In my wildest, my most delightful dreams, I could not imagine that the guy who just three weeks ago was equating liberals with traitors could soon be facing trial as a . . . traitor. I mean, I wouldn’t dare put something like that on my Christmas list. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins.
plus
There have probably been bigger liars than Karl Rove in the long, sad history of American politics — Roy Cohn and LBJ come to mind, for example. But I can’t think of any who have had such maximal ambitions, or such powerful propaganda tools at their disposal.
Back to Main
July 14, 2005
WB: Better Warm Up.. + Spock ..
Comments
What you say here is awfully extreme. I was thinking that Karl Rove should be treated with indictments and therapy.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 14 2005 7:00 utc | 1
Oh, wait, that’s what you’re suggesting, isn’t it. Indictments and … therapy.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 14 2005 7:06 utc | 2
I’ve been watching the European software patent (SWP) struggle closely, and “Spock With a Beard” was quite an eye-opener for me. In the final stages of the SWP drama, both sides hurled exactly the same arguments at each other: small businesses need to be protected, innovation will be killed, jobs will be lost etc. Until now, I was just stunned that the big industry lobby successfully managed to take most of the other side’s arguments against them and spin them to actually support their position instead of contradict it. Now I’m a bit freaked out: if this is a classic tactic of desinformation and professional European lobbyists take that kind of leaves out of Karl Rove’s book to push big business’ agenda through the European Commission, I’m afraid what controversial topic will be next. I’m just glad that the European Parliament couldn’t be totally distracted this time due to the massive public outcry. If only the really big themes (like the monthly assaults on civil liberties) would receive the same kind of public attention.
Mike
Posted by: Mike | Jul 14 2005 7:10 utc | 3
“… end the career of an undercover CIA operative and destroy an agency front operation built up over many years at much time and expense.”
So why the lack of public support by the prez for Rove ? Why the rather extreme parallel reality tack ? Why does the BushCo admin seem to be almost palpably exuding fear ?
Rove at the time was in no position to know Plame was an operative, a NOC, nor that the carefully created and historical cover extended to an agency front company and all that that entails. Such information is highly classified but more importantly highly comparmented on a strictly, truly, ‘need to know’ basis … it is NOT information that would ever be passed accidentally or via briefings to the WH and would be specifically redacted from raw source material prior to dissemination …
So the real question here is who at the Agency did know ?
Who at the Agency passed that up to the White House and who requested it re attacking Wilson ?
Who discussed it and was aware of it at the White House strategy meeting(s) re neutralizing Wilson ?
Who directed that information be passed to Rove ?
How many at the White House were or became aware of the above and took no action (passive) or attempted (pro-actively) to cover it up ?
Was Rove the only one to ‘out’ Plame from the White House ?
Has Judith Miller taken the fall(contempt) to protect the identity of the other concurrent ‘Leaker’, or just to protect her own position as an ‘operative’, of the GOP ?
The answers to these questions may explain thier fear and therefore thier extreme strategy …
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 14 2005 7:33 utc | 5
So there we have it, the two extremes – chair or therapy?
Hmmmmmmm……
I’d settle for a middle ground like, say, permanent placement on the no-fly list.
_____
(with manadatory frog march away from the gate every single time of course, aka the Amphibian Walk of the Groundhog).
@Outraged, I don’t have the link handy, but there’s a good post on this @tpmcafe. Current thinking is that sort of info. would be in Wilson’s State Dept. file – filched from there by none other than Bolton & passed along to Rove & Libby…this was related to WH not giving Senate Dems papers they requested when considering Bolton…perhaps at behest of Cheney. Also, noted that Bush & Cheney both knew about the outing…recall they both got outside counsel..
Posted by: jj | Jul 14 2005 8:12 utc | 9
Naw, while ol’ sparkey would be a good ending for Rove, I’d be happy enough to see him strung along with all the others on the Cannibal in Chiefs necklace of shrunken heads (former zelots, yes men, idelogues,aka cabinet members, and legislators) — caught up in the maelstrom of hubris, and now ensconced in a chain of fools around the dim bulb himself. You can already see it in Scotty, everyday he looks more and more like a David Byrne “big suit” imitation, without the music. If I were him I’d have a tape measure and measure my hat size every fifteen minutes or so.
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 14 2005 9:21 utc | 10
It seems like it would still be hard to prove the requirement of the Espionage Act that says that the person must know that the information could damage the US. Why couldn’t Rove just claim that he had no idea Plame was covert and therefore had no idea that the information could damage the US?
What about the possibility that Rove has already testified that Miller told her Wilson’s wife was Plame, but that Miller never said Plame was covert? Since Miller isn’t talking, it seems like Rove would get off under these circumstances.
Also, if indictments are handed down, at what point, if ever, will Bush pardon Rove?
