Novak told Rove about Plame and Rove admits to

[KipWellsFan]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050715/D8BBJCL00.html

 

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

 

Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame's identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story. The conversation eventually turned to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq war policy and the intelligence it used to justify the war, the source said.

 

The person said Rove testified that Novak told him he had learned and planned to report in a weekend column that Wilson's wife, Plame, had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims of alleged nuclear material sales to Iraq.

 

Novak's column, citing two Bush administration officials, appeared six days later, touching off a political firestorm and leading to a federal criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's undercover identity. That probe has ensnared presidential aides and reporters in a two-year legal battle.

 

Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson's wife from another reporter but had no recollection of which reporter had told him about it first, the source said.

 

When Novak inquired about Wilson's wife working for the CIA, Rove indicated he had heard something like that, according to the source's recounting of the grand jury testimony.

 

Rove told the grand jury that four days later, he had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and - in an effort to discredit some of Wilson's allegations - told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name.

[Rex Kickass]

But he still passed the information on to someone else before the story ran. Which means he leaked it, too. No?

[KipWellsFan]

I don't even know any more wino. But Peter King said this morning that Wilson is a liar and Rove deserves a medal, he's probably right...

[Balta1701]

I don't even know any more wino.  But Peter King said this morning that Wilson is a liar and Rove deserves a medal, he's probably right...

"Remove the medal of triumph, and attach the medal of shame"

 

Seriously though, if this story is true, it still raises a huge # of questions. (words stolen from Americablog)

 

1. A senior Bush administration official with access to the most classified information confirms to a journalist who a CIA agent is. Is he nuts? Again, anyone who's worked with the CIA and their agents (and I have) knows how careful they are - you do NOT confirm who works there, and EVERYONE in town KNOWS that. Why in God's name would Rove do this? It's inexcusable. And he confirmed it to a journalist, no less.

 

If a journalist said "so, I hear we're invading Syria on August 15" would Rove respond, "yeah I heard that too"? No, he wouldn't. This kind of journalist prying happens all the time. But Rove decided to answer this time, putting our national security at risk.

 

2. It confirms that Scottie McClellan REALLY misled the media when he said that it was "ridiculous" to suggest that Rove had anything to do with the Plame leak. In fact, Rove not only told TIME about Plame, he also confirmed the story for Novak. So, again, why did the White House mislead the media and the American public for two years by denying Rove's involvement?

 

3. Three days after he confirms the story for Novak, Rove tells TIME magazine about Plame. Rove can try to claim that it was Novak who brought Plame's status as CIA up in the conversation first (which still doesn't excuse Rove confirming it, good God), but Rove can't explain why HE decided to be the guy to offer Plame's CIA status on a silver platter to TIME magazine. That's a pattern of disclosure, rather than a one-time slip-up.

 

4. So now we have Rove leaking to Novak AND Matt Cooper, and Bush still hasn't fired him, no one has revoked his security clearance, and in fact Rove was walking side by side with Bush today. Could we have a bigger threat to our national security that a walking sieve attached at the hip of our president?

[southsider2k5]

The last 3 points are all predicated on the assumption (while probably true) that everyone knew who Plame was, and everyone knew that Rove told these people about Plame. That is a big leap of faith until there is proof of who else knew that stuff.

[sec159row2]

"Remove the medal of triumph, and attach the medal of shame"

 

Could we have a bigger threat to our national security that a walking sieve attached at the hip of our president?

 

 

yes, we could have a bigger threat...

 

it's called the new york times

[LowerCaseRepublican]

yes, we could have a bigger threat...

 

it's called the new york times

 

 

Now *that* is some comedy.

[Balta1701]

yes, we could have a bigger threat...

 

it's called the new york times

Well, the fact that they printed Judy Miller's B.S. about Iraq's WMD's really did do some serious damage to this country.

[Controlled Chaos]

Something from the other side...

