I’ve been reading some of the right-wing talking points on Plamegate. They seem to have a braincramp that prevents basic reasoning. So, let me lay out a case for Rove that assumes his only motive was to raise (legitimate) doubt about Wilson’s editorial.
First we have to enter our time machine and go back in time.
:::flip:::
It’s July 6th, 2003. The President has just appeared on an aircraft carrier to pronounce the ‘Mission Accomplished’ in Iraq. But, even though the war is seemingly over, Iraq is chaotic. And we have not yet found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
People opening the New York Times find a startling editorial. An ambassador named Joseph C. Wilson reveals a special trip that he took to Niger:
So far, so good. But Wilson claims that he had reported back that the intelligence report was unfounded:
In spite of this, the President had continued to refer to the intelligence report to justify an invasion of Iraq. And in his 2003 State of the Union speech he had uttered the following words:
Wilson’s editorial caused a media firestorm, because it raised the possibility that the Vice-President had deliberately ignored Wilson’s report and misled the nation. Rove needed to minimize the damage. The first thing he needed to do was gather information about Wilson, what he had actually reported, how he had been selected for the trip, etc. Rove needed to determine his his credibility, and undermine it, if possible.
He presumably went to Cheney’s office and determined that Wilson was telling the truth when he said, “I did not file a written report.” That was a relief.
He then began investigating how Wilson had been selected to take the trip. He quickly learned that Wilson’s wife was working at the CIA on issues of nuclear proliferation and that she had suggested that her husband might be a good choice for the mission. This made sense because Wilson had extensive experience and contacts in that area of Africa.
In Rove’s mind, this offered an opportunity to discredit Wilson. He was chosen at the suggestion of his wife. He could spin it as nepotism, as a government financed vacation.
Maybe he assumed that Wilson’s wife was an analyst rather than an operative, and her presence at Langley seemed to rule out her having non-official cover.
So, Rove began making phone calls to select reporters, seeking to portray Wilson as unreliable and lacking in expertise.
The problem was that as soon as he revealed that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA, it was a simple matter for the reporters to learn her true identity. Wilson only had one wife.
When it became clear that she was actually a covert agent, Rove realized that he had blown her cover and possibly committed a crime.
In this most generous scenario, Rove did not know she was a covert agent, or even know her name, and he wasn’t trying to destroy her career as retribution for Wilson’s betrayal.
He had just made a mistake.
But rather than come clean, apologize for his error, apologize to Wilson and Plame, the agency, the American public, and the President, he stonewalled.
You might believe that he lied to the President about whether he had made the phone calls. But given their close relationship, and the potential legal consequences, this seems inconceivable. Moreover, if he did lie to the President, we would expect that he would have been immediately fired after the Cooper email came to light.
That hasn’t happened. So, it is safe to say that he did tell the President about his mistake, and yet the administration has hidden that information from the general public and the prosecutor for over two years. They have allowed a journalist to go to jail. Many other people have had to expend a lot of money on legal fees, and have been subjected to stressful Grand Jury interrogation.
No matter how you spin this, Bush and Rove’s behavior has been unconscionable.
Wilson’s claims regarding Nigeria don’t necessarily make this a false statement:
Unless Nigeria is the only country in Africa with uranium.
Of course, I don’t know…is that the case? I have no idea where in the world uranium is mined.
not Nigeria. Two different countries. All the evidence was bogus for African uranium. The Niger accusation was the BEST documented. But the documents were planted, and forged.
Whoa, my bad. I knew that. I call brain-fart on me.
Your scenario definitely seems plausible, btw.
ouch! brain farts hurt….:o)
A few questions in order to get some facts straight:
Having read some of Josh Marshall’s very vague posts about these documents, I’d have to say a “Hell Yeah” to that. Whoever ends up being ultimately responsible for them, it doesn’t look good – Italy, Israel, US, whoever… My guess is it was some combination thereof, though with Italy going after the CIA I’m beginning to doubt they were knowingly involved (or maybe they got burned then too).
