Rove was the source of the Plame leak... so it appears

there is still only innuendo, speculation, conspiracy theories, and accusations being thrown around.

A grand jury is a secret undertaking and so far no indictments or even significant leaks have come out of it. To presume to know what the testimony has been is beyond sepculative.

timberlandko wrote:

Oh, and BTW, I submit that while vociferously challenged, the criticisms of Wilson's veracity and objectivity hardly have been "debunked", any more than the probes into the UN irregularities have cleared Kofi Annan of anything.

I expect, that along with Schumer and his coterie, Wilson will in the end find this all greatly to his disadvantage and inconvenience.

You lost all credibilty when you claimed that ODonnell said Rove did not commit a crime. Maybe you should try an altie!

Spy Games
Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?
September 29, 2003, 10:22 a.m.

It's the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?

What also might be worth asking: "Who didn't know?"

I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program.

On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

On July 11, I wrote a piecea second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam's alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa ...

It would help to have a link to the actual article stating Rove was fired for 'leaking information' in the first Bush campaign or administration. To the best of my knowledge, the only one who has ever asserted that is just one of many writers writing another smear book on George Bush and/or his administration, and this particular writer was practically ghost writing for O'Neill who has had major credibility problems himself.

And just to keep things stirred up, there's this, from September 2003:

Quote:

Spy Games
Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?
September 29, 2003, 10:22 a.m.

It's the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?

What also might be worth asking: "Who didn't know?"

Lash wrote:

True, Fox.

They didn't "attack" her. They revealed her part in the deception.

"she's fair game".


that reminds me, lash. i read through the report (niger, ambassador, cincinnati) and still didn't see the part about a phone number. where did you see that ?

also, it does appear that plame may have mentioned wilson as a possibility, but it looked like the call had gone out, she responded.

i don't think that there's an insidious motive really. after all, plame could put wilson's name in the mix, but her superiors would have had to make the decision, right ? seems to me that since cheney was the one that instigated the "look see", that he would have known that wilson was the emisary. if he had any doubts.. well, dick isn't shy about speaking up, is he ?

it also appers that the cia thought that the niger info was wrong to start with. hence, sending someone over to look into it. further down the road, the niger claim was taken out of the october 2002 speech in cincinnati. but then it reappeared in the 2003 sotu.

at this point, "the 16 words"... bush knew or he didn't. either way, the end result is the same.

It would help to have a link to the actual article stating Rove was fired for 'leaking information' in the first Bush campaign or administration. To the best of my knowledge, the only one who has ever asserted that is just one of many writers writing another smear book on George Bush and/or his administration, and this particular writer was practically ghost writing for O'Neill who has had major credibility problems himself.

Harper's, Oct 7, 2003 ... Rove, the president's political adviser, denied being the source of the leak, though he was reportedly fired from George H.W. Bush's 1992 reelection campaign for leaking damaging information about a rival to Bob Novak, the very columnist who exposed Plame in July ...

... Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted ...

Low political intrigue
Robert Novak

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The capital's political languor between midterm elections and convening the new Congress was interrupted Monday by accounts in major newspapers of a news-making magazine article. A former adviser to President Bush was accusing him and his White House of a policy-free obsession with politics. This was low political intrigue, in which I declined to participate as a very minor figure. The article in Esquire's January edition by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind is actually about Karl Rove, Bush's powerful political adviser. But what made it newsworthy were highly critical direct quotes attributed to University of Pennsylvania Professor John DiIulio, who briefly advised Bush in the early months of his administration. DiIulio's subsequent written statement backing away from the quotes hardly mitigated the impact.

All this is part of an indirect assault on Bush, which is all the more intense considering his current popularity. The vulnerable target is Rove, principal architect of the brilliantly executed midterm Republican victory. He tries to keep a low profile but cannot escape his early self-identification as another Mark Hanna. Republicans fear magazine cover stories about Rove, and two planned biographies of him will attempt to stigmatize Bush as poet Vachel Lindsay described William McKinley: Hanna's "echo, his slave, his suit of clothes."

