Ooowee, but things are heatin’ up in DC. If you’ve lost track of the whole Valerie Plame/Karl Rove affair, here’s a quickie rehash.
So, the latest news is that Robert Novak ALSO apparently used Karl Rove as a source for his column, which appeared just a day or two before Matt Cooper’s article came out. Cooper, you’ll recall, is the journalist who has named Rove as one of his sources for his story. The difference between Novak’s use of Rove and Cooper’s use of Rove is how it came about. Rove, apparently, approached Cooper. Novak, on the other hand, approached Rove.
Keep in mind that this is all speculation based on an unnamed source (ha!) who spoke to a reporter for the New York Times about the Novak/Rove connection. Apparently, Novak contacted Rove in regards to the article he was writing about Wilson’s trip to Niger. He (Novak) had heard somewhere that Wilson’s wife, whom he named using her maiden name Valerie Plame, was the one who had approved the trip since she works for the CIA. According to the NYT’s source, Rove’s response was “I heard that, too”.
Six days later, Novak wrote up and printed his column. A day later, Cooper, independantly, wrote his article also naming Plame. Rove spoke to Novak three days before he spoke to Cooper. So Novak and Rove apparently used each other to confirm what they had heard, perhaps even from the same yet-to-be-named source. If Rove then talked to Cooper AFTER this, he may not have actually had super-secret information - he may just have been passing along what he believed to be a rumor confirmed by the fact that Novak had heard it to. If this is true - and this is important - Rove was not the primary source for this bit of information.
Rove has stated that he didn’t give Valerie Plame’s name to Cooper. According to the source on the Novak connection, it was Novak who knew the name, not Rove. If Rove got this information second hand, he may not have known that Plame was actually working undercover and may have inadvertantly outed her. This is important because at stake is the question of whether Rove violated a law that forbids government officials with classified access from outing covert CIA agents. If Rove received the information about Plame through a classified channel, he’s guilty as sin and ought to be hauled off. But, if he received it through a typically non-classified channel (i.e. another reporter poking around asking questions, a senior official who failed to mention that, oh yeah, Wilson’s wife is undercover, so keep this on the down-low, etc.), even though it was classified information, he may not have known what he was revealing. It all lies in his intentions. And, if the reporters were also not made aware of her status as a covert operative, they, too, should be somewhat in the clean.
None of this excuses the fact that this information was used to discredit a source (Wilson) who had real, vital information about the government’s lies about its reasons for going to war, or that someone high up had to have a) known that Plame was a covert CIA agent, b) known it was classified information and c) leaked it out to someone with ties to the press. It would, however, get Rove off the hook. After all, there is no law against attempting to deflect attention from your lying, cheating, killing ways with more lies. Only the initial lying, cheating and killing is really prosecutable. Unless, of course, you’re also lying to throw off a legal investigation by federal prosecutors. That’s called “Obstruction of Justice”. Clinton was impeached for it because he lied about a blow job. Bush demonstrably lied about his reasons to push the country into a war that, to this point, has killed more than 1,700 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. Which appals you more, the blow job or the bodies?
