Leading Illinois Democrats to Top Republicans:
Join us in calling for President Bush to fire Karl Rove.
It’s about time the Illinois Democrats got in the game on this–and see my post below for what’s about to happen–an attack on Patrick Fitzgerald. Now, would any of the Illinois Republicans who have been touting the tough corruption fighter want to step up to the plate and defend him?
President George W. Bush should be held to his word and fire Karl Rove for leaking confidential information about a covert CIA agent according to Illinois Democrats who called on top Republicans to join them in holding Bush to his promise.
?President Bush promised to fire anyone who leaked confidential information. We Democrats are asking top Republicans to join us in holding Bush to his word,? said State Senator Carol Ronen, one of three Democratic National Committee members who called on GOP candidates for Governor to take a stand for ?what is right.?
Karl Rove?s own lawyer, Robert Luskin, admitted to Newsweek that Rove did speak to Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about this same story days before Chicago Sun-Times Columnist Robert Novak disclosed the name of a covert CIA agent. This contradicts earlier White House statements that Rove and other White House staff had no role in leaking confidential information that Bush Administration critic Joseph Wilson?s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent.
Despite the fact that The White House said two years ago that Rove wasn’t involved in the leak, a recently released July 2003 e-mail made it clear that Rove told Time?s Cooper that the woman “apparently works” for the CIA, according to a report by Newsweek. It added that the woman had authorized a trip to Africa by her husband, U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, to check out allegations that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons
On June 10, 2004, President Bush agreed that he would fire anyone at the White House who leaked confidential information. On several occasions, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan repeated the promise. Democrats called on the President to keep his word and fire Rove, and called on those considering a run for Governor to do the same.
Alderman Joe Moore, another DNC member, took direct aim at both announced and expected Republican candidates for Governor.
?We are calling on Judy Baar Topinka, Ron Gidwitz, Jim Oberweis, Steve Rauschenberger, Joe Birkett, Bill Brady and others who are considering a run for the highest office in Illinois to adhere to the highest standards of right and wrong and call for the President to fire Karl Rove,? said Moore.
Moore added that Illinois Republicans should take a stand. ?This story was leaked to an Illinois columnist and is being investigated by an Illinois U.S. Attorney. We need to know where Illinois Republicans stand on it. Should President Bush be held to his word or is Karl Rove above the law?? said Moore.
State Senator and DNC Member Iris Martinez noted that while some of the targets have not formally announced, they have been raising money and attacking Democrats in the media. ?Now it?s time for these to show horses to show some real leadership,? added Martinez.
An ongoing investigation by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago is focused on whether a crime was committed when someone leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name was published by the Sun-Times? Novak on July 14, 2003.
According to published reports, disclosure of the identity of an undercover intelligence officer can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the leaker knew about the officer’s secret status.
Novak’s column appeared after Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a newspaper opinion article criticizing Mr. Bush’s claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger ? a claim the CIA had asked Wilson to check out. Wilson has said he believes his wife’s name was leaked as retribution.
Of the three, I met Moore briefly at the DNC regional meeting. It was only a short talk, but he was very gracious with his time.
Sure. I’ll defend him. According to Luskin, Fitzgerald says Rove isn’t a target. A bi-partisan report has undermined Wilson’s allegations as has Wilson’s own book according to media reports. I mean the facts of the case aren’t going to come back and embarrass you or anything.
But just the same, I think the liberals should keep cranking up the rhetoric. I think this, comparing our US forces in the war against Islamofacism to Nazis and communists is what’s going to propel the Democrats back into power. I also think you guys need to get Howard Dean out there more…People like him and Michael Moore are saying the right things… They almost want to make me donate!
===According to Luskin, Fitzgerald says Rove isn’t a target.
I’m not sure how this is a defense. Luskin points out that Rove is a subject of the investigation to the National Review Online:
“Luskin also addressed the question of whether Rove is a “subject” of the investigation. Luskin says Fitzgerald has told Rove he is not a “target” of the investigation, but, according to Luskin, Fitzgerald has also made it clear that virtually anyone whose conduct falls within the scope of the investigation, including Rove, is considered a “subject” of the probe. “‘Target’ is something we all understand, a very alarming term,” Luskin says. On the other hand, Fitzgerald “has indicated to us that he takes a very broad view of what a subject is.”
