Remember this Washington Post article from September 28, 2003?
“Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,” the senior official said of the alleged leak.
Who the hell was the ‘senior official’ that was the source for that article?
And then there is this, from last night’s Hardball with Chris Matthews:
You believe that the fight between those who may be headed toward indictment, the vice president‘s chief of staff, Karl Rove, there is a war between them and the people who are going to survive them, Andy Card, et cetera.
FINEMAN: Yes.
Howard Fineman also said:
Can rumor and innuendo get more compelling that that?
Imagine! People within the White House are telling Howard Fineman that they are out to get Karl Rove. Unless Rove is already as good as in jail it is almost impossible to imagine anyone openly defying him. Even to bad-mouth Rove off the record would ordinarily be too risky for members of the administration.
And I go back to that senior official from 2003 that jumped at the opportunity to slam Rove and Libby. How long have they been gunning for them. To me, that person may be as significant as Deep Throat, maybe more so, when all is said and done.
Well, these are political rats we are talking about, not patriots and we all know what rats do to a sinking ship.
No surprises here, it just didn’t happen sooner because of a purposely sleeping (due to corporate ownership/involvement) press.
The senior official back in ’03 — wouldn’t that have been Powell who had reason to be smarting from being made a fool in front of the UN? He wouldn’t be Fineman’s current inside source, of course. But, Powell was on AF1 the day the memo was circulated and it’s obvious he’s the one who leaked, “I saw Ari reading it, too,” after it was leaked that Powell had it in his hands. He was there in the middle of the little party they had plotting to discredit Wilson. He was there while phone calls were made from the plane to reporters.
Remind me: when did Powell resign? When did Ari resign? Maybe these guys didn’t imagine the scandal that would follow but they felt uncomfortable about what was being done and got out while the getting was good.
This whole Plame Game is like an Alternative Reality Game (ARG) and I’m really enjoying it. I hope it ends like most of those games where the villians are destroyed, the heroes win and the mysteries are solved because of all the players watching and speculating and contributing to the storyline.
I just have a hunch that Powell may whisper about the others but that he’s too gutless to, say, talk to the FBI, etc.
I vote for Powell in ’03, not sure who it would be now…maybe Condi’s having a fit of jealousy over the return of Karen Hughes?
that Karen Hughes took a “family leave” ?
I don’t think it was Karen Hughes. She’s far too devoted to Bush to say that someone in the administration had done something out of revenge. She’s part of that cabal.
It has to be someone who actually has a conscience. That narrows the field quite a bit.
I figured the ’03 guy was Tenet. If you’ve just had a leak of a CIA agent wouldn’t you go to the head of the CIA and ask them about it?
As to the more recent comments… I think it is White House spin at work. It is also possibly truth. I think the White House is in serious distress and disarray but read Billmon today for more info on Andy Card.
Unless Rove is already as good as in jail it is almost impossible to imagine anyone openly defying him. Even to bad-mouth Rove off the record would ordinarily be too risky for members of the administration.
Karl Rove has run roughshod over people his entire career. He’s made a lot of enemies, some of them kept very close. People who build their careers that way are punished badly on their way down. When all those people who were bound through fear get their first whiff of blood, they all start taking their shots. That’s what will happen to the whole administration ultimately. Tyrants get destroyed, when they finally fall, and everyone who isn’t wholly enmeshed and loyal takes their pound of flesh.
You’re supposed to be kind to the people you meet on the way up the ladder, because they could be the ones in a position to step on your fingers on the way down.
I imagine there are probably a lot more people than Joe Wilson who have a keen interest in seeing Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.
Well, so much for my cleverly crafted comment on the old theatrical saw about being nice to people on the way up. Hah! 🙂
I think Powell could have been one of the SAOs early on, but there’s someone else, or several someone elses, now. With luck, we will find out in due time.
Rove has never been nice to anyone unless it serves his own narrow ends. I am reminded of the comment attributed to one of Nixon’s minions that they let themselves get caught in the whole Watergate imbroglio because they had allowed themselves to be corrupted by their own power.
Yeah. Couldn’t happen to better people at a better time . . . If this were, say, the 1940s, the Rove character could be played by Bette Davis at her most vituperative.
