The NY Times is reporting than an anonymous Rove defender who has been briefed on the case (by Rove?) says that Novak was the one who told Karl Plame’s name and informed him of “the circumstances” in which her husband traveled to Africa — at which point we are supposed to believe Karl suddenly remembered that he’d heard some of this from other journalists and confirmed the story to Novak by saying either “I heard that too” or “oh, you know about it.”
I can certainly understand why Fitzgerald might have been suspicious of this tale — especially when he read that Novak’s first comment on the matter was:
“I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.”
According to this article “they” refers to an unknown source and … Karl Rove.
Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.
After hearing Mr. Novak’s account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: ‘I heard that, too.’
The previously undisclosed telephone conversation, which took place on July 8, 2003, was initiated by Mr. Novak, the person who has been briefed on the matter said.
Six days later, Mr. Novak’s syndicated column reported that two senior administration officials had told him that Mr. Wilson’s ‘wife had suggested sending him’ to Africa. That column was the first instance in which Ms. Wilson was publicly identified as a C.I.A. operative.
It’s late and I’m tired so I’m not going to look it up, but didn’t I also hear a bunch of people saying over the last few days that Rove didn’t know Plame’s name when he spoke with Cooper? This conversation took place three days earlier. Not that it matters because he “identified” her as Wilson’s wife, but it’s interesting anyway.
The lawyer, who has knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors, said President Bush’s deputy chief of staff has told investigators that he first learned about the operative from a journalist and that he later learned her name from Novak.
Rove has said he does not recall who the journalist was who first told him that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, or when the conversation occurred, the lawyer said.
Dan Froomkin nicely linked to my post from yesterday asking why Rove hadn’t saved the country some time and money and made sure that Cooper knew he didn’t have to keep his confidence. He says:
But here’s what that makes me think: if reporters want to help get New York Times reporter Judith Miller out of jail, let’s contact every conceivable person who might have been her source, and ask them (or their lawyers): if for some reason Judy Miller were in jail thinking that she’s protecting you, would that be a mistake? Would you tell that to her lawyer?
Let’s start with Rove, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, deputy national security adviser Elliot Abrams, Cheney national security adviser John Hannah, counselor Dan Bartlett, press secretary Scott McClellan, former press secretary Ari Fleischer — and every other person’s name who has ever even remotely been attached to this story in the past.
What have we got to lose? Is anyone with me, or shall I get going myself.
I think that’s a terrific idea. Certainly you’d think Judy’s pals in the press corps would want to do her this service. Help her out kidz.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had these kind words to share last night on Hannity & Colmes:
If you can prove a case against Karl Rove, let the legal system do it, otherwise just shut up, because you’re ruining a guy’s reputation before anything has happened.
… I would like to speak a few minutes to what I believe is the unshakable, undeniable truth. And much of it is about sex.
[…]
The most chilling thing was, for a period of time, the president was setting stories in motion that were lies. Those stories found themselves in the press to attack a young lady who could potentially be a witness against him.
To me, that is very much like Watergate. That shows character inconsistent with being president, and every member of Congress should look at that episode and decide, is this truly about sex? Is Bill Clinton doing the right thing by continuing to make us have to pursue this, have to prove to a legal certainty he lied? The president’s fate is in his own hands. Mr. President, you have one more chance. Don’t bite your lip; reconcile yourself with the law.
It’s just a good thing Rovegate isn’t about the vitally important issue of consensual sex between two adults because Goober and his Mayberry Machiavelli crew would be forced to talk about it in numbing detail for months on end before the facts are in.
Luckily, instead of it being a case about a woman blowing the president, this is only about the white house blowing a CIA agent’s cover for political purposes in a time of war. We really should have more respect for the reputation of the person who the facts clearly show right now to be either an ignoramus or a thug. How rude.
Update: From Evan in the comments:
Bumper sticker par excellence
WHO DO YOU HAVE TO BLOW TO GET A PRESIDENT IMPEACHED AROUND HERE?!
Ken Mehlman: A leak is when you ask a reporter to write a story. He was discouraging a reporter from writing a false story.
So why did Bob Novak write the same story, virtually verbatim, that Rove told Cooper? Was he rebelling against the Republican establishment? Refusing to be cowed by political operatives? Unable to take a hint? What?
