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http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1360.html#006207SORRY, NOT SORRY. I realize this is not a mystery that ranks up there with whether the president really read a biography of Chairman Mao, but I suppose I should clarify that no, we won’t be apologizing to Karl Rove as per David Broder’s suggestion today. ....
...As Corn’s Web site notes (scroll down to eighth bullet point), Hubris also reveals that Rove told Chris Matthews (apparently in a conversation) that the Wilsons “were trying to screw the White House, so the White House was going to screw them back.”
That quote makes it quite clear that Rove was working to discredit Wilson and Plame (as does an earlier, widely reported Rove-to-Matthews comment, that Plame was “fair game”). Corn and Isikoff apparently describe this effort to discredit the Wilsons in their book (according to Corn’s Web site -- I haven’t read it yet).
That Rove wasn’t Novak’s source means only that, by happy (for him) coincidence, he did not out Plame. But he was very clearly trying to do exactly that at the same point in time. The existence of that scheme is well documented. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald wrote of a “concerted action” by “multiple people in the White House” to “discredit, punish, or seek revenge against” the Wilsons. ....
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