# Did Karl Rove out the CIA Agent? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 2, 2005, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791 "2005-07-02T03:04:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/421 "2005-07-13T18:55:39Z")
Let’s just change a few words and see what happens, shall we? President Bush said Wednesday that he will withhold judgment about [del]top aide Karl Rove’s involvement in leaking the identity of a CIA agent[/del] _Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction_ until a [del]federal criminal [/del] _UN technical experts’_ investigation into the matter is complete. “This is a serious investigation,” Bush said at the end of a meeting with his Cabinet, with [del]Rove[/del]_Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld_ sitting just behind him. “I will be more than happy to comment on this matter once this investigation is complete.”… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/422 "2005-07-13T18:56:49Z")
Hell, **Elvis** , everybody’s a damn centrist, to hear them tell it! **Reeder** and me are just about the only out and about lefty-radicals here, probably because we’re too old to give a shit anymore. Screw centrism! Moderates don’t lead, they won’t follow, and they can’t get out of the way! Every single advance in our history, from racial equality to child labor laws, was originally advanced by radicals. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong, go to the root of injustice and _rip it out!_ I’m reminded of Dick Gregory’s great line about racism: “Get your foot off my grandma’s neck! Now, goddamit, not one toe at a time!” ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/423 "2005-07-13T18:58:21Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Doesn’t it matter that one be not only right, but be right \*for the right reasons \* as well? No. That way lies McCarthyism. Everyone will have their own reason for getting on the train; there’s no need for the conducter to ensure that they all have his own reason. If you want to only allow people to follow your path if they also think the same way as you, you’ll be the only one there. By the way, **Bricker** is not a moral cripple. Partisan? Sure. Wrong-headed? Sure. At times a shill? Sure. Morally crippled? Not in a million years. That way lies madness. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/424 "2005-07-13T18:58:55Z")
Moderates _do_ follow when given a good reason, and a helluva lot faster than conservatives. When we’re in the grip of reactionaries, we’re on the same side as you. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/425 "2005-07-13T19:03:11Z")
Just so. See you on the barricades. Your turn to bring pie. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/426 "2005-07-13T19:04:43Z")
Dang, **Elvis**. ISTM that any degree of alliance at all with **Bricker** is a positive development. Due to the nature of **Bricker** ’s posting history, I don’t really fear that you are going to be endangering his present alignment towards the Forces of Goodness and Light, but you are in great danger (IMHO) of saddling yourself with a reputation as a doctrinaire asshat. IME, **Bricker** crafts his posts with enough qualifications to give himself cover, such that, when and if he is forced to concede a point, he may successfully defend himself against charges of “waffling,” “flip-flopping,” or “rat-like sinking ship-deserting.” This is a legitimate debating tactic, and if his artful use of it makes you have to work harder that you want to to catch him out and score a point, well, that’s just too bad. **Bricker** , welcome to the right side, at least for the moment. Perhaps someday, we’ll be able to pour you a glass of chardonnay and provide brie on water crackers. For now, though, please help yourself to the Boone’s Farm (Dixie cups are on the far end of the table) and I’ll have Edith over here squirt Cheez-Whiz on some Triscuits. _Bon apetit_! ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/427 "2005-07-13T19:10:45Z")
Pssst! **K.**! Birkenstocks! You forgot the Birkenstocks! Size 13, EEEE. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/428 "2005-07-13T19:36:05Z")
Possibly baseless rumor, gleefully reported… > **[News!](https://first-draft.com/2013/05/27/news/?file=article&sid=3683&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0)** > > This was a major story on the Today show on Friday.MAJOR: The rollout of former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) New York City mayoral bid hit a snag Thursday when it was revealed that his campai… Ari Fleisher! (Its unseemly to enjoy this so much. Note to self: schedule penance “after the investigation is complete.”) ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/429 "2005-07-13T20:01:15Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Possibly baseless rumor, gleefully reported… Damnation. Like refuses to open. Have a summary for our titilation? -Joe, hee hee ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/430 "2005-07-13T20:09:27Z")
Won’t open for me either. So what’s the scoop? Is Ari the other rat? Don’t worry about hemming and hawing, I’m willing to go with rank speculation and rumor. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/431 "2005-07-13T20:30:28Z")
Opened for me, but it took minutes. Not much new there – rumors about which administration officials have been questioned by the prosecutor, this time including Ari, but nobody knows if they’re looking at malfeasance by Ari or if he’s providing info about someone else’s deeds. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/432 "2005-07-13T20:32:43Z")
And now I’m getting a “forbidden” error. Looks like the author locked it up suddenly. Shrug. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/433 "2005-07-13T20:52:01Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > “There is great confusion under Heaven, and the situation is excellent!” - Mao Tze Tung “Sounds like one of your parties, sir.” - Honey Huan ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/434 "2005-07-13T21:24:49Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > But if we make the focus a _legal_ issue, the precise meaning of treason, you offer them an out. If they can come up with a technicality whereby they can wriggle out of that charge, it will be seen as an acquital. That is exactly what they are hoping for. If they can link politics to the legal issues, they will try to say that a failure to convict is a blanket exhoneration of everything he did. > [@Arianna Huffington](#): > > Given what we already know about Rove’s conversation, we can, right now, without even a single new revelation, and without reservation, say this: he is guilty of behavior that dishonored the White House and that placed the dirty politics of vindictive retribution over national security. > Ethics isn’t about what is legal or ilegal. It’s about what is right and what is wrong. And what Rove did was wrong – and no amount of legalistic hair-splitting will change that > [@Tim Russert](#): > > One Republican said to me last night, “If this was a Democratic White House, we’d have Congressional hearings in a second.” ---
