I am, a bit. I’ve no doubt that Rove spread the word to anyone who would listen that Wilson is a p-whipped loser who’s wife has to get him work, he probably went through his whole rolodex. But he’s a pimp, not a hit man.
“Tattaglia’s a pimp. It was Barzini all along.”
I am… but I also acknowledge we don’t know everything.
For example: what, specifically, did Rove say to the grand jury? That’s kind of important, isn’t it?
It may even be a string of negative pregnants- technically true. You know not-lies.
That would depend in part on what questions he was asked, wouldn’t it? A prosecutor who didn’t want to put him in jeopardy could frame his/her interrogation in a way that would insulate Rove from future prosecution.
No, no, I have no basis for accusing the special prosecutor of such coddling. I offer it simply as a hypothetical. I also don’t know whether grand jurors are permitted to ask their own questions of witnesses, other than recalling hearing in the dim past the phrase “runaway grand juries”.
Bricker, can you enlighten me?
If we had even remotely competent media, this quote would be all over every news source from now until Rove was bounced out on his ass.
Why? I’d like to see everyone involved with this strung up. The fact that Bush was elected, twice, left me unable to decide whether I wanted to kill myself, every willfully ignorant bastard that I come across, or the pukes in the media who won’t report real stories (and who, as has become clear lately and as I already knew from personal experience, make up stories just as soon as doing any research).
However… this utterly unsurprising bit of PR hypocrisy has nothing to do with any facts in the case and whether laws broken and by whom. I’d rather have the media talking about what actually HAPPENED, personally… but I’m weird that way.
I for one, would like to get my hands on actual transcripts (fat chance of that) if I could. If Rove did it, he should be indicted and hung out to dry. If he was involved in any way, he should be indicted and hung out to dry. If he knew something about it and failed to take any action to stop the “outing” of Plame, he should be indicted and hung out to dry. This was a grossly serious breach of security. If done for pure politics or for spite, that makes it even worse than if it had only been stupidity or incompetence. I think it was politics and spite. The fact that I noticed a severe lack of coverage says a lot about the “media” too. I agree with colridge78 and Elucidator and DoctorJ. I want to see Rove and anyone else involved get punished. Lying to a grand jury else should get a few years in prison, on top of a few more years for the security violation.
I’m (almost) enjoying seeing certain moral standards in action: You can do whatever you want - treason, blowjobs, whatever - just as long as you don’t get caught *lying * about it. Now that’s something to get upset about.
It isn’t only the US’s leaders we need to be ashamed of. Certain of our own membership is in that list as well.
To just change what you said very slightly, You can do whatever you want - treason, blowjobs, whatever - just as long as you don’t get caught
No, you can get caught and still get away with claiming your motives were pure - just look at the folks still claiming that Bush didn’t really lie about WMD’s and the 9/11 link in Iraq because he actually meant it. Same folks, come to think of it.
So would I, but that poises us to turn it into a discussion of what we DON’T know. Oh, there are oh so many unanswered questions, so much that we don’t know, it’s all so very, very complicated. We have to wait until we have all the facts–for instance, we don’t know what color tie Rove was wearing when he leaked this information to the press, so we just can’t draw any conclusions or express any outrage right now.
I’d like it to be a discussion of what we do know, and that includes the fact that the White House has done absolutely nothing about this, despite a promise to do so and despite the apparent involvement (in at least some capacity) of his chief political advisor. This quote helps frame it that way.
As it is, the discussion will center on whether what Rove did was technically illegal.
I really don’t care about any “technically” anything. What he did was WRONG. What he did was DELIBERATE. Let him hang.
I would hope that there’s no doubt that it was morally wrong, and that political 'gotchaya" is the most likely motive (and a morally repugnant one at that). Especially since in doing what was done, it at best rendered this highly trained woman incapable of doing the job she’d been trained in, let alone all of the possible ramifications for her contacts etc. and all to attempt to get back at her spouse for telling the truth.
There was (to the best of my recollection) no attempt by Bush when this first broke open to attempt to claim the sort of privelege that Bricker mentioned, and (again to the best of my recollection) he made all of the appropriate noises of “we’ll get to the bottom of this wrongful act and hold people responsible”.
From the discussion here, seems to me options include:
-
Claim Rove knew about her occupation but not that it was covert, thereby claiming no act of treason had occured. Problem w/that scenario is that had this been an ‘innocent’ error on his part, when it broke that she was covert, surely (and stop calling him that) there would have/should have been an immediate admission on his part ‘gosh darn, I’m the source so sorry I didn’t realize that she was covert and all’ and of course, have the questions in the Grand Jury carefully parsed.
-
Claim the reporter is lying. (hope they have records - they keep records, don’t they?)
