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July 12, 2005
Some Clintonesque Hairsplitting

Atrios points to a NY Post OpEd where wing-nut John Podhoretz opines about Rove’s Plame outing:

But Plame’s undercover status at the time was and is a little questionable in any case. How undercover could she have been when her name was published at the time as part of Joseph Wilson’s own biography online (see cpsag.com/our_team/wilson.html)?

Duncan points out, correctly, that the fact of the name revealing is not the issue, but the fact of revealing her working for the CIA is. The marriage to Wilson was the cover for her work. But Duncan does miss one point.

The major strategy Rove’s defense is running on is the supposed NOT revealing of a NAME. Some people even think this may be the central issue for deciding, whether this was a criminal act or not. It is important. The LA Times points out:

Luskin, [Rove’s attorney,] said in an interview Monday that Rove never identified Plame by name and never intended to reveal her identity. He said Wilson’s wife came up as an afterthought in a conversation that Cooper had initiated, primarily for a story about welfare reform.

So a name revelation is relevant, Rove’s attorney says. And he says Rove did not reveal it.

(Aside from that, according to Newsweek, Time journalist Matt Cooper wrote to his boss

"Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation …"

Now how many afterthoughts in a conversation may you tackle within a two minutes call?)

But Podhoretz says, that the NAME is irrelevant. The knowledge of Plame being the wife of Wilson was simply available on the Internet, he even gives us the link.

(The Way-Back-Machine at archive.org confirms that the Wilson bio page Podhoretz points us to, with Valerie Plame named as Wilson’s wife, existed at least since Feb 08, 2003. The Rove assault on Wilson/Plame happened mid July 2003.)

So according to right-wing-nut OpEd writer and Rove defender Podhoretz junior, having outed her name or not having outed her name DID NOT MATTER. He is absolutely correct.

After revealing that Joe Wilson’s wife was working for the CIA, Rove could be sure that revealing her NAME was only 0.17 seconds of a Google search away, not only for journalists, but for anyone.

How then, should the NAME make a difference in a criminal prosecution?

Also missing in the current debate: At the same time Rove outed Plame, he did mark anybody, especially abroad, who ever may have had any contact with Plame, as a possible CIA informant and he did burn Plame’s official employer, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, and everyone who worked for that company plus, of course, everybody who had contacts with any of that company’s employees as possible CIA assets. Could that be some damage to WMD intelligence, to US national security?

When will someone at the CIA leak the real damage in this case – done by Karl Rove?

Update: Make no mistake. Rove is central to the success and the further survival of the Repubs. There is no way the Will ever push him out. It would be devastating to them. This is only the first round of a fifteen round fight.

Posted by b on July 12, 2005 at 22:13 UTC | Permalink
Comments

about that story on welfare reform…….did he ever write it? and what was the super secret info karl gave him about.. welfare reform???

Posted by: annie | Jul 12 2005 22:25 utc | 1

The Republican Talking Points all point to Rove’s simply trying to help out a reporter.
But you know, if I am running late, and drive too fast, and run over a child at the school crosswalk, the judge doesn’t excuse anything. The deed, and its effect, is what concerns the law. Not that I was in a hurry for the very best of intentions.
This case is being tried far more in the court of public opinion than in front of the Grand Jury. The public wants nothing to do now with Rove. He’s a dead skunk on the White House lawn, and if the White House keeps him indoors, he will stink up the whole place.
The blowback will be devastating to the Republicans seeking reelection in 2006. They need to put light years of distance between themselves and this imbroglio. And they won’t be able to.
If Rove stays, if Rove goes, it is about the same. Only, Rove staying is actually much worse for the Republicans.
It’s s.o.o.o.o entertaining to watch these puppers dance!

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 12 2005 22:38 utc | 2

The blowback will be devastating to the Republicans seeking reelection in 2006.
the dems’ll save us. they hate this miserable WOT.

