Rove involved in exposure of CIA WMD operative ID

[Moses]

He worked for Nixon, and he operates like Tricky Dick. Yes he leaked the name, but not "knowingly":

Rove 'Knowingly' Refusing Interviews on Plame Leak

By E&P Staff

Published: July 04, 2005 6:20 PM ET

NEW YORK Two days after his lawyer confirmed that his name turned up as a source in Matthew Cooper's notes on the Valerie Plame/CIA case, top White House adviser Karl Rove refused to answer questions about the development today.

Rove traveled with President Bush when he spoke at a July 4 event in West Virginia today, but refused all requests for interviews about his role in the controversy that threatens to send Cooper, of Time magazine, and Judith Miller of The New York Times to jail this week for refusing to reveal sources.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had called on Rove to clear the air on Sunday. "We've heard it from his lawyer, but it would be nice to hear it directly from Mr. Rove that he didn't leak the identity of Valerie Plame, and that he didn't direct anyone else to do such a dastardly thing," said Schumer.



....Rove's lawyer has asserted that while he was interviewed by Cooper he was not the key source who revealed Plame's identity as a CIA agent. Rove's critics, however, suggest that he could be charged with perjury if he did not tell the truth about this to a grand jury.



Meanwhile, Lawrence O'Donnell, the MSNBC analyst who first broke the Rove/Cooper link on Friday, wrote on the Huffington Post blog today, that Rove's lawyer had "launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client 'never knowingly disclosed classified information.' Knowingly.

"Not coincidentally, the word 'knowing' is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent '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.'"

---

E&P Staff
 

[Moses]

What the emails said, according to Isikoff:


  MSNBC.com

Matt Cooper's Source
What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.

Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute "personal consent" from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court. Another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, refused to identify her source and chose to go to jail instead.

For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.

The controversy arose when Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying that he had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson said he had found no evidence to support the claim. Wilson's column was an early attack on the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify going to war in Iraq. The White House wished to discredit Wilson and his attacks. [sic- "attack" is an interesting choice of words, since Wilson was trying to get the truth out. Is this what the neocons in the media consider an "attack"?] The question for the prosecutor is whether someone in the administration, in an effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, intentionally revealed the covert identity of his wife.


In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: [Cooper concludes, apparently believing Rove, or wanting to believe Rove-- Rove would clearly only call those who wanted to promote the Iraq war and whom he could rely on to type up Admin propaganda w/o question] "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

[Luciane Goldberg friend Isikoff concludes, for Rove and in Rove's favor:] Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. [i.e. he hadn't read about it in Novak's column as I think he claimed before, or has been claimed on his behalf] Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.

A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," [ha ha ha ha ha! they think we are morons] the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa. [Cheney's opposition to the trip and the information that was uncovered implicates Cheney-- when will an investigation begin on him?]

Fitzgerald is known as a tenacious, thorough prosecutor. He refused to comment, and it is not clear whether he is pursuing evidence that will result in indictments, or just tying up loose ends in a messy case. But the Cooper e-mail offers one new clue to the mystery of what Fitzgerald is probing—and provides a glimpse of what was unfolding at the highest levels as the administration defended a part of its case for going to war in Iraq.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/

[Moses]

The Nation's David Corn

sketches two scenarios, both of them bad for Rove:

"This e-mail demonstrates that Rove committed a firing offense. He leaked national security information as part of a fierce campaign to undermine Wilson, who had criticized the White House on the war on Iraq. Rove's overworked attorney, Robert Luskin, defends his client by arguing that Rove never revealed the name of Valerie Plame/Wilson to Cooper and that he only referred to her as Wilson's wife.

"Leak? What Leak?" by Howie Kurtz

"This is not much of a defense. If Cooper or any other journalist had written that 'Wilson's wife works for the CIA'--without mentioning her name--such a disclosure could have been expected to have the same effect as if her name had been used: Valerie Wilson would have been compromised, her anti-WMD work placed at risk and national security potentially harmed. Either Rove knew that he was revealing an undercover officer to a reporter or he was identifying a CIA officer without bothering to check on her status and without considering the consequences of outing her. Take your pick: In both scenarios Rove is acting in a reckless and cavalier fashion, ignoring national security interests to score a political point against a policy foe."

The Note offers this assessment:

"This is a significant political problem for Rove and the President.

"Some Republicans with standing believe he'll have to make unClintonian accounting for his actions, and soon.