-
Claim that Bush had “Brickered” Plame (ie as Bricker asserts, his position would allow him to decide who was covert and not. Bigger problem w/that scenario - in the first place, same issue as w/ #1, with the additional issue - if he had in fact done so, wouldn’t it be of utmost importance to inform her superiors, Plame herself that she was no longer considered covert? Surely if you’re going to declassify some one’s status, at the very minimum ya owe it to her to say “by the way, I outed you to a few of my buds”.
-
Claim national security reasons for outing her in the first place and not 'fessing up when the story first broke. and of course, national security reasons would prohibit them from 'splaining it now.
I’m an immaginative person but I can’t come up w/any other scenarios. well, except the one with Michael Jackson, aliens and the tse tse fly.
Point of information, for everyone, as someone who was once in the Army Security Agency… Whenever a person’s security clearance is downgraded or revoked, that person and their superiors are notified. Then the person is debriefed so they know what things must not be discussed or shared with other people. Most clearances are suspended due to a simple “need to know” - if you don’t need the clearance anymore, it is supposed to be taken away. To remove a person’s clearance and not tell anyone is illegal. To “out” someone who is cleared or covert is illegal. No act by the president or anyone else after the fact will fix this. That is illegal, and is called conspiracy.
This is where my eyes cross from scandal fatigue.
Clinton & Co. did plenty of sleazy things for blatantly political reasons. They deserved to have their collective feet held to the fire, though most of their questionable moves were swamped by overkill: Whitewater, the Post Office brouhaha, Vince Foster murder plots, the Whitehouse Lincoln Bedroom for sale to the higest contributors, etc. It’s pretty damned sad when I couldn’t even get all interested about a Presidential Blow Job, mainly because it was so damned stupid.
Clinton twisted, dodged and outright lied, under oath, about getting his knob sucked. He was flat out wrong–legally and sensibly–but the whole brouhaha mainly disgusted me because it was so 1. stupid and 2. hideously expensive to taxpayers. I wasn’t a huge Clinton fan. He was a charismatic, competent horndog political wonk. Paula Jones was a tool; maybe one with a grain of truth, but it was swamped by her handlers. And her greed. The Blow Job legal maneuverings don’t reflect particularly well on either polictical side, but the real damage is to the law.
Presidents lie. Alll of 'em. They couldn’t do the job without lying, not the least because the unvarnished truth ain’t palatable, much less comprehensible, to every schmoe out walking around. Which isn’t an insult to schmoes. I are one. Schmoes elect executives to handle stuff critical to the nation. Frankly, most of us schmoes fully expect Presidents to lie like hell, set up fall guys, etc. But not (too much) over stuff that puts the country, and our schmoelike selves, at immediate risk.
You’re a lawyer, Bricker (which is an admirable thing, current cynicism aside), but the lacework of law should balance actual damages caused by abuse of executive power. I’m conservative that way. I don’t trust any of 'em much. Blow jobs, sexual harrassment, greed and general sleaze are icky. Unbecoming to the Chief Executive, not to mention politically brain dead. But they aren’t–or shouldn’t be–equal to abuse of executive power that impedes/compromises crucial governmental functions in its trust.
On a decidedly less wordy note, nothing substantive will happen to Rove, no matter what’s revealed. He’ll stay the Gray Eminence behind lame duck BushII and the increasingly rabid neocon cadre.
but Steve in prior postings, Bricker ** had posted that Bush, in his position, could decide who was or who was not covert. what you posted underscores (as you did, nicely w/my post 
) the bigger problem w/that scenario - even if Bush claims this it seems obvious that Plames supervisors and Plame herself still considered her ‘covert’, hence the investigation. So it seems that for all of ** Bricker’s postings about Bush’s legal ability to declare whomever ‘non covert’, there still would be a little sticky wicket of commiting a crime involved, eh? thanks for the additional info. this may be interesting to watch.
unless, of course, something shiney comes up in the news. Oh, look, a hurricane.
Are you sure about the bolded part? I know of no law against a government official declaring publically that an individual holds a security clearance. It would be an unusual event, but not illegal as far as I know. (I work for the NSA).
Revealing someone to be covert, of course, is a very different matter.
So, you are outing yourself. Is that legal?
There are no rules forbidding a person from stating (let’s say in a personnel file or interview) what clearance they have or did have. There are no rules against a person or their superiors knowing about that clearance or telling someone else - people need to know what clearance you have, before they hand you the pretty red folders. There are rules to follow whenever a clearance is revoked or downgraded (or upgraded). If Plame and Plame’s superiors knew nothing about this change, those rules were violated (not what happened). Now if Plame was covert, and was outed, then it is a lot more more serious (what really happened).
This was no simple reclassification, it was the deliberate revelation of a covert operative. No weasel words after the fact can change this. Rove can quibble all he wants. the current president can quibble all he wants. But, his own father, the Original Bush calls such things treason.