Newsweek is out with a rather curious piece this morning by Michael Isikoff: CIA Leak: Karl Rove and the Case of the Missing E-mail. It may well portend the beginning of a White House effort to throw Karl Rove under the bus (perhaps along with Scooter Libby), as the Plamegate sacrificial lamb. In any event, the article suggests that the White House sees indictments coming from Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury, and efforts may be underway to insulate and distance George W. Bush from the growing scandal surrounding the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Isikoff cites “lawyers close to the case, who asked not to be identified,” but they are almost certainly White House sources. They indicate that Fitzgerald “appears to be focusing in part on discrepancies in testimony between Rove and Time reporter Matt Cooper about their conversation of July 11, 2003:”
In Cooper’s account, Rove told him the wife of White House critic Joseph Wilson worked at the “agency” on WMD issues and was responsible for sending Wilson on a trip to Niger to check out claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium.
Isikoff’s piece goes on to suggest that Rove covered up his conversation despite the White House’s best efforts to come clean:
But Rove did not disclose this conversation to the FBI when he was first interviewed by agents in the fall of 2003—nor did he mention it during his first grand jury appearance, says one of the lawyers familiar with Rove’s account. (He did not tell President George W. Bush about it either, assuring him that fall only that he was not part of any “scheme” to discredit Wilson by outing his wife, the lawyer says.) But after he testified, [Rove attorney Robert] Luskin discovered an e-mail Rove had sent that same day—July 11—alerting deputy national-security adviser Stephen Hadley that he had just talked to Cooper, the lawyer says. In the e-mail, Rove said Cooper pushed him on whether the president was being hurt by the Niger controversy. “I didn’t take the bait,” Rove wrote Hadley, adding that he warned Cooper not to get “far out in front on this.” After reviewing the e-mail, Rove then returned to the grand jury last year and reported the Cooper conversation. He testified that the talk was initially about “welfare reform”—a topic mentioned in the e-mail—and that Cooper then changed the subject. Cooper has written that he doesn’t recall a discussion of welfare reform.
Isikoff then tells us that the e-mail remained un-discovered through no fault of the White House:
Why didn’t the Rove e-mail surface earlier? The lawyer says it’s because an electronic search conducted by the White House missed it because the right “search words” weren’t used. (The White House and Fitzgerald both declined to comment.)…
A question left unasked by Isikoff is why, if Rove hid his role in the outing of Valerie Plame from the president, the president continued to proclaim full confidence in Rove once his involvement became known. Clearly the president evidenced no public feeling of betrayal.
Isikoff wraps up his piece with the newly discovered June 28, 2003 Judith Miller notes concerning her meeting that day with Scooter Libby:
But the e-mail isn’t the only belatedly discovered document in the case. Fitzgerald has also summoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller back for questioning this week: a notebook was discovered in the paper’s Washington bureau, reflecting a late June 2003 conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, about Wilson and his trip to Africa, says one of the lawyers. The notebook may also be significant because Wilson’s identity was not yet public. A lawyer for the Times declined to comment.
The words “may be significant” are a major understatement. The first known document naming “Valerie Wilson” as Joseph Wilson’s wife and connecting her (in an exaggerated manner) with her husband’s trip to Niger was a State Department memo dated June 10, 2003. Joseph Wilson went public with an op-ed piece in The New York Times on July 6, 2003. Miller’s conversations with Libby roughly two weeks after that memo was written, over a week before Wilson went public, and roughly two weeks before Robert Novak outed “Valerie Plame” (Valerie Wilson’s maiden name) raise stark new questions about whether Miller’s role in this affair was that of “leaker” or “leakee.”
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I am slapping this down sans formatting …
Plame Case Solidifies: White House Defendants in Apparent Panic Mode?
by Hunter
Sat Oct 8th, 2005 at 22:20:18 PDT
The last few days have seen a number of intriguing developments in the Plame case, most of them flowing from Judith Miller’s release and testimony. The LA Times produced a solid piece breaking one impossible-to-resist mini-tidbit:
[Fitzgerald] phoned [Joseph] Wilson on Sept. 29, the same day Miller, the New York Times reporter jailed for refusing to divulge her confidential source, was released from jail after agreeing to testify in the case. She testified the next day.