Newshounds reports on Ann Coulter’s soon to be legendary performance on Hannity and Colmes last night:
Alan Colmes started off the interview by asking an excellent question:
“If Karl Rove wasn’t revealing something secret, why did he have to speak on double super secret background?”
For a moment, it looked like Coulter might have been genuinely reluctant to talk to a liberal (as the title of her last book claims she is) but I think it was more likely that she had a moment of panic at not having a good answer. After a pause, she began to speak slowly, as if she were trying to think of the right words as she went along.
Because you don’t generally read in the press – you know – I think it was all – you didn’t see Karl Rove, I think, being quoted on a lot of these things – but I think the point was, um, Clown Wilson was going around implying that he had been sent by the CIA and reported to Dick Cheney’s office… I mean, it’s amazing if you go back and read these articles now, he uses these – you know – sort of Clintonian legally accurate phrases…
She must not have had her coffee. She’s usually a little bit swifter than this.
Kevin Drum’s got some interesting stuff up today. He is one of the blogosphere’s resident experts on the Plame story — he was the go-to guy when it broke and he seems to to remember a lot of details I’ve forgotton (or never knew.)
He reminds us today (via Mickey Kaus) of this Howard Fineman analysis from 2003 in which Fineman speculates that the leak was really an attempt to smear Wilson and his wife as being part of a “pro-Saddam” CIA cabal. Here’s the relevant excerpt:
I am told by what I regard as a very reliable source inside the White House that aides there did, in fact, try to peddle the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife to several reporters. But the motive wasn’t revenge or intimidation so much as a desire to explain why, in their view, Wilson wasn’t a neutral investigator, but, a member of the CIA’s leave-Saddam-in-place team.
I think this may very well have played into at least some of the participants’ thinking at the time although since they’ve never made this explicit in the smear, I think it may have been meant more for beltway kids and the wingnut choir than for broad public consumption. This is inside baseball stuff.
The big players in this turf war are the neocons and Dick Cheney, who is only sort of an honorary neocon. He and Rummy are more simple craven power mongers. (He doesn’t give a shit about democracy which the neocons sorta, kinda do, even though they think we should create it by force, which is incoherent.) Anyway, it’s imnportant to remember that within this administration are a whole bunch of people who think that the CIA is made up of a bunch of hippies who don’t understand How The World Works.
What’s interesting about them is that they have always been wrong about everything. If there was no other reason not to back the war in Iraq, it was that it was being pushed by people who have either hugely overestimated every single threat this country has faced for the last 30 years or gotten the nature of the threat completely upside down.
Lawrence Korb wrote a piece about this subject in August of 2004, called “Time To Bench Team B”:
The reports of the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence miss the real problem facing the intelligence community. The real problem is not organization or culture, but the Team B concept which began in 1976, and the real villains are those hardliners who refuse to accept the unbiased and balanced judgments of intelligence professionals about the threats facing the country.
[…]
To be sure, the intelligence community has made misjudgments. That is to be expected. But given the fact that the intelligence community has been second-guessed and publicly embarrassed when it tried to present unbiased objective assessments of threats from the Soviets, China, and rogue nations, it is not surprising that it caved in on whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. While there was no formal Team B pressure, the hardliners were now back in power.
And from the Soviet threat to China to rogue states to Iraq, the neocons and hardliners were wrong each and every time. And they weren’t just wrong on some details, they massively, abundently wrong about everything. Korb discusses one particular fact in his piece that I think illuminates their rather insane view about terrorism:
In 1981, after the publication of Clare Sterling’s book, “The Terror Network,” which argued that global terrorists were actually pawns of the Soviets, leading hard-liners asked the CIA to look into the relationship between Soviets and terrorist organizations. The agency concluded that although there was evidence that the Soviets had assisted groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization with weapons and training, there was no evidence that the Soviets encouraged or approved these groups’ terrorist acts. However, hard-liners like Secretary of State Alexander Haig, CIA Chief William Casey and Policy Planning Director Wolfowitz rejected the draft as a naive, exculpatory brief and had the draft retooled to assert that the Soviets were heavily involved in supporting “revolutionary violence worldwide.”
