KARL ROVE - PUPPETMASTER

Google Groups: Publishing Trouble

2006-05-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

AIR AMERICA REPORTS KARL ROVE TO BE INDICTED ON PERJURY

2006-05-12T16:23:00.000-07:00

AIR AMERICA REPORTED THIS EVENING THAT KARL ROVE TOLD JOSH BOLTON THAT HE (KARL) IS TO BE INDICTED ON PERJURY AND ROVE IS STEPPING DOWN FROM HIS POSITION AT THE WHITE HOUSE.

Rove Attacks Democrats for Wanting to `Cut and Run' (Update1)

2006-01-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, criticized Democrats for wanting to ``cut and run'' in Iraq and said Bush and the Republicans better understand how to make the country stronger and safer.
``We have a loud chorus of Democrats who want us to cut and run in Iraq,'' Rove, 54, said in a broad attack at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee in Washington.
``The U.S. faces a ruthless enemy and we need a commander in chief and Congress who understand the nature of the threat and gravity of the moment America finds itself in,'' Rove said. ``President Bush and the Republican party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats.''
The speech, to about 270 party members, was Rove's first public address since November. He didn't mention the political scandals that hang over the capital, choosing to focus on three areas where he said the parties differ -- national security, the economy and the courts -- in what may be a precursor of the party's platform in this year's mid-term elections.
``Republicans and Democrats have deep differences about our nation, where it is going and what needs to be done to make it stronger, better and safer'' Rove said in a speech interrupted several times by applause.
`Radical Position'
Without citing any Democrats by name, Rove blasted ``one radical position'' calling for ``an immediate stand-down of U.S. troops in Iraq and withdrawal by the end of April.'' Democratic Representative John Murtha, a Vietnam War veteran who voted in favor of the Iraq war, in November called for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying they could be out of the country in as soon as six months.
``To retreat before victory has been won would be a reckless act, and this president and our party will not allow it,'' Rove said, drawing a round of applause.
Rove ignored the legal problems that have ensnared some prominent Republicans. I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was indicted in October on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. He has pleaded not guilty. Rove himself remains under investigation in the probe, which centers on the leaking of Central Intelligence Agency Valerie Plame's name after her husband criticized the Bush administration.
Defending Surveillance
Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted on alleged campaign finance violations, and lobbyist Jack Abramoff has pleaded guilty in a federal corruption probe.
President Bush ordered the White House staff in November to take refresher classes on ethics rules and both political parties are striving to be labeled the party of ``reform'' by proposing new regulations on lobbyists.
RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman did touch on the scandals in a speech before Rove's. While ``I'm loyal to the members of our party,'' Mehlman said, ``if Republicans are guilty of illegal or inappropriate behavior, they should pay the price and they should suffer the consequences.''
Rove defended the warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency as necessary ``to protect American lives'' and said it was ``both legal and fully consistent with'' the Fourth Amendment and the protection of civil liberties.'
The Republicans' winter meeting is designed largely to energize party members for the November congressional elections.
Inevitably, there was also talk of future presidential elections. Mehlman drew laughter during a rules committee session yesterday when he said the group was extremely important because it will set the rules for the selection of the party's 2012 nominee. ``And George P. Bush's presidential campaign will be watching what you are going to do,'' Mehlman said.
George P. Bush is the eldest son of Florida Governor Jeb Bush and President Bush's nephew. In 2012, he will turn 36, one year older than the Constitution requires for the presidency.

Bush Launches “Operation Cindy Sheehan”

2005-08-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

Deep in the heart of Texas, an epic confrontation is taking place between Citizen Sheehan and President Bush. It all started when Cindy Sheehan decided to show up in Crawford to petition her president for credible answers about a war policy that resulted in the death of her eldest son.

As recent polls clearly demonstrate, the majority of Americans are very concerned about the debacle in Iraq. They too want to know about the secret agenda that compelled Bush to spill so much blood and waste so much treasure in Iraq. That helps explain the incredible response to Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier who decided she wasn’t buying the administration’s shifting rationale for the war.

So far, Bush has evaded Cindy’s attempts to interrogate him on his motives for launching this disastrous venture. In his estimate -- Sheehan deserves no meeting and no response. The president has made an executive decision that his job description does not oblige him to divulge the real reasons for invading Iraq.

It’s not that Bush doesn’t have time to spare. One can only speculate as to the number of hours he has already wasted plotting a plan of attack against the lady from Vacaville. It now appears that the battle plans have been finalized and “Operation Cindy Sheehan” has already been launched.

Once again, Karl Rove has let the dogs out. A vicious campaign to maul Citizen Sheehan is in play. Instead of answering her questions -- the right wing media hacks are focusing on her motives, her mental health, her ideology and her family. These are standard and classic Rovian tactics used to smear administration critics. The predictable pundits at FOX have taken the lead by portraying Sheehan as a treasonous “crackpot” who is exploiting the death of her son to gain fame and fortune and advance the extremist political agenda of leftist “anti-American” groups. Hate radio stations across the nations are assailing Cindy’s integrity and questioning her patriotism.

The objective of this smear campaign is to draw fire away from Bush. Instead of focusing on the argument between Sheehan and the president -- we now have a contest between Sheehan’s supporters and her detractors. What started out as a search for the truth is being reduced to an ideological spat between the left and the right.

The success of the White House plan of attack is by no means certain. Unlike the small band of neo-cons that infest the administration, most Americans are not glued to any ideology. They tend to navigate the political landscape using nothing more than their common sense. Millions of honorable conservatives want answers to Cindy’s questions. As for the phantom “extreme left” in America -- it only exists in the imagination of the extreme right, which unfortunately has a very real constituency.

Still, one should never underestimate Karl Rove. The man has an unenviable track record in the smear industry. Vilifying Cindy puts her on the defensive and obliges her to fend off vicious attacks questioning her motives, her agenda and her ideology. My guess is that Cindy is not wedded to any ideology and her only agenda is to stop this senseless war and bring the troops home from Iraq -- safe and sound. She does, however, have a motive. She wants George Bush and his merry band of neo-cons to pay a political price for sending Casey Sheehan to an early grave.

The smear campaign against Sheehan has other advantages. It gives the mainstream media a pass from concentrating on George Bush and his failed policies in Iraq. Let there be no doubt that the mainstream media barons have as much stake in this drama as the president. Judith Miller is but one example of the many “journalists” and publishers who conspired with the White House to market this war of choice and pull off the WMD hoax. So, don’t expect them to push the envelope.

Mass Media corporations have transformed themselves into one giant burial ground for this administration’s scandals. In covering the Iraq war, the major media outlets have consistently acted as an echo chamber for the rosy projections originating in the White House. In the last month alone, they have dodged the responsibility to cover the Plame case and the AIPAC spy scandal at the Pentagon. Allegations of war profiteering by Dick Cheney and Paul Bremer have been put aside.

Every critic of this war has taken his lumps. Gen. Eric Shinseki was ushered out of the army for suggesting that the occupation of Iraq required hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers. Lawrence Lindsey was dismissed when he estimated that the war would cost up to $200 billion. The neo-cons berated both men’s estimates as being “wildly off the mark.” We all know what happened to Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. Hans Blix was publicly defamed, Scott Ritter was ignored and General Anthony Zinni was smeared as an anti-Semite. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was labeled a malcontent. And who now remembers Richard Clarke, the anti-terror adviser, who accused both Bush and Clinton of dropping the ball in confronting Bin Laden prior to 9/11?

On the other hand, the neo-con architects of this quagmire are being handsomely rewarded for their disservice to the nation. Cheney managed to steer multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to Halliburton. Following in the steps of Robert McNamara, Paul Wolfowitz was promoted to the World Bank. Douglas Feith managed to sneak out the back door of the Pentagon -- no doubt with a generous pension and a new assignment at the Israeli Lobby. And Rumsfeld and Condi Rice still retain their positions of power and influence. When did the mainstream press ever question the motives, character and ideology of these individuals? We don’t even know if Rummy has kids or if Condi has ever landed a date. When have you encountered stories about Paul Wolfowitz and his Israeli sister or Douglas Feith and his law offices in Jerusalem? What about Richard Perle and his management position at the Jerusalem Post? It is common knowledge among certain circles in Washington that Wolfowitz, Feith and Perle have spent their entire professional lives working for think tanks that act as fronts for the Israeli Lobby. We don’t even know if these people have in-laws -- much less what their in-laws think about their Likudnik ideology.

Although Karl Rove has the MSM freaks of nature in his back pocket, he still has his work cut out for him. His adversary is a white middle class small town practicing Catholic mother who married her high school sweetheart at the age of 17. Cindy Sheehan descended on Crawford armed with nothing more than a few legitimate inquiries about the cause of the quagmire in Iraq. In a single year of political activism -- she has managed to earn recognition as a national leader in the peace movement. So far, the Bush administration has vastly underestimated her ability to clearly frame questions regarding the disaster in Iraq. Like, why are we still there and why did we go there in the first place? Who was responsible for the WMD hoax and how can we hold them accountable? When do we bring the troops home and when do we get straight answers?

If we didn’t have Cindy Sheehan -- we would have to invent her. Millions of Americans have reached the conclusion that this illegal and immoral war was justified by an elaborate campaign of deception orchestrated by neo-con operatives in the administration and the media. A small cabal of mud slinging hooligans posing as journalists and pundits has effectively silenced our collective voice. Neo-con chicken hawks and war profiteers posturing as patriots hijacked the Pentagon while many of us sat passively on the fence as neutral observers. When the fictional WMDs didn’t materialize, we gave Bush a pass. Before the first shot was fired, we knew that Iraq had no link to the 9/11 atrocities. Yet, we gave this war mongering administration and its media collaborators carte blanche.

For Cindy to succeed in her noble mission, we need a sudden outbreak of journalism in America. We need to shove aside the professional character assassins at CNN and FOX. We can never hope to shame the clowns on hate radio. Their shame genes were absent at birth. It is a worthless exercise to expect a rational exchange with those endowed with the intellect of cartoon characters. These right wing hacks specialize in the art of distraction. The best way to get around their attempts to shield the president from having to answer Cindy’s questions is to ignore their ideological tantrums and keep pressing for answers from Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and Congress.

Instead of getting an honest response from the president, Cindy Sheehan is being publicly flogged for daring to challenge the war’s rationale. While journalists go on bike rides with the president -- she ends up doing their job and pressing for answers to some very important life and death questions.

This is not about left or right or center. It’s about the truth and accountability. It’s about the democratic process that Bush claims to champion abroad. We need a little demonstration of his commitment to democracy right here in America. George Bush has an obligation to provide Citizen Sheehan with credible answers as to why 15,000 American soldiers have been killed and wounded in Iraq. We need to remind those in high office that they work for us and we have every right to question their job performance. And we desperately need to reign in Karl Rove by demanding more information of his role in the Plame games. We also need to give credit to the millions of honorable conservatives and Republicans who have voiced their doubts about George Bush’s war and share Cindy’s contempt for the neo-cons. And we need to acknowledge the intellectual integrity of the many Americans who supported the war because they honestly fell for the WMD hoax and Saddam’s alleged role in the 9/11 atrocities. If so many of them had not changed their minds -- we would not now have a majority of Americans rallying against the war. Last but not least, we need to acknowledge Cindy Sheehan as a true American hero who ignited a peaceful democratic insurgency deep in the heart of Texas. That’s the America Casey Sheehan was willing to fight and die for. And that’s the America the world admires.

Rove and Ashcroft face new allegations in the Valerie Plame affair

2005-08-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

August 13th, 2005

Justice Department officials made the crucial decision in late 2003 to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame in large part because investigators had begun to specifically question the veracity of accounts provided to them by White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to senior law enforcement officials.
Several of the federal investigators were also deeply concerned that then attorney general John Ashcroft was personally briefed regarding the details of at least one FBI interview with Rove, despite Ashcroft's own longstanding personal and political ties to Rove, the Voice has also learned. The same sources said Ashcroft was also told that investigators firmly believed that Rove had withheld important information from them during that FBI interview.

Those concerns by senior career law enforcement officials regarding the propriety of such briefings continuing, as Rove became more central to the investigation, also was instrumental in the naming of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Up until that point, the investigation had been conducted by a team of career prosecutors and FBI agents, some of whom believed Ashcroft should recuse himself. Democrats on Capitol Hill were calling for him to step down, but he did not. Then on December 30, 2003, Ashcroft unexpectedly recused himself from further overseeing the matter, and James B. Comey, then deputy attorney general, named Patrick J. Fitzgerald as the special prosecutor who would take over the case.

The Justice Department declined to publicly offer any explanation at the time for either the recusal or the naming of a special prosecutor—an appointment that would ultimately place in potential legal jeopardy senior advisers to the president of the United States, and lead to the jailing of a New York Times reporter.

During his initial interview with the FBI, in the fall of 2003, Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed Plame with Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper, according to two legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter. Federal investigators were also skeptical of claims by Rove that he had only first learned of Plame's employment with the CIA from a journalist, even though he also claimed he could not specifically recall the name of the journalist.

As the truthfulness of Rove's accounts became more of a focus of investigators, career Justice Department employees and senior FBI officials became even more concerned about the continuing role in the investigation of Ashcroft, because of his close relationship with Rove. Rove had earlier served as an adviser to Ashcroft during the course of three political campaigns. And Rove’s onetime political consulting firm had been paid more than $746,000 for those services.

In response to these new allegations, Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the current ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and former chairman of the committee as well, said in a statement: "There has long been the appearance of impropriety in Ashcroft's handling of this investigation. The former attorney general had well documented conflicts of interest in this matter, particularly with regard to his personal relationship with Karl Rove. Among other things, Rove was employed by Ashcroft throughout his political career, and Rove reportedly had fiercely advocated for Ashcroft's appointment as attorney general. Pursuant to standard rules of legal ethics, and explicit rules on conflict of interest, those facts alone should have dictated his immediate recusal.

"The new information, that Ashcroft had not only refused to recuse himself over a period of months, but also was insisting on being personally briefed about a matter implicating his friend, Karl Rove, represents a stunning ethical breach that cries out for an immediate investigation by the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and Inspector General."

A Justice Department spokesman declined on Friday to say what action, if any, might be taken in response to Conyers' request.

Cindy Sheehan's Pitched Battle

2005-08-13T04:39:00.000-07:00

Cindy Sheehan's Pitched BattleCindy Sheehan's Pitched Battle
In a Tent Near Bush's Ranch, Antiwar Mother of Dead Soldier Gains Visibility

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 13, 2005; Page A01

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 12 -- Cindy Sheehan vaulted into national consciousness this month on the power of her story as the grieving mother of a fallen soldier.

But what began as a solitary campaign to force a meeting with President Bush by setting up camp along the road to his ranch has quickly taken on the full trappings of a political campaign. Sheehan is working with a political consultant and a team of public relations professionals, and now she is featured in a television ad.
Sheehan began her protest here last Saturday after crisscrossing the country for more than a year demanding answers on why Bush continues to wage what she calls an unjust war in Iraq. After her son Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in Baghdad last year, she founded Gold Star Families for Peace, an antiwar organization that labored largely in obscurity -- until now.

In part, Sheehan's case has echoed as her grievances merged with what polls show is growing dissatisfaction with the war. But her cause has also been aided by political organizers who swiftly mobilized around her -- recognizing an opportunity to cause acute discomfort for a vacationing president and put a powerful emotional frame around the antiwar movement.

No one watching cable television news this week, dominated by coverage of Sheehan's crusade, could doubt that they largely achieved their aim.

Sheehan's Crawford encampment has swollen in the past week, as other antiwar protesters have flocked to Texas. Members of CodePink, a women's antiwar organization, have pitched their tent near Sheehan's.

TrueMajority -- an antiwar group founded by Ben Cohen, one of the creators of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream -- hired Fenton Communications, a Washington public relations firm that has worked intermittently with Sheehan over the past year to coordinate media coverage.

With this help, Sheehan has courted coverage from the traveling White House press corps with a news conference. A schedule of when relatives of other military casualties in Iraq are expected to join Sheehan here was distributed to reporters. Her team is coordinating an antiwar rally planned for Saturday.

Joe Trippi, the political consultant behind former Vermont governor Howard Dean's early success in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary race, hosted a conference with Sheehan for liberal Internet bloggers, hoping their online dispatches will draw even wider attention.

On Saturday, Sheehan launched a TV ad campaign hoping to achieve what her roadside vigil so far has not: a second chance to directly tell Bush about the devastation she has experienced since her son's death.

"Mr. President, I want to tell you face to face how much this hurts," Sheehan says in the ad, which will air with only a modest $15,000 buy of airtime in Waco, the nearest broadcast market to Bush's 1,600-acre spread. "How many more of our loved ones need to die in this senseless war?"

The rising profile of Sheehan's vigil has proved awkward for the president's staff, which has been reluctant to publicly refute the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, even as they do not wish to be seen as bowing to what they view as an orchestrated publicity campaign. On Friday, as Bush's motorcade whizzed by Sheehan's camp on the way to a nearby barbecue expected to raise $2 million for the Republican National Committee, Sheehan held up a sign saying "Why do you make time for donors and not for me?"

Bush has been publicly respectful, responding to Sheehan's case with reporters on Thursday and saying he has thought "long and hard about her position," even though he disagrees with her about the war.

Still, as Sheehan has stepped onto the media stage, she has become a target in the way that happens inevitably to anyone involved in high-stakes political combat -- with opponents questioning her motives and examining her statements for contradictions.

"Despite what the headlines say, Sheehan, 48, is more antiwar protester than grieving mother," said a column Friday in the online version of the American Spectator. "She is co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, an organization that seeks to impeach George W. Bush and apparently to convince the U.S. government to surrender to Muslim terrorists."

Meanwhile, the Heart of Texas chapter of FreeRepublic.com, an online conservative forum, has scheduled a demonstration here for Saturday to counteract Sheehan's protest and show support for Bush and the war.

Others have also raised questions about Sheehan's account of her first meeting with Bush, which occurred two months after her son's death in April 2004. Sheehan was part of a larger group of grieving family members who met with Bush at Fort Lewis in Washington state.

After the meeting, she was quoted by the newspaper in her hometown of Vacaville, Calif., as saying that the president seemed sympathetic. Subsequently, she has said that Bush treated her callously during the meeting.

Sheehan said her initial reaction to Bush reflected her shock over her son's death. In addition, she said she grew increasingly angry toward Bush as it became clear that the United States had not found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and as evidence emerged that the administration had discussed an invasion of Iraq before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She has said that she has become further angered as the administration has sent mixed signals about its plans for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Though Sheehan's protest has galvanized support among antiwar activists, it has divided parts of her own family, some of whom sent an e-mail to news organizations distancing themselves from her protest.

"We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation," said an e-mail sent to the Reporter newspaper, in Vacaville. The e-mail was signed by Casey Sheehan's aunt Cherie Quartarolo on behalf of his paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

"The Sheehan family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving," the e-mail said. "The rest of the Sheehan family supports the troops, our country and our president, silently, with prayer and respect."

Sheehan, however, told the paper that the admonition came from in-laws who often disagreed with her.

"We have always been on separate sides of the fence politically and I have not spoken to them since the elections when they supported the man who is responsible for Casey's death," Sheehan said. "The thing that matters to me is that my family, Casey's dad and my other three kids, are on the same side of the fence that I am."

Arianna Huffington: It Takes a Village to Smear Cindy Sheehan - Yahoo! News

2005-08-13T04:37:00.000-07:00

Arianna Huffington: It Takes a Village to Smear Cindy Sheehan - Yahoo! NewsArianna Huffington
Fri Aug 12, 7:22 PM ET

The right wing attacks on Cindy Sheehan -- desperate, pathetic, and grasping at straws -- expose much less about their target than about the attackers.

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I mean, trying to slime a grieving Gold Star mom because she is inconveniently questioning the reasons her son was sent off to die in Iraq? Why that would be like trashing a much-decorated war hero or outing an undercover CIA agent…

Oh, right…

How much longer can the Bushies get away with mauling the very values they profess to stand for before their supporters start getting wise to the fact that the only value they really value is power?

Think about it, they’ve shown absolutely no compunction about turning the sleaze machine on an undercover agent who’d spent her career working to protect us from weapons of mass destruction, a Silver Star/Purple Heart veteran who volunteered to fight in a war the administration chickenhawks gamed the system to avoid, and now the mother of a dead soldier.

The right wing smear machine whirrs on -- using its media mouthpieces to do this dirtiest of dirty work. First it was the lie that Sheehan had, in the words of Drudge, “dramatically changed her account” of her June 2004 meeting with Bush. Despite the fact that this supposed flip-flop was a total distortion created by taking quotes out of context, the story quickly made its way into the hands of conservative bloggers… and allowed the TV jackal-pack to start tearing away at Sheehan’s flesh. For all the details on how this went down, check out Media Matters blow-by-blow description. The lowlights included Bill O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin tag-teaming up to push the idea that Sheehan’s “story hasn’t checked out”. O’Reilly also claimed Sheehan “is in bed with the radical left”, and, later suggested “this kind of behavior borders on treasonous”… and, for bad measure, tried to slime Sheehan by linking her with “people who hate this government, hate their country”.

Rush Limbaugh played his usual role, parroting the flip-flop party line, saying that Sheehan was “trying to pull a little bit of a swindle” and that “she’d been totally co-opted by…the whole Michael Moore leftist mentality.” Fred Barnes piled on, saying of Sheehan: “She’s a crackpot” (no doubt using the same video-based diagnostic technique pioneered by Bill Frist). And Michelle Malkin went all Patricia Arquette on the case, using her heretofore unpromoted ESP powers to let us know that Sheehan’s dead son Casey wouldn’t approve of “his mother’s crazy accusations”.