Oh Yeah, this really is loaded with both intrigue and entertainement value for sure. In fact rumours and gossip is the main topic of my diary today, Under the Radar, Gossip Edition. I’m not pushing my diary, it’s just that gossip is so much fun. You’ll find links to Tweeties’s interview with Fineman, as well as Bush vs. Cheney gossip and the latest on Bush’s worsening temper tantrums. Wait, there’s more… an article by Carole Coleman, the irish reporter who interviewed Bush for real and earned an official protest by the US to the Irish government. She wanted to slap him during the interview. Carole’s article is a fun read.
We’ll know this has become an important story when we tune in to Anderson Cooper and he says, “Next up: Everyone in America is wondering… Who is… the Mole?”
I think second source is Condi. Also, MSM talking heads made it sound somewhat like they are going to throw Karl under the bus to save the President. I just can’t believe this, because I don’t think Rover has the loyalty of a dog, and I think if they don’t toe the line and fight to keep his fat arse out of jail, he will take the lot of them down with him.
Unless there is an unfortunate small plane accident in Rove’s near future.
what then is her political future?
Obviously none under the Bushistas. Otherwise, any ideas?
She also plays the piano..
She’s also a fiercely dedicated shoe shopper.
And with the recent, lamented parting of Bobby Short,
She also plays the piano…
there’s probably an opening for a piano player at the Cafe Carlyle. Time off during the day to visit Ferragamo, an easy walk down Fifth Avenue.
…to watch this drama unfold… Weren’t his books really about PNAC anyway???
.
~ Cross-posted from earlier diary Under the Radar, Gossip Edition ~
Editor & Publisher link plus additional reference NationalJournal.com
FINEMAN: And that runs through a whole lot of things, whether it`s Harriet Miers or Katrina. But it all starts with Iraq.
And some submerged, but now emerging divisions within the administration over why we went into that war, how we went into that war and what was done to sell it. There are people are out for Karl Rove inside that White House, which makes his situation even more perilous.
My understanding, from talking to somebody quite close to this investigation, is that they think there are going to be indictments and possibly Karl Rove could be among them, if not for the act of the leaking information about Valerie Plame, then perhaps for perjury, because he’s now testified four times.
WSJ Edition ::
Focus of CIA Leak Probe
Appears to Widen
Christopher Dickey
America’s conflicts are fought mostly by people who have come from the powerless classes. But true patriotism is not about being a spectator.
Oct. 11, 2005 – On or about Dec. 30, 2002, which was a day after we’d had dinner in New York and a year to the day before he died of a heart attack, John Gregory Dunne put a floppy disk in an envelope and dropped it off at the Manhattan apartment where I was staying. As happens, I misplaced it in my travels after that, and only last weekend did I find it and read the digital newspaper clippings he’d pulled together, which he’d talked about with so much excitement at our dinner.
John was interested in patriotism. He was fascinated by the real substance of it, which he saw as diametrically opposed to what he called “the spectator patriotism” exploited by the Bush administration as it went looking for wars. There was something (it took a while for John to put his finger on it) in the fact that several people he knew had children on active duty: historian Doris Kearns had a son, John himself had a nephew, I had a son. We had people we loved in uniform doing what they saw, and we understood, imperfectly perhaps, as their duty to defend the values and the dreams that are the United States of America. But why were there so few from this circle of acquaintances if the cause was so great?
[…]
PS Very sorry Condi is no mole, she belongs to the rats.
▼ ▼ ▼
Maybe they’re all naked mole rats, now.
Actually, I forgot to explain my reasoning. Naked mole rats: They’re blind, live sequestered from the rest of the world underground, and their social system consists of one big fat queen mole, surrounded by worker rats and three or four male drones whose job it is to “service” her constantly. In the case of the Bush Administration, I think the “queen” is a male in this case (the President), but who cares.
Why would anyone want that image to be larger than it already is? What an yugly little creature? LOL!
That was my reaction too – click for larger image? I don’t think so!
Just so. The small image was quite sufficient, thank you. Eeuuuwww.