Since they never adjust to changing circumstances or admit any new evidence that doesn’t fit their preconcieved notions, this was still the framework they were working from when bin Laden came on the scene. It’s why the neocon nutcase Laurie Mylroie was able to convince people in the highest reaches of the Republican intelligensia that Saddam had something to do with bin Laden, even though there was never a scintilla of evidence to back it up. They simply could not,and cannot to this day, come to grips with the fact that their view of how terrorism works — through “rogue states” and totalitarian sponsorship — is simply wrong.
When Clare Sterling’s book came out CIA director William Casey was said to have told his people, “read Claire Sterling’s book and forget this mush. I paid $13.95 for this and it told me more than you bastards who I pay $50,000 a year.” Wolfowitz and Feith are said to have told their staff in the Pentagon to read Laurie Mylroie’s book about Saddam and al Qaeda. Richard Clarke, in “Against All Enemies” quotes Wolfowitz as saying: “You give Bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don’t exist.”
This, then, is simply how they think. It’s as Rob Cordry says, “the facts are biased.” (That’s the state of mind that led neocon Judith Miller to make her bizarre incomprehensible comment “I was proved fucking right!”) They truly believe that even though they have been completely wrong about everything for the past thirty years that it just can’t be so.
And no matter what, in their minds the the CIA is always trying to screw them.
So the political environment in which Valeria Plame was outed was virtually hallucinogenic. There may have really been some part of certain members of the Bush administration’s dysfunctional lizard brains that really thought in July of 2003 that the CIA had been trying to set them up and used Joe Wilson to do it.
But it’s not July of 2003 now, is it? It’s two years later and we know for a fact that the analysts, including Wilson, who said the Niger deal was bullshit were right and we know that the analysts who doubted the evidence about Saddam’s WMD were right too.
Not that this will stop the Team B neocons from insisting that “they were proved fucking right.” They really are delusional and they always have been.
Karl Rove, however, is a lot of things, but delusional isn’t one of them. He just put out the hit on Plame and Wilson to shut down the questions Wilson was raising. He was taking care of business. But others in the administration may have made a good case, at least in their own beautiful minds, that they were the victims. God knows these people love to be victims.
I don’t know if you saw Wilson on the Today show, but I thought he acquitted himself very well — mainly because he kept on the topic of the larger Iraq lies. I really think this is a key to making people understand this story.
There is a confluence of events right now with the bad news on the ground in Iraq, the Downing Street memos, the London bombings and Rovegate flaring up that are beginning to filter into the body politic. A new conventional wisdom is being written. I think that people are putting these things together which is why you are seeing the preciputous dip in the president’s approval ratings. It’s not that people know, or even want to know, the details. Only junkies like me (and you) get this into it. But the ground has shifted and people are understanding that something went terribly wrong.
The president’s right hand man exposing a covert CIA agent for political puposes perfectly symbolizes the entire fetid mess.
Update: Looks like Rush got the memo. According to Bradblog:
Rush’s final words at the end of the show (referring to the Press Conference scheduled by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to happen shortly): “Chuck Shumer is Joe Wilson’s ‘handler’ in this agency plot to bring down the President.”
Finally, it’s not just honesty where Bush is taking a hit. Only 50 percent of those polled gave him high ratings for being easygoing and likeable, down from 57 in January; 43 percent gave him high ratings for being smart, down from 50; 40 percent gave him high ratings for being compassionate enough to understand average people, down from 47; and only 29 percent gave him high ratings for being willing to work with people whose viewpoints are different from his own, down from 33.
I’m not the greatest judge in the world because I’ve always thought he was a dominating, unlikeable, dumb, arrogant intolerant asshole. A bunch oif people thought he’d be fun to hang around with, though, and it’s a big reason why he got re-elected. Without his personal popularity, what has he really got?
The good news is that this should finally kill off the “enormously popular” president meme that refused to die. I’m sure Andrea Mitchell and Tim Russert are in mourning today.
It’s nice to be able to fit another piece into the Rovegate puzzle. This Kos diary by PollyUSA is an excellent rundown of the original source of the Plame information — a classified state department document from 2002 that was then circulated all over Washington after Novak’s column ran. Clearly, most people following the case closely already know this because it’s all in the public record. I hadn’t connected the dots even though I’ve written about this document in a couple of different contexts.
In a nutshell:
There is a leaked classified state department document from 2002 in play in this case. It is widely considered to be the likely source of the information that Plame worked for the CIA.
It says that Valerie Plame recommended her husband for the job.