Beyond contempt. But I will say this for these sleazeballs: they are nothing if not resilient. After the Cindy as Flip-Flopper story was revealed as a very poorly done hatchet job, a second load of sludge was quickly dumped: the ludicrous statement from the (ahem) “Sheehan Family” condemning Cindy’s “political motivations and publicity tactics” (run under a banner headline proclaiming “Family of Fallen Soldier Pleads: Please Stop, Cindy”).

Where do I start with this piece of manufactured offal? How about the fact that no one put their names on the statement, which was “signed” by “Casey Sheehan’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins”. Don’t these folks have names? The only name attached to the “Sheehan Family” statement (delivered to Drudge via email with permission “to distribute as you wish”) belongs to Cherie Quartarolo who describes herself as Casey’s aunt and godmother. So did I miss something? Since when does godmother outrank mother? What I really want to know is: how does Casey’s second-cousin-twice-removed feel about Cindy’s vigil? How about his ex-brother-in-law’s cleaning lady?

Cindy deals with all this very succinctly in her latest post, but suffice it to say that Casey’s dad and their three other children are all supportive of what Cindy is doing. Hmm… I always thought conservatives were big proponents of the importance of the nuclear family. Does James Dobson know about this attempt to undermine the primacy of a mother?

I guess it takes a village to trash a grieving Gold Star Mom.

CNN.com - Soldier's mom digs in near Bush ranch - Aug 7, 2005

2005-08-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

CNN.com - Soldier's mom digs in near Bush ranch - Aug 7, 2005CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) -- A mother whose son was killed in Iraq says she is prepared to continue her protest outside President Bush's ranch through August until she is granted an opportunity to speak with him.

Later, in a TV interview, a Democratic senator from California said the episode evokes images that were commonplace during the Vietnam War.

Cindy Sheehan's 24-year-old son -- Army Spc. Casey Sheehan of Vacaville, California -- was killed in Baghdad's Sadr City on April 4, 2004. The Humvee mechanic was one of eight U.S. soldiers killed there that day by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. (Full story)

They are among the 1,829 American troops, including 31 this month, who have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The president -- who is spending a nearly five-week-long working vacation at his Texas ranch -- said in a speech Wednesday that the sacrifices of U.S. troops were "made in a noble cause." (Full story)

Sheehan said she found little comfort in his comments.

"I want to ask the president, why did he kill my son?" Sheehan told reporters. "He said my son died in a noble cause, and I want to ask him what that noble cause is."

Sheehan said hers was one of a group of about 15 families who each met separately with the president one day last June.

"He wouldn't look at the pictures of Casey. He didn't even know Casey's name," she told CNN Sunday. "Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject."

Sheehan said she was so distraught at the time that she failed to ask the questions she now wants answered.

"I want him to honor my son by bringing the troops home immediately," Sheehan told reporters Saturday. "I don't want him to use my son's name or my name to justify any more killing."

Sheehan, who co-founded the anti-war group Gold Star Families for Peace, led about 50 demonstrators near the Bush ranch Saturday. Some protesters were with the group Veterans for Peace, which was holding a convention in Dallas.

The protesters stopped their bus miles from the ranch in Crawford, and walked less than a half-mile before being stopped by local law enforcement officials.

A message on the Gold Star Families Web site says, "We want our loved ones' sacrifices to be honored by bringing our nation's sons and daughters home from the travesty that is Iraq IMMEDIATELY, since this war is based on horrendous lies and deceptions.

"Just because our children are dead, why would we want any more families to suffer the same pain and devastation?"

The message also urges Bush to send his twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, to Iraq "if the cause is so noble."

The site says the group is made up of families of soldiers who have died as a result of war, primarily in Iraq.

Joe Hagin, White House deputy chief of staff, and Stephen Hadley, national security adviser, met with Sheehan for about 45 minutes Saturday, according to White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

Sheehan said that the two men "were very respectful."

"They told me the party line of why we are in Iraq," she said. "I told them that I don't believe that they believed that."

Duffy said Saturday that "many of the hundreds of families the president has met with know their loved one died for a noble cause and that the best way to honor their sacrifice is to complete the mission."

Bush has refused to provide a time frame for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, saying American forces will return home when Iraqis can take care of their own security.

"President Bush wants the troops home as soon as possible, but the U.S. will not cut and run from terrorists," Duffy said.

Sheehan elicited sympathy from both sides of the political spectrum on Sunday.

"What you're seeing with that mom trying to meet with President Bush is echoes of Vietnam," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat. "Because no one is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."

"I think the president ought to meet with this mother," said Sen. George Allen, a Virginia Republican. "What I would say to her is her son will always be remembered as a great hero and a patriot, advanced freedom in Iraq and the Middle East, has made this country more secure."

Boxer said her own message would be different: "I would tell her to do everything she could to spare other families this grief, to get us off this cycle of violence."

Recent surveys have shown decreasing public support for the war.

In a Newsweek poll released Sunday, 64 percent of those asked said they do not believe the war in Iraq has made Americans safer, and 61 percent said they disapprove of the way the president is handling the war.

The telephone poll of 1,004 adults was taken from Tuesday to Thursday last week and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Gainesville.com | The Gainesville Sun | Gainesville, Fla.

2005-08-07T18:10:00.000-07:00

Gainesville.com | The Gainesville Sun | Gainesville, Fla.Evolution revolution?

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

The New York Times
August 05. 2005 6:01AM

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sharp debate between scientists and religious conservatives escalated this week over comments by President Bush that the theory of intelligent design should be taught with evolution in the nation's public schools.

In an interview at the White House on Monday with a group of Texas newspaper reporters, Bush appeared to endorse the push by many of his conservative Christian supporters to give intelligent design equal treatment with the theory of evolution in public schools.

Intelligent design, advanced by a group of academics and intellectuals and some biblical creationists, disputes the idea that natural selection - the force Charles Darwin suggested drove evolution - fully explains the complexity of life. Instead, intelligent design proponents say that life is so intricate that only a powerful guiding force, or intelligent designer, could have created it.

Intelligent design does not identify the designer, but critics say the theory is a thinly disguised argument for God and the divine creation of the universe. Invigorated by a recent push by conservatives, the theory has been gaining support in school districts in 20 states, with Kansas in the lead.

Recalling his days as Texas governor, Bush said in the interview, according to a transcript, "I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught." Asked again by a reporter whether he believed that both sides in the debate between evolution and intelligent design should be taught in the schools, Bush replied that he did, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that intelligent design was an alternative to evolution, but he did not directly answer. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said, adding that "you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

On Tuesday, the president's conservative Christian supporters and the leading institute advancing intelligent design embraced Bush's comments, while scientists and advocates of the separation of church and state disparaged them. At the White House, where intelligent design has been discussed in a weekly Bible study group, Bush's science adviser, John H. Marburger III, sought to play down the president's remarks as common sense and old news.

Marburger said in a telephone interview that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." Marburger also said that Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes.

Marburger said that it would be "overinterpreting" Bush's remarks to say that the president believes that intelligent design and evolution should be given equal treatment in schools.

But Bush's conservative supporters said that the president had indicated exactly that in his remarks.

"It's what I've been pushing, it's what a lot of us have been pushing," said Richard Land, the president of the ethics and religious liberties commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Land, who has close ties to the White House, said that evolution "is too often taught as fact," and that "if you're going to teach the Darwinian theory as evolution, teach it as theory. And then teach another theory that has the most support among scientists."

But critics saw Bush's comment that "both sides" should be taught as the most troubling aspect of his remarks. "It sounds like you're being fair, but creationism is a sectarian religious viewpoint, and intelligent design is a sectarian religious viewpoint," said Susan Spath, a spokeswoman for the National Center for Science Education, a group that defends the teaching of evolution in public schools.

"It's not fair to privilege one religious viewpoint by calling it the other side of evolution."

Spath added that intelligent design was viewed as more respectable and sophisticated than biblical creationism, but "if you look at their theological and scientific writings, you see that the movement is fundamentally anti-evolution."

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the president's comments irresponsible, and said that "when it comes to evolution, there is only one school of scientific thought, and that is evolution occurred and is still occurring." Lynn added that "when it comes to matters of religion and philosophy, they can be discussed objectively in public schools, but not in biology class."

The Discovery Institute in Seattle, a leader in developing intelligent design, applauded the president's words on Tuesday as a defense of scientists who have been ostracized for advancing the theory.

"We interpret this as the president using his bully pulpit to support freedom of inquiry and free speech about the issue of biological origins," said Stephen Meyer, the director of the institute's Center for Science and Culture. "It's extremely timely and welcome because so many scientists are experiencing recriminations for breaking with Darwinist orthodoxy."

At the White House, intelligent design was the subject of a weekly Bible study class several years ago when Charles W. Colson, the founder and chairman of Prison Fellowship Ministries, spoke to the group. Colson has also written a book, "The Good Life," in which a chapter on intelligent design features Michael Gerson, an evangelical Christian who is an assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning.

"It's part of the buzz of the city among Christians," Colson said in a telephone interview on Tuesday about intelligent design. "It wouldn't surprise me that it got to George Bush. He reads, he picks stuff up, he talks to people. And he's pretty serious about his own Christian beliefs."

Politics News Article | Reuters.com

2005-08-07T18:09:00.000-07:00

Politics News Article | Reuters.comBy Steve Holland
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - About 70 anti-war protesters shouted "bring the troops home" from Iraq near President Bush's ranch on Saturday, prompting two White House officials to come out to meet with mothers who lost children in combat in Iraq.

National Security Adviser Steven Hadley and Deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin listened to the concerns of Cindy Sheehan and five or six other mothers in a meeting that lasted about 45 minutes, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. Duffy said Sheehan told the two officials she appreciated the meeting.

"I want to ask the president, why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?" Sheehan, 48, Vacaville, California, told reporters before meeting with Hadley and Hagin. Sheehan blames Bush for the death of her son, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, 24, killed on April 4, 2004, in Sadr City, Baghdad.

The protest coincided with release of a Newsweek poll that said 61 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq. The poll came after more than two dozen Americans were killed in the past week in Iraq.

Newsweek said it was Bush's lowest rating on Iraq and the first time it had dropped below 40 percent in its poll. Pentagon officials have said maintaining public support for the war is key to the troops' morale.

The group of protesters, including U.S. veterans from the Iraq and Vietnam wars, were loud yet peaceful and McLennan County sheriff's deputies, trying to avoid arrests, stopped them on a road about 5 miles from Bush's ranch on a hot August day.

"W. killed her son! W. killed her son!" the crowd shouted. They also shouted "Bring the troops home now" and held up signs with slogans such as "Impeach the Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief."

The protesters, many who came from a peace rally in Dallas, first drove toward the ranch in a school bus painted red, white and blue. It was stopped at a police checkpoint and the protesters got out and walked.

Police allowed the group to walk on the side of the road for about a half mile but then stopped them when some in the group walked on the street itself.

After some protesters left, a small group led by Sheehan vowed to stage a vigil on the side of the road until someone representing the White House came out to talk.

HoustonChronicle.com - Anti-war protesters go after Bush at home

2005-08-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

HoustonChronicle.com - Anti-war protesters go after Bush at homeAnti-war protesters go after Bush at home
Group, which included mothers of soldiers killed in Iraq, is halted 5 miles from ranch
By MICHAEL HEDGES
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

CRAWFORD - Some U.S. veterans of the Iraq war and mothers of men who died in combat there joined an anti-war protest near President Bush's ranch Saturday and predictably were stopped from delivering to Bush their demand to bring American troops home.The demonstration by about 50 people was led by Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., who said her son Casey was killed in Baghdad in April 2004. She said she was motivated to protest by Bush's remark last week in Dallas that those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan sacrificed their lives for a noble cause.

"I want to ask George Bush what noble cause my son died for," she said. "I don't want him to use my son's name or my family's name to justify more killing."

After driving in a caravan led by a red, white and blue bus to within about six miles of Bush's ranch, the group walked another mile through the withering, near-triple-digit heat, chanting slogans, such as "W killed her son."

They were stopped by a phalanx of local law enforcement officers and U.S. Secret Service agents.

Sheehan, who heads a group called Gold Star Families For Peace, clutched a picture of her son as a 7-month-old and vowed to stay near the ranch until Bush agreed to meet with her.

No one from the ranch, where the president and first lady Laura Bush spent the day, directly acknowledged the protesters.

Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said, "We mourn the loss of every life, and Americans deeply appreciate those who have made the supreme sacrifice.

"The president has met with hundreds of families of those fallen. He grieves with all those who have lost loved ones," the spokesman added.

Among the protesters was Amy Branham of Houston, who said her 22-year-old son, Jeremy Smith, was killed in a vehicular accident at Fort Hood in February 2004, just before his unit was to ship out for Iraq.

"Iraq has claimed so many victims that no one is even counting those who died in preparation and those who committed suicide after getting back because of what they saw," she said.

Garett Reppenhagen, 30, said he returned from Iraq in February after a tour of duty as a scout and sniper with the 1st Infantry Division.

"Almost every day I was there, I saw something that made me hate the war," he said. "I saw dead children and women, injured Americans."

Some of the protesters had vowed to get arrested. A few of the most strident tried to accomplish that by calling local police officers fascists and shouting personal insults at them. But as of late Saturday, no one had been detained, a police official said.

Most of the protesters left the area after about a half hour, leaving Sheehan and a few others settled in a shallow ditch next to a one-lane highway, surrounded by scraggly brush and a few cacti.

michael.hedges@chron.com

C.I.A. Leak Case Recalls Texas Incident in '92 Race - New York Times

2005-08-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

C.I.A. Leak Case Recalls Texas Incident in '92 Race

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By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: August 6, 2005
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - These hot months here will be remembered as the summer of the leak, a time when the political class obsessed on a central question: did Karl Rove, President Bush's powerful adviser, commit a crime when he spoke about a C.I.A. officer with the columnist Robert D. Novak?

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Lauren Shay/Associated Press
Karl Rove, left, and Robert D. Novak, friends for 20 years, in June 2003 at the 40th-anniversary celebration for Mr. Novak's syndicated column. Mr. Rove's button says, "I'm a source, not a target."
Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit.

"It's history," Mr. Mosbacher said last week in a brief telephone interview. "I commented on it at the time, and I have nothing to add."

But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime.

But it does give a clue to Mr. Rove's frequent and complimentary mentions over the years in Mr. Novak's column, and to the importance of Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak to each other's ambitions.

"They've known each for a long time, but they are not close friends," said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.

The two men share a love of history and policy, as well as reputations as aggressive partisans and hotheads.

People who have been officially briefed on the case have said Mr. Rove was the second of two senior administration officials cited by Mr. Novak in his column of July 14, 2003, that identified Ms. Wilson by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and said she was a C.I.A. operative.

The larger question has been whether Mr. Rove might have been using the columnist to confirm Ms. Plame's identity to punish or undermine her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had accused the Bush administration of leading the nation to war with Iraq on false pretenses.

Mr. Novak, who stalked out of a live program on CNN on Thursday after uttering a profanity on the air, declined to be interviewed for this article.

The anchor of the program, "Inside Politics," Ed Henry, has said he was preparing later in the broadcast to ask Mr. Novak about his role in the leak case.

Mr. Rove also declined to be interviewed.

But Mr. Novak, through his office manager, Kathleen Connolly, provided the information about his first encounter with Mr. Rove. Mr. Novak, by his recollection, met Mr. Rove in Texas in the mid-80's, when Mr. Novak turned up to write columns about the state's shifting out of Democrats' hands into those of Republicans.

In those years, Mr. Rove regularly had dinner with Mr. Novak when the columnist went to Austin. Mr. Rove, in his mid-30's, was a rising political operator who in 1981 founded his direct-mail consulting firm, Karl Rove & Company. Gov. William P. Clements, a Republican, was one of his first clients.

Mr. Novak, in his mid-50's, was big political game for Mr. Rove. He was the other half, with Rowland Evans Jr., of a much read and increasingly conservative column that was syndicated by The Chicago Sun-Times and published weekly in The Washington Post. Evans and Novak, as it was called - Mr. Evans retired in 1993 -closely chronicled the Reagan era, and it would have been a sign of Mr. Rove's arrival on the national scene for Mr. Novak to mention him in print.

Still, a computer search of Mr. Novak's columns shows that Mr. Rove's name did not appear under his byline until 1992, when Mr. Novak wrote the words that got Mr. Rove into such trouble.

"A secret meeting of worried Republican power brokers in Dallas last Sunday reflected the reality that George Bush is in serious trouble in trying to carry his adopted state," the column began.

The column said that the campaign run by Mr. Mosbacher was a "bust" and that he had been stripped of his authority at the "secret meeting" by Senator Phil Gramm, the top Republican in the state.

Also at the meeting, Mr. Novak reported, was "political consultant Karl Rove, who had been shoved aside by Mosbacher."

Specifically, Mr. Mosbacher told The Houston Chronicle in 2003 that he had given a competitor of Mr. Rove the bulk of a $1 million contract for direct mail work in the campaign.

"I thought another firm was better," Mr. Mosbacher told The Chronicle. "I had $1 million for direct mail. I gave Rove a contract for $250,000 and $750,000 to the other firm."

The other firm belonged to Mr. Rove's chief competitor, John Weaver, and Mr. Rove was so angry, Texas Republicans say, that he retaliated by leaking the information about Mr. Mosbacher to Mr. Novak.

C.I.A. Leak Case Recalls Texas Incident in '92 Race

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Published: August 6, 2005
(Page 2 of 2)

Mr. Mosbacher fired Mr. Rove. As a result, Mr. Weaver, who later faced off against Mr. Rove as the political director of Senator John McCain's presidential campaign in 2000, walked away with Mr. Rove's $250,000, too.

"That's about the only time that a Novak column benefited me," Mr. Weaver said this week in a telephone interview.

Mr. Rove again turned up in Mr. Novak's columns in 1999, when Gov. George W. Bush was running for president. Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's national campaign strategist, was quoted briefly on the record in at least three columns, even though Mr. Novak has said on CNN, "I can't tell you anything I ever talked to Karl Rove about, because I don't think I ever talked to him about any subject, even the time of day, on the record."

Whether Mr. Novak forgot about the 1999 mentions is unclear. What is clear is that Mr. Rove has made frequent appearances in Mr. Novak's column in a positive light, often in paragraphs that imparted information about the inner workings of Mr. Bush's operation, feeding perceptions here that Mr. Rove is one of the columnist's most important anonymous sources.

In April 2000, under the headline "Bush Thriving Without Insiders," Mr. Novak wrote of the fears of the Republican old guard about the triumvirate of "rookies" in Austin - led by Mr. Rove - who were running Mr. Bush's "supposedly fading" presidential campaign.

"Actually," Mr. Novak wrote, "the Austin triumvirate has managed the most effective Republican campaign since Dwight D. Eisenhower's in 1952."

Last December, Mr. Novak wrote that the "retention of John Snow as secretary of the treasury was viewed in the capital's inner circles as a defeat for presidential adviser Karl Rove, who wanted a high-profile manager of President Bush's second-term economic program."

Although Mr. Novak did not directly debunk that view, he did suggest a different turn of events when he wrote that two Wall Street executives had said no to the position and that it was "decided at the White House to relieve Snow from his uncertainty and keep him in office."

These days, friends of the two men say they have not seen Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak at dinner together and note that there is little the two would have to celebrate. But in June 2003, The Chicago Sun-Times gave a party for Mr. Novak at the Army and Navy Club here to salute 40 years of his columns.

The biggest political celebrity guest, to no one's surprise, was Mr. Rove.

Philadelphia Daily News | 08/06/2005 | Before CIA leak case, Rove and Novak ties go way bak

2005-08-06T15:12:00.001-07:00

Philadelphia Daily News | 08/06/2005 | Before CIA leak case, Rove and Novak ties go way bak
Before CIA leak case, Rove and Novak ties go way bak

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON - These hot months will be remembered as the summer of the leak, a time when the political class obsessed on a central question: Did Karl Rove, President Bush's powerful adviser, commit a crime when he spoke about a CIA officer with the columnist Robert D. Novak?

Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992, in an incident well-known in Texas, Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect President George H.W. Bush on suspicions that Rove had leaked damaging information to Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

Since then, Rove and Novak have denied that Rove was the source, even as Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Rove was the culprit. "It's history," Mosbacher said last week in a brief telephone interview. "I commented on it at the time, and I have nothing to add."

But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the CIA officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime.

But it does give a clue to Rove's frequent and complimentary mentions over the years in Novak's column, and to the importance of Rove and Novak to each other's ambitions.

"They've known each for a long time, but they are not close friends," said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation between Novak and Rove in July 2003 about Wilson. The investigation has put a reporter for the New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.

People who have been officially briefed on the case have said Rove was the second of two senior administration officials cited by Novak in his column of July 14, 2003, that identified Wilson by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and said she was a CIA operative.

The larger question has been whether Rove might have been using the columnist to confirm Plame's identity to punish or undermine her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had accused the Bush administration of leading the nation to war with Iraq on false pretenses.

Novak, who stalked out of a live program on CNN on Thursday after uttering a profanity on the air, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Novak, through his office manager, Kathleen Connolly, provided information about his first encounter with Rove. Novak, by his recollection, first met Rove in Texas in the mid-'80s, when Novak would turn up to write columns about the state's shift from Democratic to Republican control.

Still, a computer search of Novak's columns shows that Rove's name did not appear under his byline until 1992, when Novak wrote the words that got Rove in such trouble.

Rove again turned up in Novak's columns in 1999, when George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, was running for president. Rove was Bush's national campaign strategist.

