One woman, of course, was Valerie Plame Wilson. And her tale? It was the infamous Novak phone call to Rove in which Novak received confirmation that Ms. Plame was really a CIA agent and also the wife of Joseph Wilson. Supposedly Novak had heard rumors from other journalists about “Wilson’s wife” being responsible for sending him to Niger to check out the story that Saddam was seeking to buy yellowcake uranium for his secret nuclear weapons program.
So if he heard it from other journalists, what made Novak decide to call Karl Rove to check the story out? Why Rove?
Murray Waas, writing for the National Journal, has the answer, and it may surprise you, since much of it has to do with the “other woman” in whom Novak and Rove had an interest:
On July 9, 2003, senior presidential adviser Karl Rove was well prepared as he returned a telephone call from columnist Robert Novak. On his desk were talking points and other briefing materials that then-White House Political Director Matt Schlapp and other staffers had compiled for Rove in anticipation of the conversation.
. . . Ironically, the materials prepared for Rove in advance of the conversation had nothing to do with Valerie Plame, the CIA officer whom Novak would identify — using Rove as one of his sources — as an “agency operative” in a July 14, 2003, column.
Instead, the voluminous material on Rove’s desk — including talking points, related briefing materials, and information culled from confidential government personnel files — involved a different woman: Frances Fragos Townsend, a former senior attorney in the Clinton administration’s Justice Department whom President Bush had recently named to be his deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism.
It seems President Bush had personally assigned Rove the task of short circuiting what the President believed was a rear guard action to defeat Townsend’s appointment from inside the White House itself. It seems Novak had been making calls to various administration officials, including Rove, seeking information about Townsend.
On July 8, Rove’s secretary wrote Townsend’s name on a telephone message slip, indicating that Townsend was the subject of Novak’s inquiry. It was then that Rove instructed his staff to prepare briefing materials for him to have on hand to answer Novak’s questions on Townsend.
When he finally got on the phone with Novak, Rove — consulting the talking points and briefing materials spread across his desk — argued the case that Townsend was qualified to be a deputy national security adviser, according to an account that Rove gave to another senior administration official at the time, as well as Rove’s later account to federal investigators.
Hmm sounds like Murray has been talking to someone who knows the details of Rove’s testimony to the FBI. That could either be someone in Fitzgerald’s office (unlikely, since Fitz has kept such a tight lid on leaks from his side) or someone close to Rove, either Rove’s attorney or someone in the Bush administration with that knowledge of why Rove called back Novak that day. In any event, nothing disqualifies this disclosure from being Rove spin just yet.
(For more on the revelations in Waas’ article, meet me after the break)
In any event, Novak would write a column about Townsend in which he stated that a senior offical had told him that National Security Advisor Rice had “obtained endorsements of [Townsend] by [then-Attorney General John] Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and CIA Director George Tenet.” These were the same talking points Rove had been handed in preparation for the Novak call. So “mission accomplished,” and all that.
So how did a call about Ms. Townsend morph into a discussion of Valerie Plame’s CIA job and her marital status?
Both Novak and Rove have told federal prosecutors that it was Novak who raised Plame’s name, with the columnist saying he had heard that “Wilson’s wife” had worked for the CIA and had been responsible for having her husband sent on the Niger mission.
“I heard that too,” Rove responded, according to published accounts of what Rove told federal investigators of the conversations. Novak’s version of what was said has been slightly different. He reportedly has told investigators that Rove’s response was something to the effect of, “Oh, you know about it.”
Novak indicated to Rove that he was still going to write a column that would be critical of Townsend. But according to an account that Novak later provided of his conversation with Rove, he also signaled to Rove that Wilson and Plame would be the subject of one of his columns. “I think that you are going to be unhappy with something that I write,” he said to Rove, “and I think you are very much going to like something that I am about to write.”
I think you’re very much going to like something that I am about to write. That statement now is redolent with ironies that may not have been apparent at the time. For no matter how much Rove wanted Valerie Wilson outed as punishment for her husband’s criticism of the Bush administration’s misuse and misrepresentation of intelligence to invade Iraq, he surely has come to regret it by now.
