Bush doesn't fall far from the Bush apple tree

Memo top secret
The Wall Street Journal will break the news today that not only was the damning State Department memo reported today labeled "secret," it was classified as "top secret."

And, according to WSJ National Political Editor John Harwood, the memo also lists the Plame revelation as "SNF," or "Secret, No Foreign," in terms of parties to whom the information can or cannot be disclosed.

For Two Aides in Leak Case, 2nd Issue Rises
July 22, 2005
For Two Aides in Leak Case, 2nd Issue Rises
By DAVID JOHNSTON
New York Times

This article was reported by David Johnston, Douglas Jehl and Richard W. Stevenson and was written by Mr. Johnston.

WASHINGTON, July 21 - At the same time in July 2003 that a C.I.A. operative's identity was exposed, two key White House officials who talked to journalists about the officer were also working closely together on a related underlying issue: whether President Bush was correct in suggesting earlier that year that Iraq had been trying to acquire nuclear materials from Africa.

The two issues had become inextricably linked because Joseph C. Wilson IV, the husband of the unmasked C.I.A. officer, had questioned Mr. Bush's assertion, prompting a damage-control effort by the White House that included challenging Mr. Wilson's standing and his credentials. A federal grand jury investigation is under way by a special counsel to determine whether someone illegally leaked the officer's identity and possibly into whether perjury or obstruction of justice occurred during the inquiry.

People who have been briefed on the case said the White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby, were helping prepare what became the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier.

They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president's political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet.

At the same time, they were grappling with the fallout from an Op-Ed article on July 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Mr. Wilson, a former diplomat, in which he criticized the way the administration had used intelligence to support the claim in Mr. Bush's speech.

The work done by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby on the Tenet statement during this intense period has not been previously disclosed. People who have been briefed on the case discussed this critical time period and the events surrounding it to demonstrate that Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby were not involved in an orchestrated scheme to discredit Mr. Wilson or disclose the undercover status of his wife, Valerie Wilson, but were intent on clarifying the use of intelligence in the president's address. Those people who have been briefed requested anonymity because prosecutors have asked them not to discuss matters under investigation.

The special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has been examining this period of time to determine whether the officials' work on the Tenet statement led in some way to the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity to Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist, according to the people who have been briefed.

It is not clear what information Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby might have collected about Ms. Wilson as they worked on the Tenet statement. Mr. Rove has said he learned her name from Mr. Novak. Mr. Libby has declined to discuss the matter.

The effort was striking because to an unusual degree, the circle of officials involved included those from the White House's political and national security operations, which are often separately run. Both arms were drawn into the effort to defend the administration during the period.

In another indication of how wide a net investigators have cast in the case, Karen Hughes, a former top communications aide to Mr. Bush, and Robert Joseph, who was then the National Security Council's expert on weapons proliferation, have both told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that they were interviewed by the special prosecutor.

Ms. Hughes is to have her confirmation hearing on Friday on her nomination to lead the State Department's public diplomacy operation. Mr. Joseph was recently confirmed as under secretary of state for arms control and international security. As part of their confirmation proceedings, both had to fill out questionnaires listing any legal matters they had become involved in.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby did not meet face to face while hammering out the critical points that were desired for the Tenet statement, the people briefed on the case said.

In its final version, the Tenet statement, through its language and tone, supported the contention that senior White House officials were focused on addressing the substance of Mr. Wilson's claims. It did not mention Mr. Wilson or his wife, and Mr. Libby made it clear that Vice President Cheney did not send Mr. Wilson to Africa, a notion some said Mr. Wilson had suggested in his article. The defenders of Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby contend that the statement underscores that they were not trying to punish Mr. Wilson.

A former government official, though, added another element to how the statement was prepared, saying that no one directed Mr. Tenet to issue it and that Mr. Tenet himself felt it was needed. The statement said that the "C.I.A.'s counterproliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region to make a visit to see what he could learn."