It’s hard to figure that when a subject of an investigation can be very broad, how that’s exculpatory.
More to the point regardless of whether there is a violation of the law, how is the behavior appropriate? It’s a very strange case where we are discussing that it’s okay because he’s not a target, but we know he identified a CIA employee.
====A bi-partisan report has undermined Wilson’s allegations as has Wilson’s own book according to media reports
Again, this is rather irrelevant to the issue of whether a Karl Rove outed a CIA agent. Even if it was true that Wilson was wrong–how does that justify his wife being outed as a CIA operative?
But beyond the narrow issue of outing a CIA operative, the basic facts support Wilson’s t that Iraq didn’t attempt to buy yellowcake in Niger. At it’s strongest, the Senate report states that the CIA was overstating the case even before the forgeries were available.
Why is it okay, even if I were to grant that Wilson lied, to pass on to a reporter that she was a CIA employee? The information is absolutely irrelevant to the argument over yellowcake.
The larger problem is one can’t tell what the objection is here. The Senate Intelligence report finds that
AP has it exactly right: the point is that Rove identified a CIA operative to a reporter, burning both her and the front company for which she worked. By a plain text reading of the espionage act, he’s guilty of espionage. That the information was published makes it worse.
It’s in the Washington Post today. Reporters were informing administration officials, not the other way around.
“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.”
* * *
“Sources who have reviewed some of the testimony before the grand jury say there is significant evidence that reporters were in some cases alerting officials about Plame’s identity and relationship to Wilson — not the other way around.”
* * *
“In accounts of both conversations that have been made public, Rove does not give Plame’s name and discusses the matter only at the end of an interview on an unrelated topic. Rove has said he did not know Plame’s name and did not know she was undercover. If that is the case, it is unlikely that the disclosure is a crime.”
AP, your original impulse about this being much ado about nothing was correct.
As far as behavior is concerned, the conversations Rove did have were with reporters who brought up the subject up at the end of discussions on other topics. That’s been reported in more than one place. Protecting Matt Cooper by saying, hey don’t go too far out on this isn’t a crime nor unethical. Wilson was going to be discredited and stopping a reporter from passing misinformation to the American people is a public service.
If indeed Novak passed the info to Rove, does that necessarily absolve Rove of any wrongs?
Depends on what your definition of “is” is, I suppose.
Rove doesn’t do anything by accident.
On another level, please spare us the “war against Islamofacism to the Nazis” or whatever the hell you wrote.
For one thing, calling it “Islamofacism” necessarily removes Iraq from the argument, since Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a secular state.
And with respect to the damage being done to Democrats, let’s have a look at what AP/IPSOS has to say:
Genrerally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction or are they off track?
Right Track 36%
Wrong Track 59%
Overall, do you approve, disapprove, or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?
Approve 42%
Disapprove 56%
Mixed Feelings 1%
There are a couple interesting things about that article that really demonstrates how bad the off the record source stuff has gone–one is that Rove’s lawyer has been avoiding saying that Rove didn’t know her name all of a sudden. Earlier Luskin would say that, now he won’t. Earlier Rove said he had nothing to do with any of this, now we know he did have a role.
But back to the point–why is Rove confirming to other reporters that he heard this and spreading it? I fully believe that there’s a good possibility Rove didn’t violate the law concerning outing covert agents–it’s a hard law to break.
The underlying question is why was he spreading information about a CIA employee in an effort to discredit Wilson. Critizing Joe Wilson is fine, but what possible reason did he bring this up?
And reverse the situation–pretend this is 1995 and replace Rahm Emanual’s name with Karl Rove’s. Taking the same facts would you be angry at the Clinton administration for this kind of slime and endangering CIA assets?
It seems to me the defense of Rove is as lame as those who tried to defend Sandy Berger.
