Rove Spoke To Time Reporter Before CIA Agent's Name Leaked

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Yes....the Walmart crowd.

Gotta love 'em.

They DO fucking vote.

Not for you guys, though.

They would if we mailed them all $300 advances and called them "tax rebates":D

[blueturk]

Or if God personally approved the Dem's political agenda.

"Justice was being delivered to a man who defied that gift from the Almighty to the people of Iraq." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2003

[Warham]

Reports: Rove Learned About CIA Officer's Identity From Journalists
Saturday, July 16, 2005

WASHINGTON — Although Joseph Wilson (search) and many Democrats have spent the last week saying Karl Rove (search) leaked the identity of a CIA operative to journalists, it may have been the other way around, according to sources familiar with grand jury testimony.

Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame (search), but that he originally learned about her from the news media and not government sources, a person briefed on the testimony told The Associated Press.

The person, who works in the legal profession, told AP that Rove testified last year that he remembered specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak (search) that Plame, who is Wilson's wife, worked for the CIA. Days earlier, Wilson, a former ambassador, had written a harsh critique of the Iraq war that was published in the New York Times

The Times also reported Friday that Rove spoke with Novak as he was preparing his July 2003 article. Novak is the reporter who first outted Plame in print but, he has not appeared to be a focus of the investigation thus far.

The Times reported that someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said Rove also learned from Novak the situation under which Wilson traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Novak told him he planned to report in a weekend column that Plame had worked for the CIA, and the details about the Africa trip, Rove testified.

After hearing Novak's account, the person familiar with the testimony said, Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too."

Rove testified that by the time Novak called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson's wife from someone else in the media but he couldn't remember exactly who.

The Novak Conversation

According to the New York Times, Novak started his conversation with Rove by asking about the promotion of Frances Fragos Townsend to a senior counterterrorism job at the White House.

The talk eventually turned to Wilson, who criticizing the Bush administration's use of faulty intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, legal sources said; Novak apparently identified Plame by name.

A few days before these conversations, in an op-ed article for The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson suggested that he had been sent to Niger (search) because of Vice President Dick Cheney's interest in the matter. But Novak told Rove he knew that Wilson had been sent at the urging of his wife, the sources said.

Novak's column was printed six days later, touching off what would turn into a political firestorm that launched a federal criminal investigation that continues today into who leaked Plame's identity.

Three days after the Novak conversation, Rove testified, the chief of staff had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and — in an effort to discredit some of Wilson's allegations — informally told Cooper that he believed Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name, sources told the AP and the Times.

An e-mail Cooper recently provided the grand jury shows Cooper reported to his magazine bosses that Rove had described Wilson's wife in a confidential conversation as someone who "apparently works" at the CIA.

On Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote another column in which he described calling two Bush administration officials who were his sources for the earlier column that identified Plame. One source was Rove, the other has not yet been named.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, said Thursday his client truthfully testified to the grand jury and expected to be exonerated.

"Karl provided all pertinent information to prosecutors a long time ago," Luskin said. "And prosecutors confirmed when he testified most recently in October 2004 that he is not a target of the investigation."

Republicans argued Friday that the latest information exonerates their man.

"Karl Rove wasn't the leaker, he was actually the recipient of the information," Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman told FOX News on Friday morning.

Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House, saying Thursday that Rove's conduct was an "outrageous abuse of power ... certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House."

Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But prosecutors must prove the leaking official knew the officer was covert and knowingly outed his or her identity. One of the questions that still remains is exactly what status Plame had at the time of the leak; many reports say she had a desk job at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., at the time.

Wilson on Thursday acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak's column first identified her.

"My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," he said.

But in an interview Friday, Wilson said his comment was meant to reflect that his wife lost her ability to be a covert agent because of the leak, not that she had stopped working for the CIA beforehand.

Melissa Mahle, a former CIA agent who knows Plame, said her friend's exact status at the time of the outing isn't the issue. She stressed that Plame was an expert in weapons of mass destruction, which is no light intelligence matter.

"Valerie was an undercover officer ... the reality is, Valerie has no cover anymore," said Mahle, the author of "Denial and Deception." "When you're an undercover officer, you nurture that undercover" status and the contacts you make during the job, she added.

"It's not so important what she was doing that moment in time because your career is linked by all of your activities and if you were exposed by beig a CIA officer, bad guys are going to start looking at what you were doing before and backtracking."

On the issue of allegations that Plame was actually the one who sent Wilson to Niger — and not someone within the Bush administration, Mahle said that isn't possible given the rigid chain of command in the CIA.

"You don't send somebody oversees as an officer ... we have a chain of command ... those kind of decisions go up your chain so Valerie wasn't in the position of making that decision," she added.

GOP: Dems Have Nothing Better To Do

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and other leaders asked Friday that Congress hold hearings regardless of the ongoing criminal probe.