In Mr. Wilson's article, he recounted a mission he undertook to Niger in 2002 seeking information about a purported effort by President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to acquire uranium there, his conclusion that the effort had not occurred and the filing of his report.

In his State of the Union address in January 2003, Mr. Bush cited reports that Iraq had sought to acquire a form of uranium in Africa as evidence of Mr. Hussein's intentions to gain weapons that he might provide to terrorists, use to threaten the United States or employ against other nations in the Middle East.

Lawyers with clients in the case said Mr. Fitzgerald and his investigators have shown interest in a classified State Department memo that was provided to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, as he left for Africa on Air Force One with Mr. Bush and his top aides on July 7, 2003, a day after Mr. Wilson made his accusations public.

The memorandum identified Ms. Wilson by name and described her as having a role in her husband's selection for the mission to Niger. A government official said the paragraph in the memorandum identifying Ms. Wilson was preceded by the letter S in brackets, a designation meaning that contents of the paragraph were classified secret. The designation was first reported on Thursday by The Washington Post.

The investigators have been trying to determine who else within the administration might have seen the memo or learned of its contents.

Among those asked if he had seen the memo was Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, who was on Air Force One with Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell during the Africa trip. Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.

Mr. Fleischer's role has been scrutinized by investigators, in part because his telephone log showed a call on the day after Mr. Wilson's article appeared from Mr. Novak, the columnist who, on July 14, 2003, was the first to report Ms. Wilson's identity.

In his column, Mr. Novak referred to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, which she had used when first employed by the C.I.A. Mr. Fleischer has told the grand jury that he did not return Mr. Novak's call, a person familiar with the testimony said.

Mr. Rove has also told the grand jury that he never saw the memorandum, a person briefed on the case said. Democrats who have been eager to focus attention on the case have urged reporters to look into the role of several other administration officials, including John R. Bolton, who was then under secretary of state for arms control and international security and has since been nominated by Mr. Bush to be ambassador to the United Nations.

In his disclosure form for his confirmation hearings, Mr. Bolton made no mention of being interviewed in the case, a government official said. In the week after Mr. Wilson's article appeared, Mr. Bolton attended a conference in Australia.

In addition to ferreting out the original leak, the grand jury is examining the truthfulness of its witnesses, comparing each account with previous testimony. One apparent area of interest is the conflicting accounts given by Mr. Rove and Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine correspondent who has said he spoke to Mr. Rove about Ms. Wilson, about why they spoke on July 11, 2003.

Mr. Rove, said a source familiar with his testimony, told prosecutors that the conversation began under the pretext of discussing welfare reform.

But Mr. Cooper said he had no record or memory of actually talking to Mr. Rove about welfare reform, instead only discussing the Wilson case in their brief chat. The grand jury focused on that apparent discrepancy, Mr. Cooper wrote in an account in Time this week.

Anne E. Kornblut contributed reporting for this article.

The Guardian profile: Karl Rove
Julian Borger
Friday July 22, 2005
Guardian UK

When Karl Rove is in trouble - and he has been in a lot of it lately - George Bush has a simple way of showing his support. When he walks across the lawn out of the White House he has Rove walk with him, so the next day's photographs will show that familiar pink, bespectacled face at the presidential shoulder.

This is the currency in which President Bush repays loyalty, and no one is as loyal as Karl Rove. Before they met, George junior was just a genial fellow from a famous family with very good connections. Rove, the hard-nosed political geek who can reel off 20-year-old election results from obscure congressional districts, turned the callow pretender into a candidate, then a governor, then a president.

At the same time, he brought the Republican party lasting dominance by bringing protestant evangelicals and hispanic Catholics under the amorphous banner of "moral values" and a shared antipathy to abortion.

Bush acknowledged his debt at the re-election celebrations in November. He introduced Rove to the crowd simply as "The Architect", and put him in charge of White House policy, finally demolishing the crumbling wall between administration policy and politics.

There has never been a partnership like it in US political history - so close and continuing so seamlessly from campaign trail to government. Never has a consultant, a hired mechanic in the political engineroom, risen so high.