These days, friends of both men say they have not seen Rove and Novak at dinner together, and note that there is little the two would have to celebrate. But in June 2003, the Chicago Sun-Times threw a party for Novak at Washington's Army and Navy Club to salute 40 years of his columns.

The biggest political celebrity guest, to no one's surprise, was Rove.

Outside The Beltway : Novak and Rove�s Long Relationship

2005-08-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

Outside The Beltway : Novak and Rove�s Long RelationshipNovak and Rove’s Long Relationship
Posted by James Joyner at 07:22
Elisabeth Bumiller has an interesting piece on the long relationship between Bob Novak and Karl Rove. She is apparently surprised that political operatives cultivate relationships with prominent journalists and vice versa.

C.I.A. Leak Case Recalls Texas Incident in '92 Race (NYT | RSS)

These hot months here will be remembered as the summer of the leak, a time when the political class obsessed on a central question: did Karl Rove, President Bush's powerful adviser, commit a crime when he spoke about a C.I.A. officer with the columnist Robert D. Novak?

Unless something really big develops in the case, this is exceedingly unlikely. "Damn that was a hot summer" is much more likely. Or "the summer the Nats collapsed." Or "the summer of steroids." Or "When 'The Dukes of Hazzard' killed off the Hollywood remakes." Almost anything except "the summer of the leak."

Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit. "It's history," Mr. Mosbacher said last week in a brief telephone interview. "I commented on it at the time, and I have nothing to add."

But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime. But it does give a clue to Mr. Rove's frequent and complimentary mentions over the years in Mr. Novak's column, and to the importance of Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak to each other's ambitions.

"They've known each for a long time, but they are not close friends," said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.

[...]

But Mr. Novak, through his office manager, Kathleen Connolly, provided the information about his first encounter with Mr. Rove. Mr. Novak, by his recollection, met Mr. Rove in Texas in the mid-80's, when Mr. Novak turned up to write columns about the state's shifting out of Democrats' hands into those of Republicans. In those years, Mr. Rove regularly had dinner with Mr. Novak when the columnist went to Austin. Mr. Rove, in his mid-30's, was a rising political operator who in 1981 founded his direct-mail consulting firm, Karl Rove & Company. Gov. William P. Clements, a Republican, was one of his first clients.

[...]

Still, a computer search of Mr. Novak's columns shows that Mr. Rove's name did not appear under his byline until 1992, when Mr. Novak wrote the words that got Mr. Rove into such trouble.

[...]

Mr. Rove again turned up in Mr. Novak's columns in 1999, when Gov. George W. Bush was running for president. Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's national campaign strategist, was quoted briefly on the record in at least three columns, even though Mr. Novak has said on CNN, "I can't tell you anything I ever talked to Karl Rove about, because I don't think I ever talked to him about any subject, even the time of day, on the record."

Whether Mr. Novak forgot about the 1999 mentions is unclear. What is clear is that Mr. Rove has made frequent appearances in Mr. Novak's column in a positive light, often in paragraphs that imparted information about the inner workings of Mr. Bush's operation, feeding perceptions here that Mr. Rove is one of the columnist's most important anonymous sources.

I'm not sure that this sheds much light on the Plame case. Rove has acknowledged that he confirmed the "Valerie recommended Joe" story to Novak and Novak can hardly deny having printed the story.

That the two men have used each other professionally for years is mildly interesting, but not terribly illuminating. Politicians and journalists exploit each other's needs for mutual benefit. Water is wet. The sky is blue.

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both of these criminals belong in prison

TREASON

Posted by: Lt bell at August 6, 2005 08:10 Permalink
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please remove me from your mailing list. Even as a relatively conservative person I found your liberal bashing to be unnecessary and unproductive to a meaningful debate on policy in general and the Rove affair in particular. Our President’s honesty and policies are being questioned by the majority of Americans—whether they are democrats or republicans. Well-reasoned defense of his policies are welcome; but that is apparently not a requisite for this site.

Posted by: neal at August 6, 2005 09:22 Permalink
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Novak has always appeared to be a meanspirited hack for the GOP. The fact that he cannot take the same heat he hands out so easily on news shows, was demonstrated when he walked out during a show with James Carville on Thursday. He has been vicious in his attacks on Democratic candidates as he smirks and discounts any other views. He deserved to be dismissed by CNN and no lame apology should ever gain him his job back!

Posted by: schar at August 6, 2005 09:47 Permalink
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another non-story by the Times to keep this non-story on the front burner as the real evidence continues to suggest Rove was not the “outer” of Wilson’s wife.

I think you are right on track, James.

Posted by: Jim Rhoads (vnjagvet) at August 6, 2005 10:03 Permalink
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

neal: I don’t have a mailing list. Had I a mailing list, I assure you that you would not be on it.

The Moderate Voice - Hot On The Trail Of The Novak-Rove Connection

2005-08-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

Hot On The Trail Of The Novak-Rove Connection
by Joe Gandelman
Don't you get the sensation now that the coming months may not be happy ones for White House political bigwig and world-class hiker Robert Novak when they open the newspapers and see the fruits of journalistic enterprise reporting like in today's New York Times?
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - These hot months here will be remembered as the summer of the leak, a time when the political class obsessed on a central question: did Karl Rove, President Bush's powerful adviser, commit a crime when he spoke about a C.I.A. officer with the columnist Robert D. Novak?
Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove, brace yourselves:
Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit.

"It's history," Mr. Mosbacher said last week in a brief telephone interview. "I commented on it at the time, and I have nothing to add."

But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime.
The self-interest point is a valid one that indeed goes beyond Rove/Novak. In journalism school they always hammered home the message: "A reporter is only as good as his sources." And a reporter's pride and joy was the big, fat Rolodex (TMV had a double one crammed with home and office names). These names and relationships of trust are what made newespaper careers. So Novak having a journalistic relationship by itself is not an issue; it's what may have done with that relationship. MORE:

But it does give a clue to Mr. Rove's frequent and complimentary mentions over the years in Mr. Novak's column, and to the importance of Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak to each other's ambitions.
Yes. Good sources often find they get good treatment. Some of it is intentional. Some of it is almost subliminal.
"They've known each for a long time, but they are not close friends," said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.

The two men share a love of history and policy, as well as reputations as aggressive partisans and hotheads.

Bob Novak?? Karl Rove? Pshaw!
People who have been officially briefed on the case have said Mr. Rove was the second of two senior administration officials cited by Mr. Novak in his column of July 14, 2003, that identified Ms. Wilson by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and said she was a C.I.A. operative.

The larger question has been whether Mr. Rove might have been using the columnist to confirm Ms. Plame's identity to punish or undermine her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had accused the Bush administration of leading the nation to war with Iraq on false pretenses.
And so on. The fact that they've had a relationship for so long would suggest that if indeed Rove and Novak overstepped legalities in anyway they'll both be on the same wavelength to protect each other. Of course, as we've cautioned before, we really won't know the facts until the Special Prosecutor's work is done.

But the Novak/Rove relationship is not an unusual one for successful journalists; in fact, these kinds of close relationships are more often the rule than not. It's just what HAPPENS with them that could turn out to be unusual here...
"

The Moderate Voice - Hot On The Trail Of The Novak-Rove Connection

2005-08-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

The Moderate Voice - Hot On The Trail Of The Novak-Rove Connection
Hot On The Trail Of The Novak-Rove Connection
by Joe Gandelman
Don't you get the sensation now that the coming months may not be happy ones for White House political bigwig and world-class hiker Robert Novak when they open the newspapers and see the fruits of journalistic enterprise reporting like in today's New York Times?
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - These hot months here will be remembered as the summer of the leak, a time when the political class obsessed on a central question: did Karl Rove, President Bush's powerful adviser, commit a crime when he spoke about a C.I.A. officer with the columnist Robert D. Novak?
Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove, brace yourselves:
Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit.

"It's history," Mr. Mosbacher said last week in a brief telephone interview. "I commented on it at the time, and I have nothing to add."

But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime.
The self-interest point is a valid one that indeed goes beyond Rove/Novak. In journalism school they always hammered home the message: "A reporter is only as good as his sources." And a reporter's pride and joy was the big, fat Rolodex (TMV had a double one crammed with home and office names). These names and relationships of trust are what made newespaper careers. So Novak having a journalistic relationship by itself is not an issue; it's what may have done with that relationship. MORE:

But it does give a clue to Mr. Rove's frequent and complimentary mentions over the years in Mr. Novak's column, and to the importance of Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak to each other's ambitions.
Yes. Good sources often find they get good treatment. Some of it is intentional. Some of it is almost subliminal.
"They've known each for a long time, but they are not close friends," said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.

The two men share a love of history and policy, as well as reputations as aggressive partisans and hotheads.

Bob Novak?? Karl Rove? Pshaw!
People who have been officially briefed on the case have said Mr. Rove was the second of two senior administration officials cited by Mr. Novak in his column of July 14, 2003, that identified Ms. Wilson by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and said she was a C.I.A. operative.

The larger question has been whether Mr. Rove might have been using the columnist to confirm Ms. Plame's identity to punish or undermine her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had accused the Bush administration of leading the nation to war with Iraq on false pretenses.
And so on. The fact that they've had a relationship for so long would suggest that if indeed Rove and Novak overstepped legalities in anyway they'll both be on the same wavelength to protect each other. Of course, as we've cautioned before, we really won't know the facts until the Special Prosecutor's work is done.

But the Novak/Rove relationship is not an unusual one for successful journalists; in fact, these kinds of close relationships are more often the rule than not. It's just what HAPPENS with them that could turn out to be unusual here...

NO MR. NOVAK...YOU GOT IT WRONG..THIS, IS BULLSHIT!

2005-08-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

Government of lies: The political meaning of the Rove affair

2005-07-30T11:49:00.000-07:00

Whenever a major crisis emerges in political life, it is necessary to distinguish between the often peculiar forms in which the crisis makes its initial appearance and the more fundamental underlying issues. So it is with the uproar touched off by the reports that Karl Rove, Bush’s top political aide, leaked the identity of a CIA undercover operative to the press, as part of an effort to punish critics of the Iraq war.

The facts of the Rove affair are no longer in question. In July 2003, after former ambassador Joseph Wilson published an op-ed column in the New York Times criticizing the administration for making bogus claims that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium in Africa, the White House moved swiftly to retaliate. Wilson explained in his article his own role in going to Niger at the behest of the CIA to investigate the issue in 2002, and related how he found the charges to be unfounded.

Only a day after the column appeared, top White House aides were reading a secret State Department memorandum on the Wilson trip which included the information—denoted as top secret—that Wilson’s wife Valerie was a CIA operative specializing in the field of weapons of mass destruction. Within three days, Rove and other officials were circulating that information to the press, suggesting that Mrs. Wilson had engineered her husband’s trip and presenting this as a case of nepotism that cast doubt on Wilson’s findings.

A week after Wilson’s column appeared, right-wing columnist Robert Novak, a longtime recipient of leaks from Karl Rove, became the first journalist to identify Mrs. Wilson publicly as a CIA agent, under her maiden name, Valerie Plame. This was accompanied by the White House-inspired smear about her alleged role in sending her husband to Niger.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft in December 2003 to investigate whether crimes were committed in leaking Plame’s name and identity to the media. While Rove’s attorney has said that Rove is not a “target” of the investigation—meaning no decision has yet been made on a possible indictment—he admitted that Rove and many other White House aides remain “subjects,” i.e., potentially indictable. Fitzgerald must complete his investigation and bring indictments by October, when the term of the grand jury looking into the affair expires.

In a sign of the growing concern that some White House aides will face charges, either for the leak itself or for subsequent lies or obstruction of justice before the grand jury, Bush appeared before the press July 18 and significantly revised his public stance on the case. Where previously he had pledged to fire any staffer found to be involved in leaking the name of the covert CIA officer, he now limited this to a commitment to fire any official who was guilty of a crime. This much more narrow standard would allow Rove, for instance, to keep working at the White House as deputy chief of staff and top political adviser even if he were to be indicted.

The more thoughtful media commentators have begun to acknowledge that the real issue in the Rove affair is not whether Rove, Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer or some other White House aide leaked Plame’s name or lied about it to Fitzgerald’s investigators or the grand jury. Such lies are only symptomatic of the much greater lies which constitute the Bush administration’s entire case for war in Iraq: claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein was an ally of Al Qaeda, and suggestions that the Iraqi president was somehow linked to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In one perceptive commentary, New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote July 17 that the public should not “get hung up” on Rove “or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far.” He continued: “Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players. That the investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.”

Rich’s column was entitled, “Follow the Uranium,” and the comparison to Watergate is more than apt, as is his political conclusion: “This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit—the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes—is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds... this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a CIA operative...”

Like Watergate, and unlike the bogus right-wing-inspired investigations into the Clinton White House, the Rove affair is about government policy, in which the actions of the bit players can be traced back directly to the decision-makers at the top: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. And like Watergate, the information has begun to surface because of a bitter conflict within the state apparatus, in which murky and even reactionary motives play a role. (Let us not forget the lesson of Watergate’s Deep Throat, now revealed as FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt, who leaked critical details of the Nixon White House conspiracy largely out of institutional loyalty to the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover.)

The driving force of the conflict now raging in official Washington is the increasingly evident failure of the Bush administration’s military intervention in Iraq. There are bitter recriminations over the consequences of Bush’s refusal to heed the cautions from the intelligence agencies and military about the likely outcome of the invasion of Iraq, which has left American imperialism bogged down in an open-ended counter-insurgency campaign.

The dreams of a swift and easy victory giving the US control over the second largest oil exporter, as well as a dominant strategic position in the Middle East, have been shattered. Instead, the plans of the US government and the military for further actions—in Iran or North Korea, for example, and ultimately China—have been significantly undermined, at least in the short term, because nearly all of the deployable forces of the Army and Marine Corps are tied down in Iraq.

No section of the political establishment advocates an American withdrawal, which would constitute a strategic defeat far more costly than Vietnam. But there are intense divisions over policy, with leading sections of the Democratic Party openly advocating the commitment of tens of thousands more troops to ensure military control of Iraq, a course of action that leads inevitably to restoration of the draft.

In the meantime, there is plenty of blame to go around for the current debacle, and a bitter struggle is taking place within the upper echelons of the executive branch, Congress, the judiciary, the two bourgeois political parties, the intelligence agencies, the military brass, and the most powerful corporate lobbyists, influence peddlers and media figures.

All told, this ruling stratum involves mere thousands of people, a layer so narrow that three of the current protagonists, Karl Rove and Joseph and Valerie Wilson, attend the same church in suburban McLean, Virginia. This makes the infighting especially bitter, as demonstrated by Rove’s role in “outing” Mrs. Wilson and perhaps endangering her life. In so doing, the Bush White House broke one of the time-honored rules of the Washington Mafia—likewise observed by its underworld counterpart—“Fight if you must, but don’t ‘hit’ the wife.”

Frank Rich is correct to trace the Rove affair back to the “big lie” campaign to sell the Iraq war, but he is only half right, or, rather, he stops halfway. The Iraq war was not the beginning of Bush’s lies, but the culmination. This is an administration based on lies from its very inception, when it took office through the theft of the 2000 presidential election, hijacked by the Supreme Court intervention to shut down ballot-counting in Florida.

Then came September 11, 2001, an event which has been the subject of the greatest campaign of distortion and cover-up in US history. No serious investigation has been conducted into the US government role in these attacks: from the initial CIA recruitment and training of the founders of Al Qaeda in the 1980s, to the inexplicable ease with which the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists entered the United States and orchestrated multiple hijackings, even though many of them were on government watchlists or actually under surveillance by US intelligence agencies.

The least credible of all accounts of 9/11 is the official story that 19 predominantly Saudi terrorists entered the United States and carried out an intricately organized attack involving multiple hijackings, without any US government agency having the slightest idea what they were doing. This must be set against the enormous political benefits which the Bush administration derived from the 9/11 attacks, which provided the pretext for long-planned invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and for an unprecedented attack on democratic rights at home, and which served as the basic platform for Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign.

Tens of millions of Americans recognize today that the Iraq war is based on lies, but they find no political expression for this understanding within the existing two-party system. The whole US political establishment is deeply discredited—the Democratic Party, which voted for the war and continues to support it; the media, which swallowed Bush’s lies and regurgitated them uncritically; and the official “labor” movement, a political cipher with no serious influence or support in the working class.

Opposition to the war and support for a US withdrawal from Iraq are widespread, despite the virtually complete ban on such views within the official media and political circles. And there is growing recognition that the “war on terror” is actually a war for oil and world domination.

The conclusion that must be drawn from the complicity of the entire political system in an imperialist war justified by lies is the need to develop a mass independent political movement of the working class based on a socialist program and directed against the financial oligarchy in whose interests this war is being waged, and all of its political representatives.

Rove cartoon blossomed out - World - theage.com.au

2005-07-28T03:57:00.000-07:00

Rove cartoon blossomed out - World - theage.com.au: "Rove cartoon blossomed out"It may be US President George Bush's nickname for key political adviser Karl Rove, but some editors don't think it belongs in their newspapers.

About a dozen papers objected to Tuesday's and yesterday's Doonesbury comic strips, and some either pulled or edited them.

The strips refer to Mr Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, as "Turd Blossom".

Lee Salem, editor at Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes the strip to 1400 papers, said the complaints from 10 to 12 newspapers were not unexpected.

Unlike other times when editors have objected to Doonesbury content, the syndicate did not send out replacement strips.

"Given the coverage of Karl Rove, we thought it was appropriate, especially given the history of the strip," Salem said.

Doonesbury's creator, Garry Trudeau, has infuriated some editors with his language, images and political themes.

Salem said that since newspapers did not have to notify the syndicate when they choose to remove a strip, it was impossible to know how many papers ran Tuesday's comic.

Advertisement
AdvertisementIn the strip, Mr Bush and an aide are lamenting the problems the Administration has had over allegations that Mr Rove leaked the name of a CIA officer to reporters.

Mr Bush says, "Karl's sure been earnin' his nickname lately."

The unnamed aide says, "Boy Genius? I'm not so sure, sir …"

Mr Bush then says, "Hey, Turd Blossom! Get in here!"

The term is said to be one of several nicknames Mr Bush uses for Mr Rove, one of his closest allies who is widely credited for getting Mr Bush elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004.

The mainstream US media have rarely mentioned the nickname but it has gained currency overseas and on the internet.

Among those with concerns was the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, whose editors removed the offensive word from the strip's final panel.

"I didn't think (taking out the word) hurt it," executive editor Joel Rawson said.

"I would prefer to run the strip and if we can edit it, that's fine."

Other papers, such as The Kansas City Star, removed the strip. "We thought it was in bad taste and probably unclear to a lot of people why we would be using the term," said managing editor of news Steve Shirk.

Bush comic pulled from papers

2005-07-28T03:55:00.000-07:00

KHON2 - The Team That Knows Hawaii | HomeBush comic pulled from papers

About a dozen newspapers across the country pulled today's "Doonesbury" comic strip. The strip refers to President Bush's key political adviser Karl Rove, who is alleged to have leaked the name of a CIA officer to reporters.

The strip refers to Rove as a "turd blossom," which is said to be one of the President's nicknames for Rove.

Some newspaper editors thought the nickname didn't belong in their papers.

Rhode Island's Providence Journal ran the strip, but removed the nickname which it considered to be offensive.

The Kansas City Star removed the strip entirely, and replaced it with an older one.

Lake County Record-Bee - Opinion-ROVE SHOULD BE CANNED

2005-07-28T03:54:00.000-07:00

Lake County Record-Bee - OpinionRove should be canned

It is time for the president to fire his good buddy Karl ("Mr. Dirty Politics") Rove. We know that Karl Rove revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent to reporter Matt Cooper and columnist Robert Novak. Rove either broke the law intentionally or was at least grossly negligent with national security secrets, yet he still works in the White House with his good buddy Bush.

Outing an undercover CIA agent hurts our national security. Bush should keep his word and fire Rove, even though he probably owes his presidency to Rove's dirty campaign tricks.

There needs to be a full disclosure to the American people about what happened in this CIA leak case. Karl Rove and other leakers in the White House outed a covert CIA agent in order to punish or discredit a critic of the Bush Iraq policy. This is outrageous, putting politics over national security. It's time to get rid of Rove.

Ron Green

Lower Lake

The outing of Karl Rove

2005-07-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

July 24, 2005

Much has happened in "The Strange Case of the Outed Spy" which I wrote about in this space two Sundays ago. As suspected, President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was a key source for the two journalists who disclosed the former spy's identity. The president once said he would fire the person responsible for the leak. He now says he would do so only if an actual crime had been committed.

The prosecutor looking into the affair has remained silent although there have been hints that he may now be looking for evidence of perjury or obstruction of justice by one or more of the witnesses.

Otherwise, the most significant development in this case in the past two weeks is that it went from being inside Washington baseball to a major national story. The confirmation of Rove's direct involvement in this affair (after the White House spokesman called it "ridiculous" to suggest such a thing) landed the president's number one adviser on the covers of Time and Newsweek, on the front pages of every major newspaper in the country and in the top of the news on all of the national TV and radio networks. Some have suggested the president sped up his decision on his Supreme Court nominee to get Rove off the front pages. Perhaps. (Actually, there is a real connection between Rove and the Judge Roberts appointment that I'll get to later in this column.)

That intense media attention has transformed the ultimate behind-the-scenes political operative into a national celebrity. Not that Karl Rove was an unknown. Throughout the Bush presidency, liberal activists have seen him as a "Rasputin" – the evil genius behind everything they dislike and fear about this White House. For conservative activists, Rove is a super hero and as Mr. Bush himself has declared, the "architect" of his presidential victories. Still, I would guess that until a couple of weeks ago, the average American would have known little or nothing about him. Now, if only through the process of osmosis, they should know that Rove is the most important presidential adviser in living memory. And because of that, what happens to him is a matter of major political significance.