"Saying, in defense, that he didn't 'say her name' or was trying to 'wave off' Cooper is, for many, hairsplitting. It may save Rove from legal trouble, but it certainly does not get him free and clear of the political responsibility. . . .

"For the average American, it is unseemly for the president's senior adviser, using inside information, to discredit enemies of the president anonymously."

[tombldr]

Prolly deserving of a new thread, but, nah:

Video Clip: FAUX News anchor John Gibson says Rove deserving of a metal for outing Plame

[Moses]

I think it would be good to keep track of who is demonizing Joe Wilson, maybe in the "who are they demonizing today?" media board. I think a pattern will develop.

[Moses]

Keeping in mind that the Times is a player...:


July 17, 2005

Rove E - Mailed Security Official About Talk
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 11:36 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Prosecutors investigating a CIA officer's blown cover gathered e-mail evidence that a top White House intelligence official knew Bush confidant Karl Rove had spoken to a reporter just days before the journalist identified the covert operative.

Rove told then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley in the July 11, 2003, e-mail that he had spoken with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and tried to caution him away from some allegations that CIA operative Valerie Plame's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.

''I didn't take the bait,'' Rove wrote in the message, disclosed to The Associated Press. In the memo, Rove recounted how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had been making.

The White House turned the e-mail over to prosecutors, and Rove told a grand jury about it last year during testimony in which he also acknowledged discussing Plame's covert work for the CIA with Cooper and syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Rove, however, told the grand jury he first learned of Plame's CIA work from journalists, not government sources.

Just days before the e-mail, Plame's husband had written a newspaper opinion piece accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence, including a ''highly doubtful'' report that Saddam Hussein bought nuclear materials from the African country of Niger.

''Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming,'' Rove wrote Hadley, who has since risen to the top job of national security adviser.

''When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this.''

Frederick Jones, a spokesman for Hadley, said Friday he could not comment due to the continuing criminal investigation. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said his client answered all the questions prosecutors asked during three grand jury appearances. He said Rove never invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or Bush's executive privilege guaranteeing confidential advice from aides.

Rove, Bush's closest adviser, told a grand jury the e-mail was consistent with his recollection that his intention in talking with Cooper wasn't to divulge Plame's identity but to caution the reporter against certain allegations Plame's husband was making, according to legal professionals familiar with Rove's testimony.

They spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury investigation.

Rove sent the e-mail shortly before leaving the White House early for a family vacation that weekend, already aware that Novak was planning an article about Plame and Wilson in his column, the legal sources said.

Rove also knew that then-CIA Director George Tenet was about to issue a dramatic statement that took responsibility for some bad Iraq intelligence but that also called into question some of Wilson's assertions, the sources said.

Republicans cheered the latest revelations Friday, saying they showed Rove wasn't trying to hurt Plame but instead was trying to informally warn reporters to be cautious about some of Wilson's claims.

''What it says is, Karl Rove wasn't the leaker, he was actually the recipient of the information, not the provider,'' Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on Fox News. ''So there are probably a lot of folks in Washington who have prejudged this, who have rushed to judgment who are trying to smear Karl Rove.''

Democrats, however, said that even if Rove wasn't the leaker, someone still divulged Plame's identity and possibly violated the law.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders asked House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Friday to let Congress hold hearings into the controversy regardless of the criminal probe now under way.

''In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was under way did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters,'' Pelosi wrote.

Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless knowingly divulged his or her identity.

Rove's conversations with Novak and Cooper took place just days after Wilson suggested in his opinion piece in The New York Times that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Summarizing a trip he made to Africa on behalf of the CIA, Wilson wrote that he'd concluded it was highly doubtful the nation of Niger had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq.

Tenet issued a lengthy statement five days later saying he never should have allowed Bush to use the Niger information in his State of the Union address but that Wilson's report did not resolve whether Iraq was seeking uranium from abroad.

---

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

[Moses]

Plame leak timeline II (Gannon)

[Moses]

2 hours, 51 minutes ago

news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1520&e=1&u=/afp/20050717/pl_afp/usmediajusticecia_050717211619


WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Time magazine reporter revealed that he first learned from top White House official Karl Rove that the wife of an ambassador who criticized the Bush administration worked at the CIA.


Time reporter Matthew Cooper said Rove told him ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife -- Valerie Plame -- worked at the CIA, but that the now White House deputy chief of staff had not mentioned her name.

Cooper had faced jail time for refusing to discuss his sources with a grand jury investigating the leak of Plame's name, but he avoided prison after Rove released him from their confidentiality agreement.

