The Dog Ate My Classified Memo

So it’s finally been revealed that Libby and Rove were Cooper’s sources. What a coincidence. And both of them “heard” about Wilson’s wife sending him on the mission from a reporter. Man oh man, what are the odds? It’s even more shocking that the two most powerful political operatives in the White House were so out of the loop because we now know that on the trip to Africa on AF One, for reasons unknown, Rove subordinates Dan Bartlett and Ari Fleischer “prompted clusters of reporters” to look into how Wilson got his job while classified memos on the subject were being faxed back and forth to Condi to prepare her to go on television. Colin Powell was reported to be waving another secret classified memo around the cabin, a memo prepared more than a month earlier, that contained the information that Wilson’s wife sent him on the trip.

And yet we are supposed to believe that Karl and Scooter never saw or heard about any of this classified information, but rather heard about it from a reporter. And I’m assuming that Bartlett and Fleischer are supposed to have heard all about this from reporters too, or maybe second hand from Rove or Libby. None of these people in the white house political and press operation who were aware of Wilson’s wife’s alleged involvement had ever seen the classified document that was all over the place. They just heard the “gossip” and had nothing to do with planting it.

(I had not heard this business about Fleischer and Bartlett throwing out hints to the press corps on the Africa trip. Certainly, the press corps knew it, but I guess they were protecting their super-double deep backround confidential communal gaggles with the White House Press Office by not telling anyone.)

And if we are to believe they all got this information from reporters who told Libby and Rove (who because there exists no political assassin shield law are forced to say they don’t recall who they were) we must also then believe that throughout all of these very innocent exchanges of water cooler gossip among the press corps and the White House, neither Rove nor Libby nor anyone else thought to check with the CIA about Plame’s actual job in WMD and whether it was appropriate that her job become public. Even Novak now denies that he thought of it and only used the word “operative” by accident. Nobody anywhere had a second thought that there might be a reason not to publicize the identity of someone who works in weapons of mass destruction at the CIA. This is what we are supposed to believe.

It seems more likely to me now that Fitzgerald is building an obstruction and conspiracy case. Unless he’s stupid, which no one has ever said he is, he cannot believe these laughable excuses. If he has evidence that ties Novak into it after he shot his mouth off then that’s a real cover-up.

And, yes,to answer those readers who think that it’s a big waste of time to be talking about Rove in this detail, I think we all know the real story here is that “Karl Rove and others in the White House outed an undercover CIA operative to cover-up their lies about Iraq.” I’ve been saying that for some time. John Podesta said so this morning. Frank Rich wrote it yesterday. Even Monsignor Russert seemed to be seeing the bigger picture when he brought Woodward and Bernstein on to talk about how the Watergate burglary was part of a bigger story of White House corruption. (Woodward is spinning pretty badly, but then what would you expect? He wrote the allegedly definitive story of “Bush at War” and didn’t really get the story did he?)

But there is value in parsing the Rove stories in meticulous detail (besides being fun.) It feeds the scandal beast and if you don’t feed that beast it dies. So, I’m going to keep writing about both aspects of this story — the big picture and the detail about Rove — because that’s how you sustain a scandal. See, I learned this at the feet of the Mighty Wurlitzer. You just keep pounding in whatever way you can — relentless, focused and loud.

And I truly believe that Rove and his antics in this case are symbolic of the whole corrupt political machine that he has built — and the outing of a CIA agent is symbolic of the reckless desire to invade Iraq and roll over anyone who stood in their way. I think people are starting to get this in their gut.

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