Posted by: lawrence | Jul 14 2005 10:35 utc | 12
When they attempt to slime Fitzgerald, as they did Lawrence Walsh more than a dozen years ago, we’ll know they’ve finally emptied their bag of tricks. It’s tough to malign a genuine warrior in the genuine war on terrorists (all but unrelated to Bush’s GWOT).
Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuted Sheik Abdel Rahman and pursued more recent terrorism cases with a fervor that has raised civil liberties eyebrows (but how’s a Republican going to fault him on that score?). Oh yeah, and he went after the Gambino family in the early ’90s.
Neutralizing Lawrence Walsh was a cakewalk. A patrician Republican jurist, snatched from retirement and assigned to the task of whitewashing Iran Contra, the poor dear went a little funny in the head and began exhibiting acute, convulsive spasms of prosecution. He obviously and urgently needed a return to pasture, and never mind the senile ravings in that “report” of his. Sad story, best forgotten.
Not so easy this time. Republicans are hindered by very dumbing-down of American discourse that made their ascendancy possible. Americans may have trouble following the intricacies of the IIPA and Espionage Act, but they know and love an Elliot Ness plotline when they see one.
Posted by: ralphbon | Jul 14 2005 11:09 utc | 13
Also, if indictments are handed down, at what point, if ever, will Bush pardon Rove?
Immediately or close to it.
Reason being not loyalty, friendship, or gratitude. Level of corruption is such that Rove can simply choose not to serve any time or else consequences can be nasty. This does not mean that these folks spend time in some sort of a stalemate of blackmail, but rather they are all so deeply involved in the “family business”, as it were, that mutual protection is natural. When W rewards apparent incompetence of a Bremmer or tries so very hard to get Bolton into ambassadorship, this is the dynamic at work.
The biggest fear must be avoiding future war crime accusations. That would explain why they’d want the torture is ok AG in SCOTUS.
Posted by: YY | Jul 14 2005 11:19 utc | 15
Two things:
1. I now understand the ‘South Park’ episode in which Cartman has a beard.
2. Karl Rove will leave a large puddle of grease below the chair.
Posted by: ahem | Jul 14 2005 11:27 utc | 16
I don’t know if Billmon is reading this, however… that chair is not funny, and actually quite disturbing. I understand we are all happy that payback time is coming, however we should be better than this. It’s already a shame that the country who calls itself “the land of the free” still allows for such a barbaric punishment…
Billmon: “In slamming Wilson, Somerby also places a hell of a lot of weight on the report of the Senate Whitewash Committee — the same “bipartisan” panel that dropped the second half of its alleged “investigation” of the WMD snipe hunt right down the memory hole.”
I hope Billmon follows up on this with another post. We might not have been going through the Rove side story if the Senate committee had uncovered the real story of how Bush/Cheney fixed the intelligence. Cheney was pissed when Wilson blew their bogus story on the yellow cake deal between Niger and Iraq. Attacking Wilson was a preemptive action to keep any other whistleblowers within the CIA from going public with similar stories of how Cheney sifted or fixed intelligence out the Agency or within their own little intelligence cabal. It was also obviously a revenge treatment on Wilson. The treatment continues today. Impeach them and their story to preempt them from impeaching us and our story.
Drag a dead skunk to cover your tracks.
The big story that we still need to uncover is how Bush and Cheney fixed the intelligence and how the Senate committee failed to address this issue on why our intelligence on Iraq was so wrong.
Very clearly, the special prosecutor needs to get to the bottom of the leaks. But lets not lose sight of the big story here.
Posted by: lou | Jul 14 2005 11:39 utc | 18
Giacomo, point taken, but, as I have argued recently in regard to similar “we are better than this” lines, the moral high ground is a pretty puny place in a nuclear wasteland. Besides, I take it Billmon is intending humor. (btw, I contribute to death penalty abolishment work, of all sorts)
Now regarding how, when and where Karl gets his pardon, or perhaps rendition to some third country in a parallel universe, I imagine sooner than later. I.e., just as soon as the shell breaks, which will be dependent on how firmly the MSM gasps what is going on and senses a tidal shift sufficient to stick their necks out a little without fear of losing “access”.
Question I’m contemplating, a la Tricky Dick and the legacy from hell, what will junior (or his handlers) do to keep that ship afloat. Maybe the country is too polarized to even have that thought right now. I imagine all the RW dead enders will go down believing they have been the victims of some librul conspriacy.
Posted by: DonS | Jul 14 2005 11:56 utc | 19
More schadenfreude from Ted Rall.
No matter how remote, we must now consider the possibility that Karl Rove may in the employ of, and/or receiving money from, a terrorist organization such as Al Qaeda. Alternatively, could he be in the employ of a hostile foreign government? If he betrayed a CIA agent, Rove is a traitor and therefore capable of anything. Only an exhaustive investigation of his and his associates’ anti-American activities, up to and including those committed by George W. Bush, can resolve these questions.