"In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was underway did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters," Pelosi and the other Democratic leaders wrote Speaker Dennis Hastert.

On Thursday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada pressed for legislation — which ultimately failed — to strip Rove of his clearance for classified information, which he said Bush should have done already. Instead, Reid said, the Bush administration has attacked its critics: "This is what is known as a cover-up. This is an abuse of power."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Democrats were resorting to "partisan war chants."

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., introduced legislation for an investigation that would compel senior administration officials to turn over records relating to the Plame disclosure.

"It seems to me this all comes down to an issue of White House credibility," Lawrence Haas, former communications director for Al Gore, told FOX News. "Nothing is more important for a White House than credibility ... this administration doesn't necessarily always play it straight ... they have a tendency to skirt the line when it comes to honesty."

Mehlman told FOX News on Friday that what happened on the Senate floor the day before was nothing more than a "partisan charade" full of "smears" on Rove.

Democrats needs to let the independent counsel to his job, Mehlman added. "We need politics to be about solutions, not insults … the angry left should not drive the Democratic Party."

"What the real problem here is, this is a political game to get Karl Rove — a political strategist who has beaten the Democrats time and time again," added Republican strategist Brad Blakeman.

Ron Kaufman, a former White House political director and current GOP strategist, told FOX News on Friday that Democrats are still bitter and sore about losing the past few elections and, during the slow summer months in Washington, the Rove issue is one they're trying to nail the administration with.

"There is no problem here except for a group of Democrats that can't talk about Social Security, can't talk about terrorism … so they're talking about Karl Rove," Kaufman said. "It's time for the Democrats to realize they lost, we won, let's get on with the things Americans care about."

FOXNews.com's Liza Porteus and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by Warham
Reports: Rove Learned About CIA Officer's Identity From Journalists
Saturday, July 16, 2005

...
Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame (search), but that he originally learned about her from the news media and not government sources, a person briefed on the testimony told The Associated Press.
...

Yes, and ROVE's word is shit. He may have perjured himself.

[Warham]

The liberal dream is falling apart.

[LoungeMachine]

ROVE / NOVAK LEAKS GO BACK 13 YEARS

From The Seattle Times:

The leaking of Plame's identity recalls an incident from the 1992 presidential campaign, in which Rove was fired from the elder Bush's re-election team because of suspicions that he had leaked information to columnist Robert Novak — the same columnist who first reported Plame's CIA role in 2003, citing anonymous administration sources.

At the time, Bush's campaign was in trouble, and there was concern he might not even win his home state of Texas. The Novak column described a Dallas meeting in which the campaign's state manager, Robert Mosbacher, was stripped of his authority, because the Texas effort was viewed as a bust.

Mosbacher complained, expressing his suspicion that Rove was the leaker. Rove denied the charge, but he was fired nevertheless.

Times staff writer Rick Schmitt and researcher Benjamin Weyl contributed to this report.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
ROVE / NOVAK LEAKS GO BACK 13 YEARS

From The Seattle Times:

Undoubtedly an unbiased source in that little liberal burg in the Pacific Northwest.

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Undoubtedly an unbiased source in that little liberal burg in the Pacific Northwest.

THE SOURCE DOESN'T MATTER, BRI, JESUS..........ROVE WORKED FOR G.HW.BUSH AND WAS FIRED



Despite Rove revelations, story of leak largely untold
White House denied links while adviser met with prosecutors
Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Washington Post

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Washington -- Karl Rove had a secret.

In public, he was masterminding President Bush's re-election and brushing off suggestions he had played any part in an unfolding drama: the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame. In private, the senior White House adviser was meeting, on five occasions, with federal prosecutors to tell what he knew about the matter.

The story he would tell prosecutors did not seem to square with the White House's denial that it had played any role in one of the most famous leaks since Watergate. Rove told prosecutors he had discussed Plame in passing with at least two reporters, including the columnist who eventually revealed her name and role in a secret mission that would raise questions about Bush's case for war against Iraq. At the same time, other White House officials were whispering about Plame, too.

It is now clear: There has been an element of pretense to the White House strategy of dealing with the Plame case since the earliest days of the saga. Revelations emerging slowly at first, and in a rapid cascade over the past several days, have made plain that many important pieces of the puzzle were not so mysterious to Rove and others inside the Bush administration. White House officials were aware of Plame and her husband's potentially damaging charge that Bush was "twisting" intelligence about Iraq's nuclear ambitions well before the episode evolved into Washington's latest scandal.

Uncertain elements

But as the story hurtles toward a conclusion sometime this year, there are several elements that remain uncertain. The most important -- did anyone commit a crime?

This article, based on interviews with lawyers and officials involved in the case, is an effort to step back from the rapidly unfolding events of recent weeks and clarify what is known about the Plame affair and what key factors are still obscure. Those people declined to be identified by name because special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has asked that closed-door proceedings not be discussed.