I can answer some of this:
1. Plame did not accompany her husband to Niger.
2. See answer # 1.
3. The Brits always claimed they had different documents from a third country’s intelligence aparatus. It has now been fairly well established by a number of well-researched sources that these were the same documents, and they were produced by Italian Intelligence. 60 Minutes was planning a major expose on this but they shelved it until after the election after the “Rathergate” scandal. The special has never aired.
4. They acknowledged this after the UN outed them, but kept maintaining that Britain had additional evidence. Today I don’t think any one maintains that the Niger allegations are credible.
5. See #3.
6. The Italians knew they were fakes because the Italians faked them.
7. Tenet knew the claims were not credible, probably because of Wilson and others who had debunked them. The CIA did not have the actual documents until much later. He told Stephen Hadley to remove the reference. That did not stop Hadley, Rice and Cheney to continue publicly alluding to Niger yellowcake or Bush from later putting it into his State of the Union speech.
8-9. I don’t know the answer to that, but it was the CIA that asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation of the Plame leak.
jpol,
Excellent! Thank you. Much of that was what I remembered but I wasn’t keeping score at home so I wasn’t sure if I had my facts straight.
Shame Ms. Wilson did not join her husband in Niger. It would have made a great deal of sense for a CIA WMD expert to go and do undercover research at the same time he was doing it in the open. But that’s neither here nor there really.
So the Italians not only “discovered” the documents but have been determined to have forged them as well.
Has anyone determined the Italians motives in creating these forgeries? Has there been any linkage showing them doing this on behalf of the US or the British?
So, presumably Tenet told the White House not to reference yellowcake because he knew from Wilson’s report (and perhaps other sources) that the yellowcake story was false. Tenet knew. Tenet, the CIA, believed Wilson’s report, the White House staff was informed of this. The White House staff knew the yellowcake story was no good. The White House staff knew Wilson’s report was valid. As I recall Wilson’s report was also given to Cheney as he had been the originator of the request… so the V.P.’s office knew the yellowcake story was false and that Wilson’s report was valid.
Ok.
Excellent. Thank you.
Re Plame accompanying her husband, I believe she was pregnant at the time.
Regarding the forged documents, Berlusconni was probably doing his buddies a favor. There seems to have been an effort at one point to pin them on Israel, and Israeli intel supposedly said the forgeries would have been much more professional if they had done them.
Details elude my memory right now and I haven’t had a chance to check my files, but I believe there were two other experts who also investigated the yellowcake for the CIA and came to the same conslusion Wilson did.
Cheney’s office claims they never were told about Wilson’s findings, but that just is not credible in my opinion.
The answer to #8 is “Yes.” That is SOP any time a covert agent is compromised, or any operation is compromised, for any reason.
The answer to #9 is classified and is so deep that historians won’t see it for two or more generations. At the least, the answers would give up means, methods and sources.
[No. I am not an expert. Those answers are obvious to anyone who has read Phillip Agee, history of Intelligence Services [such as that of the infamous Cambridge spy ring which included Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and Donald Maclean or the Walker family of CIA fame.] or a bunch of good spy novels such as those by Len Deighton or John le Carre.]
The answers are in the [heavily redacted] Senate Intelligence Committee report. Section you want is “Niger”, and it can be found here. About halfway down the page.
#8. We’ll never know the damage.
Thank you! Reading it now (while watching all-star game – GO AL!)
Thank you.
That made for some very interesting reading. I’ll have to think about this some.
You’re welcome. Would’ve been nicer w/out the damn redacts tho’….. 🙂
To my knowledge the best site to visit for Uranium in general and where it is mined (no to mention the numerous unreported accidents), is the WISE Uranium Project.
Some Uranium producers apparently do not cooperate fully with the international community such as the Congo DR, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic. There are unexploited resources in Tchad, which has been racked by civil war for generations.