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 12 2005 22:53 utc | 3

that made me laugh

Posted by: gmac | Jul 12 2005 23:53 utc | 4

It’s been two years now since Novak’s leak, and almost two years since Fitzgerald began his investigation. The grand jury must have been empanelled a very long time ago (would anyone happen to know the exact date?), and the point to bear in mind is the following: no juror, no officer of the court, and no member of Fitzgerald’s investigative and litigative team has offered a single word or leak to either the general or the special (beltway) public–not to the MSM, and not to the blogosphere. Folks who’ve been called in to testify have also been silent about the specific questions that were put to them.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 0:45 utc | 5

Now I’m not a lawyer, and i’m not a student of legal activities, but so far as I know, such reticence on all sides is truly unheard of, and I can think of only two reasons to account for it: either the interrogations are so trivial that the witnesses can barely recall what it was that they discussed, or else the interrogations are so heavy with legal implications–everyone being warned that a matter of treason is being explored, and that to blab to the press is to commit a treasonable act–that the witnesses, the jury, and the officers of the court all fall absolutely mute as soon as they walk out of the proceedings. For that matter–and why not?–these interrogations could be both things at once, i.e. trivial in their content, and of the utmost gravity with regard to the legal stakes in play.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 0:47 utc | 6

I, for one, have no idea of who’s been called before the Grand Jury, other than the obvious suspects, but I get the impression that the number of witnesses might run to the scores, if not to the hundreds. If so, then the overall silence is downright miraculous. But there’s one thing I know for sure: our pervasive ignorance about Fitzgerald’s actions has caused us all to pounce on the least little scrap of information, without having any certain idea of what it’s importance might be. This is quite deranging, or at least I find it so, and I wonder whether it isn’t just as deranging to the “subjects” and “targets” of the investigation as well as to the rest of the human race.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 0:50 utc | 7

Because no one can really know for sure if he or she really counts in the eyes of Fitzgerald, or whether he or she has carried out an actionable crime about which Fitzgera;d knows all he needs to know. Three more months of this all suspense, and Washington will be a scene of sheer, irreversible anarchy (or perhaps it already is). As some of us oldtimers may recall, I regard this entire affair as Powell’s revenge on Cheney, and of course I have no way of knowing whether that’s really the case. But if that’s what it turns out to be, then I trust that Cheney has gained some respect for Powell’s bureaucratic skills. I trust that Cheney is terrified .

Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 0:50 utc | 8

Slothrop,
You made me think of Rove as the Cheney administration’s Rasputin.
They are going to have to metaphorically poison Rove, shoot him three times in the chest, back, and head, beat him with iron rods, throw him into the frozen Potomac, and leave him under the ice for three days and nights before pulling him out and declaring themselves free of his curse.
“On the night of his murder, Rasputin said to Yusupov: “The aristocrats can’t get used to the idea that a humble peasant should be welcome at the Imperial Palace. They are consumed with envy and fury. But I’m not afraid of them. They can’t do anything to me. I’m protected against ill fortune. There have been several attempts on my life but the Lord has always frustrated these plots. Disaster will come to anyone who lifts a finger against me”. Within three months Nicholas II and the Romanov dynasty were overthrown; within 19 months the tsar and his family were all dead.”

Posted by: Jutra | Jul 13 2005 0:59 utc | 9

terrorists do not get terrifed.
they are immune. cheneys greatest fear is that the heart translplant from that abu ghuraib creature is being rejected by his immune system.

Posted by: excuse me | Jul 13 2005 1:13 utc | 10

The rethug strategy is to stir this big old pot with confusion so the sheeple will get tired of keeping track of all the angles and say, “so what”, I’m tired of hearing about it.
The bait and switch is going on and when its all done, Rove will be slapped on the hands and he will continue to head rethug stragedy as Bugs Bunny would say.
There you have it, just that simple. The Potomic two step.