While he doesn't have a fancy title – he's the deputy chief of staff of the White House – Karl Rove is intimately involved in virtually every aspect of foreign and domestic policy. And by determining the political consequences of a given policy, he significantly shapes it. He is also the master of the Republican Party propaganda machine. He didn't make the decision to go to war in Iraq, but he totally supported it and selling the war to the American people was but one of his many roles.

Rove is a superb political strategist with a ruthless, take-no-prisoners approach to politics. Paul Begala, once one of Bill Clinton's senior advisers says, "Love him or hate him, Karl Rove is one of the most brilliant and successful political consultants of all time."

As Newsweek's cover story describes him, "In the World According to Karl Rove, you take the offensive and stay there. You create a narrative that glosses over complex, mitigating facts to divide the world into friends and enemies, light and darkness, good and bad, Bush versus Saddam. You are loyal to a fault to your friends and merciless to your enemies. You keep your candidate's public rhetoric sunny and uplifting, finding others to do the attacking. You study the details and learn more about your foes than they know about themselves … in fact everything is political and everyone is fair game."

But Rove is much more than a political consultant. The title of a book about Rove by two prominent Texas journalists is "Bush's Brain." In their introduction, authors James Moore and Wayne Slater write, "The influence of Karl Rove on the president may raise constitutional questions. But there is little doubt about the practical implications of his position…. He is the co-president of the United States."

The Bush-Rove relationship goes back more than 30 years. They met in 1973 when Rove was working for the Republican National Committee under George Bush Sr. and junior was a student at Harvard Business School. Rove has suggested he was immediately mesmerized by the young Bush's "confidence" and "charisma." Later in the 1970s, they came together in Texas: Rove as a successful consultant; Bush as a struggling oil man.

Those were the days of major political realignment in the South. Many southern Democrats, unhappy with their party's role in the civil rights battles of the 1960s, were finally willing to forgive the party of Lincoln for winning the Civil War. In large numbers they were switching to a Republican Party more in tune with "states' rights" and other conservative values.

As a top Republican consultant and organizer, Rove was in the midst of this mini-revolution. In this atmosphere, he developed the political formula that would take him – and GWB – to the White House. The idea was to join together the pro-business, wealthy conservatives of the big cities with the Bible belt, usually poor traditionalists of the farms and small towns. The man he chose to preside over that somewhat awkward marriage was George W. Bush. It worked — first in Texas – and then on the national scene in two presidential elections.

But neither Rove nor Bush did this for the sheer pleasure of getting to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They shared a radical agenda – nothing less than to effectively turn back the clock 75 years, to drastically reduce the role of government by changing laws and reversing judicial rulings made during and since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

Which brings us to the new nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge John Roberts, by all accounts a very smart lawyer and a nice fellow. I don't know a lot about him but I do know this. President Bush, (under the constant tutelage of Karl Rove) said repeatedly during his election campaigns that he wanted to fill future vacancies on the Supreme Court with judges similar to Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

As USA Today (not a knee-jerk liberal paper) editorialized last week, "The Scalia-Thomas mantra was convenient political code for voters who oppose abortion, gay rights and affirmative action; reject government regulation of business, safety or the environment; or want official support for their brand of religion."

So if indeed Judge Roberts does fit the Scalia-Thomas mold — and is confirmed – (both of which seem likely) the Bush-Rove team will be closer than ever to achieving the goal that radical conservatives have been dreaming about for more than seven decades. Kind of makes outing a spy seem like small potatoes.

However, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not finished his investigations. And lawyers familiar with the case are convinced Fitzgerald would not have put a New York Times journalist in jail unless he had bigger fish to fry. That remains to be seen. But it is possible that the pesky problem of outing a lowly spy could still come back to haunt the "co-president."

Barrie Dunsmore is a veteran diplomatic and foreign correspondent for ABC News now living in Charlotte.

Telegraph | Money | China shows who's really the boss now

2005-07-24T04:02:00.000-07:00

Telegraph | Money | China shows who's really the boss nowChina shows who's really the boss now
By Liam Halligan (Filed: 24/07/2005)

China's currency revaluation, which happened last Thursday, was an event of significance. While over-shadowed by London's second terrorist incident in a fortnight, Beijing's move was a landmark in economic history.

How can this be so? After all, China's government raised the value of the yuan by a mere 2 per cent - from 8.3 to 8.1 - against the dollar. And crucial details about the new regime - the composition of the "currency basket" to which the yuan will now be linked, for instance - remain unknown.

Also, a new "trading band" means Beijing would be able to limit movements in China's currency to only 0.3 per cent per day.

But all this misses the bigger picture. The important point is that China's rigid dollar "peg", in place for more than a decade, is now gone. In recent years, US authorities have watched in horror as the value of the yuan has been artificially held down against the dollar, boosting China's already super-competitive exports even more.

The result has been that cheap Chinese goods have flooded American markets, sweeping away domestic manufacturing jobs. "China fear" has become a major US-election issue. Congress has reacted to Beijing's "currency manipulations" by threatening to erect China-specific tariff barriers, in contravention of international trading rules.

Mindful of growing financial imbalances, the White House has been lobbying the Chinese intensely too. The rush of imports from China has contributed mightily to America's yawning trade deficit - now approaching 7 per cent of GDP. This has put downward pressure on the dollar and pushed up US interest rates, threatening to derail the world's largest economy.

But China has taken a step which - potentially at least - eases these concerns. By revaluing the yuan against the dollar, even if by a small amount, Beijing has agreed to make its imports to the US less competitive.

Sino-US trade tensions have become so acute of late that the size of China's currency shift is of far less important than the fact that it happened at all.

So last week's revaluation, while modest, did a lot to defuse the immediate threat of a potentially disastrous trade war between America and China - the twin-locomotives of the global economy. And for that, the rest of the world should be grateful.

But can this new accommodation last? The White House is keen to suggest it can. Journalists were told off-the-record that "the Chinese have finally given in", bowing in the face of American power. Treasury secretary John Snow stressed that Beijing had now "put in place a mechanism providing room for significant currency movements over time".

Many financial analysts agree - pointing out that even China's "trading band" allows the yuan to rise, incrementally, by more than 6 per cent per month. Such was the euphoria greeting Beijing's decision that some Western banks issued predictions of a 35 per cent rise in China's currency by the end of 2005.

But will China let this happen? Or will Beijing use its freshly-minted "managed floating exchange-rate regime" to continue holding down the yuan, albeit at a marginally higher rate, for the foreseeable future?

I think it will do the latter. After all, a large appreciation would erode China's huge competitive advantage. And Beijing knows that rapid growth, which is dependent on a stellar export performance, is crucial to maintaining China's political stability.

Another reason why the yuan won't be allowed to rise quickly is low Chinese inflation - now down at 1.6 percent. After all, a much higher currency would significantly reduce the price of China's imports. That would expose the country to the risk of a damaging bout of Japanese-style deflation - which, again, could threaten social unrest. The authorities in Beijing will do everything they can to avoid that too.

It's also worth noting that last week's move - while economically important - was driven by political motives. China's government chose to ease trade tensions with the US at this specific moment for good reasons.

For one thing, Beijing's attempts to buy two American corporations - the oil-producer Unocal and the appliance-maker Maytag - are currently in the balance. And given that the Chinese President Hu Jintao is visiting America in September, feathers needed to be smoothed.

All this leads me to believe the Chinese will allow the yuan to appreciate further, but only in "baby steps" and only over a long period of time. With its $700 bn war-chest of reserves, Beijing is well capable of "sterilising" even significant capital inflows from overseas.

Combine that with pretty fierce capital controls, and China will be able to resist even sustained market pressure to push up the value of its currency for some time to come.

So the ending of China's dollar "peg" was a seminal moment - yes. But, to the intense frustration of the White House, the likelihood is it won't translate into a large appreciation of the yuan - and subsequent loss of Chinese competitiveness - any time soon.

In that sense, rather than being an illustration of America's might on the global economic stage, last week's revaluation could well end up displaying instead the power now wielded by China. That, in the end, will be its ultimate historic significance.

Democrats-only Hill hearing targets Rove�-�Nation/Politics�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

2005-07-23T15:50:00.001-07:00

Democrats-only Hill hearing targets Rove�-�Nation/Politics�-�The Washington Times, America's NewspaperDemocrats-only Hill hearing targets Rove
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 23, 2005

Democrats convened a partisan hearing yesterday in an attempt to breathe new life into the suspicion that Karl Rove is guilty of an illegal leak to the press.
The hearing, convened in a Senate office building by the Democratic Policy Committee, featured both House and Senate members and a slate of witnesses guaranteed to testify that the deputy White House chief of staff was guilty of misdeeds in leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
"We know that a dastardly crime in all likelihood was committed," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan was peppered with questions about Mr. Rove nearly every day for two weeks in early July, and the story dominated the political news. Since Mr. Bush tapped Judge John G. Roberts Jr. for the Supreme Court on Tuesday, however, questions about Mr. Rove and stories about the controversy have dwindled to a trickle.
Mr. McClellan was not asked a single question about Mr. Rove by reporters traveling aboard Air Force One yesterday.
Roll Call reported Thursday that a set of "talking points" was issued Wednesday by Senate Democratic leadership urging rank-and-file senators to do what they could to keep the controversy surrounding Mr. Rove in the news.
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the "faux hearings" demonstrate that Democrats are too eager to score political points to wait for the facts to come out upon completion of the special prosecutor's investigation into the matter.
"If Democrats had any confidence in the investigatory process, they would hold their fire and let the investigation proceed rather than rushing to judgment," Miss Schmitt said.
Mrs. Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who has accused the White House of lying about Iraq's attempts to acquire weapons-grade nuclear material from Niger. A report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the British intelligence service and other intelligence agencies around the world, however, claim the attempt was made.
The bipartisan intelligence committee report also determined that Mrs. Plame recommended to the CIA that her husband -- a critic of the war in Iraq -- travel to Niger to verify the story of attempted "yellowcake" uranium purchases. Though his own report suggested it had occurred, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, saying it was wrong of the White House to suggest it did happen.
Mr. Wilson has never publicly reconciled that conflict.
Democrats, however, made it clear that they believe Mr. Wilson's op-ed, and are convinced that Mr. Rove "outed" Mrs. Plame as a form of political retribution.
"The White House launched a smear campaign, and Valerie Plame became collateral damage," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat. "Now the White House has gone silent. It won't answer any questions. It won't take any administrative action against Mr. Rove."
Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, said that what occurred is "at its worst, treason committed by high-level White House officials, and at the best we have seen an abuse of power."

TheKansasCityChannel.com - News - Former CIA Analyst Chides Bush Over Rove

2005-07-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

TheKansasCityChannel.com - News - Former CIA Analyst Chides Bush Over Rove
Former CIA Analyst Chides Bush Over Rove

POSTED: 11:34 am CDT July 23, 2005
UPDATED: 12:59 pm CDT July 23, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Democrats are alleging that President George W. Bush is jeopardizing national security by not disciplining political adviser Karl Rove for his role in leaking the name of a CIA officer.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, a Republican, delivered the Democratic Party's weekly radio address. In it, he accused the president of going back on his word that anyone from the White House involved in the leak would be fired.

He said the president is "willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson," instead of "protecting intelligence officers."

PENN JILLETTE IS A FAT, STUPID ATHEISTIC ASSHOLE...SEE Penn Jillette: Quotations

2005-07-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

Penn Jillette: Quotations

kwc blog: Why Bush avoids press conferences

2005-07-15T18:26:00.000-07:00

kwc blog: Why Bush avoids press conferencesQUESTION: Mr. President, why are you and the vice president insisting on appearing together before the 9-11 commission? And, Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?
BUSH: We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.

And, secondly, because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) I was asking why you're appearing together, rather than separately, which was their request.

BUSH: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them.

QUESTION: In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.

You've looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?

BUSH: I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.

John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet.

I would've gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would've called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein.

See, I'm of the belief that we'll find out the truth on the weapons. That's why we sent up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where they are. They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm.

One of the things that Charlie Duelfer talked about was that he was surprised of the level of intimidation he found amongst people who should know about weapons and their fear of talking about them because they don't want to be killed.

You know, there's this kind of -- there's a terror still in the soul of some of the people in Iraq.

They're worried about getting killed, and therefore they're not going to talk. But it'll all settle out, John. We'll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time.

However, the fact that he had the capacity to make them bothers me today just like it would have bothered me then. He's a dangerous man. He's a man who actually not only had weapons of mass destruction -- the reason I can say that with certainty is because he used them.

And I have no doubt in my mind that he would like to have inflicted harm, or paid people to inflict harm, or trained people to inflict harm, on America, because he hated us.

I hope -- I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.

QUESTION: Following on both Judy and John's questions, and it comes out of what you just said in some ways, with public support for your policies in Iraq falling off the way they have, quite significantly over the past couple of months, I guess I'd like to know if you feel, in any way, that you have failed as a communicator on this topic.

BUSH: Gosh, I don't know. I mean ...

QUESTION: Well, you deliver a lot of speeches, and a lot of them contain similar phrases and may vary very little from one to the next. And they often include a pretty upbeat assessment of how things are going, with the exception of tonight. It's pretty somber.

BUSH: A pretty somber assessment today, Don, yes.

QUESTION: But I guess I just wonder if you feel that you have failed in any way. You don't have many of these press conferences where you engage in this kind of exchange. Have you failed in any way to really make the case to the American public?

BUSH: You know, that's, I guess, if you put it into a political context, that's the kind of thing the voters will decide next November. That's what elections are about. They'll take a look at me and my opponent and say, let's see, which one of them can better win the war on terror? Who best can see to it that Iraq emerges a free society?

And, Don, you know, if I tried to fine-tune my messages based upon polls, I think I'd be pretty ineffective. I know I would be disappointed in myself.

I hope today you've got a sense of my conviction about what we're doing. If you don't, maybe I need to learn to communicate better...

Juan Cole: President Bush's Incoherent News Conference

2005-07-15T18:24:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole: President Bush's Incoherent News Conference: "And they were happy -- they're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be
happy if I were occupied either. " - GEORGE "ASSHOLE" BUSH

Telegraph | News | New claims in CIA row turn heat on Bush aide

2005-07-15T17:58:00.000-07:00

Telegraph | News | New claims in CIA row turn heat on Bush aide

Newspapers reported that Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist, had talked about the agent in a telephone conversation with a columnist in July 2003 shortly before the journalist published the agent's name.

The disclosure of the name, potentially a criminal offence, is the subject of a grand jury investigation that has rocked the White House.

Democrats intensified their calls for Mr Bush to fire Mr Rove, credited with twice putting him in the White House, and often referred to as "Bush's Brain". The president said last year he would fire any staff member who had leaked the agent's identity.

But Republicans hit back, citing a leak from Mr Rove's evidence to a grand jury to argue that far from incriminating him, the details of his conversation with the columnist put him in the clear.

Sources privy to the grand jury told the New York Times and Washington Post that Mr Rove testified last year that in July 2003 he was telephoned by the columnist Robert Novak and asked about the link between a leading critic of the war in Iraq, Joe Wilson, and Valerie Plame, the CIA officer. The pair are married.

Novak said he had heard that Miss Plame suggested that her husband, a former diplomat, be sent on an intelligence mission. Mr Rove told the grand jury that he replied: "I heard that too."

The latest revelation links Mr Rove closer than ever to the outing of Miss Plame. Mr Wilson says she was named to discredit him after he publicly undermined one of Mr Bush's key claims about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

But Mr Rove's allies say he has a perfectly respectable defence. His account of discussions with Novak and with another journalist who wrote about the story, indicates that the subject of Miss Plame's role was raised by the journalists, rather than dropped in by Mr Rove.

It seems unlikely that charges will be levelled against Mr Rove. The crime of outing an agent is hard to prove and Miss Plame was not operating under a particularly deep cover, undermining claims that this is a key issue of national security.

Rather the Democrats are raising it as a matter of credibility, highlighting White House statements that Mr Rove was not involved.

Mr Bush yesterday made a point of defending his old friend. For the second consecutive day he walked to a helicopter at the White House with Mr Rove at his side. The image was intended to signal that Mr Bush will not let his man go without a fierce fight.

The next bombshell is expected over the weekend when Matt Cooper of Time magazine, the second journalist Mr Rove spoke to, publishes an account of his grand jury testimony.

Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter who was researching the story, has been jailed for not revealing her sources, until the end of the grand jury investigation, which is likely to be October.

Democratic spokesmen whipped up the row on news channels, employing brutal language against Mr Rove.

Mr Wilson, a former ambassador and a supporter of last year's Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, said Mr Rove must be forced out.

After being sent to Niger in 2002 to check British reports that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for a renewed attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, Mr Wilson found the evidence to be extremely questionable and in July 2003 went public.

Critically for Mr Rove, some key Republican Congressmen stand by the White House.

President Bush Holds Press Conference

2005-07-15T17:56:00.000-07:00

President Bush Holds Press Conference
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html#

NOTE-THERE IS VIDEO AND AUDIO OF BUSH SAYING THAT HE JUST DOESN'T SPEND THAT MUCH TIME ON BIN LADEN...
"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him,"

M Is for Moronic - Yahoo! News

2005-07-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

M Is for Moronic - Yahoo! NewsMax Blumenthal
Fri Jul 8, 2:12 PM ET

The Nation -- "I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is a tone deafness to issues of tone and balance," Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said in May. Since he was appointed to his position by President Bush, he has set about to change the "tone" and rectify the "balance." For example, he helped secure $4 million to fund Wall Street Journal Report, a round-table discussion featuring the newspaper's right-wing editorial board; no liberals or Democrats need apply. Next he collaborated with Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to kill a legislative proposal that would have required appointments with local broadcasting experience to the CPB board. Last year, to justify his campaign for balance, Tomlinson commissioned a secret study to prove that certain programs aired on PBS radio and television are contaminated with liberal bias.

To carry out this delicate task, Tomlinson selected Fred Mann, a conservative activist with no credentials as an expert on journalism, broadcasting or media issues, who was obscure even within right-wing circles. Mann was paid $14,700 in taxpayer money to monitor a sampling of PBS shows and file a report to Tomlinson on the political partisanship of their content. Tomlinson seems to have planned for Mann's report to become a seminal conservative document. Republicans would wave it during House appropriations committee hearings as they argued for defunding PBS and realigning its programming. Right-wing talk jocks would blare talking points based on Mann's disturbing findings, which would at last provide definitive proof of a liberal media tilt. Meanwhile, insidious liberal activists boring from within public broadcasting studios would cower in humiliation from the exposure.

While Mann diligently went about his work listening to the radio and watching TV, monitoring episodes of PBS's NOW With Bill Moyers, The Diane Rehm Show and The Tavis Smiley Show--Tomlinson concealed his activities from CPB's board. When Mann filed his detailed report, Tomlinson hid it from the CPB board. Only an internal investigation by CPB's inspector general in mid May revealed the existence of the Mann report. And only when journalists at NPR managed to secure a copy were its contents reported. Reading the study, it is clear why Tomlinson tried to keep it a state secret.

The Mann report reads as if dictated by Cookie Monster while chewing on a mouthful of lead paint chips. Names of famous political figures and celebrities are chronically misspelled. PBS guests are categorized by labels--"anti-DeLay," "neutral," "x"--for often bewildering reasons. Mann appears to have spent endless hours monitoring programs with no political content, gathering such insights as that Ray Charles was blind.

Mann begins each of his PBS program summaries with a chart showing guests' ideological leanings. An "L" denotes guests he judges to be liberal; "C" beside conservatives; "N" beside those who are neutral. Among those Mann designated as conservative is the ex-rapper and actor Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg, best known for his role as a well-endowed porn star in the film Boogie Nights. While Wahlberg used his June 2, 2004, appearance on The Tavis Smiley Show to promote juvenile justice programs--a liberal hallmark--he also said in passing, according to Mann, that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ "was a good thing." Another Tavis Smiley guest, Everlast, the rock-rapper who once fronted the Irish-American rap trio House of Pain, was dubbed a "C" for his opinion that some rap music is "sending a bad message to youth." And Henry Rollins, the former singer for the legendary hardcore-punk band Black Flag, was labeled conservative for stating, in Mann's words, that "people who have problems with the war should support the troops." Apparently, feeling sympathy for American servicemen and women is strictly "C."

Mann's liberals are an equally curious bunch. Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, garnered his "L" after speaking glowingly of Ronald Reagan in a discussion with Tavis Smiley. Hagel is, of course, that comsymp who earned a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition last year. Another Rehm guest, Washington Post reporter Robin Wright, earned her "L" by articulating an analytical point Mann apparently had not heard expressed before. "Ms. Wright's viewpoint was that U.S. intelligence was geared to fight the Cold War and did not adapt to the new threat of terrorism," Mann writes, describing why he put the "L" word beside her name. For investigating three of Tom DeLay's associates for illegal fundraising in Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who was interviewed on NOW, was dubbed "anti-DeLay." Dr. Arthur Bodette was slapped with an "L" after discussing on Diane Rehm's show "the unlimited possibilities of new advances in DNA chips to screen for birth defects, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation."

Another unintentionally hilarious aspect of the Mann report is its sloppy typos. Apparently Tomlinson's budget didn't include a proofreader. Former Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr appears as "Ken Staff," former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim as "Doug Zukheim" and former Congressman Newt Gingrich as "Next Gingrich."

