Troubled Roving

It's looking like Karl Rove could be in some deep do-do, to use one of Old Man Bush's most famous sayings.  That one isn't quite as famous lately as this one, from April 26, 1999, at the dedication ceremony for the George [H.W.] Bush Center for Intelligence (my emphasis):

Your mission is different now than it was back then. The Soviet Union is no more. Some people think, "what do we need intelligence for?" My answer to that is we have plenty of enemies. Plenty of enemies abound. Unpredictable leaders willing to export instability or to commit crimes against humanity. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, narco-trafficking, people killing each other, fundamentalists killing each other in the name of God. These and more. Many more. As our analysts know, as our collectors of intelligence know - these are our enemies. To combat them we need more intelligence, not less. We need more human intelligence. That means we need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country. (Applause)

Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.

Sidney Blumenthal gives a fairly detailed background on Karl Rove's troubles: Rove's War 07/14/05.

 ... since Monday, both McClellan and Bush have refused to comment on the investigation. While the White House stonewalls, Rove has license to run his own damage-control operation. His surrogates argue that if Rove did anything, it wasn't a crime. There's no cause for outrage, except at Joe Wilson, and now, in a turn of the screw, Matt Cooper [of Time magazine]. The inhabitants of the political village should busy themselves with their arts and crafts. No one's status will be endangered or access withdrawn, it is implied, if they do nothing rash. They should simply accept that exposing undercover CIA operatives is part of politics as usual. Return to your homes. Stay calm.

Rove is fighting his war as though it will be settled in a court of Washington pundits. Brandishing his formidable political weapons, he seeks to demonstrate his prowess once again. His corps of agents raises a din in which their voices drown out individual dissidents. His frantic massing of forces dominates the capital by winning the communications battle. Indeed, Rove may succeed momentarily in quelling the storm. But the stillness may be illusory. Before the prosecutor, Rove's arsenal is useless. ...

The sound and fury of Rove's defenders will soon subside. The last word, the only word that matters, will belong to the prosecutor. So far, he has said very, very little. Unlike the unprofessional, inexperienced and weak Ken Starr, he does not leak illegally to the press. But he has commented publicly on his understanding of the case. "This case," he said, "is not about a whistle-blower. It's about a potential retaliation against a whistle-blower."

Murray Waas has been reporting and blogging on the Plame case for a while.  For example: Murray Waas, "Front-Page Fronts", The American Prospect Online, Jul 15, 2005.  In that article, he talks about how willing the major papers have been to pass along Rove's preferred media defenses:

Columnist Robert Novak, who first disclosed Plame's identity in a July 14, 2003, newspaper column, has also been cooperating with investigators for some time, according to the same sources, as I first reported in my blog earlier in the week. But federal investigators have been highly skeptical of Novak's account -- as they have been of Rove's -- and were concerned that the key participants might have devised a cover story in the days shortly after it became known that a criminal investigation had been commenced. ...

Early Friday morning, both the Times and the Post published their accounts of what may have transpired between Novak and Rove, articles that were largely exculpatory to Rove.

The Post account largely relied on a single source, whom it identified as "a lawyer involved in the case." The newspaper also described the lawyer as having "firsthand knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors." ...

The coverage underscores the secrecy surrounding Fitzgerald's grand-jury investigation. The few leaks that constitute public knowledge of the investigation's progress have largely come from one side: the defense attorneys'. And what they have to say is oftentimes self-serving, misleading, and in some cases untrue. Their all-too-willing collaborators have been the nation's leading newspapers.

In the meantime, however, what has propelled the investigation -- and led to the extraordinary jailing of the Times’ Judith Miller -- has been the strong belief by federal investigators that Rove, Novak, and others may have misled them and the public, and that one or more of the participants may have devised a cover story with others to avoid public or legal culpability.

Waas' Whatever Already! blog has plenty of information and analysis, too.  Here is his original reporting on his blog about Novak's cooperation with prosecutors: Exclusive: Novak co-operated with prosecutors 07/12/05.  On 07/03/05, he gave a good example of why we all need to read the Establishment press critically on this story, just like any other:  Plame: Was it Karl Rove? Newsweek Story Full of Holes.

While I'm at it, I'll get in a word of promotion our group blog The Blue Voice, where Duane Tate has been following the story and providing some good updates, as in Spinning the Spin 07/14/05, Conspiracy 07/14/05 The Non-Story with Legs 07/16/05.

Gene Lyons weighs in: Getting revenge, Washington style Dunkin Daily Democrat 07/13/05.  Noting that we aren't sure yet that Rove will face criminal charges, he writes:

But this is a perilous moment for the Bush White House. Its significance shouldn't get lost in the Washington press corps' narcissistic hand-wringing over two reporters facing jail time for defying court orders to testify.

This case has nothing to do with a vigilant press corps' ability to protect "whistleblowers" against retribution from the powerful.

Rather, it's about Machiavellian White House operatives using the cloak of anonymity to take revenge against a whistleblower's family, exposing an undercover CIA agent's identity to intimidate others from speaking out. ...

According to Newsweek, Rove's lawyer now admits his client "spoke to Cooper [about Valerie Plame] three or four days before Novak's column appeared," but "never knowingly disclosed classified information."

Intent, see, is an element of the criminal statute. You don't need a law degree to recognize a careful non-denial denial, ranking with Bill Clinton's parsing the meaning of "is." But these aren't pathetic sex secrets. This is a White House operative using the media as a weapon to cover-up presidential falsehoods that led the nation to war.

