Karl Rove :: RunningForums.com :: The Need to Speed

Should he be fired?

Quote:

The Karl Rove connection
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005

THE OFFICIAL silence from the White House on Monday was quite disturbing.

For many months, the White House has insisted that Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was not involved with the "outing" of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. President Bush had personally pledged to fire the source of that leak.

The Bush administration's outrage and pledge to fire the source suddenly vanished Monday. At a White House briefing, press secretary Scott McClellan said he would not respond to reports that Rove spoke with a Time reporter about Plame's role at the CIA -- not using her name, but identifying her as the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV -- three days before Robert Novak exposed her identity in a syndicated column.

McClellan said he would talk about the case "at the appropriate time" -- explaining that would be after the investigation is completed.

It is important to remember the origins of the case. Wilson dealt a tremendous embarrassment to the White House justification for war by disclosing that his trip to Niger in 2002 found no evidence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium -- and that he reported his findings to top administration officials. Nevertheless, Bush reiterated the allegation against Iraq in his January 2003 State of the Union speech.

The "outing" of Plame effectively destroyed her career as a covert agent and may have undermined past and future U.S. intelligence operations. It sure smells like retribution against a public servant who dared contradict the White House party line. It also may have been a crime.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller sits in jail today for refusing to reveal the source of the information she received about Plame.

Meanwhile, Karl Rove continues to roam the White House, wielding great power as well as a security clearance.

There is something terribly wrong with this picture. At a minimum, Rove should be put on leave while the evidence that he may have used top-secret information for political purposes is being sorted out.

Page B - 6
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/12/EDG8HDLC431.DTL

From Neal Boortz's daily notes this AM....

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SO .. WHAT ABOUT THE KARL ROVE STORY?

Sooner or later this week I'm going to get an email from someone saying "Hey, how come you aren't talking about how Karl Rove broke the law Boortz! Why aren't you talking about how he outed Valerie Plame? What's the matter, Boortz? You can't admit that Bush should fire Karl Rove because he broke the law?"

OK ... let's deal with it now. First question ... did he violate the law? Violations of the law must, by necessity, be very specific. The law that Rove is being accused by the left of violating says that he must knowingly reveal the name of a current CIA undercover operative the identity of whom the CIA is actively trying to conceal.

The leftist fantasy among the those in the mainstream media that Karl Rove is going to be arrested and charged with outing a covert CIA agent just isn't supported by the facts. Rove spoke to Matthew Cooper at Time magazine off the record, and made reference that Joseph Wilson was sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate whether or not Saddam Hussein sought to buy materials to make nuclear weapons there. In Cooper's e-mails, released by Time, Rove makes mention that Wilson was sent at the behest of his wife, who worked at the CIA. No name was given. No name, no broken law. The prosecutor in the case has said Rove is not the target.

Rove's statement isn't in and of itself a crime. Careless? Perhaps ... but not a crime. Rove's statement only becomes a crime if it can be shown that Wilson's wife was actually an undercover agent at the time the statement was made (this has not been shown) and that Rove was aware of this fact. You also have to show that the CIA was actively trying to protect the identity of Valerie Plame.

So ... for those of you who are so elated over the possibility of finally nailing the hated Karl Rove ... make your case. Show me:

--That Rove specifically named Valerie Plame.
--That Valerie Plame was, in fact, working undercover for the CIA. (Looks like a desk job to me.)
--That Rove knew Valerie Plame was working undercover for the CIA.
--That the CIA was actively trying, and that Karl Rove knew that the CIA was actively trying to protect the identity of Valerie Plame at the time Rove made his statement to the reporter.

When establish those facts, I'll have further comment. Pesky things, facts.

Sounds like an issue of semantics, he didn't name her directly, but he mentioned her husband...so his wife wasn't to tough to determine I'm guessing. I don't know about being fired as is being suggested based on the Bush quote from last summer, but it was definitely irresponsible.

Quote:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cia_leak_investigation

White House Still Silent on Rove Evidence By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
30 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The White House is suddenly facing damaging evidence that it misled the public by insisting for two years that presidential adviser Karl Rove wasn't involved in leaking the identity of a female CIA officer.

President Bush, at an Oval Office photo opportunity Tuesday, was asked directly whether he would fire Rove — in keeping with a pledge in June, 2004, to dismiss any leakers in the case. The president did not respond.

For the second day, White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to answer questions about Rove.

Rove told Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper that the woman "apparently works" for the CIA and that she had authorized her husband's trip to Africa to assess allegations that Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium for nuclear weapons, according to a July 11, 2003, e-mail by Cooper obtained by Newsweek magazine.

The e-mail is now in the hands of federal prosecutors who are hunting down the leakers inside the Bush administration who revealed the name of Valerie Plame to the news media.

The revelation about Rove prompted Democratic calls for President Bush to follow through on his promise to fire leakers of Plame's identity, and triggered 61 questions during two press briefings Monday by McClellan.

It was McClellan who provided the previous assurances about no role for Rove, but he refused to repeat those assurances Monday.

"Did Karl Rove commit a crime?" a reporter asked McClellan.

"This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation," McClellan replied.

McClellan gave the same answer when asked whether President Bush has confidence in Rove, the architect of the president's successful political campaigns.