Wilson declined in an interview to discuss the nature of their conversation, but confirmed that it occurred.
And Reuters brings us this potential bombshell:
A New York Times reporter has given investigators notes from a conversation she had with a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney weeks earlier than was previously known, suggesting White House involvement started well before the outing of a CIA operative, legal sources said.
Times reporter Judith Miller discovered the notes — about a June 2003 conversation she had with Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby — after her testimony before the grand jury last week, the sources said on Friday. She turned the notes over to federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and is expected to meet him again next Tuesday, the sources said.
Miller’s notes could help Fitzgerald establish that Libby had started talking to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, weeks before Wilson publicly criticized the administration’s Iraq policy in a Times opinion piece, the sources said.
All speculation requires an abundance of caution, but t …
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That missing e-mail … like the tape section missing…
JERRY, will Robert Novak be involved in the indictment?
I doubt Novak will be indicted, but rumors were flying a few months ago that he started singing like a canary when Fitzgerald informed him that he might be involved in a felony, and the rumor mill also had Novak fingering Judy Miller as his original source re: Valerie Plame.
This case is beginning to call for a level of expertise just for following it that not many of us can maintain. And many are manipulating that.
Someone, I think it was David Brooks on The News Hour, even now claims that Valerie Plame “sent” her husband to Niger. Many more believe that. But it makes no sense at all: she was not in a position to “send” anyone to Niger on such a mission. People also continue to claim that Wilson “lied” about the Cheney’s office having “sent” him. Apparently, however, Cheney’s office did ask that someone investigate. So where’s the lie?
That aside, if people in the White House were setting up an attack on Wilson before his Times Op-Ed piece, then they must have known it was coming or (at least) that he was extremely unhappy that his findings had been brushed aside. If they knew that, then they certainly knew that the administration had been remiss in keeping those 16 words in the State of the Union address. Instead of accepting responsibility for the error, they deliberately decided to go on the attack–even before the error was pointed out by Wilson!
OK, we all know these people have no principles, no ethical base, no nothing…
So why do I continue to be surprised?
That June 10, 2003 State Dept. memo purportedly suggests that Plame ran the meeting (some 17 months earlier — why the delay?) at which it was discussed whether to send Joe Wilson to Niger, and that she was instrumental in sending him. In fact she did not have the authority to send her husband to Niger, and her role at that meeting was to merely to introduce her husband and then to depart about 4 minutes later. The mere fact that this memo was generated so many months after the fact and that it exaggerated Plame’s role suggests that this was the first overt phase in the White House effort to discredit Joe Wilson and out his wife.
I’m coming around to the view that Rove did lie to Bush about this, and kept him in the dark.
Sure, George is a vindictive little man who would have wanted Wilson smacked down hard. But he’s just not the brains of the operation. Rove, and Cheney’s office would have known why they should be angry at Wilson, and known that Georgie would be too if they took the time to explain it to him. I can see them agreeing to just take care of the matter and leaving George out of the loop — to give him plausible deniability and to save the time it would take to bring him up to speed.
After all, tanking political opponents of his “boss” is what Rove is all about, this was just another task that needed to be handled.
But this would explain the Mier’s nomination. Rove and company were assuring the “Conservative Base” (aka the couple dozen sheep-programmers) that they’d be happy with the Supreme Court nomination just a couple days before Miers was announced.
At the time I admit I thought this was just another Rove scheme to keep the other side (Dems) off-balance. But the way this has been handled convinces me that everyone else was right — this was a huge bungle. And Rove wouldn’t bungle something this big. If he was involved, the sheep-programmers would have been in on it, and already working to quiet their sheeple. That hasn’t happened.
Now I think that George felt betrayed by Brother Rove’s lying to him about the Plame Affair. Not by what he did, but simply by the lying. Loyalty Uber Alles is the White House motto, after all.