It all started in the early days of 2002 with Joseph Wilson IV, a flamboyant ex-diplomat who had left government for a more lucrative life of business consulting. Wilson was a veteran of the diplomatic wars of Iraq and Africa, so it seemed logical to some in the CIA, including his wife, Plame, to send him on a secret mission to Niger. Wilson's task was to determine if Iraqis had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Africa to build nuclear weapons.

To a Bush administration intent on selling the American public on war based on the threat posed by Iraq's weapons program, the yellowcake was no small deal. The White House would soon cite it as evidence that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons.

Wilson spent a week in Niger chatting with locals about the allegation, coming to the conclusion that the yellowcake charges were probably unfounded. He reported his findings to the agency -- but they never made their way to the White House.

Cheney's decision

The story might have ended there, but Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials decided to make the yellowcake charges a central piece of the administration's evidence in arguing Hussein had designs on a dangerous program of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs. On the march to war, Bush officials rebuffed concerns from some at the CIA and included in his January 2003 State of the Union the now-famous 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Wilson was floored, then furious.

Wilson set out to discredit the charge, working largely through back channels at first to debunk it. He called friends inside the government and the media and told the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof of his findings in Niger. Kristof aired them publicly for the first time in his May 6, 2003, column but did not name Wilson. This caught the attention of officials inside Cheney's office, as well as others involved in war planning, according to people who had talked with them.

The White House, hailing the lightning-quick toppling of Hussein, suddenly found itself on the defensive at home over its WMD claims. It was not just Wilson, but Democrats, reporters and a few former officials who were publicly wondering whether Bush had led the nation to war based on flimsy, if not outright false, intelligence.

Administration officials set out to rebuff their critics, Wilson in particular. By the time the Washington Post published Wilson's allegation questioning the intelligence (but not citing his name) on the front page on June, 12, 2003 -- one month before the Plame affair was public -- Wilson was on the administration's radar screen.

The more Wilson pushed, the more the White House was determined to push back against a man they regarded as an irresponsible provocateur.

Up until this point, Wilson had worked mostly behind the scenes, but on July 6, he penned an op-ed in the New York Times, writing, "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons programs was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Quick response

The White House response was swift. There is a simple rule in politics: Kill a story before it kills you. The Bush team spread word to reporters that Wilson was a Democrat, a supporter of Bush's political opponents who was sent on an inconclusive mission that people in power knew nothing of.

Then, they went a step further.

Two days after Wilson went public, columnist Robert Novak told Rove that he was hearing that Wilson had been sent on the mission at the suggestion of his wife, who was working in the CIA, a lawyer familiar with the conversation said. "I heard that, too," Rove replied, according to the lawyer. Rove said Novak had told him Plame's name and that that was the first time he had heard it, the lawyer said.

On July 7, Bush took off for a trip to Africa. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was on the trip, carried with him a memo containing information about Plame, as well as other intelligence on the yellowcake claim. It is on this trip that, prosecutors believe, some White House aides might have learned about Plame.

The origin of the Plame information is central to the case. Prosecutors are trying to determine whether White House officials shared information about Plame based on the State Department memo, or from conversations with reporters, as Rove has testified, or somewhere else. If it turns out Plame's identity was learned from the memo, it would undermine the GOP defense that Rove and other administration officials were simply discussing information they had learned from reporters.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said he could say "categorically" that Rove had not obtained any information about Plame from any confidential source, such as a classified document. A lawyer familiar with Rove's testimony hedged a bit on who precisely had told Rove about Plame, saying it might have come secondhand from another aide, as well as from Novak.

Discrediting Wilson

In Washington, Rove and others were discrediting Wilson's story even as then-CIA director George Tenet said that the yellowcake allegation should never have been included in Bush's speech. "This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed," Tenet said in a July 11 statement.

In a conversation that same day, Rove told Time magazine's Matthew Cooper that Wilson's wife was in the CIA and authorized the mission to Niger; but he did not use her name. Afterward, Rove e-mailed then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley to tell him he had waved Cooper off Wilson's claim.

A day later, Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, told Cooper he had heard the same thing about Plame, and a senior administration official flagged Wilson's wife's role, almost in passing, to the Washington Post's Walter Pincus.

Novak named Plame

On July 14, Novak's column ran, naming Plame for the first time and saying two senior administration officials had provided him with the information. The White House anti-Wilson campaign continued, but legally it did not matter, because once Plame's name was in the public domain, Rove and others were free to gossip about her.

CIA officials believed that the revealing of Plame's identity was a potential crime and contacted the Justice Department to investigate. CIA officials maintain that Plame never ordered up the trip.

It is not clear when the White House realized Plame might have been a covert operative, but Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for an FBI probe 10 days after the Novak column was published. It would be a crime to reveal her name only if a government official knew that Plame had covert status and knew that the government was actively concealing her identity.

