When exactly was it that president Bush stopped recognizing Turd Blossom?
I’d hate to think that he deceived us all by claiming his staff was pure, when he knew that it wasn’t. Did Bush lie to the prosecutor, or was he still clueless at the time of his interview?
The article in my local paper today has the defense as something like this: It was not a deliberate attempt to out a covert agent, it was an off-hand comment made in an attempt to warn the Time journalist about the potential bias Wilson might have in coming to the conclusions he did about WMDs. And, Rove did not mention Plame by name.
We’ll see how that plays out over the next few days…
As some bloggers are commenting this AM, the defense that he didn’t “name” her vs. his admitting saying, in effect, “Joe Wilson’s wife is a CIA agent” seems pretty thin.
I didn’t actually steal that necklace. I just picked it up to take to the checkout and forgot I had it…
Nope, just as “Joe Wilson’s wife.” Unless Wilson’s got several other wives wandering around, that seems like pretty positive identification.
What would Yahweh’s Son do?
He could’ve made WMDs miraculously appear in Iraq right after the invasion, so it wouldn’t matter what Wilson said.
So what stage are we at? We’ve passed the “nothing happened because you can’t prove it” and “let’s wait until all the facts are in” stages. We haven’t reached the “why do you keep bringing up ancient history?” stage. And I’m guessing under the circumstances we won’t be hearing “it’s all about national security” being used. So we’re reduced to “technically it wasn’t a crime” and “the Democrats did it first”. So:
“Mr Rove, is it true you broke the law and endangered national security by revealing the identity of a CIA agent?”
“Well, that depends on what the definition is “is” is.”
I heard on the radio last night that it may not be a crime, because she was no longer an undercover agent. Her office was in Langley (I think), where you cuold not have an office and be considered an undercover agent. Does anyone kow more about this?
Did they mention the name of the CIA front company that she worked through?
Brewster-Jennings & Associates
Langley is a town. Yes, the CIA headquarters are in Langley but working in that town does not equal CIA agent.
NY Times Online article with breaking news
Man, when they have disinformation they want to spread, you can’t get them to shut the hell up. But ask them a question about something they’d can’t defend, even irrationally, and you need the jaws of life to get their mouths open.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply so. My equivocation was meant to point to the fact that I didn’t know the building her offices were in. I had heard that they were at a known CIA location. Does anyone know if that’s true?
A link to previous categorical denials about Rove’s involvement:
Plame still considered herself covert, the CIA still considered her covert (hence their request for the investigation), and she was not able to do her job anymore after she was outed. A phone call to the CIA would have confirmed her exact status, so why would we still have an investigation two years later if she were not actually a covert operative?
This “she wasn’t really covert” stuff is just speculation by the Bush apologists, an attempt to find a shade of lipstick that makes this pig look good.
Speaking of which, I just don’t have the fortitude to venture into the right-wing blogosphere…what is the prevailing spin from that direction? Have any prominent RW bloggers or pundits done the honorable thing and condemned this, or are they all still searching desparately for a way for this all to have been perfectly legal and therefore moral?
Doctor J,
If you don’t think that politics are playing any role in this you are either naive or have blinders on. I’ve been hearing–and I don’t frequent RW blogs–that at the point that her UC status was revelaed by Novak or whoever else,she was no longer UC.
And for the record, as I stated earlier when asking the same question: “I certainly think that if she was in fact an undercover agent and it was leaked, it was treason, and that somebody should start making the noose.”
From Today’s Washington Post “White House Briefing” column:
On the right:
Blogger Tom Maguire writes: “This Newsweek revelation may create some political heat for Karl, but it is far from clear that, if these notes accurately describe the conversation, Karl Rove had the intent and knowledge that are also elements of a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.”
A post on the Powerline blog suggests: “The media feeding frenzy will, indeed, be massive. But absent a serious claim of a statutory violation or perjury, it’s questionable whether anyone apart from liberal bloggers and other pre-existing Bush haters will partake in the media’s dog food. This isn’t a top presidential aide accepting an expensive gift, or engaging in lewd sexual conduct. It’s a top aide providing truthful information to journalists in response to lies told to embarrass the administration and our government.”
Blogger Hugh Hewitt says its all particularly unseemly in the wake of the London transit bombings. “[T]he president values and trusts Rove, and the assault on Rove has nothing to do with outrage over injury to the national security and everything to do with bleeding Bush. The idea that the forces that defended Clinton’s bald lies under oath are now ‘outraged’ over spun-up pretend perjury charges would be wildly amusing but for the fact that the tragic losses of the past few days have not interrupted the vendettaists for even a decent interval.”
But don’t you think the prosecutors in the case would know if a crime was committed or not? They wouldn’t be trying to find out who leaked the name if it wasn’t a crime to have leaked the name. There was a crime committed, it is a question of WHO committed it.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.
I’ve not heard a serious argument advanced that she was not officially undercover at the time. It may exist, but I haven’t heard it. I don’t buy it, because if that’s the case, nothing afterwards makes any sense.
The argument that I have heard is that it was an “open secret” among Washington insiders that Plame worked for the CIA, so she was “functionally” not covert. For one thing, she was still apparently covert enough to do work that she could not do once she was outed; for another, the difference between an open secret and a fact confirmed by the government is huge, and it doesn’t matter how many people knew about Plame, it was still illegal for Rove to leak it to the press from the White House.