Guardian UK: White House in panic over spy scandal

[steve2470]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1530200,00.html

Bush is on the rack over a revelation that his close aide Karl Rove exposed a CIA agent

Paul Harris in Washington
Sunday July 17, 2005
The Observer

It was a question the White House press corps once believed unthinkable. Has President George W Bush lost confidence in his political guru, Karl Rove? If simply posing the question was a surprise last week, the answer - or, more accurately, the lack of one - was an even greater shock.

When Bush faced reporters at the White House last Wednesday, he dodged questions on Rove. Seated as ever, just behind his President, Rove himself was tight-lipped and pale. The Rove-Bush partnership has changed the face of American politics, propelling Bush from Texas to the White House. Not for nothing is Rove known as 'boy genius' to Republican friends and 'Bush's brain' to Democrat enemies. Now that is under threat.

The so-called 'Valerie Plame affair' has the Bush administration in a panic. An investigation into whether White House officials deliberately blew the cover of a CIA agent in an attempt to hit out at a critic of the Iraq war has Rove firmly in its sights.

The scandal has all the classic ingredients: an unmasked CIA agent - who just happens to be a glamorous blonde - and a tough-minded independent investigator. There are secret sources, leaked emails and even a reporter thrown in jail. The official White House spokesman, the normally unflappable Scott McClellan, has been caught making a grossly misleading statement. Newspapers are devoting page after page to the twists and turns of the case.


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[knowbody0]

1. tight lipped and pale

twists and turns.
my country looks dumb to the world.

[katusha]

2. "I hope Rove rots in hell"

"I hope Rove rots in hell" said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent who is a former colleague of Plame's.