Which enemies? In specific, which group did Rove “adhere to”?
You can’t charge a man with treason and claim that he aided our enemies… in general. And the phrasing is quite specific, not just aid and give comfort but adhere to. For whatever his flaws, I simply do not believe that Rove was ‘adhering to’ a single one of our specific foes.
Again, I have a problem with this backdoor approach. There is a difference between someone adhering to our enemy and purposefully giving them aid and comfort, and someone screwing over our own country. They have similar effects, but they are not the same event.
If limiting our ability to find WMD is the issue, then Bush’s purge of the CIA on grounds of ‘loyalty’ also did that. But again I don’t think that Bush should be charged with treason.
Here’s Wikipedia’s list of Americans convicted or accused of treason. Link
I very much doubt that Rove will be (or should be) convicted of treason. Our list of traitors involves mostly those who sold secrets to the Soviets; in other words, they directly and explicitly aided an enemy of the U.S. One can point to a specific atomic technology that the Russians received or the revelation that we tapped their underseas communications lines. What is the specific result of Rove’s actions?
His intention was to harm and discredit a political enemy here at home. That’s fair game. One CIA agent’s career is nothing to the people playing human chess at the top political tier. I doubt that it put a big damper on any CIA projects and it didn’t put an agent into immediate danger. More importantly, Rove didn’t explicitly aid an enemy. No one gained anything from him, he didn’t sell information to a Saudi or an Iranian, North Korea didn’t learn anything, etc.
I think he broke the law by revealing Plame’s status as an agent but it wasn’t treason. Hell, according to that list I linked to, John Walker Lindh didn’t even get convicted of treason. You really think Rove’s going to go down?
I agree that treason is unlikely to be the correct charge, but I also agree that perjury in this case will be more significant than perjury in the Clinton case. I don’t know if that’s a legal position, but from an ethical position, a lie that gets someone out of an embarrassing admission of sexual peccadilloes is nowhere near as bad as a lie that covers up ruining someone’s career and assisting in misleading the public about the reasons to go to war.
While people may avoid a charge of treason, you cannot suggest that they outed an active agent and didn’t realize consciously that it would assist our enemies. This wasn’t just going about your business as usual and having one of your decisions backfire on you. This was a completely out of left field act that clearly would affect our intelligence community.
From the Wikipedia link, there is also the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave secrets to one of our allies (Israel) and got life in prison for it. He didn’t get “treason” but at this point, what’s the diff?
It may not matter, again in the court of public opinion. Just as many Democrats had been afraid to oppose Bush’s war for fear of being called anti-American etc., Republicans who have supported what Rove has done (if not the man himself) may feel compelled to dump him to avoid appearing hypocritical, so soon after going after Clinton for something both legally and ethically far less significant. It can’t be comfortable either way.
Can anyone describe the current spin of Hutchison’s statement, or has she “clarified” it yet?
Definitely a crime. I’m not trying to defend what Rove’s done. It wasn’t right. But I really think it hurt our ability to protect ourselves more than it helped an enemy find a weakness. I’m aware that a minus for our defense is a plus to those who would attack us, however it didn’t give anything tangible to anyone (as far as I know, I’m not an intelligence operative).
Arrogant and unethical it was, but it’s not the same as selling secrets to a foreign power.
No, he did not perjure himself in the deposition. If you think so, please cite page and line. He did not answer the questions in the deposition, and no motion to compel was ever made. It’s my recollection that he came closest to perjury in his signed declaration in the summary judgment motion, and when he wasn’t under oath and said: “I did not have sex with that woman.”
I’m surprised Hutchinson would bother going out on a limb. No charges have been made by the prosecutor yet. He might not make any, and he might not make a report. He might exonerate everyone.
I certainly believe that perjury is a serious crime, and it should warrant removal from office and criminal conviction.
So, to the extent Senator Hutchinson is saying that we should ignore a “mere” perjury charge because there were more serious crimes under investigation, whether it relates to Mr. Delay or Mr. Rove’s conduct, I absolutely reject and repudiate that. If either Representative Delay or Mr. Rove is found to have perjured himself, I believe he should be the subject of criminal process. (Obviously, in this particular case, I don’t believe impeachment is appropriate).
Fitzgerald never interviewed the President, did he? That sorta precludes the possibility of impeachment for perjury, I guess.
However, it does raise an interesting point. I believe Bush said early on that he believed nobody in his Administration was responsible for the leak. (I could be wrong on this point–I don’t remember what specifically he said, but I think it was something like this). If Fitzgerald were fishing for indictments, wouldn’t he have interviewed the president about this comment?
Well, there’s also this article going around. Which would seem to suggest that Bush knew, was angry with Rove, but still decided to support him out of crony loyalty.
