Reactions to Isikoff Story

Pincus: Wilson "discredited" in 2002

Although most of us have been following the Cooper revelations with regard to Karl Rove, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post has also spilled some beans.   And the beans he spilled strongly suggest that the effort to discredit Wilson via his wife was not the result of Wilson’s disclosing his trip in a NY Times column, but was being done in 2002 in order to discredit his reporting, and "fix the facts and intelligence" around the policy.

Jul 10, 2005 — 09:59:28 AM EST

Here is the key quote from the Pincus piece in Niemanwatch…

 On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, the White House was not merely aware of Wilson’s trip and its findings, someone had gone to the trouble to find out how the trip had originated, and then lied about Plame’ s involvement in order to discredit his findings.    (Plame did not "set up" the trip, as Pincus was told, nor did she "authorize" it, as Rove told Cooper. )

(Pincus’s disclosure pretty much puts to rest the speculation that Miller’s conversation with Rove was where he first found out about Plame.)

Fitzgerald may be going after whoever told "the White House" that Plame was responsible for the trip — and really going after the whole effort to "fix the facts and intelligence" in the run-up to the Iraq war.    The real questions may now be

Why did someone investigate the detailed circumstances behind the Wilson trip and who did the investigation?

Who is responsible for lying about Plames involvement in order to discredit Wilson’s report within the White House (and, one assumes, make it possible for Colin Powell to ignore Wilson’s findings as well?)

Why?

It’s irrelevant if Karl Rove broke that one particular law

by John in DC – 7/10/2005 04:11:00 PM

Regardless of whether Rove broke that one law regarding “knowingly” outing undercover CIA operatives, there’s a damn good argument to be made that he be investigated for possibly committing treason by intentionally undermining a CIA agent working on WMD counterespionage in the midst of a war hinging on that very issue, WMD. And to make matters worse, he did it for personal/professional gain, not for altruistic “God and country” reasons.

Second issue, why does he still have a security clearance? I’ve worked with CIA agents in several of my past jobs, and lesson one is that you don’t tell anyone they work for CIA. I’d like to know if the Secret Service and/or FBI and/or CIA has investigated whether his clearance needs to be yanked. …

Karl Rove and Valerie Plame

I’m not one to pile on to stories, but the Valerie Plame case is one in which someone in the White House — and perhaps more than one person — committed a serious crime.

For many of us, the manner by which we went to war in Iraq is crime enough, but like Al Capone, a more tangible crime like tax evasion or outing a CIA agent is needed to send someone to prison, or at least to get them expelled from the White House.

I’m eager to hear about Fitzgerald’s next steps, but to add a bit of color to the story — I had drinks recently with a person (unnamed of course) who has been close to Karl Rove and his operation for years.

I asked whether it was possible that Rove had weighed in to this vengeful battle against Joe Wilson not knowing the illegality of commenting on Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert responsibilities. This person simply smiled and said that Karl Rove “doesn’t make these kinds of mistakes” and knew “exactly what he was doing.”

It’s useful to remember President Bush’s words about the “leaker” (via David Corn):

There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there’s leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.

Again TWN asks, what did the President know and when did he know it?

ROVE WAS COOPER’S SOURCE: Well, we kinda knew this already, but it’s good to have it confirmed. The salient fact is that Rove appears to have told Cooper about Wilson’s wife working at the CIA before the Novak column appeared. Rove was clearly coordinating a message to discredit Wilson by linking him to his wife, and implying that Wilson had no real authorization from the senior levels of the administration. Rove may not be guilty of a crime, if he did not disclose her name and did not know she was undercover. He is guilty of sleaze and spin. But then that’s also hardly news, is it? Kinsley differs from the NYT in an interesting piece of counter-intuitive reasoning here.

THE LATEST ON PLAME….The promised Newsweek story about Matt Cooper, Karl Rove and Valerie Plame is now up. It’s from Michael Isikoff, and here’s the guts of it:

It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. “Subject: Rove/P&C,” (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation …”

….Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a “big warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson.” Rove told Cooper that Wilson’s trip had not been authorized by “DCIA” ? CIA Director George Tenet ? or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, “it was, KR said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.” Wilson’s wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division.

This is progress. Cooper’s email makes it clear that Rove did tell Cooper that “wilson’s wife” worked at the CIA, that he did it before Robert Novak’s original column about the affair appeared on July 14, and that he did it as part of a pushback against Wilson’s New York Times op-ed a few days before.

However, much is still murky. It’s not clear if Rove ever mentioned the name “Valerie Plame” and it’s not clear that Rove knew Plame worked undercover. I doubt that it’s useful to try and hyper-parse Cooper’s email any further at this point, so for now we’ll just have to wait for more clues. If only Patrick Fitzgerald’s office leaked as much as Ken Starr’s did, eh?