That was my reaction several weeks ago when Suskind called me, requesting a background interview on Rove for a forthcoming article. I am loath to give my colleagues information about public figures that I do not reveal in my column. Also, Rove was caricatured as a right-wing ideologue in Suskind's July Esquire article about Bush adviser Karen Hughes, and his new venture looked like a sequel. Finally, several people interviewed by Suskind for his earlier article complained to me that he took no notes, did most of the talking and did not accurately reflect their views.

I declined his request, and so did many other people that Suskind approached (out of fear of Rove, he claimed). Like a wildcat oil driller who is frustrated by one dry hole after another, he hit a gusher in the Penn professor. Unexpectedly, John DiIulio became the article's focus.

Bush, reaching out to non-Republicans and non-conservatives after the Florida vote recount, named DiIulio -- a registered Democrat who voted for Al Gore -- to run his faith-based initiative. It proved a bad idea. DiIulio, a distinguished social scientist (not a historian, as reported by Suskind), was uncomfortable in a political environment. He opposed Bush's proposed estate tax repeal, attacked conservative Christians and was a disorganized administrator. He left after seven months (not 14 months, as reported by Suskind).

Unfortunately, I did not escape Suskind's article, which includes these sentences: "Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fund-raising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted." I was called by no fact-checker, who would have learned of multiple errors.

Suskind has confused former Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher Sr., Bush's 1992 chief fund-raiser, with his son Rob, who headed the Bush campaign in Texas (Victory '92). Criticism of the younger Mosbacher, a frequent unsuccessful candidate in Texas, was not "planted" with me by Rove but was passed to me by a Bush aide whom I interviewed. Rove was indeed fired by Mosbacher from Victory '92 but continued as a national Bush-for-president operative.

Three mistakes in two sentences lend credence to claims by White House aides that they were misrepresented in Suskind's July article and to DiIulio's statement on Monday. "Several quotes and anecdotes concerning me or attributed to me in the article are not from" his long memo responding to Suskind's questions, he said, specifically denying the juicier anecdotes.

Belatedly, said DiIulio, "I will not be offering any further comment or speaking or writing further on any aspect of my limited and, as I stressed to Mr. Suskind, unrepresentative White House experience." That is good advice for neophytes swimming in Washington's treacherous seas. It would also be good advice for a president not to appoint neophytes to politically sensitive positions.

Why did President Bush view this as something serious and express the same back at the beginning?

Did he or did he not express his desire to get to the bottom of this serious issue? ...

I think sometimes we all are prone to draw conclusions from far too little information. And when that destroys reputations, hinders people from doing their jobs, or just hurts people, that is just plain wrong.

I appreciate your distress, kuvasz; I wonder why the American Left can't get itself to come to grips with the fact it has no case to make. Inuendo, supposition, conspiracy theories, boogiemen, shrillness, and negatavism simply don't play to The Electorate. Continuing a course of action consistently demonstrated as counterproductive, in expection of improved result, is silly at best.

I am confident The Plame Game, as over the past decade or so have just about all the transparent, baseless, illogical, illconsidered, ultimately futile and embarrassing Democrat-backed attacks against The Majority Party, will far better serve The Majority Party than the Democrats.

My partisanship is as firmly emplaced as yours; the difference is which of us find ourselves at odds with day-to-day political and socio-economic developments.

Unfortunately, I did not escape Suskind's article, which includes these sentences: "Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fund-raising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted." I was called by no fact-checker, who would have learned of multiple errors.

Suskind has confused former Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher Sr., Bush's 1992 chief fund-raiser, with his son Rob, who headed the Bush campaign in Texas (Victory '92). Criticism of the younger Mosbacher, a frequent unsuccessful candidate in Texas, was not "planted" with me by Rove but was passed to me by a Bush aide whom I interviewed. Rove was indeed fired by Mosbacher from Victory '92 but continued as a national Bush-for-president operative

I stand ready to wager this will not turn out at all the way the Democrats hope - and anticipate - it will. If PDiddie is willing, I'll offer the same terms as our previous bet: a $50 donation to the National Committee of the US political party chosen by the winner. To clarify my position, I state again, I do not believe the investigation will conclude any high-level Republican perpetrated any prosecutable offense in the matter of the Plame Game.