Posted by: jdp | Jul 13 2005 1:40 utc | 11

@Jutra
That quote is a little out of context. Grigorii Rasputin also prophesied his own death and the fall of the Romanovs. In a letter he wrote to tsar Nicholas in November, 1916 (a month before his death), he stated that:
“…I feel I shall leave my life before January 1st [he was killed 16. December]…
… if I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, tsar of Russia, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign in Russia for hundreds of years. But if I am murdered by nobles [he was], their hands will remain soiled with my blood.
…if it was your relations who brought about my death [it was],then none of your family, that is to say none of your children or relatives, will remain alive for more than two years [they didn’t].”
Anyway, I don’t think the comparison between Rove and Rasputin is apt. Rove is certainly not one of the peasantry, never has been, and the only supernatural powers he has demonstrated are the awesome ability to mangle the truth and to evade justice.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 13 2005 2:00 utc | 12

Drip…drip…drip…
Rove is the Appetizer…Fitz is tying up their time & energy, keeping them from taking the initiative…Rove leads to Libby…leads to Cheney…Might even decide to toss Limbutt in jail for awhile…
And after the Appetizer course, we have on July 22 more AbuG photos…and then on July 24, there’s the National Press Club Press Conference that may – depending on how things are going – toss 911 to the Wolves, I mean the scribes for the elite…er the press
We should be spending our time figuring out how to protect ourselves from the Pirates while this little coup d’etat to put them in power is under way… Optimist that I am…Otherwise we’re at least as screwed after the 3 Stooges are removed as before.

Posted by: jj | Jul 13 2005 2:05 utc | 13

Yeah well it’s hard to believe BushCo doesn’t know exactly what’s going on with that grand jury.
Does anyone really believe that it hasn’t been bugged worse than an old chicken leg after the picnic? The geo stat satellites will certainly spending time on Fitzgerald’s actions every day. Even if they did need a court order or warrant how hard would it be to argue national security to a ‘tame’ judicial officer.
But the good news is that BushCo don’t appear to have a strategy despite knowing exactly whats going on. The fact that there hasn’t been any dirt dished on Fitzgerald can only mean one of two things They have nothing and is it possible for any human being to have nothing in their past that shouldn’t see the light of day? Or whatever they have is being held off until the S really hits the F. Both scenarios sound OK to me cause although Billmon’s correct that the Repugs need Karl; the way things are panning they’re not gonna be able to keep him and his loss will be a huge psychological hit as well as a strategic one.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 13 2005 2:10 utc | 14

Rove also never finished college and is an autodidact. Self-taught, anti-intellectual intellectuals often dangerously reproduce favored worldviews.
I offer this only as a refutation of the popular antiintellectualism.
I’m sure there’s a great apropos quote somewhere from Cardinal Newman.

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 13 2005 2:18 utc | 15

Debs is dead, bugging is certainly possible, but so is sweeping for bugs, and the finding of bugs on a sweep is serious business. The question therefore becomes, why should we ever suppose that the DoJ might protect Fitzgerald’s proceedings to that degree? Well, one of the parties injured by Cheney’s team is the FBI, and I take this whole affair as a concerted push-back against Cheney by the FBI, State and the CIA. These are the folks who insisted on Fitzgerald’s appointment, and who had the clout (always in concert, of course) to get their way with Ashcroft. Once in place, Fitzgerald was free to hear his “sponsors” story. Or to put it another way: Fitgerald couldn’t possibly proceed as he’s done without the most determined and resourceful patrons.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 3:28 utc | 16

In my view, the whole thing is the working out of a bureaucratic rift, just like the Watergate affair, and it’s a mark of Bush’s utter weakness as a leader that he couldn’t impose any discipline on his own “family”. If not even the firing of Powell (for that’s in efffect what it was) could have any effect on the momentum of Cheney’s opponents, then it’s worth asking where they’ve found that momentum. Two answers suggest themselves: first, that the crucial depositions were taken prior to last November’s elections; and second, that Mueller remains in office, there being no way in hell–given Mueller’s role in the “war on terror”–that Bush would push him away.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 3:30 utc | 17

These simple facts reduce Cheney’s options to little more than a hope, viz., that every last detail can be explained away; that no connections need be drawn; and that those who complain are only the sore losers of a bureaucratic contest. I think Cheney’s hope would certainly be answered if his opponents didn’t have a more powerful lever with which to continue–namely the charge of treason , which is not to be confused with a charge of corruption, or of abuse of power. The charge of treason is something very different–a “capital” offense in every sense of the word.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 3:32 utc | 18