There are also curious asides and digressions. In a description of the March 29, 2004, episode of NOW, Mann notes that 9/11 widow Kristin Breitweiser filled in for Bill Moyers as host. What did he make of this? He doesn't say. In his summary of former CIA operative Robert Baer's interview with Diane Rehm, Mann writes, "Mr. Baer's viewpoint was that [Ahmad] Chalabi leaked secret classified information to Iran regarding U.S. cracking Iran's codes. As to how Chalabi new [sic] this information, Baer speculated, it was probably a drunken operative." Reporting on Gen. Anthony Zinni's appearance on Rehm's show, Mann observes, "His viewpoint was that...Saddam was not a treat [sic]." Yes, and Nixon was not a cook.

Besides scrutinizing political PBS guests, Mann was paid to watch countless hours of nonpolitical programming and report back to Tomlinson with his insights. Thus Tomlinson was secretly informed that during one Diane Rehm episode, "Carole King talked about her career.... James Taylor inspired her." Or that, during The Tavis Smiley Show, actor Jamie Foxx "discussed the career of the late Ray Charles and the obstacles (blind and black) that he had to overcome to achieve success." Next to Foxx's name Mann affixed a lowercase "x," which, because Mann labeled neutral guests with an "N," may mean that Foxx's politics are beyond neutral. Either that or he's become a secret black Muslim.

Who is Fred Mann? For all we know, he could be a werewolf with supersensitive hearing that detects liberal bias inaudible to the average human's ear. But since he and Tomlinson have not provided the same level of accountability they are demanding from others, it is impossible to know. Reporters who have attempted to locate him, including NPR, have all failed. Perhaps only Van Helsing could uncover Mann's tracks. What is known is that in 1980, Mann worked on the senatorial campaign of Dan Quayle. Then, during Reagan's second term, Mann went to work at the Virginia-based National Journalism Center as its job bank and alumni director until he retired last year. The National Journalism Center is directed by M. Stanton Evans, a former editor of the conservative Indianapolis News, and a founder in 1960 of the right-wing youth group Young Americans for Freedom. Through the center, Evans nurtured movement activists like Mann and trained aspiring young media players, including Ann Coulter and Maggie Gallagher, the conservative Catholic columnist who took federal money from the Bush Administration to promote its policies.

The Mann report may be one of the strangest documents ever produced by the federal government; however, it is not totally without value. Though it may be botched as an indictment of liberal media bias, it inadvertently offers an unfiltered glimpse into the recesses of the conservative mind.

The conservative media game was neatly summarized by Matt Labash, a former senior writer for The Weekly Standard who now writes for National Review, in a 2003 interview on the website journalismjobs.com. Labash explained: "The conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective.... It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket."

But until Ken Tomlinson, no conservative imagined that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would provide taxpayer funding for the "great little racket."

Santorum firm on Boston 'liberal' comment

2005-07-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

Santorum firm on Boston 'liberal' commentBOSTON, July 13 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., seems to be standing by his statement connecting Boston's ''liberalism" with the Roman Catholic Church's sex-abuse scandal.

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Responding to remarks made three years ago, Santorum, a leader among Christian conservatives, told the Boston Globe in a Tuesday interview: " I was just saying that there's an attitude that is very open to sexual freedom that is more predominant" in Boston.

When told the scandal had occurred across the country, Santorum told the Globe that "at the time (in 2002), there was an indication that there was more of a problem there" in Boston.

Massachusetts political leaders ridiculed Santorum's suggestion that priests were driven to abuse children by the city's liberal culture.

Santorum faces a tough race for re-election next year in Pennsylvania. The state's treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., the expected Democratic candidate, has been ahead or even with Santorum in recent polls, although Casey hasn't begun actively campaigning, the Globe said.

HoustonChronicle.com - Judge won't kill charges against DeLay associate

2005-07-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

HoustonChronicle.com - Judge won't kill charges against DeLay associate

Congresswoman Louise M. Slaughter-Send Karl Rove His Pink Slip!

2005-07-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

Congresswoman Louise M. Slaughter
SEND ROVE PACKING TO LOWER SLOBOVIA...FIRE ROVE!

AlterNet: Is Karl Rove Screwed, or Not?

2005-07-12T17:14:00.000-07:00

AlterNet: Is Karl Rove Screwed, or Not?
Is Karl Rove Screwed, or Not?

By Jan Frel, AlterNet. Posted July 11, 2005.

For once, Bush or Rove or somebody in this administration may get an uppercut that keeps them down on the mat, or at least out for an eight-count. Tools
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More stories by Jan Frel

A week ago, what Karl Rove may have done to expose the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame was just another gone-nowhere, 2-year-old, dusty Bush scandal on the shelf, relegated to languish among the lies that got us into the war in Iraq and the doctored FDA reports that suppressed the risks of Big Pharma's moneymakers.

Today, What Karl Rove Said is the story. And there's every indication that for the first time, he is in deep shit. That's really what everyone wants to confirm: Is Karl Rove screwed, or not? And luckily for us, for the first time he's going to have to answer some questions on terms other than his.

Kenneth Lerer, a former top exec for AOL Time Warner, nailed in the Huffington Post how times have suddenly changed for Bush's Svengali advisor. Here's the world Karl Rove until now has lived in:

[When] Rove says he can't be quoted, he's not quoted. Period. He knows what he says will never ever come back to haunt him. Talk to the reporter. Say what he wants to. Move on to the next call. It's like talking to your psychiatrist or rabbi/priest: It's a private conversation never to be repeated.

And now in the present:

But now imagine if some of the things you said to your psychiatrist, rabbi/priest all of a sudden were to become public. Shit. Now you understand Rove's problem.

But, considering the fact that not one of the seven hairs on Rove's balding head has been so much as singed since Bush took office, it's worth looking at what it is that will take the man down. Is it the court case, or will it be political damage?

David Corn points out that Rove doesn't need to go jail for this incident to do grievous harm to the White House -- and that's what we all care about anyway, right? That for once, Bush or Rove or somebody in the administration gets an uppercut that keeps them down on the mat, or at least out for an eight-count. It's about seeing that you can hurt these folks, who have been miraculous untouchables in their first four-and-a-half years.

Corn writes, "This is proof that the Bush White House was using any information it could gather on Joseph Wilson -- even classified information related to national security -- to pursue a vendetta against Wilson, a White House critic. Even if it turns out Rove did not break the law regarding the naming of intelligence officials, this new disclosure could prove Rove guilty of leaking a national security secret to a reporter for political ends. What would George W. Bush do about that?"

Corn reminds us that in George Bush's statements on the leak scandals of 2003, Bush threatened to "take care of" anyone behind the leak. And that he ordered anyone with knowledge about the Plame affair to come forward. Corn writes, "Has Rove done so? No. So it seems he violated a presidential command. Would Bush be obliged to fire him for insubordination?"

Rove is certainly nailed for that. His firing would certainly approach the political damage so many have waited years for.

But it will take media bullying and a concerted effort by all the progressive bully pulpits to turn the Rove's role in the Plame affair into The Question that Bush Must Answer. Oddly enough if it comes down to a political and media battle, Karl Rove is screwed only if a convincing public case is made that what Rove Did Was Wrong, and that Karl Rove Is Screwed.

Reading all the articles and analyses out there, it's pretty clear that no one has a clue if the court case will bring down Rove; with the possible exception of Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in charge of the case, and even then, he probably doesn't have a clue, either. Not very satisfying, is it? Imagine that despite all this frenzy, no one has even got a solid lead so far on whether on not Karl Rove will be indicted, and if you consider that the stretch between being indicted and going to jail for something is longer than Tom DeLay's list of ethics scandals, there's no point in waiting to find out if Rove will plea-bargain for parole before he turns 60.

Consider Sunday's Big Revelation, which comes from Michael Isikoff in Newsweek. Isikoff published a copy of an email by Time's Matt Cooper in his report that names Rove as the source who leaked Valerie Plame's identity. Here's the money-shot sentence pulled whole-cloth from the email: "It was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."

Not only this, Rove is now known to have leaked this information before Bob Novak wrote about it in his infamous column of 2003, a loophole in Rove's potential defense now sealed. Potential defense, because of course, if Rove hadn't talked about Plame until Novak published his column, then Rove would be able to say that he learned about Plame reading the column.

So he's screwed, right?

Well, there's no proof that Rove lied about this yet, because in what has become his central public testimony is that he didn't know or leak her name. By saying "she" or "Wilson's wife," or whatever, he's not necessarily lying. Whether Rove lied under oath is still a private matter between Fitzgerald and the grand jury. And then the only other way Rove goes to jail is if he "knowingly" blew Plame's cover, and of course, whether or not someone knowingly did something is one of the hardest things to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

There is one thing causing a distraction from the wave of reports on the Rove scandal, and that is much of the reporting itself. All the big breaking stories on the Rove scandals carry a tone that makes it clear that each word tapped out by every journalist from Michael Isikoff of Newsweek to Dan Balz at the Washington Post was produced in an atmosphere where the authors were judging their work against the giant stories of journalism: the Pentagon Papers, the discovery of My Lai massacre, Watergate. Same with the TV analysts and their pronouncements.

The vanity of these power-hungry hacks swarming around Karl Rove's fate is, I think, revealed perfectly in the very same email from Time's Matt Cooper that confirmed Karl Rove as his source. Cooper writes with boyish glee that Rove told him these things about Valerie Plame on the condition that they use the Tree-House Gang's highest security clearance: "double super secret background." Cooper of course agreed, but only on the condition that Rove would supply the chocolate bars.

But that's another distraction from the real story here, which is that for the first time, there is real blood in Bush's political waters -- and that Karl Rove Is Screwed.

=============SNIP===============
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CBC News: Bush administration won't discuss Rove's role in CIA leak

2005-07-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

CBC News: Bush administration won't discuss Rove's role in CIA leak
Bush administration won't discuss Rove's role in CIA leak
Last Updated Tue, 12 Jul 2005 15:25:30 EDT
CBC News
U.S. President George W. Bush and his press secretary declined to answer questions again Tuesday on whether senior advisor Karl Rove leaked the name of a CIA agent to the media to get back at an administration critic.

The president promised a year ago to fire anyone found to have leaked the name of Valerie Plame, which appeared in a column by Washington-based reporter Robert Novak.

But Bush declined to answer a direct question Tuesday on Rove's role, and later White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to comment for the second day in a row as reporters fired questions at him.

"This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation," was all McClellan would say while under the grilling. Reporters wanted to know whether Rove had committed a crime, would resign or had affected the credibility of the White House.

They also asked in vain about Republican party attempts to downplay Rove's alleged conversation with a Time magazine reporter.

However, McClellan did publicly defend Rove in the fall of 2003 after the investigation had started, a discrepancy he also failed to address. "The president knows he's not involved," McClellan said at the time.

FROM JAN. 6, 2005: N.Y. Times reporter jailed for refusing to divulge source's name

An e-mail from July 2003 by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper says Rove told him that the woman "apparently works" for the CIA. Federal prosecutors are investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the name of Valerie Plame to the media.

A U.S. law, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, forbids naming undercover agents. It is punishable by a $50,000 US fine and 10 years in jail.

Cooper avoided going to jail recently after a judge ordered two reporters to divulge who had told them about Plame. Judith Miller of the New York Times is in jail for refusing to comply.

Media reports say four other reporters were fed the Plame information before Novak published it, but no one wrote that the administration was using the leak as a revenge tactic.

Niger-Saddam nuclear link sought

Plame's name was released in an apparent backlash against her husband, Joesph Wilson, a former Clinton diplomat the CIA sent to Africa in 2002 to pursue claims by the administration that Saddam Hussein had obtained nuclear material from Niger.

The quest turned up empty after supposedly official documents first discovered by British intelligence were found to be fake.

Wilson wrote an editorial piece published in the New York Times, which criticized Bush for mentioning the Niger-Saddam link in his 2003 state of the union address that ratcheted up the case for invading Iraq.

That fall, the CIA asked the Justice Department to probe the leak and it called a grand jury investigation.

Also Tuesday, senior Democrats waded into the partisan fray with former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry saying: "I believe Karl Rove ought to be fired." Senator Hillary Clinton and Senate minority leader Harry Reid agreed.

"If these allegations are true, this rises above politics and is about our national security," Reid said.

A Senate intelligence report has shown that Plame twice recommended her husband travel to Niger and that the nuclear mission was approved without senior level CIA approval.

Bloomberg.com: U.S.

2005-07-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

Bloomberg.com: U.S.White House Says Rove Retains Bush's Backing After CIA Leak
July 12 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush still has confidence in Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, administration spokesman Scott McClellan said, after Rove's name surfaced in the investigation into who disclosed the name of a covert intelligence agent.

``Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president,'' McClellan said in response to questions about Rove at the daily White House briefing. ``Everybody who is working here is helping us to advance an agenda, and that includes Karl in a big way.''

Earlier today, during an appearance with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Bush ignored reporters' questions about whether Rove should be fired.

For the second consecutive day, McClellan refused to answer questions about Rove's role in the case, in which an independent prosecutor is investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to reporters in 2003. It's a federal crime to intentionally reveal the identity of a covert agent.

McClellan said investigators ``certainly expressed a preference'' that he and other members of the administration not discuss the case.

Democrats, including Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party's 2004 presidential nominee, called on Bush to fire Rove, the president's top political adviser and the architect of Bush's two presidential election victories.

E-Mail

The July 18 issue of Newsweek reported that Rove told Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper that diplomat Joseph Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to buy uranium there was authorized by his wife, ``who apparently works'' at the CIA. Newsweek cited an e-mail Cooper sent to his editors that the magazine said has been turned over to the prosecutor. Newsweek reported that Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said Rove never mentioned Plame's name or that she was a covert agent.

Cooper and another reporter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, were ordered to disclose their sources to the prosecutor investigating the leak, and Miller is now in jail for refusing. Cooper agreed to testify. Plame's name surfaced after Wilson wrote an opinion article for the New York Times criticizing the Bush's administration's case for going to war in Iraq.

At issue are past statements by McClellan, who in September and October 2003, denied Rove's involvement in the leak. ``They assured me that they were not involved in this,'' McClellan said on Oct. 10, 2003, referring to Rove, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams and Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

McClellan said today that any comment now might compromise the investigation.

``The investigation is continuing. I want to be helpful to the investigation. I don't want to jeopardize anything in that investigation,'' McClellan said. ``I look forward to talking about some of these matters once the investigation is complete.''

Kerry and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid cited past statements by McClellan and Bush that anyone involved in the leak should be fired.

``We are asking the President and the White House to do what they promised,'' Kerry said in an e-mail to supporters.

FT.com / Home UK - Top Bush adviser revealed as Plame source

2005-07-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

By Holly Yeager in Washington
Published: July 10 2005 23:17 | Last updated: July 10 2005 23:17

Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, was the secret source who gave a Time magazine reporter permission to testify last week, thus avoiding jail for contempt of court, Newsweek reported on Sunday.

Mr Rove has been the subject of growing speculation as two journalists faced prison for failing to reveal their sources to a federal prosecutor investigating the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer.

Last week Judith Miller of the New York Times was jailed after she refused to testify before a grand jury about her source. Matt Cooper, of Time magazine, had expected to keep his source a secret as well. But in dramatic fashion, just as he was about to persist in maintaining his silence, he said he received permission from his source to testify in court.

Mr Cooper has refused to identify his source publicly. But in this week's edition Newsweek said Mr Rove's attorney had confirmed that Mr Rove had discussed Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who is married to Ms Plame, with Mr Cooper and that he gave Mr Cooper permission to testify.

It is illegal to reveal knowingly the identity of an undercover officer, and the prosecutor has been searching for the source of the leak who revealed Ms Plame's identity, which was first reported by Robert Novak, a columnist.

Mr Rove has insisted he did not leak Ms Plame's name, and e-mail accounts included in the Newsweek story only make clear that he talked to Mr Cooper about Mr Wilson's wife, without revealing her name.

“Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative,” according to Newsweek. “Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published.”

Was it Karl Rove? - The Nuge Board

2005-07-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

Was it Karl Rove? - The Nuge Board
Thunder&Lightning
Member posted 07-06-2005 11:21 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
who outed Joe Wilson's wife? If so, he and Novak both need to be sharing a jail cell. Treason committing m*t*e*f*c*e*s.
IP: Logged

Oscar
Member posted 07-06-2005 11:26 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But but but but..he's on OUR side, so treason's ok!
IP: Logged

Thunder&Lightning
Member posted 07-06-2005 11:37 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the implications are far reaching and a major threat to "our security". 20 years of undercover C.I.A. work down the tubes. Her life has been seriously endangered, as well as the lives of the people she associated with, whether or not they knew. All becuase her husband would not jump in bed with the administration. I've known for some time now what a credent Mr. Rove is. He is a Lee Atwater protege. If compelling evidence arises which points to his guilt, losing his job will be the least of his worries.

Bush aide Rove was Time reporter's source-Newsweek

2005-07-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

Bush aide Rove was Time reporter's source-Newsweek

Reuters
Sunday, July 10, 2005; 6:35 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top White House advisor Karl Rove was one of the secret sources that spoke to reporters about a covert CIA operative whose identity was leaked to the media, Newsweek magazine reported in its latest edition.

The magazine said Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove talked to Time magazine about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame.

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Luskin said Rove recently gave Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper permission to testify about the conversation to a grand jury investigating the leak in 2003, according to Newsweek.

A U.S. federal judge ordered Cooper, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, to testify and reveal their confidential sources.

Last week Cooper avoided a jail sentence for contempt of court by agreeing to testify in the case. Miller refused to testify and was jailed.

The case has become an important test involving freedom of the press and has pitting the media's traditional use of anonymous sources against the efforts of a federal government prosecutor to investigate a possible crime.

It is illegal to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent.

Although Rove has made statements about the Plame leak, he has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about the CIA agent.

Rove has carefully chosen his words when questioned about the leak. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," he told CNN last year when asked if he had had anything to do with it.

All Headline News - Karl Rove Revealed as Source in Time Magazine, CIA Case - July 10, 2005

2005-07-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

All Headline News - Karl Rove Revealed as Source in Time Magazine, CIA Case - July 10, 2005
Karl Rove Revealed as Source in Time Magazine, CIA Case

July 10, 2005 10:21 p.m. EST

Danielle George - All Headline News Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON (AHN) - One of the sources that leaked the identity of a CIA operative to Time Magazine reporters, is Top White House advisor, Karl Rove, according to Newsweek Magazine.

Newsweek said Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove talked to Time magazine about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Two journalists faced prison for failing to reveal their sources to a federal prosecutor investigating the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer.

It is illegal to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover officer, and the prosecutor has been searching for the source of the leak who revealed Ms Plame's identity, which was first reported by Robert Novak, a columnist.

Last week Judith Miller of the New York Times was jailed after she refused to testify before a grand jury about her source. Matt Cooper, of Time magazine, had expected to keep his source a secret as well, but he said he received permission from his source to testify in court.

Rove is adamant that he did not leak Plame's name, and e-mail accounts included in the Newsweek story show that while he talked to Cooper about Plame there was no mention of her name.

“Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative,” according to Newsweek
=======snip============
The Puppetmaster....Ah Yes...The Texas Turd Blossom...Loose Lips Sink Shits

AlterNet: Blogs: Peek: Newsweek: Rove as source revealed

2005-07-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

AlterNet: Blogs: Peek: Newsweek: Rove as source revealedNewsweek: Rove as source revealed

Posted by Deanna Zandt at 8:13 AM on July 10, 2005.

Yep, Rove's our guy. Now let's nail him. Blog Tools
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David Corn reports this morning that Newsweek has obtained a copy of emails sent from Matt Cooper to his editor revealing that Karl Rove is the source of the Plame leak. "There now is clear-cut evidence that Rove was involved in--if not the chief architect of--the actions that led to the outing of Plame/Wilson. If he's not in severe legal trouble, he ought to be in political peril," he says, and in another post, explains the full ramifications. (David Corn)

Deanna Zandt is a media, message and web design consultant, as well as a political arts activist in New York.

BLAST FROM THE PAST-----Wayne Madsen: Exposing Karl Rove

2005-07-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

Wayne Madsen: Exposing Karl Rove
Exposing Karl Rove
by WAYNE MADSEN

He's America's Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush. Rove's dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon's 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national stage. From his Eagle's Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill.

Since his formative political years when he tried to paint World War II B-24 pilot and hero George McGovern as a left-wing peacenik through his mid-level career as a planter of disinformation in the media on behalf of Texas and national GOP candidates to his current role as Dubya's "Svengali," Rove has practiced the same style of slash and burn politics as did his Nixonian mentor Segretti. Many of us remember the Lincolnesque Senator Ed Muskie breaking down in tears during the 1972 campaign over Segretti-planted false stories in a New Hampshire newspaper that accused Mrs. Muskie of being a heavy smoker, drinker, and cusser and accused Muskie of uttering a slur in describing New Hampshire's French Canadian population. Rove's hero also forged letters on fake Muskie campaign letterhead, disrupted rallies and fundraising dinners, and spread false stories about the sex lives of candidates. Segretti's brush also smeared George McGovern, George Wallace, Shirley Chisholm, and McGovern's first vice presidential choice, Senator Tom Eagleton. Segretti of course did not go on to a high-level White House job -- he was sentenced to six months in federal prison for distributing illegal campaign material.