 

Rove Trumps Wilson: It's Not Even Close

 

The Left isn't obsessed with destroying Karl Rove simply because they want to taint President Bush by taking out one of his closest confidants. When they're not focused on their fantasy that Vice President Cheney is the de facto president, they sometimes think Rove is. To destroy Rove is to neuter the Bush presidency.

 

As resolute, effective and visionary as President Bush has been in office, the Left obviously still doesn't consider him the man in charge. Only a superhuman Machiavellian strategist could have engineered this bumbler's unlikely ascension to the presidency.

 

And, anyone capable of facilitating a lightweight's rise to the highest office in the land must be not only brilliant, but sinister. For who but a sociopath would foist on the nation such a dangerous Neanderthal hell-bent on reversing the advances of "progressivism"?

 

The Left's underestimation of Bush and irrational fear of Rove distort their perception and drive them into a mouth-foaming feeding frenzy to devour this mad political scientist. These misapprehensions also explain their jaded view of the baseless claims against Rove in the Valerie Plame matter.

 

But in considering the Left's possible motives in this manufactured scandal against Rove, let's not forget the underlying subject matter driving the story: the Left's obsessive claim that Bush lied in maintaining that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling or trying to acquire WMD.

 

If there were such a thing as the personification and eventual death of an ideology, American liberalism would doubtlessly derive some degree of deathbed comfort from repeatedly chanting until it's final breath the "Bush lied" mantra. What began as a monstrous deception would finally ripen into a full-blown delusion where the engineers of the lie came to believe it themselves into eternity.

 

But American liberalism is far from dead and is eager to retrofit any available snippets, no matter how intrinsically unreliable, onto its "Bush lied about Iraqi WMD" template. One such snippet was Joe Wilson's supposed revelation that President Bush lied when stating these notorious 16 words in his 2003 SOTU address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

 

Now, let's be clear here. President Bush's statement was true when he made it, and it remains true today. The Brits made such a claim and reiterated it emphatically (with the Butler inquiry expressly validating President Bush's SOTU claim) even after the Bush-scavenging American Left falsely accused him of inventing the story.

 

That Joe Wilson claims he couldn't substantiate Britain's findings on his own trip to Niger in no way alters the irrefutable fact that the Brits made and stood by their claim. But as we now also know, analysts contradict Wilson's present version of the story, saying that his findings did more to support the Brits' conclusion than discredit it.

 

In their zeal to dispatch Rove, the Left willfully ignores that Wilson not only lied about his findings but also about who sent him, denying his wife recommended him for the job, and sometimes alleging that Vice President Cheney, who didn't know him from Adam, sent him.

 

They ignore that a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee discredited Wilson in two essential particulars. First, it confirmed that Plame recommended her husband for the African junket. Second, it found that certain forged documents Wilson bragged about debunking were not even discovered until eight months after his trip.

 

The Left also chooses to overlook Wilson's political motivation to damage President Bush -- his admitted longtime support of John Kerry and his monetary contributions to Kerry's presidential campaign.

 

They would have us believe the flawlessly calculating Rove is gratuitously vindictive. That he is foolish enough to risk conspicuously violating a criminal statute by outing an undercover CIA operative to a presumptively hostile member of the mainstream media all for the sake of petty revenge on the Wilson/Plame duo.

 

It strains credulity far less to deduce that Rove -- who readily provided information to authorities with no apparent fear of incriminating himself -- alluded to Wilson's wife's CIA status to refute his fraudulent implications against the Bush administration: that it sent Wilson to Niger.

 

It is uncontroverted that Rove didn't know Plame's name, much less that she was a covert operative. He was alerting Time's Matt Cooper to the incestuous, conflict of interest-laden genesis of Wilson's assignment (through his wife) in defense of his boss, not to lash out at or imperil this star-struck couple, who didn't even respect Plame's undercover status themselves.

 

If the Left didn't have so much invested in Wilson's fictions and obliterating Karl Rove and George Bush, they would abandon this non-starter against Rove and concede that the clear misfit in this overblown episode is the truly tainted and already thoroughly discredited Joe Wilson.