The investigation was ongoing in 2003 when McClellan assured the public Rove wasn't involved, a reporter pointed out, but the spokesman refused to elaborate.

In September and October 2003, McClellan said he had spoken directly with Rove about the matter and that "he was not involved" in leaking Plame's identity to the news media. McClellan said at the time: "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved," "It was a ridiculous suggestion" and "It's not true."

Rove's own public denials at the time and since have been more narrowly worded: "I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name," Rove said last year.

Democrats pressed Bush to act.

"The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "I trust they will follow through on this pledge. If these allegations are true, this rises above politics and is about our national security."

Democratic consultant Paul Begala, appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America" Tuesday, said Rove has both a legal problem and a political problem.

He said the legal issue should be resolved by the grand jury. Begala also said the White House has a political problem because "people are going to look at this crowd and say, Gee, we can't trust a thing they say after the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) controversy.' "

New York Times reporter Judith Miller is in jail for refusing to reveal who in the administration talked to her about Plame.

Cooper had also planned to go to jail rather than talk, but at the last minute he agreed to cooperate with investigators when a source, Rove, gave him permission to do so. Cooper's employer, Time Inc., also turned over Cooper's e-mail and notes.

One of the e-mails was a note from Cooper to his boss in which he said he had spoken to Rove, who described the wife of former U.S. Ambassador and Bush administration critic Joe Wilson as someone who "apparently works" at the CIA, Newsweek magazine reported.

It said "Wilson's wife" — not CIA Director George Tenet or Vice President Dick Cheney — authorized a trip by Wilson to Africa. The purpose was to check out reports that Iraq had tried to obtain yellowcake uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Rove's conversation with Cooper took place five days after Plame's husband suggested in a New York Times op-ed piece that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq. Wilson's trip to Africa provided the basis for his criticism.

Robert Luskin, Rove's lawyer, said his client did not disclose Plame's name. Luskin declined to say how Rove found out that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and refused to say how Rove came across the information that it was Wilson's wife who authorized his trip to Africa.

"In the conversation, Karl is warning Cooper not to get too far out in front of the story," Luskin said. "There were false allegations out there that Vice President Cheney sent Wilson to Niger and that Wilson had reported back to Cheney about his trip to Niger. Neither was true."

Luskin added, "A fair-minded reading of Cooper's e-mail is that Rove was trying to discourage Time magazine from circulating false allegations about Cheney, not trying to encourage them by saying anything about Wilson or his wife."

___

On the Net:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

I'd love to see him go. But you can see the White House already backpedaling so it's going to have to be a stronger case than what we're presently hearing.

Gogirlgo wrote:

I'd love to see him go.

So would many other people. But if he didn't violate the law - then that opinion isn't backed up by the facts/law.

Here is what i don't understand - If Rove totally spilled the beans & knowingly violated the law (which I doubt), why is Judith Miller going to jail to save him? Why wouldn't the NYT be blasting this on page one of their news rag?

sonnylax wrote:

She isn't going to jail to save him, she's going to jail to save her principles. Remember that Miller didn't even write anything about l'affaire Plame, she only had notes.

It remains to be seen whether Rove violated the law and whether the White House tried to cover that up for two years. Still, my question is as it was when I posted it before: why is Novak, the one who did write the story, sitting pretty?

It remains to be seen if Plume was even a undercover CIA agent. A factoid omitted by virtually all of the recent main stream media reports. If she wasn't a covert agent, it's a moot point anyway.

Hmm, this story has been going on for two years. Why do you think this is an issue now?

Gogirlgo wrote:

Hmm, this story has been going on for two years. Why do you think this is an issue now?

Maybe because the main stream media has an agenda that doesn't align with the current adminstration? Why hasn't it been determined if she truly is/was a covert agent or not? (The press continues to assume she was, despite the fact that might not be the case.) Have you ever thought that someone from the CIA is leaking info to the press to make Bush/Rove look bad?

sonnylax wrote:

Or mainstream media are totally in line with the current administration, and all of a sudden when this story actually has teeth, now let's bring out how Plame might not even be an agent. The timing looks real bad there.

sonnylax wrote:

So would many other people. But if he didn't violate the law - then that opinion isn't backed up by the facts/law.

It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he broke the law; Bush made a promise he would fire whomever was responsible. Shouldn't he live up to his word?

Even if it's not a legal issue, it's an ethical one. You shouldn't reveal the names of secret agents, EVEN if you just imply who it is. It's just wrong. If he did it, he's wrong and should lose his job.

camelia bedelia wrote:

It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he broke the law; Bush made a promise he would fire whomever was responsible. Shouldn't he live up to his word?

Let me get this straight. You think someone should be fired for not violating the law? God, I hope you are never on a jury in my neck of the woods.

It has everything to do with whether or not he broke the law. I know simple fact.

I'm no legal expert and I don't have his comments in front of me... but I'm fairly certain that Bush was referring to the fact that he would fire whoever was responsible for breaking the actual law.

sonnylax wrote:

People get fired all of the time for not violating the law.

phillycat wrote:

People get fired all of the time for not violating the law.

Sure, but Rove's performance is probably better then most others.

The question at hand is whether or not Rove should be fired for potentially violated the law. Not some other non-quantifiable job performance measure that you wouldn't be privy to anyway.

Karl Rove

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