Maybe Rove committed a crime, maybe not. But ask yourself this: What honorable purpose could he have for discussing Valerie Plame with reporters on the very day Joe Wilson's whistle-blowing article appeared?

Jules Witcover suggests that the White House's balking on leak might backfire Baltimore Sun 07/13/05.

In an earlier briefing, the [White House] press secretary [Scott McClellan] evaded a question about Mr. Rove's alleged involvement in the case with a Mr. Nice Guy defense.

"I've known Karl for a long time," he said then, "and I didn't even need to ask Karl, because I know the kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct. ... It's not something I needed to ask him, but I like to, as you do, verify things, make sure that it's completely accurate. But I knew that Karl would not be involved in something like this."

But matters have gone some distance since that reply. Now the wolves are at the door, and so far, at least, the door is being slammed shut. Democratic Sen. John Kerry has called for Mr. Rove to be fired, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has hinted that Mr. Rove should face prosecution. "If the allegations are true" that he outed Ms. Plame, he said, "this rises above politics and is about our national security." ...

Beyond the question of Mr. Rove's future, at stake is the credibility of Mr. Bush at a time that a cloud of deception still hovers over his decision to invade Iraq, and public doubts grow over his coping with the troubling aftermath.

This administration, in which nobody is ever blamed for what goes wrong, can't afford to let the culprit who outed the CIA agent, whoever it may be, escape identity and punishment.

Witcover took up the story a couple of days later: Republicans dig in in defense of Rove Baltimore Sun 07/15/05.  Having read quite a few Witcover columns and a couple of his books, I'm pretty sure that his use of the word "deft" in the following quote is meant to be ironic.  And his description of the Wall Street Journal is not standard fare for the Establishment press:

In a deft effort to make this particular sow's ear into a silk purse, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, a Rove political offspring, has cast the president's chief political strategist not as a squealer but as a noble whistleblower trying to save the reporter from error.

From the RNC, Mr. Mehlman has circulated an editorial from the Bush administration's house organ, The Wall Street Journal, saying Mr. Rove "is turning out to be the real 'whistleblower' in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal."

Witcover believes that Bush is so dependent on Rove's dark political arts that he will try to retain him on the White House staff as long as possible.  He writes:

More of the story must yet unfold to determine whether the federal prosecutor has enough to seek indictment and conviction of any of the players in the case, whether on grounds of leaking classified information or perjury before the grand jury hearing the matter.

But for the time being, the Bush administration and its single mostimportant White House political operative are digging in, struggling to get off the defensive in another serious challenge to the president's credibility with a public that is telling pollsters its doubts about him, and his war, are mounting.

John Dean has taken another look at the Plame case: It Appears That Karl Rove Is In Serious Trouble Findlaw.com 07/15/05

Dean looks at the precedent of the Bush administration's prosecution of Jonathan Randel, a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) official who leaked the name of a potential target of DEA investigations.  He faced 500 years in prison if convicted of all the charges against him.  He pleaded out to one year of prison and three years probation.

Even based on the information currently in the public record, Dean thinks the reasoningin the Randel case is an important precedent for Rove's action, which would make him, at least according to Old Man Bush in 1999, "the most insidious of traitors." (My reference, not Dean's.)

United States District Court Judge Richard Story's statement to Jonathan Randel, at the time of sentencing, might have an unpleasant ring for Karl Rove. Judge Story told Randel that he surely must have appreciated the risks in leaking DEA information. "Anything that would affect the security of officers and of the operations of the agency would be of tremendous concern, I think, to any law-abiding citizen in this country," the judge observed. Judge Story concluded this leak of sensitive information was "a very serious crime."

"In my view," he explained, "it is a very serious offense because of the risk that comes with it, and part of that risk is because of the position" that Randel held in the DEA. ... Rove was risking the identity of, in attempting to discredit, a WMD proliferation expert, Valerie Plame Wilson. ...

Given the nature of Valerie Plame Wilson's work, it is unlikely the public will ever know if Rove's leak caused damage, or even loss of life of one of her contracts abroad, because of Rove's actions. Dose anyone know the dangers and risks that she and her family may face because of this leak?

It was just such a risk that convinced Judge Story that "for any person with the agency to take it upon himself to leak information poses a tremendous risk; and that's what, to me, makes this a particularly serious offense." Cannot the same be said that Rove's leak? It dealt with matters related to national security; if the risk Randel was taking was a "tremendous" risk, surely Rove's leak was monumental.

There is one factual mistake in Dean's article.  He says that the leak about Plame occurred "occurred at a time when the nation was considering going to war over weapons of mass destruction."  Actually, it happened months after the Iraq War had begun.  Although the John Boltons of the world were rattling sabers against Syria and Iran over WMDs, too, so if you want to comma-dance on it, Dean is correct in some sense about some country.

And he's right about his main point: Karl Rove could be in some serious trouble.

Finally, I'll mention again that Bob Somerby has been cautioning liberal bloggers and journalists to keep in mind that the mainstream press has developed some incredibly sloppy habits.  Just because the story of the moment is a scandal involving on of the worst characters in the Republican Party, it doesn't mean that our Potemkin "press corps" won't screw up on the basic facts, or get distracted by side issues.  In fact, the latter is part of what Rove is surely counting on in tossing out so many varied attacks and defenses.

His post of 07/14/05 was devoted to various aspects of media coverage of the Valerie Plame case: They Shall Not Be Released!  This is a story he's following closely right now.