Posted by: beq | Jul 14 2005 13:26 utc | 20
Somersby is one of my favorites but his equivalence of Wilson and Rove is stunningly insane. Assume whatever you want about Wilson. Wilson is not the second or third man with the most power over the American State who is trying to lock up more power for his gang for a generation to come. Assume what you want about the technicalities of whether the elements of one felony of another was committed, but Wilson is not the never elected man with a history of filthy tricks and zero foreign policy and administrative experience, who has been using the apparatus of State power to attack enemies at a time of foreign crisis with total disdain for the realities of the foreign crisis and a willingness to use the foreign intelligence apparatus to turn inward to bring down its domestic enemies.
Sommersby has drunk his own brand of kool aid and that is a bigger story than a lot of this dribbling of details and fantasies of some divine justice arriving from a prosecutor who was suspiciously quiet around election time, when this all could have been wrapped up.
What Rove and Bush have been doing is inexcusable, in the exact same way that it is inexcusable for any American vice president to take a walk over to the CIA to send a message on what conclusions should be. Whoever starts debating the issue according to Rovian talking points has sold out their country. I have no idea where Somersby went insane, but I suspect that he is connected to Democratic circles that disdain Wilson. The idea that any Democrat in the U.S. Senate today can be relied on to do an impartial and rigorous investigation of anything connected to foreign policy is the idea of an insane peson. Senate Democrats have proven time and again over the last five years that they are complete, utter, shameless, power whores.
Posted by: razor | Jul 14 2005 13:46 utc | 21
Karl Rove knows where the skeletons are hidden, where the bodies are buried, and where the tapes and pictures are filed. He is not a man to take one for the team, or to go down in flames without taking the whole squadron with him. If he were hung out to dry, he’d spill enough dirt to drive the whole pack of West Wingnuts into the hills. There wouldn’t be anybody left to turn out the lights.
Solution: The Nixon Sindrome. Sympathy, full pardon, accolades from a grateful citizenry. Maybe even a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
I think Kleiman’s absolutely right about the forthcoming “runaway prosecutor” line, the anticipation of which would explain (1) Fitzgerald’s rigorous silence about the proceedings, and (2) the extraordinary care with which he’s worked up his materials. I take particular pleasure in watching Rove’s defenders as they try to defend him against charges they can’t imagine, because it’s impossible to trash an investigation before some of the cards are on the table, and I don’t see any cards on the table. Miller and Cooper were slapped down for refusing to play by the rules, and there’s nothing inherently interesting about charges of that kind. In fact, charges of that kind are decidedly, maddingly, boring. The more bored we get, the higher our expectations become. By October, nothing less than a mass execution will get us back to the comfort-level, to the ongoing processes of tranquil hallucination, so characteristic of everyday life.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 14 2005 14:30 utc | 23
With an espionage charge as the low hanging fruit, it is nearly certain that indictments will be coming from this investigation.
Clearly at this stage no matter what type of wording the republicans use, Rove’s security clearance must be revoked, and he must step down until the investigation and following criminal trial are complete. Rove is clearly involved in the disclosure of the identity of an active CIA agent, the only question that reamains is for a court of law to decide the degree of criminality of this involvement. Further Rove and others have clearly been caught lying about this fact. How can we trust any words or actions from the administration, if they are so clearly willing to put the security of the entire nation at its highest levels at risk, for the sake of one man. What does this say about the character of those “journalists” who know they are pushing lies to protect this man?
Bush can stare daggers all he wants, he can shout and he can yell and fluster, but Rove must be removed from the administration for the honor of the nation. Anything less will put members of the administration including the President in line for conspiracy charges.
Why did they even bother running this slate for re-election? It should have been obvious to the saner heads in the leadership of the republican party this time last year that the cost of supporting Team Bush was way higher than the pay outs. Now we are a year later and everything is orders of magnitude worse; the administration and larger party and all of its mouth pieces and infromation planners, must devote all of their collective efforts to protect Team Bush from criminal charges and possible jail time.
Republicans cut your losses now. The bill gets higher and higher the longer you leave it unpaid. Team Bush must go. Is it worth losing your Congressional majority, is it worth having your propaganda networks uprooted, is it worth re-playing the Nixon Impeachments but this time losing all the players involved instead of just the moentary leader? This is no joke, its not defendable. Rove must step down.
Posted by: patience | Jul 14 2005 14:33 utc | 24
From Spock with Beard:
On his most megalomaniacal day ever, Dick Nixon would never have dreamed of trying to spin his squalid dirty tricks operation into a heroic blow for truth, justice and the American way.