Why Don’t Mackerels Like Potatoes?
Patrick Fitzgerald to McClellan, “But my poor friend, you
will all be in the nuthouse only a few months from now!”
Scott McClellan to Fitzgerald, “Jealous?”
John McCain, muttering off the record about the mess,
“Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!”
Condi Rice, to no one in particular, “You’re in a desert,
walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look
down and see a… ”
Robert Novak, writing his semi-autobiographical farce,
“I mean, so what if some fifty-eight-year-old president gets
a hard-on and starts playing Death Race 2003 in the Middle
East power struggle? What kind of chance is he taking? He’s
just waiting around to see what kind of cancer he gets anyway.”
Dick Cheney, remarking on Karl Rove’s private sex life,
“Four days, three nights, two convertibles, one city.
“He was somewhere around Georgetown when the
drugs began to take hold….”
Heinrich Heine, remarking on Dick Cheney’s grasp of reality,
“Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when
he was merely stupid.”
Chief Justice Potter Stewart, remarking on the triumphal
Neo-Con overthrow of democratic institutions in the US,
and their total disregard for the Truth and Human Dignity,
“”I shall not today attempt to define the kinds of material
I understand to be spun here . . . but I know it when I see it. ”
Colin Powell, on the whole cotton-pickin’ BushCo caboodle,
“We’re all just sitting here, like when gran’pappy falls asleep
and cuts a ripe one in church, to see whether the pastor will
pick up the sermon, or turn beet red and start a’ stammerin’.”
Jenna Bush, dreaming of her powerful father George,
“She dreamed that she and her father were together
in a great wide field of wild flowers on a beautiful
summery day. He was reciting poems of Mallarmé,
but it was as if he himself had written them; and
Jenna was much younger, and she ran about the
fields picking flowers, and though she would some-
times be at quite a distance from her father, she
could hear every line he spoke. He spoke the lines
perfectly, with exactly the right intonation and feeling
for each word. Sometimes when he finished a
poem, he would say: “That wasn’t a bad poem. Now
here’s another — this is one I wrote for you, sweet-
heart; it came to me in a flash — in a terrible, beautiful
flash just as I was releasing the sweet powerful
seed from my testis that made you!”
(from Le Roi de Coeur a Cafe Des Deux Magots)
I remember back a long time ago in college, a fraternity
prank at Pi Gamma Pi, we dressed a northern frat bro’ as
Sandy Claus, then got him good and drunk on Southern
Comfort. He held each one of the prom dates on his lap
and asked them lewd questions, until the Prom Queen
sat, when the uptight Prom King looked at him severely,
shaking his head “no” to the lewd suggestion gimmick,
until our bro’ panicked, leaned his head back and then
projectile-vomited all over the Prom Queen’s dress.
The look on everyone’s face is exactly like the look I see
on the mostly Republican’s faces today, over Karl Rove.
“Oh … My … God! I can’t believe he did that!”
“There coming to take me away, ha-ha, he-he, ho-ho,
to the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time,
and I’ll be happy to see those nice young men in
their clean white coats, and they’re … *let me GO*! ” %)

Posted by: tante aime | Jul 13 2005 3:34 utc | 19

Some people on other blogs have seen Sensenbrenner’s letter to the appeals court as an attack on Fitzgerald, perhaps the beginning of a counter-offensive.

Posted by: Brian Boru | Jul 13 2005 5:09 utc | 20

@ Alabama
I’d like to hear more about your mention of “treason”
in the Cheney-Rove-Plame case.
I should also mention that, much as I applaud any sally that breaches one of the Bush castle’s towers, the Plame case is merely a minor skirmish compared to what I view as the main battle, legal redress for the coordinated and conscious lying in justification of the war against Iraq.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jul 13 2005 5:10 utc | 21

I doubt Rove will be charged, and if charged, prosecuted.
Bush will not fire Rove, despite the clamor, and pigboy will eventually join the board of Haliburton’s Baby Seal Recycling division and write his memoires, How I Fucked The Left.
Said Left will wail and rail in its glorious impotence while the media will move on to the surprising disappearance of Tom Cruise’s latest beard.
The Right will introduce the Brand New Cleaner Tougher Improved Bush Mark III (whose last name might even be Bush) by 2007 after Mark II is allowed to retire gracefully into a Home for the Incurably Insane.
Thanks to our dedicated slaughter and extreme disciplining of innocent Iraqi civilians, revenge-driven attacks will continue, the cost being only the occasional loss of a few civilian nonentities and/or green card-seeking military who don’t belong to the proper circles.
Thanks to the above, we can keep the sheep frettish, continue the Forever War On Terra ™, justify permanent bases and stay in power for a thousand years, or until the Big Blow-Out (ba-da-bing) whichever happens first.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 13 2005 6:01 utc | 22

Me above.