**Author:** ![JimSox5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5a626/32.png) [@JimSox5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimSox5)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/435 "2005-07-13T21:25:08Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Dang, **Elvis**. ISTM that any degree of alliance at all with **Bricker** is a positive development. Due to the nature of **Bricker** ’s posting history, I don’t really fear that you are going to be endangering his present alignment towards the Forces of Goodness and Light, but you are in great danger (IMHO) of saddling yourself with a reputation as a doctrinaire asshat. IME, **Bricker** crafts his posts with enough qualifications to give himself cover, such that, when and if he is forced to concede a point, he may successfully defend himself against charges of “waffling,” “flip-flopping,” or “rat-like sinking ship-deserting.” This is a legitimate debating tactic, and if his artful use of it makes you have to work harder that you want to to catch him out and score a point, well, that’s just too bad. > > **Bricker** , welcome to the right side, at least for the moment. Perhaps someday, we’ll be able to pour you a glass of chardonnay and provide brie on water crackers. For now, though, please help yourself to the Boone’s Farm (Dixie cups are on the far end of the table) and I’ll have Edith over here squirt Cheez-Whiz on some Triscuits. _Bon apetit_! Ah, thank you, **kaylasdad**. That’s the eloquence I was lacking while driving to the same point. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/436 "2005-07-13T21:52:46Z")
I’ve got it! Of course! Rove says he never spoke of Ms. Plame _by name_, simply referred to Mr. Wilson’s wife, right? Wilson was _previously_ married! So Rove could have been referring to his _first_ wife! Who has no connection to CIA, so fars we know. But there’s no law against him outing someone who is _not_ a covert agent! Not Indictable! ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/437 "2005-07-13T22:03:21Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Rove says he never spoke of Ms. Plame _by name_, simply referred to Mr. Wilson’s wife, right? The thing that gets me about this defense is how gleefully smug Rove appeared when he first offered it last year, as if it was some clever strategy that would render any further charges moot. But it is so transparently lame; are we to believe that if someone threatened to “kill Laura Bush’s husband,” the Secret Service would throw up their hands in frustration, stifled by the lack of a specific name? “I never said her name” is no defense at all. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/438 "2005-07-13T22:11:22Z")
An interesting [letter to Salon](http://www.salon.com/news/letters/2005/07/13/rove/index.html): > [@](#): > > It appears that everyone is fixated on the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act as the law that could possibly have been broken by Karl Rove, and points to the difficulties in obtaining a conviction under that law given the circumstances of the case. > > There is, however, another law that could be operative here, the 1917 Espionage Act. It states in part that “whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, note, or information, relating to the national defence, through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust” is guilty of a crime. > > Certainly, the identity of a covert operative in the CIA is “information” under the definition of the act. This would make Rove culpable even though he did not fit the stricter requirements of the subsequent 1982 law. The last person I know of to be prosecuted under this law was Samuel Morrison, who in 1984 leaked three classified spy satellite photos of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. > > Even though the photos were of a Soviet ship, didn’t compromise any U.S. national security secrets, and were given to a publication – Jane’s Defense Weekly – not to enemy agents, the Reagan administration prosecuted the leak. > > It was argued that the leak of classified material alone, regardless of motive, was enough to trigger the statute. The Court of Appeals agreed. It held that such a leak might be prompted by “the most laudable motives, or any motive at all,” and it would still be a crime. Guess what? Morrison went to jail. For giving a magazine photos of a Soviet carrier. > > Plame’s identity was not common knowledge and Rove disclosed it. Therefore, he could have violated the Espionage Act regardless of whether he knew she was covert, did it deliberately to compromise her, or used her exact name. Perhaps this is why the Circuit Court of Appeals judges cited the likelihood of serious underlying crimes in their decision to compel Cooper and Miller to testify. Federal judges tend to know the law a little bit. > > Besides, doesn’t it sound so much better to be indicted for espionage than violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act? Any of our legally-minded Dopers care to comment on this possibility? ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/439 "2005-07-13T22:23:28Z")
**luci** , don’t get off the point just to make a whimsical joke. Rove’s leak to Novak was a cheap political trick with one objective and one objective only – to ruin an official who had publically contradicted the President. Wilson’s offense was one of diminishing the majesty of the king (there is a phrase in French for this but I can’t pronounce it or spell it) or contemplating the death of the king. That is not yet an offense in this country. The administrations reaction was a resort to thuggery. I suppose that Wilson is lucky that he didn’t end up with an ice pick in his ear during a trip to view the garbage dumps in New Jersey since that is the sort of tactic real gangsters employ. This bunch, in contrast, just turns the Swift Boat Liars, the paid hacks and the running dogs in Congress lose to contort, misrepresent, falsify and backpedal. The point that has got to me made and made again is that this Administration is dishonestly, dishonorably and vindictively savaging an honest man to cover its own fraud. Some wit once said that George Washington could not lie, that Nixon could not tell the truth and that Reagan (or Clinton, depending on your proclivity) could not tell the difference. To that we need to add that George W. Bush doesn’t care about the difference. Here is one more demonstration that these people will do and say anything that will allow them to retain power. I still anticipate that Good Soldier Powell will sooner of later reach the end of his tether. When he starts talking there will be hell to pay. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791/440 "2005-07-13T22:28:30Z")
> [@ArchiveGuy](#): > > An interesting [letter to Salon](http://www.salon.com/news/letters/2005/07/13/rove/index.html):Any of our legally-minded Dopers care to comment on this possibility? I’m sure there’s no shortage of legally-minded Dopers just itching to comment. If it’s all the same to everybody, I think a legally **trained** Doper would be a better candidate to comment. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-karl-rove-out-the-cia-agent/310791.md?page=23)