Sorry Booman, I just cannot give anyone in this administration, let alone Rove, the benefit of the doubt. I know you are just playing Devil’s Advocate but it seems these days the devil doesn’t need any help. Rove is a lying, manipulating little twirp. He has gotten away with it for 30+ years now. Don’t we ship security risks to Gitmo?
what is the old saying…the devil is in the detail….I hear ya Ladybug…I do not want to give an inch to their rheteric, but we do have to look like we ae looking into their evidence..no matter what…we have to put that good face on it….I think the administration is playing this for all it is worth.
Ah yes, the old game plan. Never hurts to look at the evidence but any good lawyer will tell you not to hand them the evidence either. LOL
I contend that Novak got his marching orders from within the WH to publish this information to the public. If he did not, then he is the man that should be in trouble in stead of Rove. I want to believe that Novak should have had enough common sense to know that he should not have reported this one. With commonsense factor out of the way then it was a meant to be thing and this is an untoward fallout that they did not intend on getting.
Of course the right wing will continue to deny and deny until they deny they are even alive to deny. What a sorry sack of humans out there. They do not intend on letting this get in their way of hurting ppl in any fashion what-so-ever. They are revengeful!
Saying all of this, I suspect that with politics being as playful as it is, he will not pay one ounce of a price for any of this.
Hugh Hewitt was just on MSNBC and said Rove and Scottie won’t anwser any questions because the “media is a bunch of empty headed people” and thus the media is out to get Rove?McClellan for not ansewring their questions. Say what? It’s the cover up and lies. It’s the cover up and lies. Repeat after me.
Oh, yes. Please blame it on the media. Anything to instill the corporate media with some backbone is fine with me. “a bunch of empty headed people”? Somehow, I don’t think that argument will work in a court. Does anyone else foresee a Watergate-to-outdo-Watergate coming?
Yup. Our colleagues (loosely so) in the WH press corps have been played and spun and lied to for rather a while and they haven’t been allowed to do anything much about it… and now they’ve got hard proof and they’re a whole LOT pissed off.
This could get amusing (not that it’s not already; the last couple of press conference transcripts have been pretty good reads on their own…)
Bob Novak used the term “Operative” which he used correctly. Nowhere in his past has he used that term for anything other than what it means.
That indicates (and yes, you can call that speculation on my part), that he was told she was an operative by his source. Note that doesn’t mean his source is Rove, which bolsters your hypothesis. However, it still indicates that someone in the white house knew her background and used it anyway.
The question then is “why?”
The only answer that I can come up with, and was mentioned at the TPM Cafe (sorry, it will take too long to find the diary) was that the white house was unable to discredit Wilson’s report [since by then they knew about the forged Niger documents] as there was no WMD program, so they had to discredit Wilson.
And why did they have to do this? Because the intelligence was fixed around the policy [DSM anyone] of attacking Iraq, and Wilson just broke a big link in the intelligence chain justifying the war.
Scott Ritter was accused of being a pedophile. Paul O’Neil was threatened with arrest for divulging classified documents (where did I read that today, I’ve gone through so many blogs on Plame-gate). The implication: Bad things will happen to you if you cross this administration.
last night, and he addessed the use of the word ‘operative’.
He said that Novak had claimed that he used the word ‘operative’ to refer to political operatives, like Rove or Carville. Thus, Novak claimed that the word ‘operative’ was not a modifier for CIA, but a perjorative description of Plame’s political motivations for recommneding her husband.
Woodward said he bought it.
I don’t.
I didn’t buy it either.
Novak’s not that dumb. Which makes me wonder what he told the Special Investigator.
me either….what is this with woodward? I thought he was to be an honest reporter and person.
once upon a time…
I can’t find the link but someone went back and and checked Novak’s use of the word operative over an extended period of time. He had appropriately limited use of the term operative to a covert agent in the past.