The uproar over the leak was ephemeral, as the story seemed to wilt in the summer heat. But in late September, a senior White House official was quoted as telling the Post at least six reporters had been told of Plame before Novak's column, "purely and simply out of revenge." Two days later, Bush was told that the Justice Department was investigating whether someone had unlawfully leaked the identity of an undercover agent.

U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald in Chicago was named special counsel three months later, setting in motion an aggressive investigation that would soon force about a dozen administration officials to testify, compel the Supreme Court to consider the age-old question of how much protection a reporter can provide a source and land one reporter, the New York Times' Judith Miller, behind bars for refusing to testify. Her role remains a mystery, because she never wrote a story.

Fitzgerald subpoenaed White House phone records and e-mails, guest lists for parties and information about the State Department memo reportedly brought aboard Air Force One. What started out as a simple investigation into a leak evolved slowly at first, swiftly in the early days of 2004, into a wider probe of other potential illegalities. Bush and Cheney were asked to talk to investigators informally, while a parade of officials from Powell to Rove to McClellan appeared before the grand jury.

Reporters obtained releases from sources such as Libby to discuss confidential conversations, while others refused. Cooper and Miller, in a case that reached and was rejected by the Supreme Court, refused to reveal sources and were held in contempt. Cooper was released by Rove to talk; Miller is sitting in an Alexandria, Va., jail.

The showdown over sources has already impeded at least two major media outlets. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, fearing criminal prosecution, has decided against publishing two investigative pieces not related to the Plame controversy because they were based on anonymous leaks. Time reporters have said that at least two sources have told them they would no longer provide information because the company had turned over documents in the Plame case.

As for the Bush administration, the investigation has exposed how an administration that publicly deplores leaking has engaged aggressively in the practice to advance its goals.

Yet much of the case remains a mystery. Did the White House leak the identity of a CIA operative? Is it a crime? Did Bush have any knowledge of it? Will Fitzgerald have spent this much time pressuring officials and reporters and not deliver an indictment? Those questions should be answered soon, as the grand jury's term is set to expire in October.

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by Warham
The liberal dream is falling apart.

Say who? YOU?

puh-leeze


Actually the workings of Bush/Rummy/Cheney/Rice/Wolfie/Perle/Bremer/DeLay/Cunninham/Rove/Santorum will all eventually turm out in our favor.

The pendulum will swing back to the Left, because you guys over shot the runway, took it too far, and are about to pay the consequences.

see ya:D

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
Say who? YOU?

puh-leeze


Actually the workings of Bush/Rummy/Cheney/Rice/Wolfie/Perle/Bremer/DeLay/Cunninham/Rove/Santorum will all eventually turm out in our favor.

The pendulum will swing back to the Left, because you guys over shot the runway, took it too far, and are about to pay the consequences.

see ya:D

True dat.' The return of REAL Liberal Democracy is a historical inevitability, it's just a matter of time, and of how much damage these Neo Con, Leo Straussian Mythology beLIEving, buffoons can do to our country and military.

[Warham]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
Say who? YOU?

puh-leeze


Actually the workings of Bush/Rummy/Cheney/Rice/Wolfie/Perle/Bremer/DeLay/Cunninham/Rove/Santorum will all eventually turm out in our favor.

The pendulum will swing back to the Left, because you guys over shot the runway, took it too far, and are about to pay the consequences.

see ya:D

You guys have to hope for the demise of the Republican party, otherwise you won't get back into the drivers seat. None of the party's liberal agenda or ideas will get the voters inspired enough to care.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Warham
You guys have to hope for the demise of the Republican party, otherwise you won't get back into the drivers seat. None of the party's liberal agenda or ideas will get the voters inspired enough to care.

This IS the demise of the Republican party. It has been ever since the BCE took it over and started implementing their perpetual war, perpetual fear, perpetual fascist agenda.

People are starting to wake up to the fact that they were never Republicans to begin with, but fascist corporatists with no loyalty to God, country or anything else but the almighty dollar.

[Big Train]

Thanks for the laughs this morning guys...

[blueturk]

Originally posted by Warham
You guys have to hope for the demise of the Republican party, otherwise you won't get back into the drivers seat. None of the party's liberal agenda or ideas will get the voters inspired enough to care.

The main thing that inspires support for Bush is fear, which Dubya uses every chance he gets. He just came down here to drum up support for CAFTA, but spent a lot of time talking about terrorism before his pitch. If 9/11 had not happened, Bush would not be in office right now.

[Big Train]

If memory serves, Bush was in office BEFORE 9/11. I think he was reelected not on the basis of 9/11, although I will say it was a major part of his base, but because Kerry was so weak across the board. Which was a REAL fear of mine in not voting for him. He had zero positions and zero solutions. I have no time for that.