The official title, deputy White House chief of staff, does not do him justice. At the age of 54 and without a college degree, Rove is the second or third most powerful man in the US (arguably therefore the world) depending on where you place Dick Cheney.

You need to go abroad and back in time to look for parallels. He is the White House's Richelieu - or, if you ask his enemies, its Rasputin.

Yet now, at the zenith of his career, Rove seems at his most vulnerable. A Washington scandal he tried to brush off two years ago has broken the surface again and threatens to pull him under.

As with many of the White House's current difficulties, this tale starts with the decision to go to war in Iraq. On July 6 2003, a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, had an article published in the New York Times that cast doubt on one of the justifications for the invasion. Contrary to the president's claims, Wilson wrote, there was scant evidence that Saddam Hussein had been buying uranium in Africa. He knew because he had gone on a fact-finding trip to Niger the previous year and found the claims hollow. In all the controversy over pre-war intelligence, this seemed like a smoking gun. Eight days later, a veteran conservative columnist, Robert Novak, wrote a piece playing down the importance of the Niger trip, claiming Wilson had been sent at the suggestion of his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction".

Ms Plame was indeed Wilson's wife, but she was also an undercover agent and the leak of her identity was a potential felony under the intelligence identities protection act, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The White House stonewalled, denying the involvement of senior people, specifically Rove.

For nearly two years, the investigation went nowhere, even after the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, threatened journalists with jail for failing to reveal sources on the story. Novak seems to have struck a deal. Judith Miller, of the New York Times, meanwhile, went to prison rather than talk.

It was Time magazine that cracked. Faced with heavy fines, it handed over the computer notes of its journalist, Matthew Cooper, against his wishes. With the cat out of the bag, Cooper announced his source had waived confidentiality. Cooper's evidence confirmed what many had suspected - that Rove was in the thick of it.

In a telephone conversation on July 11, Rove told Cooper that Wilson had been sent to Niger by his wife, who worked on WMD issues at "the agency". Cooper said: "This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife."

Despite this bombshell, Rove has yet to be "frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs", as Wilson once imagined. Intelligence identity law makes life hard for prosecutors, who have to prove the perpetrator knew the agent was undercover and leaked the identity "with intent to injure" the US.

But Fitzgerald is exploring other possible charges, including perjury and obstruction of justice. It is one of the iron laws of White House scandals that the cover-up is always worse than the crime, and this might be the case again. There are rumours of imminent indictments, but also of different targets: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, also talked to Cooper at the time.

Even if Rove escapes prosecution, the political damage is done. Several times in 2003 and 2004, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, denied Rove was "involved", calling such suggestions "ridiculous", and McClellan and the president pledged to sack anyone involved. The Cooper revelations forced Bush this week to re-phrase that vow, saying he would dismiss anyone who "committed a crime" - a penalty that most Americans would hope was standard White House policy, at least since Richard Nixon's days.

Bush's poll ratings for integrity have subsequently plummeted. Even Americans who hated him often noted that he was the plainspoken sort who said what he meant. Now even some who love him are wondering what to believe. The man who got Bush to the White House and won him four more years, is sullying the second term - the time when all presidents try to find a place in history but mostly spend fighting off scandals.

So far Bush has shown no sign of ditching his mentor. The president believes in loyalty, in receiving and giving it. He is also knows Rove has got them out of scrapes before. Bush's shrugging nonchalance - so attractive to voters - is only possible because Rove has determination and calculation enough for them both. Bush meandered into politics. Rove had much further to come but made a beeline.

According to a Rove biography, cheekily entitled Bush's Brain, Rove was once asked when he started thinking about presidential campaigns. He replied: "December 25 1950." That was the day of his birth, in Denver, Colorado.

There are no easy explanations for where Rove's political drive comes from. He was born into a modest, not very political or religious family. His father, a geologist, was away a lot and eventually left. Rove discovered, aged 20, that the man was not his biological father. A few years later his mother committed suicide.

