Every time you say IOKIARDI, an angel earns its wings. 
I was just commneting on your line about Bush apologists. Yes they are going to spin things as best they can. But the other side is equally hard at work trying to build the case against Rove. My bet is that neither is 100% right.
Your astute observation about there being a big differnce between having someone’s UC surmised or known is a worth noting. I think what will happen may hinge on that.
Hewitt is such a whore! Next to him, Garret/Gannon is Heidi. One wishes one could ask him just what he imagines a decent interval might be, seeing as how this particular snail’s marathon has been going on for two fucking years!
My son, the Hair Apparent to my vast holdings, is in the other room reading Bilmon’s compilation of Scotty’s writhings . The gloating chuckles are a good indication.
Its kind of like a frog in a frying pan, you know, how if you gradually raise the temperature you can boil the stupid fuck because he doesn’t realize when its time to jump.
While I unerstand how you could confuse Gannon with the man who tracked down Billy the Kid, his non-nom de plume was Guckert, James Guckert.
It seems to me that Rove built quite a case against himself. You make it sound as if he is being unfairly tarnished. This strikes me as another example of false equivalence, which the right is quite adept at, in my opinion.
It is a fact that someone criminally released the status of a covert agent. That, until the recent few days, has not been contested. It now appears that Rove was the one who did it. Unless you want to argue that Rove didn’t do it, and the real culprit is not yet known, there really is no way to paint this as a he said/she said kind of thing.
I think this guy is right. In his e-mails to Matt Cooper, Rove did not identify the woman by name or say that she was a covert operative. (He said she “apparently works” for the CIA.) It will be hard to prove that Rove knowingly outed a covert agent, and if that e-mail is any indication, he at least tried to create an out for himself.
It looks like Rove is going to avoid an indictment. He probably did not, legalistically, have covert relations with that woman, Valerie Plame.
The real question is, will Bush try to wiggle his way out of his commitment to fire the “leaker” if and when he is found out? And, if he does try to wiggle out of it, will he be successful? I’m eager to watch this spectical.
What reasonably intelligent traitor wouldn’t?
There is a legal defense and there is a legalistic defense. What is asserted here is a legalistic defense that assumes that our friend Rove had no reason to know that Ms. Plame was a covert CIA operative (apparently a confidential consultant on unconventional weapon dissemination under circumstances that much or all of her value to the CIA would have been lost if her contacts knew that she had more than a scholarly interest in the subject), that he had no means of finding that out and no obligation as a member of the President’s personal staff to find that out before he ran his mouth off. The special prosecutor apparently thinks there is good reason to think a criminal offense was committed, otherwise why would he have gone to all this effort to intimidate the recipients of the White House leak.
The claim that Mr Rove blameless because he never actually uttered her name is just silly. The is no substantive difference between saying that George Bush is the President and saying that Laura Bush’s husband is the President. Maybe that works for folks who want to conclude that the present administration embodies all the forces of righteousness and every thing it does is thereby made pure, but an objective observer has to conclude that Rove knew damn well what he was doing. You will remember that this is the same bunch of people who publically exposed a mole in the AlQaida network for no reason better that a temporary political advantage.
The reasonable question is why did Rove do this at all. It was unnecessary. The President was already in a situation where he had to back off the “yellow cake” claim. Some might think that it was an object lesion for other officials who might consider contradicting the Administration’s line in the future – in effect a warning that anyone who makes the President out to be a liar will pay a price. Some might say that the objective was to discredit Mr. Wilson by pointing out that his wife’s own agency, in his wife’s area of expertise, disagreed with his conclusions. Some say that it was an attempt to discredit the whole WMD study group at the CIA (just how I’m not sure).
What I have yet to see is the claim that Rove’s disclosure somehow promoted the interests of the United States and advanced the effort to make America and the West safe from what ever threat it was that we were dealing with a the moment. It still reads as a base act of political vindictiveness from an Administration that has little regard for the truth or for principle when it gets in the way of political and economic objectives.
