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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Beltway insiders are consumed by one question: Did Karl Rove do it?
Jul 7, 2005 | When Karl Rove was little known outside Texas political circles, he was fired from George H.W. Bush's 1992 reelection campaign for leaking information to syndicated columnist Robert Novak. According to newspaper reports at the time, Rove was terminated for passing information to Novak from a meeting of the president's chief advisors. Rove denied he was the leaker.
Today, with another Bush in office, a journalist is being jailed to protect a source that led Novak to name a CIA operative, Valerie Plame. There is fevered speculation that Novak's source was, once again, Karl Rove.
If Rove, George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff, knowingly revealed Plame's name, he could be charged with committing a felony. The same source that revealed the operative's name to Novak reportedly also spoke to two other journalists, Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller of the New York Times. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, confirmed to reporters on Saturday that Rove spoke with Cooper days prior to the publication of Novak's column in July 2003. But Luskin denied that Rove named Plame.
Miller was jailed on Wednesday for refusing to reveal her source, the latest step in a drawn-out investigation by federal special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that has culminated in the most heated showdown between the media and the federal government since the Vietnam War. Time handed over Cooper's notes last Friday, and Cooper agreed on Wednesday to testify before the grand jury in order to avoid jail. Cooper says his source gave him permission "in somewhat dramatic fashion" to reveal his identity.
Rove isn't the only name being thrown around as the possible leaker. Speculation has long centered on Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. But at least one critic, Valerie Plame's husband, says either way, Rove bears some responsibility for what happened -- for fanning the story's flames. "I have no idea whether [Rove] was the source or not," former Ambassador Joseph Wilson told Salon on Wednesday. "But certainly he was part of the effort to push this story, including his phone call to ['Hardball' host] Chris Matthews." Wilson claims that Matthews told him that Rove had called days after the Novak column ran and said that Wilson's wife, Plame, was "fair game." Matthews has testified in the Plame case, though publicly he has neither confirmed nor denied Wilson's statement.
"In my judgment, [Rove's] behavior, even if it is not criminal, it is certainly below the standards of ethics we have a right to expect from our senior White House leadership," Wilson said. "It's an outrageous abuse of power."
Meanwhile, Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., is reportedly circulating a draft letter to his colleagues calling on Bush to demand that Rove either come clean about his role in Plame's outing or resign. "Notwithstanding whether Mr. Rove intentionally violated the law in leaking information concerning former CIA operative Valerie Plame, we believe it is not tenable to maintain Mr. Rove as one of your most important advisors unless he is willing to explain his central role in using the power and authority of your administration to disseminate information regarding Ms. Plame and to undermine her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson," Conyers wrote.
"Democrats are getting a little too giddy in trying to get [Rove]," said Chuck Todd, who edits the National Journal Hotline, an subscriber-based service considered the go-to point in daily political news. "It's a grand jury investigation. I think Democrats better keep their powder dry on this."