He’s also admitted that he called the CIA to check on Plame before publishing and they said it was sensitive, recommended against publishing. He went ahead and did it anyway and then claimed it was a “weak” restriction.
Also, in regard to a previous comment: my understanding is that we don’t know the origin of the forged documents from Italy. Am I wrong about that? Wonder if they were more of the “fixing.”
Alterman has a great article at the MSNBC site today. He is screaming for the president to do the right thing. You can find it here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
you know that this pResident will just place him under house arrest and continue SOP…
besides, the WH will make the unemployment in DC area much better by creating new jobs for them there by having them make a tunnel from roves house to the WH and that will be just that…end of story…;o)
she had suggested that her husband might be a good
choice for the mission. This made sense because Wilson
had extensive experience and contacts in that area of
Africa.
I would like to flesh out this part a little.
Valerie Plame only suggested that her husband would be
a likely candidate. WMD was her field afterall.
I was told over at TPM/or here that she was not even at
the meeting where the decision was made. When
this information that she made the suggestion was
revealed in the official 9/11 Report, the right wing
grabbed it and called Joe Wilson a liar. Until the
CIA came forward to say that Valerie Plame did not
make the decision and they shut up about it.
I think when Rove dropped this “nepotism” innuendo he was being was being blatantly dishonest. He knew better.
Plame doesn’t get to decide who goes on such missions.
It’s not obvious to the wing nuts.
Monica Crowley on MSNBC spun this one hard right with ‘the facts are that the wife did send him, it was in Senate hearing, and a lot of other stuff about how Wilson was totally discredited’….So how much do you think her salary is from the propaganda machine.
Sorry, but after yesterday, I cannot bear to hear her talk for a few days, hope someone will keep me informed.
was permanently contaminated with an infectious disease which she picked up from Nixon while working for him.
The disease destroys those parts of the human character that deal with ethics, rational thought, and tolerance for others. Once someone exhibits symptoms of this ailment as severe as hers, there’s virtually no hope for a cure.
I don’t know who she is, but that was an entertaining description. 🙂
Pretty interesting interview with Mellman on Wolf Blitzer just now….Mellman was just “‘outraged’ at the dems for this smear campaign against Karl Rove, who has done nothing wrong, and he can’t comment on anything, not even if he was called to testify.” Blitzer just kept after him and Mellman kept repeating the same answers, it seems the spin is turning hard left now,,,,aiming at the likely target Hillary and Kerry, + “Oh they are so baddddddd”, he says, “not usssss, we just want to do the work to make this country even better.”
Every station I have had on has covered this…
doing so would help him advance his own agenda on something. And certainly, with the possible exception of Cheney, Rove is the most despicable excuse for a human being in the entire administration, always willing to prey on the weak and unsuspecting, always ready to exploit anyone’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses without compunction in order to get his way.
As inexcusable as his behavior is, it’s representative of the entire Bush regime, and I have to say that as much as we all would like to see him rotting in a hellhole somewhere, clamoring for him to be sacked, making all sorts of assertions about his guilt that are as yet unsubstantiated; all ofthis behavior will play right into the Repubs hands if Rove survives this challenge. The wingnut propaganda machine will have a field day ripping into everyone, (i.e. Dems) for asserting his guilt prematurely.
I think it’s a real shame how easily we are willing to jump to conclusions absent concise evidence; how our eagerness to see creatures like Rove and Miller suffer (schadenfreude) leads us to throw the rope over the tree limb before we have the evidence that the person in question has in fact committed a crime.
There are, to my mind, only two scenarios that make this speculation feasible.
1. Rove was out of the loop, vis a vis, Plames “real”
status…extremely unlikely, as he was privy to the special
cabinet group discussions surrounding the intel in
preparation for the invasion and it’s evolving rationale.
2. Rove was set up by Cheney, with whom he apparently was
having disagreements w/ over the issue of authorization for
sending Wilson to Niger.