Four days later, on July 14, Novak wrote his now-famous column on Plame, in which he outed her as an “agency operative.” Although the column was little noticed at the time, it would eventually unleash a firestorm in Washington and lead to the appointment of Fitzgerald; the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller until she agreed to testify before the grand jury; and the grand jury indictment of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby and his resignation as Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff.
So what does the disclosure of the Rove and Novak’s discussion of the pending Townsend appointment (in the same phone call in which Rove confirmed Valerie Wilson’s identity as a CIA operative) add to our knowledge of the situation at the White House in July, 2003? It certainly shows some of the intense infighting going on within the administration over foreign policy and National Security matters, but how does it relate to Fitzpatrick’s investigation? Well, Waas says it may explain why Fitzpatrick has yet to bring charges against Rove:
The papers on Frances Townsend that Rove had on his desk on July 9 appear to have corroborated Rove’s and Novak’s accounts to prosecutors that the principal focus of their conversation was Townsend’s appointment. But on the issue of Valerie Plame, prosecutors have been unable to determine whether in fact Novak was the one who first broached the subject, and whether Rove simply confirmed something that Novak already knew. Sources close to the investigation say this uncertainty is one of the foremost reasons Fitzgerald has not decided yet whether to bring criminal charges against Rove.
Sources close to the investigation. Whatever that means. Sounds like Rove’s attorney, Luskin, to me, though who knows. Maybe somebody in Fitz’s office decided to explain the delay in indicting Rove, even though we know that there hasn’t exactly been a pattern of leaks coming out of his office on this matter.
But wait. There’s more. Waas reports that the Townsend affair shows the competition and divergent goals of various factions within the White House, and in particular between Rove, Bush’s top political strategist and Libby, as defender in chief of Vice President Cheney. In other words, Libby and Rove were not really thick as thieves because they were really adversaries on a number of issues. One of those was the Townsend appointment, with Libby preparing position papers arguing against her appointment for circualtion among Congressional staffers and Rove defending that choice to journalists like Novak. The idea being, I suppose that Rove shouldn’t necessarily be aligned with Libby, and likely had a different agenda re: Plame than Libby and Cheney did.
That Rove and Libby and others on the Vice President’s staff would work at cross-purposes with one another was hardly a surprise to many senior West Wing staffers, even as they later considered the irony that during the very same telephone conversation in which Rove was doing damage control with Novak to blunt the effort to undercut Townsend, Rove appeared to be working in tandem with Libby when he spoke to Novak about Plame.
A former senior White House aide said in an interview that while Rove and Libby were often allies, they were two men with “different objectives” that were by their nature inherently in conflict. Rove, this person said, was Bush’s “top political strategist,” while Libby’s primary role was that of “defender-in-chief for the vice president.” That, of course, led to inevitable conflict between Libby and Rove.
Well, to me, this seems like spin coming from the Rove camp. It’s pointing the finger at Libby and through him to his boss, Cheney, as the real culprits of the Valerie Plame outing, with Rove as just an innocent bystander who got caught up in Libby’s backwash.
Sorry, but I’m not buying that one. Rove had his hands in every major decision that came out of the White House. Outing Valerie Plame may have been done at the insistence of Cheney and Libby, but I have little doubt that Rove had signed on board with their decision. He, after all was looking out for the President’s interest, and in this case it coincided with Cheney’s and Libby’s agenda. Townsend was a minor disagreement over a minor figure. Wilson, and the damage he was doing to Bush’s credibility on the reasons for going to war, on the other hand, was something all parties could agree upon.
What is more relevant, to me, in Waas’s account is the idea that Rove now clearly has it in mind to make Libby the fall guy. Before this story, Rove’s confidants and attorneys were not openly attacking Libby, but merely suggesting that Rove himself played only a minor role at best in the matter. Now it appears that all efforts to present a unified front and a unified defense have been discarded. Libby is indicted and therefore Libby is history. Best to stick the knife in now before Fitzgerald’s indictment of Rove comes down. Like always, Rove is looking out for number one. Just read the following and see what you think:
One official said that Rove and Libby, reflecting sometimes two distinct power centers in the White House, often viewed each other with mistrust and as a “necessary evil in the larger scheme of things,” but they respected each other’s abilities.
Well, I agree with one part of their mutual assessment. They are both certainly evil.