[Balta1701]

There's also a fair amount of questioning as to who this "Anonymous source" is who leaked this piece to the NYT/WaPo/AP and whether or not they can be trusted or if they are just saying this to try to get a cover story on the front page. Via Talkleft

 

The key clue that it is spin? Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, isn't endorsing it. Which, to me, says it's a public relations ploy, coming from one of Rove's lawyer/p.r. friends who thinks he or she is helping Rove by this disclosure. Defense lawyers and public relations people often do not see eye-to-eye. One is trying to protect a client's liberty. The other is trying to protect the client's reputation. In a criminal investigation, the lawyer is usually right. The less said in public, the better.

[KipWellsFan]

yes, we could have a bigger threat...

 

it's called the new york times

 

I'm not so hung up on this leak being a threat to the USA but what you just said is a f***ing embarassment.

Edited July 15, 2005 by KipWellsFan

[KipWellsFan]

As resolute, effective and visionary as President Bush has been in office

 

 

This guy must have been wasted for the last 4 and a half years.

 

It's really unbelievable be it left or right that people are coming to the aid of Rove before Wilson. Hey assholes! read a little bit about their pasts. One full of embarassment and scandal one with no scandal and honor. Sort of reminds me of the '04 election.

 

FACT: False. The Butler Report was intended to exonerate Tony Blair and George Bush to prevent them from facing criminal charges. For obvious reasons, it excluded reams of information about Bush's claim that showed that the White House lied through it's teeth in defending Bush's claim. (Indeed, as the link shows, people from the NSA, CIA etc. themselves stated that the SOTU claim did not have a sound backing.)

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004870.php

 

Is David Limbaugh Rush's kid?

 

Basically all the argument's against Wilson are a joke.

[KipWellsFan]

As resolute, effective and visionary as President Bush has been in office

 

 

This guy must have been wasted for the last 4 and a half years.

 

It's really unbelievable be it left or right that people are coming to the aid of Rove before Wilson. Hey assholes! read a little bit about their pasts. One full of embarassment and scandal one with no scandal and honor. Sort of reminds me of the '04 election.

 

already thoroughly discredited Joe Wilson.

 

if there's a hell these people all seem to be booking a first class ticket

 

FACT: False. The Butler Report was intended to exonerate Tony Blair and George Bush to prevent them from facing criminal charges. For obvious reasons, it excluded reams of information about Bush's claim that showed that the White House lied through it's teeth in defending Bush's claim. (Indeed, as the link shows, people from the NSA, CIA etc. themselves stated that the SOTU claim did not have a sound backing.)

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004870.php

 

 

Is David Limbaugh Rush's kid?

 

 

 

Basically all the argument's against Wilson are a joke.

[Balta1701]

Is David Limbaugh Rush's kid?

 

Basically all the argument's against Wilson are a joke.

Brother.

[Balta1701]

Something from the other side...

 

Rove Trumps Wilson: It's Not Even Close

In their zeal to dispatch Rove, the Left willfully ignores that Wilson not only lied about his findings but also about who sent him, denying his wife recommended him for the job, and sometimes alleging that Vice President Cheney, who didn't know him from Adam, sent him.

 

They ignore that a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee discredited Wilson in two essential particulars. First, it confirmed that Plame recommended her husband for the African junket. Second, it found that certain forged documents Wilson bragged about debunking were not even discovered until eight months after his trip.

 

The Left also chooses to overlook Wilson's political motivation to damage President Bush -- his admitted longtime support of John Kerry and his monetary contributions to Kerry's presidential campaign.

There's so many foolish points there I'm just going to hit on 3.

 

First of all...saying that Wilson alleged that Cheney himself had ordered Wilson's Nigeria trip is a deliberate distortion of Wilson's words. The quote in question comes from an appearance in 2003 by Wilson with Wolf Blitzer, and the Republicans grabbed 1 quote from that appearance without context and distorted it into that first point. Here's an analysis of the actual transcript.

