Rove was Time reporter's source.....Follow

Rove's lawyer acknowledges he was Time reporter's source

Hmmmmmm. Here's another article on that too.

Hope he goes to jail.

Edited, Sun Jul 10 19:54:27 2005 by kundalini

Kundie thanks for the good news.

The guy is more slippery than a greased scotsman though, I am sure that he will dodge it. Or it will be a Ollie North situation where he gets tagged for a minor thing then pardoned when Bush goes on his way out.

Except when his voice is digitally stored and replayed it comes out as children screaming. Part of the deal when he sold his soul.

This is me channeling Gbaji in the not so distant future

"...he didnt "intentionally" do it..."

just a portion of the mountain of typed text to come but its a much more reliable forecast than anything your weatherman can give you.

I'm guessing Rove may get off due to the agent not having been specifically mentioned as being a covert operative or something. Then we'll probably have Bush trying to get him pardoned on the idea that he's a grand patriot that just made a little mistake that shouldn't be held against him. We'll have Fox news saying how awful the liberal media is for attacking Rove on his little mistake, then anyone who speaks ill of Rove will probably be spoken of as liberal scumb bags, causing the United States to get behind Bush more so and we'll end up with having Bush get a 3rd term somehow.

Though maybe I'm being too optimistic.

That part alone would make me happy.

sad thing is it will end up in a wash just like the foul trator who stole classified documents for Pres. Clinton who got away with everything.

bunch of bloody traders all of them.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For two years, the White House has insisted that presidential adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak of a CIA officer's identity. And President Bush said the leaker would be fired.

But Bush's spokesman wouldn't repeat any of those assertions Monday in the face of Rove's own lawyer saying his client spoke with at least one reporter about Valerie Plame's role at the CIA before she was identified in a newspaper column.
[...]
White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to discuss the matter at two news briefings Monday. He said he would not comment because the leak is the focus of a federal criminal investigation.

"The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium," McClellan said in response to a barrage of questions about Rove and the previous White House denials.

"I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said," McClellan said. "And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time." He said the appropriate time would be when the investigation is completed.

Anyone taking bets on Rove not getting fired?

Sheesh!! You can't expect Pubbies to be all up in arms about Rove when that ***** Hilary just compared the President to Alfred E. Neuman!!! Get your priorities straight!

Not treason but rather breaks the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982,

Has a sentence of up to 10 years and 50,000$ fine

Not necessarily. Again. You guys are still confusing two very different things:

1. "The Leak". The leak, and the person for whom that charge is appropriate would be the person who knew that Valarie Plame was an undercover operative with the CIA and passed that information on.

2. "Talking about her working with the CIA". If someone who does not have access to the fact that she's an undercover CIA operative is talking about it with a reporter, that person cannot be the leak.


Rove can only be charged with a crime if it can be shown that he had access to a NOC list of CIA operatives and therefore *could* have been the leak. My understanding is that he does not have that level of access. Additionally, while the newsweek email does suggest that Rove talked about this with Cooper, it does not establish that Rove was the source of this information for the reporter. For all we know Rove was just confirming that he too thought that she was working for the CIA. He may have had no official knowledge that this was true, and most certainly could not have known in what way he worked for the CIA.


What I find interesting is that the original reporter who "broke" the story about Valeria Plame has mostly been ignored in all of this. Novak stated on several occasions that the fact that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA was "common knowledge". It was the kind of thing that might come up at a party as "Oh. that's so and so... You know his wife works at the CIA?...".

In order to show that Rove did *anything* wrong, you'd have to establish that Rove had inside knowledge that she was an undercover operative for the CIA. You'd also have to show that he was the "source" of that information, and not just one of a hundred people who knew it after it was leaked. Everything I've seen of this story smells strongly of Rove just being someone who knew vaguely that she worked at CIA, just like dozens of other people did. If that's the case, then he did absolutely nothing wrong.

Edited, Mon Jul 11 16:42:05 2005 by gbaji

I agree with gbaji about Novak. He's cut a deal for himself in all this, I'd bet the farm on that.

As for Rove, he knew. Don't be stupid; he has clearance to find out whatever the hell he wants to find out.

If he didn't know, then he was a careless fool; it's my belief that he's neither. Evil, yes. Careless? Foolish? No.

Not necessarily either though. Imagine this scenario. You're sitting at a dinner party with a bunch of people, and as part of the conversations, someone mentions that Wilson's wife works for the CIA. At that same table, two other people say that they also know she works for the CIA. Later that week, you're chatting at a coffehouse with a group of different people, and they also mention that she works for the CIA.

Given that, and given that you *don't* have access to a NOC list, you'd have absolutely no way to know you were outting an undercover operative if 3 weeks later, in a conversation with a reporter looking into how it came to be that Wilson got an "assignment" from the CIA in the first place, you mentioned "Hey. Maybe you should ask his wife. I heard she worked for the CIA...".


That is a far more plausible explanation for what happened here then the somewhat ridiculous idea that Rove had accesss to a NOC list, and passed that information on directly to a reporter. Should he have said that? Maybe. Maybe not. But given the bits and pieces we've heard it's really sounding more like the "leak" occured long before Rove got involved. He was just one of many people who'd been leaked *to*, not the other way around.

If you don't have access to a NOC list, you'd have no way to know her job at the CIA was supposed to be secret, would you? Which is exactly what Novak said when he was questioned by a grand jury on this issue. Which is presumably what Rove said during one of the 3 times he's *already* testified to grand juries on this issue. But since we don't necessarily have access to what was said, we have only the rumor mill to go on.