One imagines you've heard by now that Karl Rove's lawyer has admitted he sourced Cooper on "[W]ilson's wife," and that Scott McLellan got beaten about the head and face by a newly rabid press corps at Monday's press gaggles. The LAT and USAT pieces, perhaps responding to somewhat later deadlines, both include/highlight the enraged responses of the now-usual vocal Democratic opposition: Slaughter, Waxman, Kerry, Dean, Schumer, et al. Apparently only Ken Mehlman of the RNC was bold enough to make any other statements beyond McClellan's "no mas," generated as if by computer, so predictably non-responsive it was.
Note how many of the press accounts pass the same accepted news article truisms back and forth, without really thinking about them. For instance, nearly all mention the fact that Luskin, Rove's lawyer, said that the prosecutors told him Rove was not a target. As far as I know, this information was conveyed BEFORE the revelations hit the streets last week. So where's the update from Luskin post-brouhaha? He's not talking. And on the other side, several treat as accepted fact that Plame was indeed an operative (and thus covert) at the time. I have to say that there have been enough corroborations of that knowledge to make it a useful statement of the truth--but the media should be asking the CIA these questions, and they're not, or the agency isn't talking.
The editorials for tomorrow are beginning to trickle in. David Corn's piece at CBS is unsurprisingly modulated towards damning, but it also reminds readers where the focus should remain:
But let's put aside the legal issues for a moment. This email
demonstrates that Rove committed a firing offense. He leaked national
security information as part of a fierce campaign to undermine Wilson,
who had criticized the White House on the war on Iraq. Rove's
overworked attorney, Robert Luskin, defends his client by arguing that
Rove never revealed the name of Valerie Plame/Wilson to Cooper and that
he only referred to her as Wilson's wife. This is not much of a
defense. If Cooper or any other journalist had written that "Wilson's
wife works for the CIA" -- without mentioning her name -- such a
disclosure could have been expected to have the same effect as if her
name had been used: Valerie Wilson would have been compromised, her
anti-WMD work placed at risk, and national security potentially harmed.
Either Rove knew that he was revealing an undercover officer to a
reporter or he was identifying a CIA officer without bothering to check
on her status and without considering the consequences of outing her.
Take your pick: in both scenarios Rove is acting in a reckless and
cavalier fashion, ignoring the national security interests of the
nation to score a political point against a policy foe.
This ought to get Rove fired -- unless he resigns first.
Kos happens to be fronting the Seattle PI's lead Tuesday editorial, but I saw it first near the top of the Google listing. Reminiscient of Corn, it's not much of a surprise that the PI board is outraged, but like Corn they get the focus exactly right--the implications for national security in the hands of this crowd. Dana Milbank also does a pretty credible job describing the scene in the press room as I myself saw it, but I did my best to read it for style rather than substance, because I found his piece on the Conyers DSM forum to be needlessly diminutive and snark-lazy. You could tell it was going to be that way again in the first paragraph, Milbank crowing in his ability to get his "taking McClellan to the woodshed" pun into the article by referencing White House yardwork. At least this time The Post ran a straight news piece on the gaggles, to go with Milbank's forcedly desultory commentary. And before I leave the realm of the general newsparroters, the Guardian has a concise group of quotes from 2003 and 2004, as a way to compare the currently operative statements/demurrals from McClellan.
In the blogosphere, we see why it might be necessary to remind readers of what it means for Rove to have leaked Plame's identity in order to protect their doctored evidence, from the Brothers Judd:
As we've said all along,
the whole thing appears to be a matter of the White House defending
itself from the CIA, in which the attempt by nureaucrats to subvert the
elected government has genuine constitional implications. And it's
highly unlikely that the "leak" was illegal--it certainly wasn't
unethical. However, the leaker is likely to have to resign, because of
the politics, even if it's Karl Rove.
Fascinating. He didn't do anything illegal, and--go figure--it wasn't even unethical to out her. But Judd is fully dedicated to the ugly game of politics I guess, where ultimately even God would have to be kicked off the political stage if he got drunk and started embarassing everybody by telling weepy stories about how he could have stopped Nagasaki if not Hiroshima too. So Rove may have to go. Also Also, see Froomkin for a string of righty synopses:
Blogger Tom Maguire
writes: "This Newsweek revelation may create some political heat for
Karl, but it is far from clear that, if these notes accurately describe
the conversation, Karl Rove had the intent and knowledge that are also
elements of a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act."
A post on the Powerline
blog suggests: "The media feeding frenzy will, indeed, be massive. But
absent a serious claim of a statutory violation or perjury, it's
questionable whether anyone apart from liberal bloggers and other
pre-existing Bush haters will partake in the media's dog food. This
isn't a top presidential aide accepting an expensive gift, or engaging
in lewd sexual conduct. It's a top aide providing truthful information
to journalists in response to lies told to embarrass the administration
and our government."
Blogger Hugh Hewitt
says its all particularly unseemly in the wake of the London transit
bombings. "[T]he president values and trusts Rove, and the assault on
Rove has nothing to do with outrage over injury to the national
security and everything to do with bleeding Bush. The idea that the
forces that defended Clinton's bald lies under oath are now 'outraged'
over spun-up pretend perjury charges would be wildly amusing but for
the fact that the tragic losses of the past few days have not
interrupted the vendettaists for even a decent interval."
From the left, both Mark Kleiman and The American Prospect marvel at what caused the press corps to suddenly light the torches in the press room and begin hammering at McClellan in near-unison (save Lee Kingsolver and the India Times guy who always asks about Pakistan). Their conclusion? They're upset that it's now clear they were lied to. Oh, boo-hoo. The American public has been lied to for the better part of three years, and the press is only concerned once THEY'RE lied to? As much as I might want to enjoy the newfound backbone and unwillingness to let spokesman ueberBS dominate another White House press gaggle, I fear that Kleiman and TAPPED are right, and they only care because their egos are bruised, and they can't like Scott anymore. That's pathetic.
Why is it pathetic? Because it's the front end of a story that backends with the -other- major memos and notes scandal, the DSM. With all the fuss over the possible violations of spy acts, or perjury by a high Bush official, it's easy to forget the chain of events that brought this all about:
- Ousting Saddam decided on; plan for selling the war based on hot intel made.
- Culling of hot intel begins in earnest; one good lead is Iraq buying yellowcake in Niger.
- The Niger stuff doesn't pan out when it's discovered the documents are bogus.
- This gets pointed out publicly, sort of ruining the ability to use that intel.
- As revenge for having the false Niger info ruined as hot intel with which to sell the war, the person who pointed it out publicly, becomes the target of a smear campaign.
- As part of the smear campaign, he is emasculated by being tittered about as having been sent by his "agency wife" to lie about Niger.
Voila'. Why is Scotty clamming up? One cannot say for sure, but I think a very strong guess is that this linkage--way too hazy in most Americans' minds, currently--is what will become evident if the story fleshes out: Rove outed a CIA agent because her husband was ruining their cover story for the already decided-upon Iraq invasion.
And THAT, my friends, is the story in Plamegate. Not calls for resignation of Bush's brain, not dismissive legalese about not revealing the name or having a strong legal case for calling Karl Rove a fucking liar, and not about how it's so cool that the press turned wolfpack on Sweaty Scotty today. It's that the administration lied to get us into the war they wanted--unless telling the truth about people worked better.
--TJ
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