info fits EXACTLY into the defense Rove has concocted. No name, no specifics of Plame's CIA undercover status. It's all just too perfect.

Miller knows too much. Her testimony would wreck Rove's defense. It's almost a certainty that he told her more than he told Cooper, and if she testifies, he goes down.

Fitzgerald may have the case made even without her. He might have gone after her and Cooper just to be absolutely certain he had it. But it's possible that he doesn't have it yet.

We'll soon know what kind of balls Fitzgerald has.