Option 2 only works if Rove DIDN’T know her actual status. However, it is not beyond Cheney’s ability, nor out of character, for him to pull something like this off. Throw his energy taskforce “secrets” into the mix, and Plame’s [Mrs. Wilson’s] presumptive cover, ARAMCO, and you’ve got a lot of reasons to ask ?s
When are we going to see James Baker III? If and when he appears there is going to be big trouble brewing.
Peace
And this is the point of the whole thing…
How would Rove have found out that Plame was working at the CIA if a) she didn’t attend the meeting & b) was NOC?
There is another leak out there… someone who would have access to that particular information. This was no ordinary “mistake”, this required planning. My guess is that Rove has blackmail material prepared against anybody who he doesn’t know is 100% loyal to the cause. He probably went digging on Wilson when he first came back from Niger and gave his report… so he was ready for the smear when Wilson went public.
Well:
So, we can assume there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
Yeah, I don’t know if Liddy would be the one… I’m still thinking Bolton and his access as Deputy NSA.
He would have had access to the super duper classified info, including Valerie, as it would seem that she would have kept a low profile.. you know, she wasn’t out there briefing the White House or anything… 😉
Cooper’s source was Rove. that is what all the comotion has been about yesterday and today.
Miller refuses to seek permission to speak, and her motives are very suspect. See my post of yesterday: “Evidence Mounts That Judy Miller Is Protecting Judy Miller.” It is still “recommended” but will probably fall off the list shortly.
.Evidence Mounts That Judy Miller is Protecting Judy Miller
Thinking along these lines—of what actually might have happened, or at least what Rove’s people can eventually say happened with some plausibility–is helpful, because the smart thing to be doing right now is to think beyond Rove.
I’m amazed that so many topics and threads and diaries are all about getting rid of Rove. The blood is the water metaphor turns out to be apt. All this excitement, and for what?
Rove will go—either they will weather this current firestorm and in as decent an amount of time as possible, Rove will announce he is leaving to “pursue opportunities in the private sector” or whatever, or he will resign to spare the president this controversy.
Then what? That’s what I want to know. If all anybody can lust after is Rove’s blood, what happens when he just walks away, without admitting anything, and everything in the courts drags on until the public forgets what it was about in the first place?
Do you even think Rove will disappear, have no influence, not be working for the GOPers? He’ll be a hero to the hard right no matter what. Firing Rove is fine, but Democrats need to think ahead to the next step, and not just with their glands.
Forcing Rove out would be a crippling blow to the administration.
Just the process of forcing him out is perfect for us right now. He is the poster boy for corruption, and he is too close to the Prez.
This is pure gold. If they fired him, it would hurt them tactically, day to day.
By holding on to him, they are handing us a hammer.
The biggest risk here is the scenario where Rove is fired before the investigation is completed, the investigation is limited to current White House staffers (IE, not Rove, he’s fired), and his name gets slipped into the middle of Bush’s mile-long pardon list. This protects the Bush administration and leaves Rove free to keep playing Kingmaker.
in that. Rove organizes an enormous operation. Much of it would be impossible to do from outside the WH.
His resignation will weaken the entire Bush machine. If he stays, we will run against corruption next year to great effect.
And the investigation itself is another wildcard.
Anytime the WH’s press secretary is rendered mute, we are winning.
You may be right, but I’m not coming up with any examples of a political aide leaving the White House that did signficant damage to that president or to the party. All other things being equal.
My point is:
Watergate wouldn’t have been what it was if all that had happened was Nixon’s political aides resigned.
Most Americans couldn’t pick Karl Rove out of a lineup. They don’t share the frenzy of politically active people who hate and fear Rove.
Yes, Rove out of the White House will disrupt that machinery. But it won’t destroy it. And it won’t end his influence. Again, I may be wrong about all this, but I am skeptical of all this glee.
is to cheer up.
It’s like when Cincinnati Bengals (us) unexpectedly beat the New England Patriots (them).