So George showed Rove (and Cheney) that he’s still the President, and bucked their advice. Enough with political games, he knows Miers, trusts her, and appoints her instead of the guy/gal that he’d been advised to push.
Of course, this is George Unhandled, and predictably led to Very Bad Things.
But it does explain why such a collosal mistake could occur, right under the watchful eyes of the adults in the administration.
(Not that this is doom and gloom for the Republicans — having just watched the talking-heads Sunday shows, I’m seeing a pattern of “Bush is not a Conservative”. Looks like the Republican strategy is to save the Party by throwing BUSH under the bus — giving him all the blame for the failure of their policies.)
Great comment Yaright, and I agree with you that the Reps. seem to be thowing Bush under the bus.
About Rove lied to Bush, that may be so, but if Bush found out, would he have kept him as close. According to one of the talk show guest this morning Rove is the one who called him to inform of the nomination of Meirs. and he is in charge of Katrina,Rita, in the WH…still I believe, as I have seen no update. So Bush’s loyalty thing I think would lead him to at least push Rove down the ladder of access if he found out he lied.
I do think Bush took the decision alone on Meirs, he had to have, or is Rove crashing.
I am reminded of the time during the election when for unknown reasons, rove went to the front of the plane and sat in fron of the wheels, until Bush called him back, laughing. Was that Rove saying I put my life on the line for you George.,
More questions to ponder than answers, I fear.
I am unconvinved that Rove lied to Bush. If Bush did not know it would have been because he did not ask. Besides, I remain convinced that not only Rove and Libby, but very likely John Bolton Dick Cheney and Stephen Hadley played at least a passive role in outing Plame. Did they all lie to Bush? And are we really to believe thar the White House simply “missed” that e-mail from Rove because of a faulty word search? The cover-up is unraveling, and the White House is engaged in damage control.
I sure don’t know either way, perhaps Bush does not know that Rove lied, as he may have lied about the lie and that would explain why he still sits in the next office.
I am quite enjoying the unrevealing, unravelling, undending, exposing of the corruption of the WH and all.
I wonder those things, too.
Rove would put down his life for Bush? That certainly has been true up through this re-election cycle. I wonder, now that Rove needs a new patron in order to stay in the White House. But George’s most valued trait is loyalty, so that’s gotta be a tricky tightrope to walk.
I’m sure Rove saw the coverup (yes, probably involving Bolton, Scooter, Cheney, and the gang) as in George’s best interest.
I am more and more convinced Rove was out of the loop on the Miers decision. Making Rove tell the movement that Miers was the gal, after Rove had told them otherwise could be a slap in the face, or a gentle but firm reminder of who’s the boss and who is the underling.
It does seem clear that if Rove was involved in the Miers choice, he would have either prevented it entirely, or better prepared the conservatives (aside from Dobson, who appears to have been on-message). That alone makes me believe this was boy king george asserting himself to make a point.
I wonder how the timeline with George becoming aware how the Plame inquiry was progressing lines up with the Katrina mess. It sure would explain things if George had pushed Rove away while on vacation. The mess George caused in the early Katrina days could have led to boy-king realizing he still needs Rove as his advisor, but/and then his dumping the whole affair in Rove’s lap could also be another way of distancing himself from Rove, and punishing Rove for letting the mess develop in the first place.
If Rove and Bush are still as tight as they were in 2000, this is some amazing Kabuki theater we’re seeing. Since that seems unlikely, its awful tempting to believe they really have fallen out, and George is only keeping Rove as close as he has to, and not a bit closer.
I thought from the beginning that Bush made that Meirs, decision alone and it was a total surprise to all, they had to scurry to cover themselves and yes it could be true that he had Rove deliver the news as a punishment.
I think in many ways it was either a huge error on Bush’s part or he was arrogantly asserting his power position, but my bet is on ‘huge errror, decision taken alone’.
I’ve been wondering the opposite today — could the intention be to shore up Bush’s (and therefore other Republicans’) support among Moderates and Independents by alienating the far right? It’s not like the real lunatics have anywhere else to go politically. They’ll suck it up and vote Republican in the end, just like some of us will vote for Dems, even those we don’t like.