In many respects, however, the apprentice Rove has far exceeded the chicanery and evil-mindedness of his mentor Segretti. Rove is a tech-savvy puppet master for Bush. Take, for example, last June's discovery of a "lost" CD-ROM in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Contained on the CD was a PowerPoint presentation given by White House political director Ken Mehlman to Rove on the strategy for next Tuesday's off-year election. The slide show showed First Brother Jeb Bush being vulnerable in Florida. Jeb Bush later joked that the disc was part of a plot cooked up by him and his brother to make it appear that he was vulnerable in order to rally an otherwise complacent GOP base in the Sunshine State. Or was it a joke? Jeb Bush and his political minions like Katherine Harris have shown us that if anyone thinks what the GOP has done in Florida is funny they have an incredibly sick sense of humor.

Rove's own tendency to be sick-minded originates with his mentor Segretti. The 2000 GOP primary was a chance for Rove to hone his skills in dirty tricks. His target then was Senator John McCain who appeared to be within striking distance of Dubya in South Carolina after the then-GOP maverick's surprise upset victory in New Hampshire. Rove's operation proceeded to target McCain with false stories: McCain was a stoolie for his captors in the Hanoi Hilton (this from a lunatic self-promoting Vietnam "veteran"); McCain fathered a black daughter out of wedlock (a despicable reference to McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter); Cindy McCain's drug "abuse"; and even McCain's "homosexuality." In the spirit of Segretti, Rove engineered a victory for Dubya but at the cost of trashing an honorable man and his family. Muskie, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Hart, Tsongas, Clinton, Biden, Dole, Perot, and others had all seen the Segretti/Rove slash and burn tactics before.

And Rove's penchant for fascistic demagoguery and outright lying continues to this very day. After Paul Wellstone's sons asked that Vice President Dick Cheney not attend the Minneapolis memorial service for their father, mother, and sister, the White House explained that the real reason wasn't the surviving Wellstone family's abhorrence for Cheney but the fact the family didn't want Cheney's Secret Service protection to interfere with public access to the service. Of course, the Rove and Ari Fleischer disinformation machine forgot to take into account that two attendees, Bill and Hillary Clinton, had their own Secret Service details. But such is the case with a White House that takes its lessons from Goebbels and the editorial staff of the old Soviet News Agency Tass.

Rove's dirty fingerprints could also be seen in the Iowa Senate race between Tom Harkin and GOP candidate Greg Ganske. A few months ago, a story was leaked that the Harkin campaign had employed a spy within the Ganske campaign. To put this in a Rove context, we must go back to the 1986 Texas gubernatorial race in which Rove's candidate Bill Clements was taking on Democratic Governor Mark White. Just before a debate between the two candidates, Rove spun the story that his office had been bugged. No proof. But the insinuation that White's people had carried out the bugging was reported by the media. In the election, Clements defeated White. Rove stashed away more political capital into his already heavy knapsack of ill-gotten IOUs.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, we were obviously treated to more Rove chicanery when the following Associated Press story hit the wires: "A woman who worked for a media company that produced ads for President George W. Bush's campaign was indicted for secretly mailing a videotape of Bush practicing for a debate to Vice President Al Gore's campaign." Yes, that videotape, along with a 120-page briefing book, just happened to turn up in Gore's headquarters as fast as the CD-ROM turned up in Lafayette Park. The sourcerer Segretti must be very proud of his apprentice. In 1980, no Republican bemoaned the fact that Jimmy Carter's debate briefing book was swiped and found its way into the hands of the Reagan-Bush campaign. In Rove's world, its only an affront when someone "steals" your own campaign secrets and not when your are on the receiving end of a heist.

"If you're not with me, you're against me." Bush's binary view of "good and evil" and "friend and enemy" sits well with the Rove strategy. Georgia's conservative but libertarian-minded Representative Bob Barr found out about this in last August's primary when his GOP primary opponent John Linder began spreading around stories that Barr was "soft on terrorism." Because Barr was skeptical about a number of aspects of the Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT Act, he became a target for the Rove machine. However, it was likely that Barr became a target earlier on when he supported Steve Forbes against Bush in the 2000 primary. Bush apparently means to say, "If you've not always been with me, you're against me." It must have really been a dilemma for Bush and Rove to have to come to the support of John Sununu, Jr. in the New Hampshire Senate race. Although Daddy made George W. unceremoniously give the axe to Sununu's father as White House Chief of Staff during the Bush 41 administration, the man who the junior Sununu defeated in the primary, Bob Smith, was even more of a problem. He had the temerity to quit the Republican Party in 2000 and run against Dubya for President. So in Bushspeak, which is obviously borrowed from Forrest Gump's scripts, "if you're less with me than the other guy, you're more against me."

Undoubtedly, Rove was also behind the campaign to "get" Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney who was the first nationally-known politician to question what Bush may have known beforehand about 9-11. She was defeated by a former Republican state judge who had supported the wacky Alan Keyes for President in 2000. Never mind, McKinney was "less with Bush" than Keyes, so it was more important to get McKinney who was "more against" Bush.

In all seriousness, rewarding the GOP on November 5 will only increase the appetite of Rove to amass more and more power into the White House. The advent of a Democratic-controlled Senate and House might even begin to spell the end of the road for Segretti's star pupil. German opposition figures in the mid-1930s often lamented the fact that they could have stopped the rise of the Nazis if only they had been more united in a common front when they had a chance. However, they fell prey to the media manipulation of Goebbels and fought among themselves more than they did against the menace from the far right. We Americans also have an early opportunity to stem an out-of-control and anti-constitutional regime with the Rasputin-like Rove at the after steerage helm of our ship of state. That opportunity presents itself next Tuesday--Election Day.

"London Calling...:"

2005-07-09T05:27:00.000-07:00

If anything is learned from the horrible loss of life due to the London attacks, it is that this bizarre notion that we need to be in Iraq to "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here."

Tell that to the families of British soldiers serving in Iraq that sustained injuries or deaths in the attacks of 7-7-2005.

KARL ROVE: WORSE THAN OSAMA BIN LADEN - Yahoo! News

2005-07-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

KARL ROVE: WORSE THAN OSAMA BIN LADEN - Yahoo! News
NEW YORK--In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example. This explains why, at the end of occupations, the newly liberated exact vengeance upon their treasonous countrymen even they allow foreign troops to conduct an orderly withdrawal.

ADVERTISEMENT

If, as state-controlled media insists, there is such a creature as a Global War on Terrorism, our enemies are underground Islamist organizations allied with or ideologically similar to those that attacked us on 9/11. But who are the collaborators?

The right points to critics like Michael Moore, yours truly, and Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who points out the gaping chasm between America's high-falooting rhetoric and its historical record. But these bête noires are guilty only of the all-American actions of criticism and dissent, not to mention speaking uncomfortable truths to liars and deniers. As far as we know, no one on what passes for the "left" (which would be the center-right anywhere else) has betrayed the United States in the GWOT. No anti-Bush progressive has made common cause with Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or any other officially designated "terrorist" group. No American liberal has handed over classified information or worked to undermine the CIA.

But it now appears that Karl Rove, GOP golden boy, has done exactly that.

Last week Time magazine turned over its reporter's notes to a special prosecutor assigned to learn who told Republican columnist Bob Novak that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The revelation, which effectively ended Plame's CIA career and may have endangered her life, followed her husband Joe Wilson's publication of a New York Times op-ed piece that embarrassed the Bush Administration by debunking its claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. Time's cowardly decision to break its promise to a confidential source has had one beneficial side effect: according to Newsweek, it indicates that Karl Rove himself made the call to Novak.

One might have expected Rove, the master White House political strategist who engineered Bush's 2000 coup d'état and post-9/11 permanent war public relations campaign, to have ordered a flunky underling to carry out this act of high treason. But as the Arab saying goes, arrogance diminishes wisdom.

Rove, whose gaping maw recently vomited forth that Democrats didn't care about 9/11, is atypically silent. He did talk to the Time reporter but "never knowingly disclosed classified information," claims his attorney. But there's circumstantial evidence to go along with Time's leaked notes. Ari Fleischer abruptly resigned as Bush's press secretary on May 16, 2003, about the same time the White House became aware of Ambassador Wilson's plans to go public. (Wilson's article appeared July 6.) Did Fleischer quit because he didn't want to act as spokesman for Rove's plan to betray CIA agent Plame? Another interesting coincidence: Novak published his Plame column on July 14, Fleischer's last day on the job.

If Newsweek's report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson.

Osama bin Laden, conversely, is loyal to his cause. He has never exposed an Al Qaeda agent's identity to the media.

"[Knowingly revealing Plame's name and undercover status to the media]...is a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and is punishable by as much as ten years in prison," notes the Washington Post. Unmasking an intelligent agent during a time of war, however, surely rises to giving aid and comfort to America's enemies--treason. Treason is punishable by execution under the United States Code.

How far up the White House food chain does the rot of treason go? "Bush has always known how to keep Rove in his place," wrote Time in 2002 about a "symbiotic relationship" that dates to 1973. This isn't some rogue "plumbers" operation. Rove would never go it alone on a high-stakes action like Valerie Plame. It's a safe bet that other, higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal--almost certainly Dick Cheney and possibly Bush himself--signed off before Rove called Novak. For the sake of national security, those involved should be removed from office at once.

Rove and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty.

Campaign veterans run anti-Wal-Mart effort - Tom Curry - MSNBC.com

2005-07-07T16:37:00.000-07:00

Campaign veterans run anti-Wal-Mart effort - Tom Curry - MSNBC.comWASHINGTON - A union crusade against America's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, has the potential to not only hurt the company’s balance sheet and alter Americans’ shopping habits, but also to change the course of the 2006 and 2008 campaigns.

Americans cast their votes not just on Election Day but every day, by deciding where to spend their money. And the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is urging Americans to not spend their money at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has successfully fought the union's efforts to organize its workforce.

Now the union has recruited strategists from the 2004 Howard Dean and Wesley Clark campaigns, and they are mounting a crusade that goes beyond the usual union tactics, such as the boycott or shareholder resolution expressing disapproval of a company’s policies.

Paul Blank, who served as political director for the Dean campaign, is running the "Wake-Up Wal-Mart” campaign, and Chris Kofinis, a strategist for the Clark campaign, is the effort's communications adviser.

Blank and Kofinis are deploying election campaign-tested tactics to assail Wal-Mart: running petition drives and holding house parties, canvassing at farmers’ markets, stockpiling an e-mail list and conducting conference calls to marshal the efforts of local anti-Wal-Mart activists.

“We need a broad social movement to change this company,” said Blank. “This is a moral question about what kind of America we want to live in. Do we want to live in Wal-Mart’s version of America, where you drive down wages, don’t provide health insurance, provide no retirement security, ship jobs overseas and have complete abandonment of your values in the relentless pursuit of profit?”

“This is going to become a very important wedge issue that political leaders on Capitol Hill and across the country are going to have to face,” said Kofinis.

Focus on health insurance
At the moment, the union’s indictment of Wal-Mart is focused on the charge that the company does not provide adequate medical insurance for its employees, some of whom must turn to Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income people.

The company’s response: It offers health insurance plans to both full-time and part-time workers. The full-time worker must wait six months before being eligible and the part-timer must wait two years. The Arkansas-based Wal-Mart has 1.2 million employees, of which 568,000, or 47 percent, are covered by the plan.

Blank offers a longer bill of anti-Wal-Mart particulars:

"Poverty-level wages, which have a huge negative impact not only on the workers but also in terms of driving down wages for the entire industry."
A retirement plan that is "an empty promise which leaves more than 550,000 Wal-Mart employees ineligible for any retirement benefits at all."
"Exploitation of sweatshop labor and foreign–sourced labor."
"The destruction of small businesses in communities and downtowns."
"Sprawl" caused by the company’s proliferating stories.
One possibility is that the Americans who shop at Wal-Mart — about 112 million of them every week — have digested these charges and nonetheless still like the store's low prices.

But Kofinis said the company will have no choice but to change its practices to keep customers. “If consumers say, ‘You do not reflect our values right now, the way you treat you employees, the effect you have on the country; if you don’t change your behavior, we’re not going to do business with you.’ Wal-Mart is going to respond to that," he said.

Blank added, "This is not about destroying Wal-Mart. This is about making a better America and that starts by making Wal-Mart be a more responsible company."

If consumers sour on Wal-Mart, grocery store chains such as Kroger and Giant and discounters such as Costco stand to gain. All three have workforces that are at least partly unionized.

Creating jobs
Wal-Mart’s response to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is that it offers people a way out of poverty, with an average wage of $9.68 per hour. (One Wal-Mart competitor, Costco, says its average wage is $16.72 per hour.)

“Wal-Mart often provides the mechanism for associates to remove themselves from public assistance and build a better life,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Nate Hurst. “Seventy-six percent of our store management began in hourly jobs at our stores, often their first jobs.

Another company spokesman, Dan Fogleman, responded to the "destroying neighborhood business" charges by saying, "Look outside almost every Wal-Mart store. You'll find business cropping up. Businesses want to locate near Wal-Mart locations to take advantage of the customer flow we create."

Last year, he said, Wal-Mart purchased $150 billion in goods and services from more than 61,000 suppliers in the United States .

As for "sprawl," Fogleman said, "Look at a Wal-Mart super center. You can do your shopping, get an oil change for your car, get prescriptions filled, get a hair cut. It is the truly the convenience of a one-stop shopping experience."

Rebutting Blank’s charge of “no retirement security,” Fogleman said Wal-Mart offers a combined profit sharing/401(k) plan and contributes up to 4 percent of an employee's wages, whether the employee contributes his own money or not.

So for a worker making $30,000 a year, Wal-Mart will contribute $1,200 a year.

Both full- and part-time workers are eligible to participate in the plan after completing 13 months of service and 1,000 hours.

The company also offers a stock purchase plan and matches 15 percent of a worker’s purchases. More than half of the employees own Wal-Mart stock obtained through the purchase plan.

In Congress and in some state legislatures, the union is getting support from its Democratic allies. This year, the Democratic-controlled Maryland Legislature passed a law requiring firms with more than 10,000 employees to spend an amount equal to at least 8 percent of its payroll costs on health care benefits. The only employer to fall into this category was Wal-Mart.

Governor vetoes bill on health insurance
Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican who is running for re-election next year, vetoed the measure, saying it jeopardized Wal-Mart's plans to build a distribution center in Somerset County, Md., that would provide up to 750 jobs at an average of $12 an hour, $2.50 more than the county's current average wage.

The law, Ehrlich said, is “bad policy because it imposes an arbitrary number on employers and health care and further establishes that a state will dictate to businesses the type and level of health insurance they must provide for their employees.”

Blank predicted that Ehrlich would "pay a political price for standing with Wal-Mart.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. has been touting his bill to require states to identify which companies with 50 or more employees have workers receiving Medicaid or other taxpayer-funded health insurance. The bill would also require states to estimate the cost to taxpayers of providing health insurance to employees of large firms who are enrolled in Medicaid.

“Every American worker across this country is contributing a part of their taxes to pay for health care for those families in need who work at Wal- Mart,” Kennedy said at a recent Capitol Hill rally . “And at the same time we see record profits, which they (Wal-Mart executives) are distributing to themselves and to their shareholders.”

The bill’s purpose, according to its House sponsor, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., is to “find out how much that dollar that we’re saving on a pair of jeans is costing us in other ways.”

Kennedy said his bill “is the first step, but it certainly will not be the last,” hinting at a federal law along the lines of the Maryland legislation that Ehrlich vetoed.

Arguing that Wal-Mart’s low wages undercut its competitors, whose workers are represented by labor unions, Sen. Jon Corzine, D- N.J. said, “Our friends who work in the labor movement struggle every day in collective bargaining to try to provide health care to their workers… It is absolutely essential that we level the playing field, that we make sure that workers are treated equally everywhere.”

Contributor to Clinton, Bayh campaigns
If one believes that campaign contributions give a donor political clout, then Kennedy, Corzine, and Weiner face an uphill battle in Congress.

The Wal-Mart political action committee, which ranked 20th among all PACs in the amount of its donations in the 2004 campaign, gave 78 percent of its contributions to Republican candidates and 22 percent to Democrats.

Among the prominent Democrats receiving Wal-Mart PAC money for the 2004 and 2006 campaigns are Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland. In the early 1990s, while living in Arkansas, Hillary Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board of directors.

If the Wal-Mart issue grows in prominence, then Clinton and Bayh, potential contenders for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, may find themselves facing tough questioning from anti-Wal-Mart activists on the campaign trail.

“Every American worker across this country is contributing a part of their taxes to pay for health care for those families in need who work at Wal- Mart,” Kennedy said at a recent Capitol Hill rally . “And at the same time we see record profits, which they (Wal-Mart executives) are distributing to themselves and to their shareholders.”

The bill’s purpose, according to its House sponsor, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., is to “find out how much that dollar that we’re saving on a pair of jeans is costing us in other ways.”

Kennedy said his bill “is the first step, but it certainly will not be the last,” hinting at a federal law along the lines of the Maryland legislation that Ehrlich vetoed.

Arguing that Wal-Mart’s low wages undercut its competitors, whose workers are represented by labor unions, Sen. Jon Corzine, D- N.J. said, “Our friends who work in the labor movement struggle every day in collective bargaining to try to provide health care to their workers… It is absolutely essential that we level the playing field, that we make sure that workers are treated equally everywhere.”

Contributor to Clinton, Bayh campaigns
If one believes that campaign contributions give a donor political clout, then Kennedy, Corzine, and Weiner face an uphill battle in Congress.

The Wal-Mart political action committee, which ranked 20th among all PACs in the amount of its donations in the 2004 campaign, gave 78 percent of its contributions to Republican candidates and 22 percent to Democrats.

Among the prominent Democrats receiving Wal-Mart PAC money for the 2004 and 2006 campaigns are Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland. In the early 1990s, while living in Arkansas, Hillary Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board of directors.

If the Wal-Mart issue grows in prominence, then Clinton and Bayh, potential contenders for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, may find themselves facing tough questioning from anti-Wal-Mart activists on the campaign trail.

Caught in a Perjury TrapWill Karl Rove Be Indicted? :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - ch

2005-07-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

Caught in a Perjury TrapWill Karl Rove Be Indicted? :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - ch

Caught in a Perjury Trap
Will Karl Rove Be Indicted?
JOSHUA FRANK, CounterPunch

July 6, 2005 - Occasionally I get emails from Washington folks who work on the Hill claiming to possess juicy insider digs on our public servants and their corporate paymasters. I usually delete said emails, as I don't want to be responsible for propagating dirty rumors or false information that can't be corroborated. I'd rather let Judith Miller and the New York Times do that. Nonetheless, in the past 24 hours I have been contacted by three separate Congressional Democrats in Washington, and a Justice Department official, first by email and later phone, who all say the same thing: Karl Rove is about to be indicted.

All this comes on the heels of events that transpired over the weekend, as two different individuals, journalist Michael Isikoff and political commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, both claimed that Karl Rove might have been responsible for leaking the identity of an undercover CIA officer's identity to Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. Isikoff claims that Cooper talked to Rove during the period that Plame's identity was leaked, but there is still no proof that Rove was the culprit. As Isikoff of Newsweek wrote on July 3:

"The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with Newsweek, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article."

If it turns out that Rove did leak Plame to Cooper, it still does not necessarily mean that he was also Robert Novak's inside guy, although it surely raises suspicion. The indictment, as I am told, will most likely be of felony weight. In fact, Karl Rove may be accused of perjury, as Bush's top strategist told a Grand Jury that he was not responsible for leaking Plame's identity to Time magazine.

So the charge may not be for leaking top-secret information to the press, but for perjuring himself.

Sources also all say that this indictment is likely to come down either late this week or early next week. Of course Rove's lawyer denies that his client ever "knowingly" handed over classified information to the media, or is the "target" of any investigation. Perhaps Rove "unknowingly" did, and he's the "subject" rather than a "target" of an investigation. Time will tell.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has been leaked this information either. Over at Redstate, a right-wing Internet blog, one member who calls himself "Ohsure," also claims "[four] Great sources confirmed" the matter, and later added:

"I not only don't do this, I have never done this.

But here it is;

'Karl Rove will be indicted late this, or early next week.'

I'm trusting a source. So either I am made a into an overzealous horses a**, or..., I have good sources and may be more trusted to get these things right."

Over to you Mr. Fitzgerald.

Conspiracy Planet - Al Martin - Karl Rove, Fairy Queen of the GOP (Gay Old Party)

2005-07-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

Conspiracy Planet - Al Martin - Karl Rove, Fairy Queen of the GOP (Gay Old Party)
Karl Rove, Fairy Queen of the GOP (Gay Old Party)
by URI DOWBENKO

Bush Family retainer and Republican dirty trickster Karl Rove, under grand jury investigation for leaking the fact that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame is a covert CIA operative, may face a stiff prison term, since "outing" an agent like Plame is a federal crime.

Rove, allegedly a closet homosexual like other top leaders of the Republican Party, including RNC chairman Ken Mehlman and Republican apparatchiks Ralph Reed and Gary Bauer, may be preparing himself for the eventuality of prison, writes Al Martin, author of "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider."

"We have an update on Karl Rove, the Fairy Queen of the Gay Old Party. That's G.O.P. to the unenlightened," writes Martin in his column
"Asset Protection: A Timely Update." (7-4-05)

"The speculation is the grand jury will finger Karl as the leaker with regards to the Valerie Plame CIA situation. Then he's going to put Bob Novak right in the frame."

In a recent interview, Martin confirms that Rove has deep family ties to the Bush Family through Prescott Bush, who was a sales agent for the Portugal-based subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel, which sold war materiel to the Nazis during World War II.

The Huffington Post | The Blog

2005-07-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post | The Blog

by Lawrence O'Donnell (Lawrence was on Air America today talking about this)
The One Very Good Reason Karl Rove Might Be Indicted
Two years ago, when I first read the federal law protecting the identities of covert agents, my reaction was the same as everyone else who reads it -- this is not an easy law to break. That’s what I said on Hardball then in my first public discussion of the outing of Valerie Plame, and that’s what I said on CNN the other night. Let’s walk through the pieces that would have to fall into place for Karl Rove to have committed a crime when he revealed Plame’s identity to Matt Cooper.