The relevant section of the law, I believe:
It’s incredibly clear from this that revealing the name itself is irrelevant. “Wilson’s wife’s a spy” is as much “information that identifies a covert agent” as is “Valerie Plame’s a spy”.
So all there is is whether Rove knew that the US was taking measures to conceal her identity. Seems odd that his inquiries would have obtained her identity, her relationship to Wilson, the fact that she was a spy and the precise area of the CIA in which she worked, but not uncovered the fact that she was a ‘covert’ spy and leaking her identity might in fact be a bad thing…
I’m aware of the difference, and I’m not saying he’s blameless. I should’ve made it clearer that “Rove was clever enough to leave legal room for argument,” not that he didn’t really identify her. I guess I thought I implied that.
This applies only to people who have authorized access so maybe it doesn’t apply to Rove.
And I think that not only will Rove get away with it, Bush won’t suffer too much. Their constant harping on external dangers is effective. It looks like GW got a little boost in approval ratings, probably because of the London bombings. He is, after all the President and responsible for the operational end of national security. And that situation is going to continue for another three years so I guess people feel they have to trust him as there is no other choice.
I think it’s quite telling that all of a sudden, the White House has stopped promising that Rove was not involved and that the leaker will not be fired. If they need to distance themselves I think they’re getting ready for it.
as I understand it, the field of play has shifted to a possible perjury beef.
That’s why Matt was so important to Fitzgerald’s case. Because Cooper’s conversation with Rove took place before Novak’s column was printed (there is some ambiguity vis a vis the web published version, which seems to have come out just a squeak or two after Rove tells Cooper.
Rove later claimed the FBI that he learned about Plame from Novaks column, and therefore was not outing a covert operative, since she was no longer covert (for one thing…)
So it’s Marth Stewart all over again, EXCE
Seems pretty likely that the President’s chief advisor would have clearance out the wazoo, and a potential need to know about just about any topic.
If he didn’t hold the proper authorization, then there’re sections of the Act that might be better applied, such as s 421 © providing for a similar offence without authorized access in the first place, but as part of a pattern of discrediting or undermining intelligence-gathering activities. There might be an arguable point there.
Pish. They’re clearly battening down the hatches, stonewall all the way. Until and unless Rove is indicted, this will be the stance: “We’re cooperating and waiting for the result of the investigation. Nothing to see here. Fire the leaker? We haven’t heard from the prosecutor, sorry.”
This could all change tomorrow, or in a year, if an indictment is handed down. Or, if not: not.
That’s exactly what they said. But they were cooperating to their fullest, so they said, a year ago, and two years ago, and still promised Rove wasn’t involved and that the guilty party would be fired.
He won’t suffer dramaticly, this ain’t Watergate. But it erodes his good guy image, so carefully crafted and applied by the best public opinion manipulators money can buy. It’s truth is simple enough for mass consumption: GeeDubya is vindictive and underhanded. That doesn’t mesh with the image they sell of earnest masculinity, out there clearing brush, got them manly work gloves on. The kind of man Gee’s handlers want us to think he is, he don’t do shit like that. He’s an earnest son of toil, a man’s man, born in a tiny, rural gated community…you know the drill.
Its not the impact, its the erosion. Not conviction, just weary confirmation. The Emperor’s nekkid, and, from the looks of things, he might be Japanese.
We’re just guessing here but Rove isn’t GW’s chief advisor. He is the chief political advisor. Maybe he has security clearance for intelligence information and maybe he doesn’t. I would suspect not.
In any case, I guess we’ll find out.
That would be my guess; that Rove is technically not authorized with the information that was leaked (even if he was privy to it), and can not be prosecuted on those grounds.
If so, we have an interesting situation: If Fitzgerald (who is generally held as being an unbiased and competent prosecutor) hears this defense, he may (and should) require Rove to name his authorized source, or incur the same penalty as Miller and Cooper if he does not. And so, speculation grows as to just how high this may go…