The Frogman Cometh?

By Josh Marshall

David Corn says Newsweek’s running a story tomorrow that has Rove dead to rights. Here’s what he says. [SNIPPED]

Newsweek‘s Mike Isikoff has gotten ahold of Time‘s Matt Cooper’s emails revealing Rove as his original source on Joe Wilson’s wife working for the CIA:

It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. “Subject: Rove/P&C,” (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation…” Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, “please don’t source this to rove or even WH [White House]” and suggested another reporter check with the CIA…

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson’s criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time’s editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine’s corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a “big warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson.” Rove told Cooper that Wilson’s trip had not been authorized by “DCIA”?CIA Director George Tenet?or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, “it was, KR said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.” Wilson’s wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: “not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger… “

Isikoff confirms that Rove is the source who gave Cooper direct permission to testify last week at the last minute.

In other words, “Wilson’s wife,” not Valerie Plame.” I find it fascinating that Rove was not only trying to campaigning to discredit Wilson, but was pushing so hard to legitimate the bogus Iraq- Niger uranium information, just days before the administration capitulated and said it shouldn’t have used that language in Bush’s SOTU.

Burn Them


Paul Lukasiak points out that the Bush administration has been, through anonymous sources, lying about Wilson’s trip all along.

Since when do journalists protect sources who lie to them? Very odd.

Indeed

Ailes says:

What the hell is this bullshit? The disclosure of Plame’s identity (as the wife of Joseph Wilson) was the friggin’ crime. It was disclosure of information to Cooper. Under the law, it doesn’t friggin’ matter (1) if there was an organized effort; (2) whether Rove intended for Cooper to publish; or (3) whether Rove’s motive was to knock down a rumor. Repeat: None of those things friggin’ matter. The only possible issue left is whether Rove knew Plame was a covert agent. The e-mail is silent on the matter — although the fact that Rove didn’t want his name connected to the leak strongly suggests his guilt in that regard.

This passage also illustrates the abuse of anonymous sources. If the source isn’t Rove’s attorney (who is quoted on the record elsewhere in the article), then there’s no way he or she has first-hand knowledge of what Rove told the grand jury. So this jackass is simply providing uninformed spin – making an argument based on the language of the e-mail. Why should Newsweak give someone with no knowledge, but only spin, a promise of confidentiality?

Ribbit

David Corn has the latest Rove news…

Yet tonight I received this as-solid-as-it-gets tip: on Sunday Newsweek is posting a story that nails Rove. The newsmagazine has obtained documentary evidence that Rove was indeed a key source for Time magazine’s Matt Cooper and that Rove–prior to the publication of the Bob Novak column that first publicly disclosed Valerie Wilson/Plame as a CIA official–told Cooper that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife apparently worked at the CIA and was involved in Joseph Wilson’s now-controversial trip to Niger.

This appears to be it. Spikey Mikey really pulls his punches:

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson’s criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time’s editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine’s corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a “big warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson.” Rove told Cooper that Wilson’s trip had not been authorized by “DCIA”?CIA Director George Tenet?or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, “it was, KR said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.” Wilson’s wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: “not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger… “

FROG MARCH?….David Corn:

Tonight I received this as-solid-as-it-gets tip: on Sunday Newsweek is posting a story that nails [Karl] Rove. The newsmagazine has obtained documentary evidence that Rove was indeed a key source for Time magazine’s Matt Cooper and that Rove ? prior to the publication of the Bob Novak column that first publicly disclosed Valerie Wilson/Plame as a CIA official ? told Cooper that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife apparently worked at the CIA and was involved in Joseph Wilson’s now-controversial trip to Niger.

….This new evidence could place Rove in serious political, if not legal, jeopardy [SNIPPED by Susanhu]

Newsweek sure does have lousy newsroom security, doesn’t it?

July 3, 2005: Rove’s Lawyer Lies To Bloomberg

Here’s what Karl Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin told Bloomberg News on July 3, 2005:

[Karl Rove] did nothing wrong, did not disclose Plame’s identity, and did not reveal any confidential information.

According to TIME reporter Matt Cooper’s e-mail, here is what Karl Rove told him sometime before July 11, 2003:

[I]t was, KR [Karl Rove] said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip.

This was before the Novak column appeared on July 14. At that time, the fact that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA was confidential information.

(On other occasions, Luskin has said Rove never “knowingly” disclosed classified information. But he did not use that qualifier with Bloomberg News.)