First, and most obviously, Valerie Plame had to be a covert agent when Rove exposed her to Cooper. It’s not obvious that she was. The law has a specific definition of covert agent that she might not fit -- an overseas posting in the last five years, for example. But it’s hard to believe the prosecutor didn’t begin the grand jury session with a CIA witness certifying that Plame was a covert agent. If the prosecutor couldn’t establish that, why bother moving on to the next witness?

Second, Rove had to know she was a covert agent. Cooper’s article refers to Plame as “a CIA official.” Most CIA officials are not covert agents.

Third, Rove had to know that the CIA was taking “affirmative measures” to hide her identity. Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a political operative would or should know.

Fourth, Rove had to be “authorized” to have classified information about covert agents or at least this one covert agent. Doesn’t seem like the kind of security clearance a political operative would or should have.

I’ll be surprised if all four of those elements of the crime line up perfectly for a Rove indictment. Surprised, not shocked. There is one very good reason to think they might. It is buried in one of the handful of federal court opinions that have come down in the last year ordering Matt Cooper and Judy Miller to testify or go to jail.

In February, Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues’ order to Cooper and Miller despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges “in the light of reason and experience.” Tatel actually found that reason and experience “support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to “the gravity of the suspected crime.”

Judge Tatel’s opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to “[h]aving carefully scrutinized [the prosecutor’s] voluminous classified filings.”

Some of us have theorized that the prosecutor may have given up the leak case in favor of a perjury case, but Tatel still refers to it simply as a case “which involves the alleged exposure of a covert agent.” Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters’ shield law -- but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph, he says he “might have” let Cooper and Miller off the hook “[w]ere the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security.”

Tatel’s colleagues are at least as impressed with the prosecutor’s secret filings as he is. One simply said “Special Counsel’s showing decides the case.”

All the judges who have seen the prosecutor’s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.

Blog Reveals Bush Advisor Rove Exposed CIA Agent's Identity :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - ch

2005-07-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

Blog Reveals Bush Advisor Rove Exposed CIA Agent's Identity :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - ch
Blog Reveals Bush Advisor Rove Exposed CIA Agent's Identity

July 2, 2005

In a post at The Huffington Post weblog, senior MSNBC political analyst and Former Chief of Staff Lawrence O'Donnell asserts that Karl Rove, George W. Bush's chief political advisor, is the confidential source that revealed the identify of Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative".

"Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source," states O'Donnell. "I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury."

If the revelation turn out to be accurate, "RoveGate" may join other recent controversies as tests of the power of blogs, podcasts and other Internet media to force stories into the mainstream news.

Karl Rove: Traitor for Politics?

Many have suggested that Plame was outed by the White House in retaliation for her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, charging that the Bush administration lied to the American people about US intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Wilson had been sent to Niger to investigate documents that implied Iraq had attempted to illegally purchase uranium. Wilson reported to the CIA and the State Department that the information was "unequivocally wrong" and that the documents had been forged. The discredited information was used in the President's State of the Union address to support his Weapons of Mass Destruction case against Iraq.

In early October 2003, Newsweek reported that Rove had called MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson's wife was "fair game". White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was "totally ridiculous."

Because of the confidential nature of Plame's role, it's unknown whether any lives were lost as a result of her outing. At a minimum, her exposure eliminated her value as a CIA operative. The exposure of a covert government agent would violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Google Search Revealed Yellowcake Forgeries

According to an article on the forged "Yellowcake" documents at WikiPedia, it took International Atomic Energy Agency officials only a matter of hours to determine that the documents Wilson had discredited were fake. Using little more than a Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications of a crude forgery, such as the use of incorrect names of Niger officials. As a result, the IAEA reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents were "in fact not authentic."

Vincent Cannistaro, the former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, has suggested that "The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein..."

Worse than Watergate?

Wilson charged that his wife's CIA association had been deliberately exposed by the White House in order to destroy her career, in retaliation for his public charge that the Bush administration had lied to the American people about U.S. intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In an article in The New York Times on 6 July 2003, Wilson denounced the Bush administration, saying that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

In an article at Salon, John Dean, counsel to President Nixon, has stated "In blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame to take political revenge on her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth, Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means."

Salon.com News | All eyes on Turd Blossom

2005-07-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

Salon.com News | All eyes on Turd Blossom
All eyes on Turd Blossom
Beltway insiders are consumed by one question: Did Karl Rove do it?

July 7, 2005 | WASHINGTON -- When Karl Rove was little known outside Texas political circles, he was fired from George H.W. Bush's 1992 reelection campaign for leaking information to syndicated columnist Robert Novak. According to newspaper reports at the time, Rove was terminated for passing information to Novak from a meeting of the president's chief advisors. Rove denied he was the leaker.

Today, with another Bush in office, a journalist is being jailed to protect a source that led Novak to name a CIA operative, Valerie Plame. There is fevered speculation that Novak's source was, once again, Karl Rove.

If Rove, George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff, knowingly revealed Plame's name, he could be charged with committing a felony.

The Stranger - News - City - Hot Karl

2005-07-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

The Stranger - News - City - Hot Karl
The confrontation over the next Supreme Court appointment may be grabbing most of the political headlines lately, but another juicy political story is percolating up through blogs and certain mainstream news outlets, and it has die-hard Democrats salivating because of its potential to make President Bush's feared political advisor, Karl Rove, squirm—and perhaps even do time.

The complicated story has its roots in the outing, in 2003, of CIA officer Valerie Plame by conservative columnist Robert Novak. That outing, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison, seriously hurt Plame's career as an undercover agent, and was apparently accomplished through a leak to Novak from within the Bush administration. The leak was widely seen as revenge for an op-ed that Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, published in the New York Times criticizing the administration's pre-war claims about Iraq. (Wilson, a career diplomat, contradicted the administration's line about Iraqi leaders trying to purchase uranium from the small African nation of Niger, and was in a position to know something about the subject, since the administration quietly sent him to Niger to investigate the claim before the war.)

Bush, who has always said keeping secrets and supporting national security are among his top priorities, couldn't turn a blind eye to a crime against a CIA employee, even if it seemed likely to have been committed as a means to his own political ends. Now, however, Bush's patriotic stance may end up unearthing the unpatriotic deeds of his closest aide.

A special prosecutor was appointed to get to the bottom of things back in the fall of 2003. That prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has doggedly hunted the leaker for the last year and a half, during which time Rove has always been seen as a prime suspect, at least among media-watchers and hopeful Democrats. Now, the hunt appears to be reaching a climax as two journalists who have been ordered by a federal judge to give up their sources in the Plame story face jail this week for refusing to comply. One is Judith Miller of the New York Times, who gathered information related to the story but never published an article, and the other is Matthew Cooper, of Time magazine, who did publish a piece. Cooper's employer, Time Inc., recently decided to comply with a court order it was facing regarding Cooper's notes, and turned them over to the special prosecutor despite Cooper's objections. Shortly thereafter, Newsweek ran a story saying Cooper's notes show Rove was a source on the Plame story.

The Time magazine notes may or may not be the smoking gun that links Rove to a federal crime, but the reported emergence of hard evidence that could connect the "hand of Rove" to the Plame outing was enough to send Democrats gleefully poring back over Bush's words on the matter in an effort to bind him to punishing any illegal actions by Rove.

AMERICAblog, the liberal website run by John Avarosis, recently posted the following exchange between a reporter and Bush regarding the Plame leak back in October of 2003:

Q: Mr. President, on another issue, the CIA leak-gate. What is your confidence level in the results of the DOJ investigation about any of your staffers not being found guilty or being found guilty?

PRESIDENT BUSH: First of all, I'm glad you brought that question up. This is a very serious matter, and our administration takes it seriously... I am most interested in finding out the truth... This is a serious charge... We're talking about a criminal action, but also hopefully will help set a clear signal we expect other leaks to stop, as well. And so I look forward to finding the truth.

Now that the truth seems closer to emerging, Rove has been notably silent. New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer has called on Rove to publicly explain what he told Cooper, but as of early this week Rove had left it to his lawyer to do the explaining. The lawyer, Robert Luskin, told Newsweek that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information," leaving a lot of wiggle room for what Rove might later be shown to have "unknowingly" done, and only further whetting Democratic appetites for Rove's comeuppance.

Meanwhile, on the blog huffingtonpost.com, which claims to have broken the story of a definitive Rove connection, there were more posts about past administration statements that don't bode well for Rove should he be found to be the leaker, and more demands that Rove answer questions—questions that, as a few mainstream media stories noted, Rove was not answering. ■

What is it with Bush and Bicycles...did he fall off the wagon again?

2005-07-07T03:24:00.000-07:00

Bush Says He's Fine After Bike Accident

Thursday July 7, 2005 10:31 AM

AP Photo XGLE102

By TOM RAUM

Associated Press Writer

GLENEAGLES, Scotland (AP) - Fresh bandages on his left hand from a mountain biking accident, President Bush said Thursday he's doing well - and so apparently is the Scottish police officer with whom he collided.

``It just goes to show I should act my age,'' Bush, who turned 59 on Wednesday, joked with reporters.

Bush lost control of his bike Wednesday on a slick stretch of pavement and ran into the local officer, who was on foot, knocking him over.

``When you ride hard on a mountain bike, sometimes you fall. Otherwise, you're not riding hard,'' Bush said.

The spill occurred as Bush was exercising after arriving here to attend a summit of the Group of Eight nations.

Bush, who was wearing a helmet, suffered minor scrapes and bruises to his left hand and arm that required bandages by the White House physician, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. The officer, a member of the police department of Strathclyde who was on a security detail, was briefly taken to the hospital and suffered a minor ankle injury.

The president said he called the officer's cell phone later Wednesday and talked to him as he was on his way home from the hospital. ``He's doing fine,'' Bush said.

``I was less concerned about myself and more concerned about him,'' Bush said.

Bush said the accident happened after he had been riding for about an hour on the grounds of the golf resort here that is the site of the summit. Bush said he was ``flying'' on his bike. ``The pavement was slick...The bike came out from under me,'' he said.

Bush's bike was damaged, requiring him to ride back to the hotel in a Secret Service vehicle.

But the fall didn't affect the president's schedule. Dressed in a tuxedo and showing no signs of distress, he attended the summit's opening dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth on Wednesday night.

On Thursday morning, Bush appeared alongside British Prime Minister Tony Blair with flesh-colored bandages on two fingers of his left hand.

``I think I found my limitation,'' the president said.

A year ago, Bush was cut and bruised when he sailed over the handlebars while riding a mountain bike at his Texas ranch.

========Snip===========
And..taking a trip down memory lane..here's another story from
CodeWarriorz Thoughts about another of his bicycle crashes..

Bush's "Accident Proneness" Goes back a while
"Bush Bruised Diving To Avoid Truck "

Now, more recently we remember poor little Georgy almost choking to death on a pretzel, falling off the couch and hitting this head...he fell off his bike and scraped his face and hands up....
and looking back to 1999...
"AUSTIN, Texas –– Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican presidential front-runner, sustained minor injuries to his right leg and hip Monday when he dived to avoid a truck trailer that overturned near his jogging path.
Bush was treated at the scene and later traveled to New Hampshire for a scheduled campaign swing, said Linda Edwards, Bush's press secretary.
Staff Sgt. Roscoe Hughey, a 39-year-old Texas Department of Public Safety agent who was accompanying Bush on a bicycle, received bruises to his left side, DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said. He was treated at the Brackenridge Hospital emergency room and released about four hours later, said hospital spokeswoman Stephanie Elsea.
Bush was running on the hike-and-bike trail around Town Lake in downtown Austin when the accident occurred about 12:06 p.m, according to Ms. Edwards and the Austin Police Department,
A truck pulling a dumpster-like trailer was traveling on the street that parallels the jogging trail when the trailer overturned. Debris – including chunks of concrete and wood – were dumped across the jogging path.
"We're not clear what made it lose control, but the truck was out of control," Ms. Edwards said.
She said Bush told her the injuries to his right leg and right hip were suffered when he dived to get out of the way. "
============SNIP=================
For a non-drunk, he sures does have a lot of accidents.

Rogues Gallery

2005-07-07T03:09:00.000-07:00

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Al-Qaida threatens to kill captured Egyptian diplomat

2005-07-06T19:09:00.000-07:00

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Al-Qaida threatens to kill captured Egyptian diplomatAl-Qaida threatens to kill captured Egyptian diplomat

Rory Carroll
Thursday July 7, 2005
The Guardian

Al-Qaida in Iraq threatened to kill a kidnapped Egyptian envoy yesterday and posted pictures of his identification cards on the internet to prove he was in its custody.
The group, headed by the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said there would be no mercy for Ihab al-Sherif, 51, who was snatched in Baghdad last Saturday.

"The sharia court of al-Qaida organisation in Iraq has decided to hand over the apostate, the ambassador of Egypt which is allied to Jews and Christians, to the mujahideen to carry out the punishment of the apostate ... and to kill him," said a web statement attributed to the group.

There was no way to verify the statement, but an earlier posting exhibited the front and back of five ID cards in Mr Sherif's name as well as his Egyptian driving licence and a foreign ministry card showing his photograph.

It raised the spectre of the diplomat sharing the fate of Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer captured and beheaded by the group last year.

Mr Sherif leads Egypt's mission in the Iraqi capital and was due to be made an ambassador as part of an upgrade in diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Diplomats from Bahrain and Pakistan escaped ambushes on Tuesday in what appeared to be a concerted effort to drive out envoys and isolate the Iraqi government.

Pakistan's ambassador flew to Jordan yesterday after being ordered to leave Iraq by his government.

Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, urged others to hold their nerve. "We hope all countries will stand beside us to bolster the democratic process and continue to carry out their political work in Iraq, mindful of security procedures."

A US embassy spokesman echoed the call: "It's no secret Iraq is a dangerous place. We believe it's important for the international community to show support for the Iraqis by establishing and maintaining a diplomatic presence."

Meanwhile, four police officers were killed and nine injured in separate attacks yesterday, and the US military announced that a bomb had killed an American soldier on Tuesday.

A Journalist Jailed

2005-07-06T19:04:00.000-07:00

A Journalist JailedA Journalist Jailed

Thursday, July 7, 2005; Page A18

THE JAILING of New York Times reporter Judith Miller yesterday in an attempt to force her to testify about a source is a damaging blow to the press's ability to do its job. Ms. Miller has refused to testify before the grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative, and the federal courts have ruled against her claims of privilege. Yet while special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald was legally entitled to take action against her, his judgment in doing so is highly questionable. We don't yet know how compelling are the facts underlying this extraordinary sanction. They are still mostly secret. But unless Mr. Fitzgerald is preparing to bring a case of great public importance to which Ms. Miller's testimony is indispensable, her jailing will appear as a serious abuse of prosecutorial discretion and a gratuitous assault on press freedom.

Mr. Fitzgerald is charged with investigating whether the leak of Ms. Plame's identity by one or more administration officials to columnist Robert D. Novak two years ago constituted a criminal act. Yet so far the only person to actually face jail time in his prolonged investigation is a reporter who never wrote a story about Ms. Plame, let alone revealed her CIA affiliation. While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear -- at least on the public record -- that a crime took place. The threshold for criminality under the law protecting agents' identities is relatively high. Moreover, Mr. Fitzgerald has already heard from journalists whose sources have waived confidentiality -- including two from The Post. And he will now hear from another. Yesterday, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, who has already testified about one source, agreed to testify about another after this second source personally released him from his pledge.

Ms. Miller's attorney said she did not have such a release from her source and did not consider the general waivers obtained by Mr. Fitzgerald from several public officials to be sufficient. She is right on that point: Commitments of confidentiality by journalists to their sources will have little value if they can be invalidated by waivers obtained by prosecutors or demanded by senior government officials from their subordinates. In such cases, journalists are obligated to protect their sources even if the law is against them. Indeed, reporters have been willing to face jail to protect confidential sources for decades; few have been regarded by the public as criminals.

For these reasons, the Miller case should make plain that the legal authority that Mr. Fitzgerald relies on must change. Almost all states recognize some form of privilege for reporters, either an absolute privilege or a qualified one. Federal law, which recognizes no privilege in the grand jury setting, is the outlier. Congress has before it bipartisan legislation to provide an appropriate shield. Post officials have lobbied in favor of this legislation, and The Post, along with other media organizations, filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the Miller case.

In situations in which solemn professional obligations require silence, legislators or the courts have relieved people of the burden of choosing between honoring their word and going to jail. Congress needs to make that happen here, too.

Democrats & Liberals:: So Why is Novak not in Trouble?

2005-07-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

So Why is Novak not in Trouble?
The United States Supreme Court this morning declined to hear the appeal of two reporters who are protecting their sources in the Valerie Plame case. Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time were recipients of information in 2003 that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent. Unlike Robert Novak, these reporters did not go public with the information, presumably to protect Ms. Plame's cover, but because they are refusing to reveal the identity of their informant they may face jail time.

"I am extremely disappointed," Ms. Miller said in a statement. "Journalists simply cannot do their jobs without being able to commit to sources that they won't be identified. Such protection is critical to the free flow of information in a democracy."
What boggles the mind, though, is that these two reporters who are playing by all the rules, both protecting their sources and protecting - at the time - the identity of the undercover CIA agent, are the ones in trouble, while Robert Novak who went public with the Valerie Plame story, endangering the agent and blowing her cover, is not charged with any crime. Also from the NY Times story:
The case against the reporters arose from the publication of the identity of Ms. Plame's identity by the syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who said "two senior administration officials" had told him the information. It can be a crime for government officials to disclose such facts.
Even as Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper prepare for jail, Mr. Novak remains free. Neither he nor Mr. Fitzgerald [the prosecutor] will say why that is so.

Many political observers have speculated that the leak to Novak, Miller, Cooper, and perhaps others was political payback by the Bush administration for embarrassing revelations made by Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, publically discrediting Bush's claims that Iraq was seeking to purchase yellowcake uranium from the West African country of Niger for nuclear arms development. One helpful timeline is here. The cynical view is that Novak has avoided prosecution because he played along in the payback scheme designed to silence others who might come forward with embarrassing information with the implied threat that "your family may not be safe" if you talk as Wilson did.

I can't claim to know the truth here, and since Miller and Cooper would walk free if they revealed their sources, it begs the question of who those sources are and why a prosecution beholden to the administration would be willing to pressure their being identified if their identity would embarrass the administration. Conspiracy theorists of all types can spin it all sorts of ways, but it still strikes me as outrageous that the most obviously culpable journalist in the matter, Robert Novak, remains unindicted. What gives?

Arianna Online Forums - I Think Bob Novak should be going to jail, not the other two reporters.

2005-07-06T18:20:00.001-07:00

Arianna Online Forums - I Think Bob Novak should be going to jail, not the other two reporters.

Daily Kos: Novak on why he "can't reveal his source of the Plame leak"

2005-07-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

Novak on why he "can't reveal his source of the Plame leak"
by theRoaringGirl [Subscribe]
Wed Jun 29th, 2005 at 17:00:09 PDT
found this on fishbowldc it's from arough transcript of the Robt. Novak Interview on Inside Politics" :

HENRY: Okay. Now, just in general about the principle at stake here -- William Safire, fellow conservative, wrote an op ed in the New York Times saying that at the very least, he believes that you owe your readers, and in this case, your viewers, some explanation. He said, "Mr. Novak should finally write the column he owes readers and colleagues perhaps explaining how his two sources, who may have truthfully revealed themselves to investigators, managed to get the prosecutor off his back."

Diaries :: theRoaringGirl's diary :: ::

Henry, cont.: I think that's the question. Why sit that there are two reporters out there who may go to jail, Bob, but it doesn't appear that you are going to go to jail?

NOVAK: Well, that's what I can't reveal until this case is finished. I hope it is finished soon. And when it does, I agree with Mr. Safire, I will reveal all in a column and on the air.

HENRY: Do you understand why in general there's frustration among fellow journalist after 41 years of distinguished work, where you've always pushed and been a fierce advocate of the public's right to know, you're not letting the public know about such a critical case, and two people may go to jail.

NOVAK: Well, they are not going to jail because of me. Whether I answer your questions or not, it has nothing to do with that. That's very ridiculous to think that I am the cause of their going to jail. I don't think they should be going to jail.

HENRY: Yes. But I didn't say you were the cause. But there are some people...

NOVAK: Yes, you do did.

HENRY: No, but some people feel if you would come forward with the information that you have, that maybe they would not go to jail.

NOVAK: But you don't know -- Ed, you don't know anything about the case. And those people who say that don't know anything about the case. And unfortunately, as somebody who likes to write, I'd like to say a lot about the case, but because of my attorney's advice I can't. But I will. And there might be some surprising things.

HENRY: We'll all be waiting to hear that story finally told, Bob.

Novak is being coy. he doesn't give a flying yellow elephant turd if two peers go to jail. He ain't talking. but the thing of it is, he sounds more scared than anything.

Novak stonewalls press corps as Times reporter ... [Media Matters for America]

2005-07-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

Novak stonewalls press corps as Times reporter faces jail

Following a federal judge's announcement that he would send two reporters to jail if they did not agree to disclose their confidential sources to a grand jury, CNN host and syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak refused to answer direct questions from either The New York Times or CNN regarding his involvement in the case, let alone reveal his secret source. But in the past, Novak has been more willing to reveal confidential sources.