It’s doesn’t mean the Bungles are going to make the playoffs, but their fans can rejoice.
Most Americans couldn’t pick Karl Rove out of a lineup. They don’t share the frenzy of politically active people who hate and fear Rove.
They’re certainly getting to know him and Scott McClellan now. The press is all over this like white on rice and CNN has been pounding this story for hours. That is a victory – even if nothing ever happens to the bastards.
Lou Dobb’s poll
“Do you believe the White House should immediately disclose to the American people everything it knows about the CIA leak?” Yes or No
Yes 96% No 4%
Yes 97%
No 3%
And they had a statement from Joe Wilson (haven’t been able to find it online yet). He explicitly links this whole deal back to the cover-up of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war.
I’ll keep looking, but if anyone else sees this…well, that’s some pretty good (and incendiary) stuff.
how they will respond:
AP article – emphasis mine
Like a cornered cat, expect the claws to be used readily, we have to be ready.
else who is to blame – never themselves. They never make a mistake remember? So even with Boo’s generous giveaway Rove wouldn’t take that out, because it would be admitting he didn’t know what the blink he was doing!
I would love to see the Democratic leadership give a speech talking to the American people about how everyone must undergo Performance Evaluations at their job; then make it clear that the entire Republican party has failed to govern this country effectively and deserve to be terminated in the 2006 elections. Speak to them on terms they can understand. The R’s job performance sucks and the people have the power to hold them accountable.
Guess they couldn’t take the heat:
White House expresses confidence in top Bush aide:
But Bush and White House spokesman Scott McClellan balked at answering key questions about the case, as some Democrats stepped up calls for Rove to be fired.
McClellan said the White House was asked to remain silent by prosecutors investigating who leaked the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, an act Plame’s husband said was meant to discredit him for criticizing Bush’s Iraq policy in 2003.
“Any individual who works here at the White House has the president’s confidence. They wouldn’t be working here if they didn’t have the president’s confidence,” McClellan told reporters in answer to a question.
This is rich:
Pot meet kettle.
Lou Dobbs interviewed John Dean today and they spoke about the fact that if Rove used his office for political purposes regarding this Niger claim and Wilson’s report, as you state here, he could be guilty of fraud and/or conspiracy:
That is an angle I hadn’t heard before. We all know that Rove is the political puppet master, but I think this angle deserves some investigation if, in fact, it was against the law for him to try to gain some political points by doing what he did.
Catnip – I heard Dean on TV before and he’s published some good stuff in Findlaw. I’m no expert on legal stuff but he seems to be one of the best informed and most reasonable people dealing with the legal issues. (And he does have relevant experience.) Sorry – couldn’t resist that.
this is what I just heard from Newt Gindrich on the O’Reilly show, just now, i am paraphrasing here, but he impllied what’s the big deal about telling Cooper, Wilson’s wife, got him the job, anyone could find out Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent.
Oh it was lovely as he and O’reil ooohed and aahed over how right Newt was, really so simple, a smear campaign to ruin this man who’s only crime was saying “His wife got him the job,.” not that she was CIA.
Not that she could even be the one to assign him, they just sailed right over that…
GRRRRRRRR I have wanted to throw something at the TV all day and I have been shouting at it.
Save your TV! You may need it for the greater good.
I would make sure it was soft, don’t want to break my TV, what would I do?????lol.
This so reminds me of the swift boat thing in reverse, but they are applying the same crapola as they did to SB. Did that make sense, I think I am losing sensibility after watch a couple Reps. being interviewed.
“He presumably went to Cheney’s office and … learned that Wilson’s wife was working at the CIA on issues of nuclear proliferation…”
Nice story, which far from exonerates Rove and also implicates Cheney, since who leaked VP’s covert identity to Rove so he could leak it to the press?
There should be no one who had the information about Plame’s covert operations who didn’t also have security clearance to have that information.
If Karl Rove wasn’t the leak, then who was it? Cheney?