Moderates and Independents, however, can be snapped up by Democrats. If Bush, however, can be seen as standing up to the wackos, might he hope to curry favor with M/I voters?
Just a thought, and I don’t know if I even agree with it.
I don’t think so….I think he is losing favor all across the board and perhaps the only thing he has left is his quiet base, not the louds ones we hear.
I know what you mean.
To the Conservative Movement, GW Bush is ultimately expendible. He’s a failed president who’s delivered on many important issues for them, but in his last term, and frankly sucking all the momentum out of their movement.
Not that he’s alone, Delay/Abramoff and even petty Frist aren’t helping the cause. They’re all expendible, to the movement. They only got power because they could deliver, now that they can’t — goodbye. That is, if the movement can find effective replacements for the roles (campaign fund raising, party-line ideology enforcers) that they held.
On the other hand, Bush has only his “legacy” to be concerned about at this point. He’s walked away from every other failure. Of all the ex-presidents wondering what to do post-office, he’s got to have the fewest real choices. Maybe cutting brush and being left alone is enough for him. Its not like he’s an ideological powerhouse with an agenda of his own, is it?
He doesn’t need the conservative movement. He’s probably tired of being told what to do by petty columnists and think-tankers, let alone the chaffing hand of Cheney. Even Rove has to be a bit distasteful, getting all the “credit” for “Bush’s” accomplishments (in George’s mind).
Those guys have done made a mess out of his legacy. They said “trust us”, and now look what happened.
If there is a grand plan going on, Bush is giving his most convincing performance of his public career. Alienating the conservatives was a strage move, and certainly has the Dems off-guard.
But I have full faith the DLC wing and its blogging accessories will fumble this opportunity in their usual fashion.
I still think the group that’s best able to put together a policy that explains what went wrong these past five years, and what (easy, unpainful) steps the American People have to ask for (which they’ll in turn deliver) to correct the situation is destined to take power in 2006/2008.
If no one makes the case, the Dems will win by default. That might be the 2006 scenario.
But in the long-term, I’m still thinking the Conservative movement is the only one with the ability to craft and execute a plan that the American people will buy. They can almost count on support from the DLC-types to endorse their initiatives (with a feeble “we’ll do it better” approach, doomed to fail).
Unless this fractures the Republicans deep enough to let the Dems win by default, I’m not seeing the Dems coming out ahead here.
But at least there will be a pause in our nation’s ever-downward momentum while this works itself out.
So far my instincts have been correct, so I’ll push it a little further and suggest that yes, Rove is being sacrificed (not scapegoated exactly, because he probably planned as well as carried out the outing of Plame) and the story eventually will leak out that he lied to Bush. That strikes me as the kind of “lie” that is strictly formal, providing deniability to Bush.
As bad as this activity was, it’s unlikely to be the worst thing the Bush people did. Bush has to know what kind of underhanded activity on a breathtaking scale has put him and kept him in the presidency.
The real test of Fitzgerald’s prosecution is whether he will be able to implicate Cheney and Bush. Right now, the hunger for Rove’s blood is so great that the Bushites may be hoping if they throw him to the wolves, that will be enough. It shouldn’t be.
But at the same time, I doubt that Rove is going to go quietly. He will not admit to any wrongdoing or at least intentional wrongdoing. Enough people will want to believe him that his career will continue.
After all, indictment didn’t exactly get rid of DeLay, and now we’ve got oil refineries with no enviro regulations, and more windfall profits for the oil industry. He proved he can still deliver. Mere indictments don’t mean much to these guys, or their supporters.
it was all rove’s fault! georgie didn’t do nothin’!
so, who’s playing the press if rove’s up the creek? or is he still running everything from some remote WH closet?
Isikoff, if I remember correctly, is the same reporter who was attacked by the White House for the story about putting the Koran in the toilet. That fiasco was suspicious, given that so much had already come out previously. He was also a big part of the attacks on Clinton, during the Lewinsky affair. Where he is going with this, I don’t know. Possibly he felt betrayed by Rove after the backlash, especially since he had done alot of their dirty work before.