Out of this turmoil came a determination breathtaking in its single-mindedness, and a bent for hero worship. At the age of nine Rove backed Nixon for the 1960 elections; and endured a beating by a little girl next door, a Kennedy fan. He was able to recall the incident, talking to journalists, four decades on.

Throughout the1960s, Rove was the perfect Republican, going to school each day in jacket, tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, carrying a briefcase. He later described himself as a "big nerd". But he was a nerd who got even.

Alongside his ambition and fixation on politics he appears to have believed that the end always justified the means. At school debates he had a mountain of reference cards. Every debater on the team brought a shoebox of cards, but he would bring up to 10 boxes and dump them down, intimidatingly. A team-mate said "there wasn't a thing on 99% of them". He seems to have been a natural at what he called "pranks". Working on one of his first proper campaigns, aged 19, in Illinois, he infiltrated the Democratic campaign and stole its headed notepaper, which he used on the streets to distribute invitations to their HQ promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing".

Three years later, he was caught on tape boasting about such exploits to student Republicans; the party chairman at the time, Bush's father (George HW Bush) was so impressed he hired him as an assistant.

One of his menial jobs was to hand over the Bush car keys whenever George junior went to Washington. Rove's description sounds like the start of a love affair. "I can literally remember what he was wearing," he said of an occasion in 1973, "an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, blue jeans. He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have."

Since that day, nothing has stood in the way of their political marriage: Bush's opponents have been smeared as lesbians (Ann Richards, the ousted Texas governor), crazed veterans with illegitimate Asian children (Senator John McCain) and cowards falsifying their war records (Senator John Kerry).

The dirty tricks out of the bag, Rove has been close at hand but leaving no discernible fingerprints. Until this week. For the first time in 32 years, he has been caught, and his survival now depends on the gratitude of his partner and protege in the White House.

Life in short

Born December 25 1950 in Denver, Colorado. Discovered at age 19 that the man who raised him was not his father.

Family Married twice, with a son from second marriage.

Education University of Utah (left without graduating in 1971).

Career Volunteer on Republican campaign at high school; chair, then president, College Republicans, 1973; worked for former President Bush at Republican national committee, 1973; assisted former President Bush's 1980 presidential campaign; began consultancy in 1981; adviser to President Bush in campaigns for Texas governor (1994, 1998) and president (2000, 2004); senior adviser in current administration, and teaches at University of Texas

On Bush "... the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait a lifetime to be associated with."

Political consultant Mark McKinnon "The Bobby Fischer of politics. He not only sees the board, he sees about 20 moves ahead."

Why Bush 41 fired Karl Rove
Bush Watch Opinion:
When Daddy Bush Fired Rove Over Novak "Leaks," Ron Suskind (2003)

William Kristol, among the most respected of the conservative commentators--a man embraced by the Right but still on dinner-party guest lists for the center and Left--is untouchable. He is willing to speak...."I believe Karl [Rove] is Bush. They're not separate, each of them freestanding, with distinct agendas, as some people say. Karl thinks X. Bush thinks X

There is criticism of Karl from the friends of the former President Bush who don't approve of the way the current President Bush is doing his job in every case." Kristol notes that "the kid is what he is, and he's different from the father, some differences that I feel good about," but that gray men around "41" who don't approve of "43" have trouble criticizing the son to the father "and ascribe everything to Karl's malign influence."

In that, Rove is at the center of the most portentous father-son conversation of modern times. Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush (41) 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."

Rove an "Anonymous Source" Before?
July 22, 2005
Rove an "Anonymous Source" Before?
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Michael Galinsky

In the wake of the Plamegate and the recent revelations about Karl Rove's role, I am reminded of another infamous instance in which Rove was implicated as an anonymous source.

My partner Suki Hawley and I directed the documentary "Horns and Halos," which chronicled the exploits of author James H. Hatfield and publisher Sander Hicks as they put out the controversial George W. Bush biography Fortunate Son during the 2000 presidential race.