 

Second...yes, it has been confirmed that Plame suggested her husband, a noted long time diplomat and confidant of George Bush 1, for the job, given his extensive experience with both Iraq and WMD issues. But if I were to reccomend something to my supervisor here...it wouldn't happen without their approval. In other words...just because she reccomended him for the job doesn't mean that she made the decision...someone else had to look at that and say "Ok". Someone else had to budget for it, schedule th ings, etc. Saying that Plame reccomended her husband for the job ignores this important point.

 

And third...Yes, Wilson contributed to the Kerry campaign after his wife was outed by Novak. If someone high up in the Administration caused your wife to basically be out of a job, wouldn't you help out the other guy? In 2000, Wilson contributed equally to the Gore and Bush campaigns. Where's that information in that piece? No where.

[bmags]

i don't understand how you could be so attached to a party that when someone in your party does something wrong you immediately blame it on the democrats...or the republicans...

[KipWellsFan]

Good point Bmags, but there are many Republicans who still have spines that are having no part in the effort to ruin Wilson's cred.

[kapkomet]

What credibility? None of these f***ers have an ounce of credibility. They are all lying to protect their own asses and push their own agendas.

 

f*** them all.

[Balta1701]

Just another addendum to this discussion about today's grand jury leaks...

 

Based on what Rove has admitted to already, and based on what Novak has said, we can now officially say that Karl Rove should have his security clearance revoked.

 

From the NYT

 

Mr. Novak wrote that when he called a second official for confirmation, the source said, "Oh, you know about it."

 

That second source was Mr. Rove, the person briefed on the matter said.

 

Here's what a TPM Cafe writer had to say about this.

 

it's now abundantly clear that Rove violated the Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement (known as the "SF 312") that federal employees with access to classified information have to sign (I'm assuming Rove is not exempt from this agreement as a White House employee; please tell me if I'm wrong).

 

The Briefing Booklet that accompanies the SF 312 provides a handy FAQ section that Rove should read.  One question states:

 

Question 19: If information that a signer of the SF 312 knows to have been classified appears in a public source, for example, in a newspaper article, may the signer assume that the information has been declassified and disseminate it elsewhere?

 

Answer: No. Information remains classified until it has been officially declassified. Its disclosure in a public source does not declassify the information. Of course, merely quoting the public source in the abstract is not a second unauthorized disclosure. However, before disseminating the information elsewhere or confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, further dissemination of the information or confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.

 

If confirming the accuracy of classified information that has already been made public still violates the guidelines, then surely confirming information to a reporter before a story is made public is an equal or greater offense.

 

And from what I've read, covert or not, Plame's identity as a CIA employee was classified information.  So if Rove did indeed confirm that fact for Novak as it appears, we've got a pretty clear violation.

 

It's also worth noting that the terms of the SF 312 provide that breach of the agreement may result in (a) "termination of any security clearances" the person holds, (B) "removal from any position of special confidence and trust requiring such clearances," or © the "termination of [] employment or other relationships with the Departments or Agencies that granted my security clearance or clearances."

[FlaSoxxJim]

A potential technical stumbling block to showing actual illegality was brought up in yesterday's abcnews.com's The Note. It had to do with the fact that Plame was not on overseas deep cover assignment at the time she was outed.

 

Certainly a technicality, but it sounds like exactly the kind of little legal opening a crack team of lawyers can pounce on and get him off.

 

Checking my scorecard though, there is still one White House source of the two initially alluded to by Novak that remais unaccounted for. Lots of renewed attention on Ari. Maybe the "other interests" he left the post to pursue include a keen interest in not being incarcerated?

 

Doesn't sound like "Scooter" is off the hook either, and he is a person who has been personified as being "obsessed with Joe Willson" by unidentified staffers.

[Balta1701]

A potential technical stumbling block to showing actual illegality was brought up in yesterday's abcnews.com's The Note.  It had to do with the fact that Plame was not on overseas deep cover assignment at the time she was outed.