Posted by: Lupin | Jul 13 2005 6:02 utc | 23

nominating you to best thread status. alabama and tante aime take a bow

Posted by: annie | Jul 13 2005 6:45 utc | 24

bloomberg
Hannah K O’Luthon, here’s a good piece from Bloomberg, filed this morning, which gives a good picture of the scope and gravity of Fitzgerald’s investigation. Now it’s a fact (I believe) that although the article doesn’t say anything about “treason,” it nonetheless does say that something really “serious” is in the works–serious enough to let Fitzgerald move forward. As I understand it, the Agee Act does indeed regard the outing of CIA “operatives” as an act of treason in some technical sense, and you can bet that the CIA regards it as such in a broader, ethical sense. This isn’t to say that Fitzgerald will file an indictment of “treason”; but he may well file charges of “obstruction of justice” when “justice” (Fitzgerald himself) was seeking to evaluate a possible act of treason. Such obstruction, from Fitzgerald’s point of view, would be cause for legal action fully as serious as that act of treason.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 12:59 utc | 25

Hmm. “something serious”. It would take a legal scholar (I am not) to unravel these implications, but my take on alabama’s article is not a very rosey one.
The “crime” (quotation marks included due to the fact that we should not be discussing a case under investigation as we are informed by the nervous White House spokesman) of Rove divulging a CIA operative’s identity was done for a reason. Rove didn’t simply phone up the press corps in a fit of pique to drop a name (or… rather… not drop a name, but an identity, if that makes a difference). Plame was “outed” in an act of retaliation designed to stifle Wilson’s criticism of the uranium-from-Niger story and to send a message to the rest of the CIA that they had better play ball with the Cheney administration or else. Those are the circumstances leading up to the “crime” under investigation and can not be excluded from testimonies pursuant to that investigation.
Fitzgerald’s professional silence on the matter invites much speculation, but I do have to note that the uranium-from-Niger story that led Rove to commit the crime of blowing a CIA agent’s cover (which was, as I have said, an effort to extort compliance from the rest of the Agency… the threat was not to Wilson and Plame alone) leads directly to the troublesome sixteen words from Bush the Younger’s January 2003 State of the Union address that the administration had thought they had heard the last of. Proven that this was the case, and in conjunction with the Downing Street notes, a very tight legal case can be made that the Cheney administration consciously and maliciously committed fraud on a grand scale (not just to the people of the USA). Of course, this is old news.
What concerns me is that if the “something serious” Fitzgerald has not revealed does carry these implications, and if Fitzgerald loses this case, then the adminsitration becomes legally exonerated for all the high crimes of the past five years. A precedent like that makes a frog-marching Rove seem a bit trivial.
As unsavory and nasty a character as is the Turdblossom, he is still not an elected official. His removal would hinder the GOP only insofar as operations and logistics go; their basic philosophy would remain unchanged. That is to say, Rove hasn’t sold them anything they weren’t already trying to buy.
My hope is that this is not a “tempest in a teapot” about removing one piece of filth from the Straussian machine and neglecting all the others. My fear is that it is about removing the others and that it might not be successful (despite what you might hear from a neocon, failure is always an option). The way in which so many notable cheerleaders and benchwarmers for the cheney administration have rather inexplicably distanced themselves in the past year or two (Fleischer, Ashcroft, Powell, et cetera), I suspect that Fitzgerald has a chopping block set up for more necks than just the Pilsbury Doughadvisor. I just hope that his axe is sharp and his aim is true, because a legally “vindicated” Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-et al would be almost too much to bear.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 13 2005 23:10 utc | 26

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