Rove's Deceptions: Update

UPDATE (July 11, 2005):

So it would seem that O’Donnell was on target with the revelation of Karl Rove being the ‘source’ that threw Valerie Plame to the press, however, the spin surrounding it is nauseating. So here’s what the lawyers and the spin-doctors are saying via the LATimes:

According to Newsweek, Cooper and Rove discussed Wilson’s wife in the context of who at the CIA had been responsible for the trip. Cooper noted in the e-mail that Rove was trying to raise concerns about the credibility of Wilson’s report.

Cooper wrote his bosses that Rove offered him a “big warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson,” saying that the trip had not been authorized by senior officials.

Rather, “it was, KR said, [W]ilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip,” the e-mail stated, according to Newsweek.

Luskin, Rove’s attorney, declined to confirm or deny the contents of the e-mail.

But Luskin 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.[…]

At the same time, Luskin declined to say whether Rove knew that Plame was a covert agent, even if he did not know her name, which analysts said was a crucial factor in determining whether the law was broken.

They also said that although Rove asserted he did not intend to disclose her identity, a jury might find otherwise based on other factors, such as whether he discussed Plame, even anonymously, with other reporters.

So lets recap on this. Apparently in this day of information and technology when you can Yahoo or Google the phone number of someone in a foreign country, national media would find the reference ‘Wilson’s wife’ to be unclear and are so incompetent as to not be able to find out her name? Who’s buying this nonsense?

How about the spin that she wasn’t ‘covert’? So now we spend millions of taxpayers dollars on issues that could have been answered without a grand jury, simply by stating that she wasn’t covert? Why bother with a grand jury at all if this was the case? Well, in a nutshell, because she was covert and this is all about spinning at this point.

The whole ordeal has left me so angry and outraged. I’m just hopeful that people won’t let this one slide under the rug, like the rest of the nasty things that have occurred with this administration. It’s time for some accountability.

From July 2, 2005:

Fresh off the press, it seems that political bombshells may well outshine the fireworks on the 4th of July. In the past few weeks, liberals and progressives have concluded Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor had a big mouth – but just how big seems to be the new political bombshell looming on the horizon.

Word has it that Lawrence O’Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst claimed tonight on the syndicated show, McLaughlin Group, that the source behind the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame is none other than the president’s right hand man, Rove.

“What we’re going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper’s e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury, the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

“And I know I’m going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of…for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine’s going to do with the grand jury.”

So what will happen to Rove, should this statement by O’Donnell be proven true, considering revealing the identity of a CIA agent is a federal crime? Perjury charges? Treason charges? A Bush pardon and business as usual?

Interestingly enough, Joseph Wilson, former ambassador and husband to Ms. Plame named Rove as the source who leaked his wife’s name to the press from the beginning, was met with cynicism, disbelief and relative silence from that oh so ‘liberal’ (tongue in cheek!) press of ours. If Cooper does indeed name Rove as the source to the Grand Jury, I will be watching with fascination as to how the administration will wiggle out of this one.

Oh, by the way Karl, Pope Boniface VIII left a message for you:

“Silence is the genius of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.”