 

Certainly a technicality, but it sounds like exactly the kind of little legal opening a crack team of lawyers can pounce on and get him off.

There is no way this works as a way around the law. Let's start with the actual text of the law.

 

    Sec. 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources

 

    (a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent

 

    Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined not more than $50,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

 

    (B) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of covert agents as result of having access to classified information

 

    Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined not more than $25,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

 

    © Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents

 

    Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States, discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual's classified intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined not more than $15,000 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

There is nothing in this law which mentions an actual deployment at the time, the only requirement is that the person is a covert agent of the United States. There are only 2 ways around it; either it has to be unintentional by Rove or it has to have been given to him by someone else, which is the defense his guys have been trying to pull.

 

Now, let's look at why that explanation is so illogical; when you out a covert agent, you don't just out that covert agent him/herself, you also break up everything that the agent in question has done.

 

Let's think about all the things that this person has done. First, she was employed by a CIA front company. The moment Novak's column was written, the cover of every single person who was supposedly employed by the same company or any project/person who dealt with that same company was also immediately blown. In other words, there could be dozens of other people who's cover was blown simultaneously. And any project that received money from that front company was exposed as a CIA operation.

 

On top of that, people have to have record overseas of where this person has gone and what they've done. Pictures. Maybe even surveillance. She has to have met with dozens of other people. Some of them had to be other covert U.S. agents. Others could have been covert agents of other nations or even people who were working for us in other governments. Immediately upon publication of that article, every single person she had ever met with was exposed as well. If she had met with another covert agent and there was a record of that meeting, then it could have exposed another covert agent. Or it could have exposed other companies. Or just about anything else.

 

Think about that. In a career spanning tens of years as a CIA employee, how many people could she have met with to gain information useful to this country? The moment Novakula's article was published, each and every one of their lives may have been put in danger. The lives of everyone who dealt with that CIA front company may have been put in danger. Other CIA fronts may have been exposed. The damage could potentially have been enormous. Literally, that sort of information could set back our intelligence operations years, if not decades. People could have died because of that leak. Terrorists could get their hands on WMD because of that leak. It doesn't matter if she was on duty overseas or not...every single thing she ever did was immediately compromised when the Douchebag of Liberty exposed her.

 

We have no idea how much damage was done, because exposing any damage would only do more damage. So there's no way for us to know what the damage was, which is the brilliance of this leak; it's possible for the Republicans to claim that nothing bad happened, because it's utterly impossible for us to learn what the results were.

 

That's why that law was written. So that there was punishment for anyone who broke a person's cover intentionally. Some things happen by accident. But this was no accident. Someone out there did potentially horrific damage to the U.S. intelligence services. Someone deserves to be punished for this.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I agree with you entirely, it's about a lot more than outing a single agent. And it carries through to all the families that are exposed now as well that are shielded from having ties to the operatives for a reason.

 

The bit from The Note just has me concerned that there is maneuvering room for Rove's lawyars.

[southsider2k5]

I agree with you entirely, it's about a lot more than outing a single agent.  And it carries through to all the families that are exposed now as well that are shielded from having ties to the operatives for a reason.

 

The bit from The Note just has me concerned that there is maneuvering room for Rove's lawyars.

 

There are enough legal holes to drive a truck through unfortunately. Just as usual, it depends on what your definition of "is" is. Instead the only people who are going to win are going to be the lawyers.

[Balta1701]

There are enough legal holes to drive a truck through unfortunately.  Just as usual, it depends on what your definition of "is" is.  Instead the only people who are going to win are going to be the lawyers.

And this nation's enemies, who now have an easier time of acquiring WMD's because the CIA was weakened.

[kapkomet]

And this nation's enemies, who now have an easier time of acquiring WMD's because the CIA was weakened.

I know what you were going after, but the weakening of the CIA started long before there was a Karl Rove.

 

GMAFB.