Rove Told Bush?
Continuing my sense of 1974 deja vu, here’s today’s entry in the “what did the President know and when did he know it?” file. From Thomas M. DeFrank, Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News: Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak.
See Joshua Micah Marshall’s commentary: It’s slightly sugar-coated…, A few more thoughts on Tom DeFrank’s article…, and Right at the top of the gaggle…
Fitzgerald doesn’t get to indict Bush (since he’s a sitting president, and apparently that falls outside a prosecutor’s constitutional authority). But evidence that Bush was part of the conspiracy either at the time of the original outing or during the coverup afterward would certainly be politically damaging.
Again: This is all pretty premature. But Fitzgerald is a prosecutor going after a criminal conspiracy. And what does a prosecutor going after a criminal conspiracy do? He puts pressure on the little guys, doing whatever he can to get them to flip and deliver the bigger guys who are higher up in the conspiracy.
It’s pretty much the opposite goal from that of Pentagon investigators looking into Abu Ghraib, or Sen. Pat Roberts looking into the Iraqi WMD intelligence debacle, in which the whole point was to seal off the upper levels from accountability, assigning all blame to the low-level foot soldiers.
Go, Patrick Fitzgerald.
October 19th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
I love left wing extremists Rove has been “caught red-handed” telling a reporter the truth that Wilson’s wife, Plame, engineered his trip to Niger. Remember Mr. Wilson lied about this at the time and a bipartisan Senate Investigation prove Karl Rove was right!
In America telling the truth doesn’t land you in jail even if your name is Karl Rove.
October 19th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
Did you actually read the Senate intel committee’s report?
October 20th, 2005 at 9:35 am
Don’t you just love it when the first comment hijaks your thread?
If I told the truth about the secret projects I’m working on, it would land me in jail. If I declined to tell you anything about the secret projects I’m working on, I would be doing the right thing.
Can you be forced to reveal classified information by a Senate investigation?
October 20th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
My point is that in America telling the truth doesn’t land you in jail even if your name is Karl Rove.
The liberal spells it all out…… Rooting for Rove’s indictment in this case isn’t just unseemly, it’s unthinking and ultimately self-destructive. Anyone who cares about civil liberties, freedom of information, or even just fair play should have been skeptical about Fitzgerald’s investigation from the start.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2128301/nav/tap1/
October 20th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Well, if the “truth” that you tell is to out an undercover agent, and you do it under the specific circumstances set out in the statute in question, then it very much _could_ land you in jail. Likewise, even if Rove’s and others’ initial behavior doesn’t qualify under the statute, there’s still the possibility that their having made false statements to a grand jury after the fact could get them charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and/or conspiracy charges.
That article by Weisberg is certainly an odd one, though. I thought that Matt Yglesias’ response to that was pretty good. See:
http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/18/23404/204
Also, going back to your earlier assertions about Joe Wilson having lied, I recommend the following article by Larry Johnson:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/19/142419/59
October 20th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Please with your narrow interpretation of the law then John Kerry could be arrested for inadvertently saying the name of a real covert agent in congress during a live hearing this year.
Here are the facts of Joe Wilson for a real news organization…
Senate Investigation report: As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did Joe Wilson NOT “debunk” the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html
Chairman of the Senate Investigation on Niger: Senator Pat Roberts, “I believed very strongly that it was important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact.”
Bottom line Valaire Plame did recomend her husband Joe Wilson to go to niger! On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador’s wife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations which said, “my husband has good relations with both the prime minister and the former Minister of Mines not to mention lots of French contacts, both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” Senate Investiagtion Report:
October 20th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
Yeah, that Susan Schmidt article gets mentioned a lot by those pushing the “Joe Wilson lied!” spin. It was nicely debunked by Josh Marshall in this item:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_07_04.php#003143
And yeah, Pat Roberts worked very hard to get that bit about Wilson’s wife having recommended him for the trip into the comittee’s report. But again, just because Pat Roberts is willing to say that that fact is somehow the most important fact in the whole affair doesn’t make it so.
In the world of conducting Senate investigations and putting out pro-Bush reports, sure, having Pat Roberts as your committee chairman is very helpful. But when you’re facing a federal prosecutor and a grand jury, where the rule of law operates, you need to have actual facts on your side. Whether the Bush team does as well in that sort of scenario remains to be seen. And I for one am really looking forward to it.
October 20th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Yes, trg, you’re right that it appears that Rove told the truth about Plame’s role in getting Wilson sent to Niger. But as Tommy mentions, that isn’t relevant to the legal case against Rove (or Scooter or whoever). Any indictments will be for telling a very specific piece of truth that is protected by law — or perjuring on what exactly their role was.
Does the fact that Wilson lied about why he went to Niger weaken his case? Absolutely. It seems now that him and his wife were fed up with the administration’s handling of intelligence and decided to go over there and try to look for some evidence against the administration’s claims. That was a poor choice, but not illegal. Nonetheless, I’m not a big fan of Wilson’s, especially since he felt the need to deny his wife’s role. But as the report mentions, at least the point that Wilson was trying to make was in fact correct: the evidence for the claims made by Bush were weak or nonexistant.
Also distasteful, but more so in my mind, is the fact that the administration clearly tried very hard to distance itself from Plame’s outing and lied repeatedly in denying any involvement. They made clear that anybody involved would be fired, then backtracked when it was discovered that Rove and Scooter were the leaks (whether or not they actually broke the law by *knowingly* outing Plame). And to me, using the letter of the law to punish those engaging in ugly practices like this is completely justified, assuming that there is actual proof of wrongdoing and/or perjury.
That’s why this is interesting to me.
October 20th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
Hah, sorry. “Tommy” is jbc (also not his real name).
October 21st, 2005 at 1:02 pm
Until actual indictments come out, this whole Plame affair just makes my head hurt in trying to figure out who did what when. But I’ll submit a source that I’ve been reading that seems to cover things pretty throughly, but without any wildly partisan rantings.
October 21st, 2005 at 1:46 pm
Hm, that is some good analysis, Craig. And yeah, now my head hurts too.
October 26th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
trg, does that stand for the rendon group by chance? your writing would fit the profile…