The climax of the film takes place in a scene at the 2001 Book Expo of America during a press conference organized by Hicks and Hatfield to promote Soft Skull Press' new edition of Fortunate Son. The announcement of the press conference promised startling new revelations, and a handful of journalists showed up. Hicks began, against Hatfield's wishes, by disclosing that one of his main sources for the book's infamous allegation - that Dubya was arrested for cocaine possession and his father had it expunged from his record - as none other than: KARL ROVE. Hatfield reluctantly corroborated Hicks' remarks and fielded questions from a couple of reporters. A transcript of his remarks with Bob Minzensheimer from USA Today follows:

Bob Minzensheimer, USA Today: Yea, hi. Did you say Karl Rove is your source on the cocaine arrest?

Hatfield: Well Sanders [the publisher] kind of put me between a rock and hard spot, but now with the re-launching of this edition. Yeah, Karl Rove is my, one of my major sources.

Minzensheimer: Why would Karl Rove tell you that, and how do you know he was telling the truth?

Hatfield: He contacted me the first time in June of 1999. The book was finished. It was turned in. I had a May deadline with St. Martin's Press. He just said, "I'm a Bush campaign person, I want to make sure the nuts and bolts are correct." And I corroborated everything he told me that weekend with secondary and third sources.

Minzensheimer: How do you know Rove is telling the truth with the cocaine arrest?

Hatfield: Well because I called the other two sources. Those were two other people I used throughout the book. And they had always been right on the money with stuff. So I chose three people. And basically I played poker with them. That wasn't in the St. Martin's edition, but it was in the Soft Skull edition. I told them I had lots of people who were willing to go on record. And I called their bluff, there's not a doubt in my mind it's not true.

At the time, Hatfield's reputation was in shambles, and the reporters treated him incredulously. Almost two years earlier St. Martins Press dropped Fortunate Son and recalled 100,000 copies just a few days after its initial release when they discovered Hatfield had lied about being a convicted felon. His credibility was tarnished permanently.

As a filmmaker who had been following the story for over a year I certainly had my doubts as well, and still do. Hatfield had not always been completely forthcoming.

However, the way that Hicks and Hatfield explained things it made a bit of sense. Their theory was that Hatfield was given the information by Rove (or that Rove corroborated it) because Rove knew about Hatfield's criminal history. Thus, when the book and the cocaine story came out, Hatfield could be discredited and the focus would shift from Dubya's past to Hatfield's. As it turned out, that is exactly what happened.

Rumors of Bush's cocaine use among the press were running rampant when Fortunate Son was released in October of 1999. The book fanned those flames for a few days, as it contained an after word that alleged Dubya had been arrested for cocaine possession in 1972 and his father had it expunged from his record by a judge who was a family friend. A couple of days after the book hit the shelves it was reported in the Dallas Morning News that Hatfield served time in jail for his role in a murder for hire plot. Initially, Hatfield denied the accusation to his editor at St. Martins Press, but when it proved to be true they pulled the book from shelves.

After reading about the recall of Fortunate Son in The New York Times we began following Hatfield and Hicks, operating out of a basement office, as they mounted a campaign to re-publish the book. For the next year and a half they battled lawsuits, faced financial ruin, and made numerous media appearances, including a "60 Minutes" profile, in an attempt to gain back Hatfield's credibility and publicize the new edition of the book. The press conference at the 2001 Book Expo of America was their last attempt at giving the book legitimacy. With nothing left to lose Hicks was compelled to reveal Hatfield's sources and Hatfield reluctantly went along with it. Soon after, he confessed his fears about revealing Rove as a source and not having anyone believe him. He told us: "If anything happens to me get this out in the press."

Unfortunately, one month later, Hatfield committed suicide. We were devastated at his loss. While there was widespread speculation that he had been killed, we are certain that he took his own life.

We still don't know if he was telling the truth about Rove. He did have telephone records documenting numerous calls to Rove's unlisted number. Beyond that we have to take him at his word.

You can view the clip of the press conference at:

www.hornsandhalos.com/

Michael Galinsky