For an administration that doesn’t like leaks, the dam has burst wide open this weekend. This latest one favours Rove once again, so we all know who’s leaking to who and why right now.
Rove told then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley in the July 11, 2003, e-mail that he had spoken with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and tried to caution him away from some allegations that CIA operative Valerie Plame’s husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.
“I didn’t take the bait,” Rove wrote in the message, disclosed to The Associated Press. In the memo, Rove recounted how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had been making.
The bait? Can they possibly try any harder to make Rove look like some sort of innocent victim in all of this? Seriously…
Rove, however, told the grand jury he first learned of Plame’s CIA work from journalists, not government sources.
With all of this fast and furious leaking going on this weekend so Rove can try to cover his butt, can someone please now leak who this supposed reporter was? This is getting tiresome already.
“When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.”
Is this the new and improved altruistic Karl Rove? C’mon.
Now Hadley’s lawyer is clamming up, citing the “ongoing investigation” mantra. This is all being leaked courtesy of anonymous sources who claim that they must maintain the secrecy of the grand jury proceedings. If it’s so damn secret, why are they running around telling people that Rove is just some innocent dupe here? I think Ken Mehlman just had an orgasm.
Leak something useful to our side, people! I’m getting nauseous from all of this spin. If you’re planning on tuning into the Sunday morning talk shows, have dramamine close by.
Does that mean i have to watch Meet the Press because Matt Cooper will be on?
No, poor Susan. There’s always the transcript. 🙂
None of this stuff matters, it’s all just chaff–stuff that’s used to confuse missles so they don’t hit their target.
The immediate target is this:
Bush said he’d fire anyone responsible. Scott McLellan said no one responsible would continue working at the White House. Bush said he wanted anyone who knew anything to come forward so they could put the matter behind them.
All of which produces two conclusions:
(1) Rove must go, according to previous WH statements. This is not a Democratic demand. This is Bush WH demand.
(2) Except, of course, that the Bush WH never meant it. It was simply involved in a coverup. Which leads to the overwhelming presumption that it’s STILL involved in a coverup.
So this is our line:
Either
(1) Rove goes now.
or
(2) We can safely assume that the WH is involved in an ongoing coverup, and Bush, as President, is directly responsible. Which makes it an impeachable offense.
Either Bush is guilty of obstruction of justice–protecting someone else who’s guilty–or else he himself is guilty of a substantive felony. Either way, it’s an impeachable offense.
I wish I was as sure as you are. The bigger the attempted coverup, the bigger the offense though…usually.
The ultimate crime here is already revealed in the Downing Street Memos. This whole thing with Wilson & Rove is a sideshow. It’s just that the official media is itself so deeply implicated in the main event that it can’t handle writing about.
But think about it for a moment. Think about what Wilson wrote in the NYT op-ed of July 6. It went against the grain of the triumphalism that was still going around, but in terms of actual content, it really wasn’t that damaging.
In fact, over at TPM, Josh is pointing to an article that predated Wilson’s op-ed, which says that “the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies.” Since Wilson himself said that Cheney may well have only been orally briefed, it would have been fairly easy to dismiss Wilson’s story without the ridiculous overkill involved.
If we were dealing with anything close to rational actors here, they would have buried Wilson’s story with a chorus of guffaws, and be done with it. The fact that they didn’t speaks both to their limitless arrogance, and to their guilt, which are flip sides of the same coin. They did not respond to Wilson in a carefully calibrated manner. They responded to him like someone who’s brushed up against a deep sore spot.
What Wilson wanted to do was to promote a serious investigation of how intelligence was being handled. Well, we’re unlikely to ever get that from the government. But the defensive spasm he provoked may, in the long run, bring the whole edifice down–if all the rest of us do our parts.
any possibility that Novak screwed them by printing her name? Well, not just her name, but who she was.
In other words, is it possible that they wanted to spike the story on background, but Novak ran with the story?
Personally, I suspect that they intended to ratfuck Wilson and his wife was ‘fair game’.
But there is a sliver of a chance that Rove only wanted to discredit Wilson on background, and did not intend for any reporters to use the information overtly.
Nah. What am I saying?
IMHO, they were like glue-sniffing 14-year olds. And Rove totally wanted to screw Wilson. I’m just saying that glue-sniffing 14-year olds 40 years on have a lot to be guilty of.
These leaks just keep on coming but I think the flood about to happen is inevitable. They are desperate to spin, keep changing the wording ever so slightly but they are all caught up in it now. Bush is complicit and impeachment proceedings must be demanded. It is just like when no wmds showed up then it became Saddam and then freedom and democracy. Oh to be a fly in the Oval Office these days!
You’d think they’d realize that perhaps too much spin is a Bad Thing? They sure are working overtime on this one. I’m just waiting to hear how saying bad things about Karl Rove is a win for the terrorists and how Karl bashing caused 9/11.
LMAO Catnip. I would not hesitate to put anything past the lying liars as Al Franken would say.
They certainly are loud and annoying but they’re just not that creative when it comes to having more than 2 mantras. 🙂
I wonder why politicians never learn that a cover-up only prolongs their agony and that usually it ends up not only being a short term disaster but may unravel even more than the original story or investigation.
Then again I’m glad they never learn. Funny about this frenzy of leaking going on..reminds me of the whole Ken Starr investigation and his office being the one doing all the leaking.
If Bush was smart(hahahahaha)he would have publicly said Rove was relieved of duties until investigation was over but of course quietly let him go about his dirty business. This would have made it look like he was actually doing something and most likely got reporters off his back.
By the way Catnip..the idea Ken Melhman having an orgasm is my idea of mental harassment.
By the way Catnip..the idea Ken Melhman having an orgasm is my idea of mental harassment.
I’m truly sorry…
🙂
The ecstasy makes any self-induced agony worthwhile… seriously… the leadership of this country is now dominated(pun intended) by a bunch of Sado-Masochists… They believe in torture… I mean, I joke around a lot, but why is 3/4 of the American population so incredibly BLIND to this…?
I think if you look at the intricacies of the spin this week, you’ll see why so many choose to be blind – it’s just all too hard to put together when the public is bombarded with he said/he said everyday. I suspect most people are waiting for the final conclusions and then they’ll figure out where they sit. It’s hard enough for those of us following the story each day to figure this out.
blew that one all to shit today….when he said it was Rove who brought it up and that he didn’t know about Plame until Rove told him.
Another one bites the dust.