It was leaked to a bunch of news organizations during 2003 and is a piece of evidence in the Senate commission report.
This is the same document that was on the Africa trip with Colin Powell and the president.
The CIA has publicly disputed the accuracy of the memo, saying that the author of the memo could not have been at the meeting and therefore didn’t know what he was talking about.
PollyUSA rounded up a number of newpaper articles that discussed this document but here are just a couple of them:
An internal government memo addresses some of the mysteries at the center of the White House leak investigation and could help investigators in the search for who disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, according to two people familiar with the memo.
The memo, prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel, details a meeting in early 2002 where CIA officer Valerie Plame and other intelligence officials gathered to brainstorm about how to verify reports that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake from Niger.
Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband’s trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.
It is a crime to leak classified information, so this may well be an element of Fitzgerald’s case. In an interesting sidenote, it was this document that JD Guckert referenced when he interviewed Wilson and it got him a visit from the FBI. (After preening about confidential sources for a while, Guckert eventually said that he’d read about the document in the Wall Street Journal.)His story confirms that the FBI was following up on this document and that means it probably was still classified when Guckert wrote about it in October 2003, however.
I have a couple of thoughts about this.
In order to stay out of legal and political trouble, members of Bush administration simply have to claim that they didn’t know Valerie Plame was undercover. So, if this classified report is the source of the leak and it only says “Wilson’s wife suggested he go on the mission” with no mention of her status, then it appears that not one person who saw that document — whether it was Colin Powell on Air Force One or whether it was Cheney and Libby with the entire Iraq Group holding their hand towels in the mens room —– not one bothered to raise a flag about this CIA “employee’s” status before Rove et al blabbed the story all over town. If they are innocent of purposefully outing a CIA Agent this is what we must believe.
I don’t have a top security clearance and I don’t work in Washington and I am as far out of the war planning for this country as you can get. Yet I know that I would have wondered whether it might be a matter of national security to tell the press that someone was a CIA employee. Anybody who watches “Alias” would know that for gawd’s sake. We are supposed to believe that top presidential advisors took the information from one state department document and ran with it without ever checking the details.
Could be. Nobody ever thought the president would personally authorize the break in of the Democratic National Committee, but he did.
Second, the CIA has disputed the characterization of Plame’s role in getting her husband the assignment. I don’t know or care whether she did or not — it’s a red herring. But nonetheless, it’s worth pointing out that is has been challenged by the CIA from the beginning. From Newsday July 22, 2003:
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked “alongside” the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. “They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,” he said. “There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,” he said. “I can’t figure out what it could be.”
I think we’ve figured it out.
But what’s interesting about that is that this classified document that people consider the source of the leak was written in 2002. I’m assuming it was part of a report on what Wilson’s findings, although I have no proof of that. And I don’t know who wrote this memo (although it’s certain that some members of the press do, since they’ve seen it) but he or she has been described as an analyst at the INR — the state dept intelligence division. I have to wonder what was the purpose of putting in this little tid-bit about Plame in the first place?
It would be nice to know who wrote it if only to prove or disprove the speculation that Bolton’s cabal was involved. If he was, then this is a whole new ballgame. I would be very tempted to think that Bolton had spiked Wilson’s report from the get. On the other hand, Bolton and his minions apparently have not been called to the Grand Jury so perhaps that’s unlikely. If I had to guess, I’d say this tid-bit about Wilson’s wife was a throw away line that caught Rove and Libby’s attention as a possible way to feminize Wilson.
I’m speculating that when they got wind that Wilson was going to spill the beans they looked for dirt.(Wilson says he was told that when the yellowcake story was falling apart in March the VP’s office ordered a “work-up” on him.)This classified state department document contained the information that Wilson’s wife got him the job. The character assassins decided that this was their weapon — Wilson’s CIA employee wife got him the job for either nepotistic, partisan or treasonous reasons. Maybe something else. (Maybe all three if you ask John Gibson.) And the optics of it were that Wilson was an effeminate loser whose wife had to find work for him (“little wifey got it for him.”) It sure sounds like a Rove special.
And at the end of the day, the simple truth remains: they either knew she was undercover and outed her with malice aforethought or they were so stupid and sloppy that they never bothered to find out what her status was. Which explains why they are so intent upon making people believe that Plame wasn’t undercover. It’s their only decent defense.
