Rove: Deputy Chief Traitor on Staff

[ignatzmouse]

An anonymous legal source "familiar with the case" asserts in an AP piece today (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050715/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_rove;_ylt=Anf3RUqouPv3O1XMl6B9u8ms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-) that Karl Rove testified that as part of a wider conversation columnist Robert Novak told him that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. But as a defense, this feint of innocence reveals more of his guilt in the matter than the administration might hope. The most blatant and obvious evidence that Rove's statements are nothing more than a contrived cover-up is that if Novak spoke to Rove telling him he was going to name Plame as a CIA operative in an upcoming story, then why didn't Rove report the intended crime? At the very least, according to today's attempted deflection, Rove is complicit.

Far from being Rove's exoneration, the story that Plame's name just happened to come up in his discussion with Novak more readily makes a case that Novak was acting as a consultant to the administration. Rove did not express outrage at Novak's expressed intent to reveal an American agent. He did not call the Justice Department and seek Novak's apprehension. No, this was business as usual, and business as usual to Rove obviously means conspiracy.

Novak is nothing more than a sounding board for the Bush administration. The conversation with Rove seems to have been little more than a powwow. Wilson had crossed them by telling the truth and the next step was deciding how best to nail him for it. Novak appears very much to be acting not only as a conduit but as an active participant in formulating and directing retribution. Could the discussion have entailed Novak giving Rove a list of friendly or key reporters to slip the information? Perhaps Rove solicited such a list, or perhaps Novak helpfully suggested some names to see the plan through. It appears likely for Rove followed with specific calls and emails to a number of reporters mentioning that one very telling detail -- the one about a certain ambassador's wife. There is no other word for that than conspiracy.

Lest we forget, the most damning case of all is the purported call from Rove to Chris Matthews stating that Wilson's wife was "fair game." With that proclamation in mind, Rove's stammering defense (b-but this was about setting the record straight on Cheney) flies apart. "Fair game" means one thing. It was and *was only* about outing a covert CIA operative in payback for Wilson's op-ed piece. In those terms, it was nothing short of a betrayal of America by sniveling traitors. And it may yet unravel perhaps the greatest irony in recent political history -- Bush rode carefully choreographed sanctimony into the White House while underneath corruption and dirty tricks paved his every step, and yet it may be that the reliance on the secret script was this administration's ultimate and inevitable undoing.

Without it, they would not have won Texas let alone the White House. With it, they were doomed to open a sink hole to the sewer beneath the Oval Office.

[EarlG]

1. Good post

And not only that but if Novak told Rove that Plame was a covert agent, rather than telling Novak not to publish the story, why did Rove then tell a bunch of other reporters, and then keep his mouth shut for two years while George W. Bush was on a manhunt to find the leaker?

[ignatzmouse]

3. When Deception Becomes the Rule

Exactly. How in this administration's (and the RNC's) current state of megalomania is this in any way a defense?

They've equated deception and spin with the truth for so long, that they are now actually astonished that's it's not a legal defense.

[dave29]

2. AND HOW DID FREAKIN NOVAK KNOW SHE WORKED FOR THE CIA????

ahem. Excuse this outburst.

[ignatzmouse]

4. Steering Committee

Similarly, today's other press dangle from the suddenly leak-happy Bush administration is little more than a trawling for an innocuous record-keeping document that would allow them to categorize it as an alibi. The email does not address Plame, though there has already been an admission that Rove discussed Plame with Cooper. Where are the documents that record the exchange in question?

The email memo from Rove to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is not what it is purported. It is simply a case of probably hard-sweated strategy designed to stay the lynch mob. (What is the least-damning piece we can slip out to the press in a way that we can manipulate the terms of its discussion? Oh, here's this broad undetailed note to legal. We can flip it and say it's Karl steering the reporter *away* from a bad angle. Release it at the weekend and let the impression sink in until Monday. At the very least it will raise doubts in the press and keep them in check.) It's nothing but choreography and deflection.

"Fair game"?