AP, Rove wasn’t spreading rumors about reporters were. It’s been reported that both Novak and Cooper brught this up, not Rove.
Heck, from what I’ve seen today, administration officials were the only ones in the dark about Plame working at the CIA. Her neighbors even knew.
If the shoe were on the other foot my position would be the same. I’d be counseling Republicans to hold their fire. This one can backfire.
Plame was identified as the person who was pushing her husband to go to Niger. That makes her integral to the story. It answers the questions, “How this partisan hack was chosen and why was he chosen?”
===AP, Rove wasn’t spreading rumors about reporters were. It’s been reported that both Novak and Cooper brught this up, not Rove.
Whether Cooper brought up the issue of Wilson or not is irrelevant. Attacking Wilson is irrelevant as well, but it’s not irrelevant that Rove said she worked for the CIA. Rove brought up and identified the Wilson’s wife as a CIA employee. And I fully admit this doesn’t mean Rove knew she was covert, but it’s absolutely out of line.
It’s bad judgment and wrong. Even if the Novak bit is true, why would a White House official be confirming such information? Rove’s reaction is a problem in itself. It makes the Cooper bit even worse.
There is no, we don’t like the guy exception to not identifying classified information.
==Heck, from what I’ve seen today, administration officials were the only ones in the dark about Plame working at the CIA. Her neighbors even knew.
And in those neighborhoods, it’s kind of understood what people do, but who didn’t know it were foreign governments and when they knew she was an operative, they knew her cover and the company were then involved in the CIA and that’s unforgiveable.
—-Plame was identified as the person who was pushing her husband to go to Niger. That makes her integral to the story.
The CIA has continued to say this isn’t true. She probably mentioned her husband, but this whole effort to say she was pushing him involved more classified information being given to reporters:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A30842-2003Dec25&notFound=true
“But sources said the CIA believes that people in the administration continue to release classified information to damage the figures at the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA officer by unidentified senior administration officials for a July 14 column by Robert D. Novak.
Wilson, a prominent critic of the administration over Iraq, has said that was done to retaliate against him for continuing to publicize his conclusion, after a 2002 mission for the CIA, that there was little evidence Iraq had sought uranium in Africa to develop nuclear weapons.
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.
CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame’s alleged role in arranging Wilson’s trip could not have attended the meeting.
“It has been circulated around,” one official said. CIA and State Department officials have refused to discuss the document.
On Oct. 28, Talon News, a news company tied to a group called GOP USA, posted on the Internet an interview with Wilson in which the Talon News questioner asks: “An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?”
”
===It answers the questions, “How this partisan hack was chosen and why was he chosen?”
How is a career guy in State a partisan hack? He gave $1000 to Bush in 2000 and was very supportive of the first Bush. He seems much more to be a careerist.
But let’s say he was on a partisan crusade–what exemption is there that would allow someone to identify a covert agent?
Rove may not have committed a crime, but when by any reasonable ethical standard he should have just not commented. Instead he identified Wilson’s wife as an agency employee for partisan reasons. That had serious implications for those tied to her through her cover.
What covert agent? She worked at the CIA, she went in the front entrance everyday. That’s overt, dude…Any more overt and the Wilson’s would have had to put up neon signs…
She hadn’t been overseas since 1997. Under the law the law she is exempt from protection. Furthermore, in the case of Cooper, a soon to be released report was going to discredit Wilson…And it did… With Novak it is only alleged that he confirmed something another source said. The cat was all ready out of the bag.
You can make an ethical case that he was attempting to stop misinformation on a delicate matter from being released. That’s reasonable ethical standard — stopping someone from making a mistake.
It depends on what law one is speaking to whether her identity as a CIA employee was classified or not. Her name was asscoiated to the front company–and the contacts that company had overseas:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340
It’s entirely possible no crime was committed, but the most compelling evidence that there was a serious problem with the revelation is that it was referred to Justice by the CIA itself and a Special Prosecutor was appointed. The alternative theory would have to be that the CIA Counsel’s office made a referral over someone who simply works at a desk and that’s a bit hard to believe.