I’m also reminded today of Murray Waas’ account of Roves testimony to the FBI:
But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.
Everytime I read that I’m amazed. If that is true it is a truly damning confession of character assassination by the man who is the president’s most trusted advisor. Regardless of any actual crime being committed, I think that if the American people knew this a large majority would demand that Rove be dismissed. He basically admits that smearing opponents is something he does with the help of the entire Republican infrastructure. We know this stuff exists in politics, some on both sides. But to insist it’s “legitimate” and admit freely that you do it is something else.
But I mention it here because that passage contains something that may or may not be legally problematic for Rove. It depends upon his precise words, which we don’t have:
Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column.
I suppose it depends on what the definition of “circulate” is, if he even used that word at all. But, generally speaking, if he insisted that he hadn’t been talking about Plame before Novak’s column, he lied to the FBI. We know he spoke with Cooper.
And then there’s the classified document being passed around to every wingnut in town.
Rove is in an unpleasant box. He’s claimed that his aggressive smear campaign to to leak and disseminate derogatory information about Bush’s critics through partisan channels was completely legitimate — but that he didn’t know that Plame was undercover or that this document was classified. I hope for his sake that’s not actually his defense. I’ve long said he’s no genius, but nobody will believe he’s that stupid. I doubt Patrick Fitzgerald is that stupid either.
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog to find that I’m more than a little glad to finally see General Geoffrey Miller finally exposed for the sadistic incompetent that he is — even a little bit. Apparently, he might be “reprimanded” for his sadistic tactics at Gitmo. But maybe not. I sure hope it doesn’t go that far because I’m sure it would really, really hurt his feelings. Testimony today before the Senate Armed Services Committee says that practices condoned by Miller (and approved by the pentagon) at Gitmo went too far:
Investigators described their findings before the Senate Armed Services Commttee Wednesday. They were looking into allegations by FBI agents who say they witnessed abusive interrogation techniques at the Guantanamo prison for terrorist suspects.
The chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, described the interrogation techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
It was learned later that he had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 but was turned away by an immigration agent at the Orlando, Fla., airport. Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was in the airport at the same time, officials have said.
Schmidt said that to get him to talk, interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra, forced him to wear a thong on his head, told him he was homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it. They also forced him to dance with a male interrogator, Schmidt added, and subjected him to strip searches with no security value, threatened him with dogs, forced him to stand naked in front of women and forced him onto a leash, to act like a dog.
Still, he said, “No torture occurred.”
He was kept in solitary confinement for 160 days. Interrogations went on for 18 to 20 hours a day, for 48 out of 54 days. Apparently, however, this wasn’t torture because “torture involves inflicting physical pain or withholding food, water or medical care, none of which took place.”
Well, sure. Being forcibly “strip-searched” is a walk in the park. I would imagine that anybody who is captured by the enemy ought to be mighty careful going forward. If this is true, guards putting their fingers in orifices to break them isn’t actually torture. In fact, under this definition, sexual assault may not be torture at all since it might not feature the appropriate level of physical pain.
There is one teensy little problem with this AP story, however:
Miller, a subject of criticism by human rights groups, took command of the prison camp at Guantanamo in late 2002 with a mandate to get more and better information from prisoners. He later went to Iraq to oversee detainee operations there. He is now stationed at the Pentagon in a position unrelated to prisoners.
True. Except he was the guy who was sent to Abu Ghraib with the express orders to use his fabulous Gitmo techniques on Iraqis, who at the time, nobody was considering terrorists. We know what happened after he got there. It’s a fairly significant part of this story, I would think. Expecially since at least half of the techniques described in this report were the exact same “abuses” perpetrated by the low life bad apples on the night shift at Abu Ghriab! We’ve got pictures, ferchristsakes, doesn’t anybody remember that? How in the hell did Lynde and her friends just happen to come up with exactly the same college hijinks that were used on a top level prisoner in Gitmo???
We’re told that these techniques eventually resulted in the “20th hijacker” offering “useful” information. Perhaps. But I have to reserve judgement since virtually everyone involved has been lying their asses off from the beginning. Especially that sadist Geoffrey D Ripper, the artillery officer turned interrogation expert, who will undoubtedly skate on this whole thing.
Too bad about America’s reputation, though. It sure does make it tough to see the moral clarity through all the whitewash.