The few pictures taken lately of VP Cheney remind me of my compatriots in old age who have gotten that message that you don’t want to hear of how many months you have left. On top of that there appears to be a cabal in the White House who are pushing to make Scooter Libby, the VP Chief of Staff, the fall guy. Karl Rove is too important to President Bush. It all is enough to understand why there are rumors of a falling out between POTUS and VPOTUS flying through Etherville.
I have seen a number of comments, although they seem to be speculation rather than fact, that he has congestive heart failure. Not a good diagnosis for someone with his cardiac history, pacemaker or no.
How about Andrew Card?
Mary Matalin.
I love a good mystery…motive, method, opportunity, plus access…hmmmmm.
Interestingly, many of the ‘suspects’ already listed were originally part of the WHIG, White House Iraq Group, put together in the Summer of 2002 for the express purpose of marketing the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the public:
Andrew Card
I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby
Karl Rove
Karen Hughes
Mary Matalin
James Wilkinson
Nicolas E. Calio
Condi Rice
Stephen J. Hadley
It is not unreasonable to assume that all of these people had access to this information, especially in light of the fact that the major press offensive to ‘prove’ that Iraq had a major nuclear weapons program began in earnest in Aug/Sep 03.
It also ties in rather conveniently w/ Judy Millers early Sep 02 article(s) reporting on the ‘aluminum tubes’ and ‘uranium enrichment’, and we all know how that turned out.
Oh yeah, don’t forget the Downing Street Minutes from July 02 and the …intelligence being fixed around the policy… assessment therein.
Lots of people w/ access to classified information who represent the highest level staff of both Bush and Cheney, as well as State and CIA and DOD…the potential for this investigation to expand to an ever widening scope is phenomenal.
Stay tuned.
Peace
Matalin. Her husband knows his shit. She had to much on the line to go down with the Bushship. Until further notice my money is on Mary
I think I’ll go along with that bet Chamonix1.
yup…she was the SR.Top Cheney person who quietly disappeared and didn’t come back for Bush/Cheney round 2. Her husband probably was the guy who tipped off the CIA, and she got imunity way early on..probably the first one. James is no dummy, he went through the entire Clinton/Monica thing, he knows his shit and really knows the coverup is always worse than the original crime. $100 on Mary to win.
I don’t think cabinet level. Who in the White House opposes him now? Is it Card? I would bet whoever is feuding with him now, was the one then.
What goes around….
Yup..Andy Card is def the one who is trying to get rid of Rove. Tired of having the best title around and being bossed around by a loser who Card knows is bad for the party and is a criminal…although Card is in this to. I am sure he has been waiting years to rat out Rove. Rove is so gone. I can’t believe he is still walking the halls of the WH.
Who is the mole?
It’s Andy Card, the White House Chief of Staff, that’s who.
Card has much to gain by destroying Rove, who has always undermined Card’s influence with the President.
Card has much to gain by destroying Scooter Libby, who has also undermined Card.
And Andy Card knows where all the bodies are buried…so to speak.
I should remind you that Andy Card was a Deputy Chief of Staff to the FIRST President Bush…which means that Mr. Card may be a “real Republican” and not a neocon.
The mole, or ex-mole, since he is no longer in the WH, is definitely Powell. Andrea Mitchell blurted out his ID on Tuesday’s Hardball. First Isikoff:
ISIKOFF: How they learned about Wilson`s wives identity, we do know there was this classified state department report that was circulated in that time period and that the paragraph that had the information about Wilson`s wife at the agency was marked not just secret but N.F., no foreign.
So, that it was so sensitive that it could not be disclosed, it would be harmful to national security, if it was…
Then Mrs. Greenspan:
MITCHELL: We also know that, that paragraph, that document was circulated on Air Force One as the president was flying to Africa, that Ari Fletcher saw it, Colin Powell testified to that. And that could be one of the key facts in this.
By the way, after she said this Matthews, Isikoff, and a reporter from the ChiTrib had frozen smiles on their faces, obviously reacting to Mrs. G’s slip of the tongue. The nipped, tucked, and botoxed Mrs. Greenspan, however, always looks frozen, so it’s difficult to know if she realized she spilled the beans.
transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9671487/
oooo, the plot thickens! Nice catch Lucille and welcome to BooTrib!