Uh, actually, Billmon, Nixon did do something quite like this.
Caught evading taxes, Nixon claimed that the undeclared funds were for “fighting communism,” and America giggled and went back to sleep.
.
Posted by: Grand Moff Texan | Jul 14 2005 14:37 utc | 25
alabama
respectfull as i am of your work here – i have the same feelings towards this investigation & its consequences as i did to jérôme’s optimisitc hopes for your last elections. the substance is there – bt the reality – otherwise
from the heart of france i hope
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 14 2005 14:41 utc | 26
It will be interesting to see if any information emerges (in legal proceedings) concerning calls between the White House and Air Force One during the Africa trip. I’m curious whether W got into the action directly. He strikes me as someone eager to be one of the guys.
Mustn’t jump the gun, but if W were to be implicated directly, it would both help explain his behavior on this issue, and give us an attractive addition to the nation’s vocabulary.
The Republican standoff.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 14 2005 14:44 utc | 27
Hi all. Frequent reader, rare (ever?) participant, on this page at least. I’m a lawyer, and I was intrigued by Billmon’s (and Mark Kleiman’s) discussion of the Espionage Act. A bit of Westlaw research later, and I found an interestingly-titled 1986 law review article, “The Constitutionality of Section 793 of the Espionage Act and its Application to Press Leaks.” (That’s a yousendit file, for those of you interested in having a look.) I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but it may provide some grist for the mill.
Posted by: Billy Pilgrim | Jul 14 2005 14:55 utc | 28
The hyperlink to yousendit doesn’t seem to work, so here’s the raw URL:
http://s48.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=34OOAF04D91NE1RV2JXNL3MS44
Thanks.
Posted by: Billy Pilgrim | Jul 14 2005 14:58 utc | 29
There is a better analogy than “Spock with a Beard” – the British Sci-Fi comedy Red Dwarf had an episode where they landed on a world were everything was backwards, best scene – were the cat took a dump, hilarious.
Posted by: postit | Jul 14 2005 15:06 utc | 30
I don’t know if Billmon is reading this, however… that chair is not funny, and actually quite disturbing. I understand we are all happy that payback time is coming, however we should be better than this. It’s already a shame that the country who calls itself “the land of the free” still allows for such a barbaric punishment…
nothing less than a mass execution will get us back to the comfort-level, to the ongoing processes of tranquil hallucination, so characteristic of everyday life.
people, people, lets all calm down. i’m willing to dispense w/ the excecution, but pleease, will someone post an image of rove balancing on a box (one foot only) w/wires attached to his balls. i don’t think we need any clothes or a hood, i want to see his face. and i’d like to see some bruises, a little blood, . now, crouched in front of him, simulating sex acts, cheney…..maybe a pyramid nearby..
Posted by: annie | Jul 14 2005 15:32 utc | 31
Yesterday it was “the uncremated remains of Bob Novak.” Today it’s Karl Rove: “His Mayberryness.” LOL, you are killing me, Billmon.
Posted by: chris c | Jul 14 2005 16:03 utc | 32
and I don’t see any cards on the table. . . .The more bored we get, the higher our expectations become.
Does anyone have an idea of when Fitzgerald might be expected to deliver indictments? If he had essentially “wrapped up” the case last October, why has it taken so long to get to this point? Is Cooper the final witness to be questioned?
I would also like to ask, “What is the probable ultimate outcome of this case,” but realize the answer must be of necessity be speculative.
My thanks to anyone who can hazard answers to these questions.
Posted by: Thaxter | Jul 14 2005 16:08 utc | 33
Goddamn but I hope you’re right!!!!
It would be christmas, easter, and a really drunken new years with great sex AND a lottery win all rolled into one.
Posted by: four legs good | Jul 14 2005 16:25 utc | 34
Okay, I’ll calm down now.
I don’t know if you guys saw it, but John Dean was saying last week that Fitzgerald might be going after them with the “conspiracy to defraud the government by misuse of government property” statute, which is what caught most of the watergate ninnies.
I’m just hoping he found SOMETHING to hang them with.
Posted by: four legs good | Jul 14 2005 16:34 utc | 35
@Thaxter,
A full presidential pardon and a senior administrative position in the next GOP White House.
Posted by: gylangirl | Jul 14 2005 16:42 utc | 36
thatcher , he will be wrapping up the case this october, not last
Posted by: annie | Jul 14 2005 16:47 utc | 37
Thanks glyangirl and annie. A pardon is inevitable, I suppose.
I seem to recall reading that Fitzgerald had said in October 2004 that essentially he had everything he needed except for Cooper’s and Miller’s testimony. That’s why I wondered why it took so long to get to this point, i.e., to get to Cooper’s testimony.
Posted by: Thaxter | Jul 14 2005 17:48 utc | 38