NEWSWEEK COVER: The World According to Karl Rove
Sunday July 17, 12:02 pm ET
------------------------------
Source Close to Rove Says He Had Been Questioned by Investigators About Conversations He May Have Had With Lewis I. 'Scooter' Libby, Chief of Staff to Cheney
------------------------------
Rove Rose Using Tactics His Foes Are Turning Against Him, But He's 'The Survivor's Survivor,' Says One Political Consultant
------------------------------
NEW YORK, July 17 /PRNewswire/ -- In the World According to Karl Rove, you take the offensive, and stay there. You create a narrative that glosses over complex, mitigating facts to divide the world into friends and enemies, light and darkness, good and bad, Bush versus Saddam. You use the jujitsu of media flow to flip the energy of your enemies against them. The Boss never discusses political mechanics in public. But in fact everything is political -- and everyone is fair game, writes Chief Political Correspondent Howard Fineman in the July 25 Newsweek cover, "The World According to Karl Rove" (on newsstands Monday, July 18). In a familiar Washington twist of fate, Rove's theory of politics is being turned against him -- and he is being forced to deploy the Republican machine, which he built on Bush's behalf, for a more personal task: his own defense. "The Manichean politics that Rove had perfected over three decades now threaten to engulf him, or at least render him as something less than what he has been to Bush: the mastermind of Republican hegemony," Fineman writes.
A source close to Rove told Newsweek last week that Rove "doesn't remember" where he heard the crucial information that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent working in weapons of mass destruction issues. But, the source said, Rove is "pretty sure he heard it directly or indirectly from a media source." The source close to Rove later acknowledged that Rove had been questioned by investigators about conversations he may have had with Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Rove couldn't recall any specific exchange with Libby about Wilson's wife, the source said.
Fineman writes that in May 2002, the State Department's intelligence unit had prepared a secret memorandum about the provenance of Joe Wilson's journey and its classified results -- including the curious fact that Wilson's wife had been involved in planning the mission, and even had suggested that her husband undertake it. Still, there had been no cause to criticize Wilson -- let alone mention his wife. But then Wilson went public, and soon enough, Rove had drawn a bead on Wilson.