Here’s some more detail on the “Karl Rove was the source of the Valerie Plame identity leak” allegations.
From the Washington Post, last Saturday (July 2): Lawyer says Rove talked to reporter, did not leak name. And there’s this from the Sunday LA Times: Rove talked but did not tattle, attorney says.
The gist of this seems to be that Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, made the rounds of the mainstream media over the weekend, giving interviews in which he went on the record saying that:
- Rove did talk to Matthew Cooper in the days before the Novak column that outed Plame.
- Rove didn’t knowingly reveal as part of that conversation that Plame was an undercover CIA agent.
So, reading between the lines on all this, it sounds like Patrick Fitzgerald (the federal prosecutor investigating the Plame outing) may be interested in pursuing perjury charges against Rove, based on his having said one thing during his grand jury testimony and another thing being implied by Cooper’s notes. Or something.
More analysis of this is provided by David Corn, the Bush-hater who was the first mainstream media person to point out the potential legal implications of the Plame outing: Is Rove it?
If Luskin is telling the truth, Rove has nothing to fear. But defense lawyers have been known to spin the facts. The contents of Cooper’s emails and notes might support or challenge Luskin’s account. They might be inconclusive. (You should see my notes sometimes.) That Rove, a top White House aide, spoke to Cooper, who was covering the White House for a major newsmagazine, during this white-hot episode would not be unusual. And the piece Cooper co-wrote covers far more ground than Plame’s post at the CIA (which accounted for only two sentences). It is certainly conceivable that Rove was tossing other anti-Wilson information at Cooper (and others) at this point. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, also talked to Time for this article, and he was quoted by name saying that Cheney had been interested in the Niger allegation but didn’t know about Wilson’s trip to Niger. (After Libby gave permission to Cooper to tell Fitzgerald about their conversations, Cooper did so.)
Rove talking to Cooper days before his piece–and Novak’s–was written is an intriguing lead for Fitzgerald. But this does not solve the mystery. Before anyone can expect to see Rove frog-marching, Fitzgerald will have to determine what was said in these conversations.
And if that’s not exciting enough, you can enjoy the over-the-top (yeah, even for me) partisan japery of Bob Brigham at The Swing State Project: Karl Rove: It’s not the lying, it’s the treason. Brigham looks forward to the Rove investigation leading to a re-opening of the issue of Jeff Gannon’s getting White House press credentials, and Rove’s involvement in that. Brigham posts a transcript of an Air America broadcast he did with Janeane Garofalo back in February, at which Garofalo said:
Janeane Garofalo: May I throw my two cents in Bob, because you’ve be unbelievably polite about this. Here’s exactly is going to happen. Here is what the Gannon/Guckert sexual hypocrisy, whatever the scandal is, beyond the scandal we all know about. My gut feeling is that Karl Rove is either bisexual or gay, Scott McClellan, either bisexual or gay and either one of those two men – I tend to think it is Karl Rove – has had an affair with Ganon/Guckert.
Lies.com: We report. You decide.