In a Time article released Sunday, Cooper revealed what he told the grand jury on Wednesday as a federal prosecutor looks into whether the leak of Plame's name as a CIA employee was a crime.

The reporter said he called Rove on July 11, 2003, after Wilson wrote a New York Times opinion piece contradicting President George W. Bush's assertion that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Niger.

"As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name," wrote Cooper.

"Rove did, however, clearly indicate that she worked at the 'agency' -- by that, I told the grand jury, I inferred that he obviously meant the CIA and not, say, the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Rove added that she worked on 'WMD' (weapons of mass destruction) issues and that she was responsible for sending Wilson (to Niger). This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife."

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told Newsweek in an article published last week that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."

Cooper also revealed for the first time a conversation he had with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who also released Cooper from their confidentiality agreement.

The reporter said he gave limited testimony about their conversations in August 2004.

"He (Libby) denied that Cheney knew about or played any role in the Wilson trip to Niger," Cooper said.

"On background, I asked Libby if he had heard anything about Wilson's wife sending her husband to Niger. Libby replied, 'Yeah, I've heard that too,' or words to that effect."

But Libby, like Rove, never used Plame's name directly or indicated that she was a covert agent, he added.

Rove has come under fire from opposition Democrats over his role in the case. And Wilson, who has said the leak was in retaliation for his repudiation of the administration's claims about Iraq seeking uranium in Niger, has called for Rove to be fired.

Fellow Republicans have rushed to Rove's defense and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman on Sunday accused Democrats of engaging in a "smear campaign."

"Karl Rove is a good man; he is an honest man. He works every single day for this country," Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman told NBC television. "And the notion that people are trying to rush to judgment to smear him for political gain is outrageous and it's wrong."

While Cooper has avoided jail, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was imprisoned for refusing to discuss her sources for a story she never even wrote.

Plame's identity was first revealed in an article by veteran columnist Robert Novak, who cited "two senior administration officials."

In the July 14, 2003 article, Novak wrote that Plame was an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction who suggested that Wilson be sent to Niger.

Cooper said he only learned Plame's after speaking to Rove, either in Novak's column or on the Internet.

[Moses]

Danny Schecter reports:

The latest in today's Washington Post:

'Plame's Identity Marked As Secret'

"A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contains information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked '(S)' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to government officials."

WAS THIS ALL AN ACCIDENT?

David Gagne asks in the Boston Globe: Will Bush give Rove a pass?

"Nothing in the Bush administration happens 'by accident.' George W. Bush did not win two terms as president by accident. He did it with the carefully thought-out ideas of Karl Rove. Rove has never done anything in his political career without first considering all angles. He then acts when he believes it will further his or his boss's political cause. Bush has staked his integrity on having an administration that does not leak information. In fact, he has said that he would fire anyone who would do so. Yet he seems to have changed this criterion in the face of the fact that Rove did just that -- leaked information that resulted in the outing of an undercover CIA agent (''Bush seems to shift on his grounds for dismissal,' Page A1, July 19).

"By making it appear 'accidental' because he made a 'casual' remark, Rove has perhaps saved himself from going to prison for having committed a federal crime. But fact is fact: He leaked classified information. So why has Bush not acted? It seems there are two possibilities. The first is that he is a man of his word only when it suits his interests. Rove has been instrumental in Bush's political success. Perhaps Bush meant to say that he has one set of rules for his advisers and another for everyone else.

"The second, more disturbing, possibility is that Bush authorized, either explicitly or implicitly, the leak to retaliate against Joseph C. Wilson IV, who publicly presented evidence that the administration was distorting facts to sell the American people on going to war Either way, the president has painted himself into a corner."

www.boston.com

MOLLY: THE ELEPHANT IS IN THE ROOM

Molly Ivins writes in a piece reprinted on AlterNet:

"Now it's getting funnier and funnier. There is an elephant in the living room and we're sitting around having a conversation about whether there's an elephant in the living room.

"'I think there's an elephant in the living room.'

"'Well, there's a lot of elephant poop around, but that doesn't prove there's an elephant in the living room.'

"The entire Republican Party is shocked (!) anyone would think that Karl Rove (!!) would leak a story to damage a political opponent. Oh, the horror. And Karl has always been such a sweet guy. Just to give you an idea, one time Rove was displeased with the job done by a political advance man and said, 'We will f— him. Do you hear me? We will f— him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever f—ed him!' (From an article by Ron Suskind). And that was a guy who was on his side."

www.alternet.org/story/23622/