The grand jury in question is investigating the leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. In a July 14, 2003, column, Novak revealed that "two [Bush] administration officials" had told him that Plame, "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," had suggested sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the West African nation. Plame was working undercover at the time of the column. In investigating the leak, federal special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald subpoenaed Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times, who both allegedly received information about Plame, and the judge issued a contempt order when they refused to testify. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Cooper and Miller's appeal. On June 30, Time announced that it would turn over documents to the prosecutor's office that disclose the identity of Cooper's source, which will presumably result in the judge's lifting the contempt order against Cooper.

Since the federal investigation began, Novak has remained conspicuously silent about his level of cooperation and, despite hundreds of appearances on CNN, has rarely faced direct questions on the topic. In the December 2004 edition of Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan reported that he has worked to preserve this arrangement:

Colleagues like [CNN host Paul] Begala say that they don't question Novak about the Plame case out of personal loyalty. "Look, he's a friend of mine," Begala said to me. "I know that he can't talk about it. I respect that fact, so I don't bring it up." But there's another reason they don't ask. Novak won't let them. The topic hasn't come up on "The Capital Gang," for instance, because, according to one source at CNN, "Bob is the executive producer and he has more say than anybody else ... He won't talk about it." Novak's role at the show means that he gets to determine what subjects do -- and, more importantly, do not -- get discussed. But couldn't one of the other panelists bring it up, even so? "You have to understand," said the source, "this is Bob's show. He's the boss."

But on the June 29 edition of CNN's Inside Politics, host Ed Henry grilled Novak on the extent of his contact with federal prosecutors, asking at one point, "Why is it that there are two reporters out there who may go to jail, Bob, but it doesn't appear that you are going to go to jail?" In response, Novak said he could not comment on the case and claimed he will "reveal all in a column and on the air" once the case has concluded. "Ed, you don't know anything about the case," Novak stated. "And those people who say that don't know anything about the case. And unfortunately, as somebody who likes to write, I'd like to say a lot about the case, but because of my attorney's advice I can't."

In a subsequent interview with The New York Times, Novak again declined to provide additional information regarding his contact with investigators. He asserted that he is not to blame for the fact Miller and Cooper face jail time. Novak reiterated that he will "write a column when the case is closed" and "tell everything I know."

While Novak remains mum, some colleagues have urged him to go public with his story. Indeed, the Henry grilling followed a June 29 New York Times op-ed by former columnist William Safire, who wrote, "Mr. Novak should finally write the column he owes readers and colleagues perhaps explaining how his two sources -- who may have truthfully revealed themselves to investigators -- managed to get the prosecutor off his back."

In its June 30 article, The New York Times cited "Gina Lubrano, reader representative for The San Diego Union-Tribune, which publishes Mr. Novak's columns on Sundays, [who] said she found it baffling that someone who demanded answers to tough questions as part of his job could be so reticent when the spotlight turned on him. 'As a journalist, he would find that response unacceptable from others,' Ms. Lubrano said."

On the June 30 edition of Fox News' Dayside with Linda Vester, Marvin Kalb, former NBC News correspondent and current senior fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, said, "[H]e's going to reveal everything after it's over. But after it's over could be with the imprisonment of two reporters -- now maybe just one. Why not, at this point, Mr. Novak, step forward, say what it is that's on your mind and let people know?"

Novak has, in fact, previously been willing to identify sources in what he referred to as "extraordinary circumstances." In 2001, he revealed that he had taken information from Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent found to have spied for the Soviet Union. Novak wrote that he divulged the confidential source "in order to be honest to my readers."

From the June 29 edition of CNN's Inside Politics:

HENRY: Two reporters facing possible jail time are expected to attend a hearing at the top of the hour at U.S. District Court here in Washington. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times both face possible 18-month sentences for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity. Cooper and Miller asked for today's hearing after the Supreme Court earlier this week refused to hear their appeals.

Columnist and CNN political analyst Bob Novak was the first to reveal the CIA employee's identity, Valerie Plame. And Bob Novak joins me now on the show.

Bob, first, what's your reaction to the Supreme Court saying they would not hear this case?

NOVAK: Well, I deplore the thought of reporters -- I've been a reporter all my life -- going to jail for any period of time for not revealing sources, and there needs to be a federal shield law preventing that as there are shield laws in 49 out of 50 states. But, Ed, I -- my lawyer said I cannot answer any specific questions about this case until it is resolved, which I hope is very soon.

HENRY: In general, though, you believe in the principle of keeping the identity secret of confidential sources. Have you ever revealed the identity of one of your confidential sources?

NOVAK: Well, people know -- who have read my column know there have been special cases where I have. But the question of being coerced to by the government and being put in prison is, I think, something that should be protected by act of Congress.

HENRY: In general, have you cooperated with investigators in this case?

NOVAK: I can't answer any questions about this case at all.

HENRY: Okay. Now, just in general about the principle at stake here -- William Safire, fellow conservative, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times saying that, at the very least, he believes that you owe your readers, and in this case, your viewers, some explanation. He said, "Mr. Novak should finally write the column he owes readers and colleagues perhaps explaining how his two sources, who may have truthfully revealed themselves to investigators, managed to get the prosecutor off his back."

I think that's the question. Why is it that there are two reporters out there who may go to jail, Bob, but it doesn't appear that you are going to go to jail?

NOVAK: Well, that's what I can't reveal until this case is finished. I hope it is finished soon. And when it does, I agree with Mr. Safire, I will reveal all in a column and on the air.

HENRY: Do you understand why in general there's frustration among fellow journalists after 41 years of distinguished work, where you've always pushed and been a fierce advocate of the public right to know, you're not letting the public know about such a critical case, and two people may go to jail.

NOVAK: Well, they are not going to jail because of me. Whether I -- whether I answer your questions or not, it has nothing to do with that. That's very ridiculous to think that I am the cause of their going to jail. I don't think they should be going to jail, though.

HENRY: Yes. But I didn't say you were the cause. But there are some people --

NOVAK: Yes, you did.

HENRY: No, but some people feel if you would come forward with the information that you have, that maybe they would not go to jail.

NOVAK: But you don't know -- Ed, you don't know anything about the case. And those people who say that don't know anything about the case. And unfortunately, as somebody who likes to write, I'd like to say a lot about the case, but because of my attorney's advice I can't. But I will. And there might be some surprising things.

HENRY: We'll all be waiting to hear that story finally told, Bob.

News Hounds: Rove's Name Is Spoken - Brit Hume Defends

2005-07-06T18:15:00.000-07:00

Rove's Name Is Spoken - Brit Hume Defends
Today on Studio B with Shepard Smith, they brought out their big gun to tackle the Valerie Plame Grand Jury case. Seems they were afraid of Shepard being a bit vociferous lately when it comes to the Valerie Plame case, so they brought in Brit Hume to tone it down.

The following is my transcript of the segment between Shepard Smith and Brit Hume on the Valerie Plame case. (Paraphrased, but pretty much verbatim)

It's long, but I promise, you'll enjoy Hume's defense of Rove.

Shepard Smith: How might the White House be affected. Washington Management Editor, Brit Hume is here for some comment on what this all means. Did this help us learn anything?

Brit Hume: Shep, this has turned into the most puzzling case because there are a couple of things that are no longer clear. One of the things that is no longer clear anymore is just exactly what crime the prosecutor is investigating.

You'll recall that this began as an inquiry into the possible criminal leak of classified information regarding the identity of a CIA operative.

(Here's where he starts defending)

Now, you got to prove an awful lot to prove that. You have to prove that the person who leaked the information got it through classified sources and knew what he or she was saying would have the effect of outing an undercover operative and all that. That's not easily proven. (In other words, it was done but you can't prove it legally)

And it was never clear from the beginning that this was an attempt to do this. It was always much more likely and indeed, Bob Novak, the person who supposedly got the original leak, the columnist, has always said that he didn't think any crime occurred, that nobody was trying to out anybody and the implication always was that it was some kind of a passing comment. Uh...by somebody, who had no intention of revealing a classified source or any criminal intent. (Well, if he didn't have any criminal intent, we'll let Rove get away with it, right!)

So...it's not clear. Time Magazine has been saying for some time that that's not what the crime, that's not the crime that prosecutors are investigating anymore. The prosecutors are now really trying to investigate if someone during the course of the investigation made conflicting or false statments.

So, we don't really know what this prosecutor is doing. What we know is he's got the court to agree that he's entitled to the testimony of these journalists. You look at the case of...sorry..

Video break to Judith Miller's attorney. He speaks briefly and ends his statement with, 'I think anyone who believes that government and other powerful institutions should be closely and aggressively watched should feel a chill up their spines today.'

SS: They should feel like a chill up their spine. Now, let's talk about what he's saying here. Two points. One of them is this White House, any White House, needs to have a group of reporters looking out for the interests of the people to make sure that the White House isn't doing things wrong to people.

Brit Hume back with us. Brit, should this send a chill up the spine's to those who want aggressive coverage of the White House? (What happened to point two?)

BH: Well, that's a melodramatic way of putting it. I'm more interested in what he said first, which is the point I was trying to make. It's not clear what this guy's investigating.

SS: Right.

BH: You'll recall that at the beginning of this, Shep, the accusation was made by Valerie Plame, she's the person who was supposedly outed (supposedly? I think she was outed) husband, Joe Wilson, an administrative critic (more than that he was an ambassador and served under several administrations, but don't disclose those facts, Brit). This was revenge on him for his criticism of the administration. And he blamed Karl Rove. Karl Rove, we now know several things about. One is that he testified before the grand jury and his lawyer has said he has done so more than once. (Brownie points for Karl Rove)

His lawyer has also said and I believe, the prosecutor has confirmed, that Karl Rove has released all journalists from obligations of confidentiality as regarding him.

Now, Matt Cooper's source, whoever that was, apparently just released him from his oath of confidentiality, or pledge of confidentiality. So, it doesn't make any sense that Matt Cooper's source was Karl Rove, at least in any way that matters to this case.

The question, of course, remains who was Judith Miller's source. The prosecutor is saying, 'I know who Judith Miller's source was and that source has released her from her obligation of confidentiality. And she is saying she doesn't trust that release. She believes it was coerced. That seems to me to be a judgement that she must believe, pretty passionately, because she's going to go to jail on it.

I'm skeptical of it all. I don't know exactly what Judith Miller's protecting here. I don't know what the prosecution is investigating. But, it seems to me that we are waste deep in the big muddy (oh brother) on an investigation that the original crime suspected may not have occurred.

So, what a mess.

SS: Yeah, I'd say. Just for our viewers, Judith Miller, according to disptatches from the courtroom, stood and hugged her lawyer and was escorted from the courtroom. The judge saying that there's a realistic possibility that being sent to jail might get her to testify.

Of course, a lot of what is going on here, Brit, is just as you detailed. There are those who have been suggesting that Karl Rove leaked this name or had someone else leak this name in an effort to get back because he (Joe Wilson) did a report from Africa, found that there was nothing that the president had said there was, and that the White House wanted him shut up or punished along those ways and outing was a way to do it, but outing a CIA agent or employee, well, that's a federal offense.

BH: Well, it can be a federal offense depending on the circumstances. You've to to prove a lot. (this is his stance) The trouble with this crime, the crime that's involved here..err..suspected here, is that there are a lot of things that have to be attended to. There has to be a purpose of it. You've got to have gotten the information that you leaked in a certain way and if you don't have all of these things, you don't have a crime and you're probably not going to have a conviction. And it's always been a good question from the beginning, whether this prosecutor was on a fools errand? (And thus, the defense of Karl Rove?)

SS: Well, the prosecutor is now investigating the possibility that Karl Rove committed perjury before the grand jury.

BH: (Rushing his words) Well, we don't know if it's Karl Rove he's investigating. We know...he...uh...Time Magazine is claiming that the investigation is something to....whether some witness made a conflicting statement. We don't know if it's Karl Rove or not.

And, his lawyer, by the way, says he is not, he is not the object of the investigation, he is not the target of the investigation (well, as long as his lawyer vouches for him). In other words, (doesn't Bush use this expression a lot?) he is not the one under criminal suspicion, and you know, the fact that he's testified in this case means that, yeah, that could be the situation in which you make a conflicting statement, but it sounds like he's a cooperating witness and it would be a little surprising, at this late stage of the game, after all of this and after he testified, that he's still in the spotlight here. One senses he may not be (now we're relying on 'sense').

SS: This is a story that needs some time to settle.

BH: There's a lot we don't know, Shep.

SS: Hopefully we'll know more by your show tonight.

Comment: Shepard Smith has been getting a little loose on the lips regarding the administration lately, and I think they used Brit Hume to reign him in a bit. Hume gives his long, rambling explanations, but really doesn't say anything except, 'you've got to do a lot to prove it's a crime'.

So, in other words, maybe Rove did it, but try and prove it was anything but an innocent statement.

Thanks, guys, for taking the time to read a long transcript (it took a while to type, too), I appreciate it.

"

So What's the Story on Bob Novak?

2005-07-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

COMMENTARY
So What's the Story on Bob Novak?
His decision to play it cagey in the Plame case is helping no one.

By Jonathan Turley, Jonathan Turley is a professor at George Washington University Law School and has represented individuals asserting the journalistic privilege.

Columnist Robert Novak has made a career for himself as a human flamethrower for conservative causes. Yet, even Novak appears surprised at the mounting cost of his disclosure in 2003 of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

It was classic Novak: a hatchet job directed not at Plame, but at her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The firestorm that erupted has consumed millions of dollars in investigation and litigation costs and has wreaked havoc with the career not just of Plame (who had to leave the CIA) but of two reporters who were hauled into court and threatened with prison.

Novak's original intention, it seems, was to publicly damage Wilson, who had embarrassed President Bush by showing that he relied on false information to justify the Iraq war. Although Novak admits that he was asked not to publish Plame's name by a CIA official, he insists that he did not realize that he might be putting her in danger. Nevertheless, he showed little concern for safety or propriety until after the controversy erupted.

It is a far cry from the first recorded fight over anonymous sources: In 1848, New York Herald reporter John Nugent refused to give up his source for a copy of the secret Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War.

It goes without saying that Novak is no Nugent. After all, Nugent's source was a government official who revealed the controversial elements of a secret treaty. (Many still believe that the leaker was James Buchanan, the secretary of State and future president.) Conversely, Novak's piece was based on dirt received from anonymous government officials seeking to discredit a whistle-blower.

Novak insists that he was merely publishing a newsworthy tip from "two senior administration officials;" he suggests that it was important to point out that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent in order to explain why Wilson had been sent on a mission to Niger by the Bush administration. But whatever the value of this information, Novak could have ended it there. Instead, he chose to name Wilson's wife.

The disclosure of the name — in addition to violating the law against revealing the names of covert personnel — served no apparent purpose beyond that of retaliation.

Here's another difference between Novak and Nugent: Nugent allowed himself to be held in contempt rather than reveal his source. What Novak has done or failed to do as a journalist remains shielded in mystery because Novak refuses to talk. Traditionally, journalists have publicly explained their status and their position in such controversies — as have various other reporters in the Plame affair. Knowing where Novak stands in this case would be important because the other journalists involved — especially Judith Miller of the New York Times — need to know his position so they can form a unified front against government threats.

Over the course of the investigation into the matter, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has gone after journalists such as Miller with a fury — winning findings of contempt against them for refusing to give up their sources.

Yet, there has been a conspicuous absence of any similar effort against Novak. This has led to speculation that either Novak has been given special treatment by a Republican prosecutor, or he has revealed his sources, or his sources have revealed themselves to the prosecutors.

On Wednesday, Novak appeared on CNN's "Inside Politics" to deflect growing criticism of his silence. "If anyone thinks they're going to jail because of me, it's madness." This is, of course, is technically true. Miller may go to jail for her principled refusal to sacrifice her sources.

In the interview, Novak refused to answer even the most basic question, such as whether "in general … you cooperated with investigators in the case." Novak insisted his lawyer had told him not to answer "until this case is finished." His reliance on his lawyer's advice is a rather feeble and perplexing defense.

Yes, lawyers often prefer that their clients remain quiet under the theory that what you don't say can't be used against you. But Novak is not some button-man for the Gotti family. He is a self-described journalist who started a firestorm with a politically engineered attack piece on a civil servant for which another reporter is in danger of going to jail. Novak himself would never accept the "my lawyer did it" defense from a public figure. At the end of the day, it is Novak's decision whether to take such advice or ignore it.

Journal Gazette | 07/06/2005 | Why isn�t Novak facing jail like other reporters?

2005-07-06T18:12:00.000-07:00

Why isn’t Novak facing jail like other reporters?

By Carol Marin

CHICAGO – I just can’t figure it out. Why in the world is New York Times reporter Judith Miller headed to jail next week while my Sun-Times colleague Robert Novak is not? Why is a reporter who has written not one single word about a CIA operative about to be sent to the federal slammer while another reporter, the one who actually broke the story, isn’t in similar trouble?

Don’t get me wrong. I like and respect Bob Novak and don’t want to ever see him in an orange jump suit. Or think about him being strip-searched upon intake to federal prison. Then again, I never even met Judith Miller, and I don’t want that happening to her, either.

I called Novak in Washington to see if he could help me make sense of all this. “I can’t say anything,” he said, citing advice of counsel and the pending federal investigation.

This is a confusing story that centers on two critical and, in this case, competing values: the rule of law vs. the need of reporters to protect their sources. This is, in my opinion, also a story of an over-zealous federal prosecutor and a mostly timid press corps.

It was two years ago this month that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson tore into the Bush administration for going to war with Iraq, in part, on claims that Saddam Hussein was in hot pursuit of yellow cake uranium from Africa. Wilson said the administration’s claim was bogus because he was the guy the CIA sent to find out.

It was Novak who then wrote a column citing “two senior administration officials” who cast doubt on Wilson’s mission. They told Novak it was Wilson’s wife, a CIA operative named Valerie Plame, who sent him to Africa. The implication was that it was a meaningless junket.

Who were those “two senior administration officials” and what business did they have outing a supposedly “covert” CIA operative?

Enter Chicago’s own U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who was appointed special prosecutor to find out. With a federal grand jury at his disposal, Fitzgerald began questioning not only administration officials but members of the press.

Now, two years later, the investigation is heading to a close. And for some reason that most of us have trouble understanding, two reporters other than Novak are risking jail. Though Matthew Cooper of Time magazine wrote about Plame after Novak did and Judith Miller of the New York Times never wrote about her at all, they refused to identify sources with whom they discussed the matter, and so a federal judge has ordered them to jail.

As I write this, Time magazine has caved and, against Cooper’s wishes, handed over his notes. Miller is now the lone holdout.

What no one understands, myself included, is Novak’s silence. Can he confirm he got a subpoena? “I can’t do that,” he told me. Can he explain the distinction between himself and these two reporters? “I can’t get into that,” he said.

For 41 years, Novak built his career and reputation by asking the toughest of questions. Now, the tables turned, he refuses to answer them. Isn’t that, I asked, grounds for criticism?

“No,” Novak told me, “because this is a criminal investigation.”

By any standard, it is a curious criminal investigation. Even the authors of the 1982 federal law that made it illegal to disclose the identity of a “covert” CIA operative have gone on record saying in this particular case the law does not appear to have been broken. Why? Because, according to federal legal experts Victoria Toensing and Bruce Sanford, Valerie Plame wasn’t working covertly, and the CIA, when contacted by Novak in advance of his story, never offered any objection to him publishing her name.

OK, if that’s true, what’s the law that’s been broken?

It boils down to this. Fitzgerald, in his zeal, has made reporters the criminals here and taken them to federal court to force them to disclose their sources. Though there are reporter shield laws in most states, there is no similar protection federally. By that standard, Cooper and Miller, ordered in court to give up their sources, break the law by not disclosing. With Time magazine buckling, Cooper may not go to jail, but it looks like Miller will.

Has there been a hue and cry about all of this from the media? Not enough. Not even we at the Sun-Times, in my view, have done enough to trumpet what I think should be our profound outrage at what’s going on. Novak is certainly entitled to protect his legal rights as he sees fit, but this is an issue that affects every working journalist.

But I fear it’s too late. The damage has been done, or as the Bush administration likes to say, “Mission Accomplished.” Our profession, which relies on anonymous sources for everything from Watergate to Hired Truck investigations, looks lame and weak and fearful. And any budding Deep Throats, these days, have far less reason to risk a trip to the parking garage.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHICAGO � I just can�t figure it out. Why in the world is New York Times reporter Judith Miller headed to jail next week while my Sun-Times colleague Robert Novak is not? Why is a reporter who has written not one single word about a CIA operative about to be sent to the federal slammer while another reporter, the one who actually broke the story, isn�t in similar trouble?
Don�t get me wrong. I like and respect Bob Novak and don�t want to ever see him in an orange jump suit. Or think about him being strip-searched upon intake to federal prison. Then again, I never even met Judith Miller, and I don�t want that happening to her, either.
I called Novak in Washington to see if he could help me make sense of all this. �I can�t say anything,� he said, citing advice of counsel and the pending federal investigation.
This is a confusing story that centers on two critical and, in this case, competing values: the rule of law vs. the need of reporters to protect their sources. This is, in my opinion, also a story of an over-zealous federal prosecutor and a mostly timid press corps.
It was two years ago this month that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson tore into the Bush administration for going to war with Iraq, in part, on claims that Saddam Hussein was in hot pursuit of yellow cake uranium from Africa. Wilson said the administration�s claim was bogus because he was the guy the CIA sent to find out.
It was Novak who then wrote a column citing �two senior administration officials� who cast doubt on Wilson�s mission. They told Novak it was Wilson�s wife, a CIA operative named Valerie Plame, who sent him to Africa. The impli"

WHITE HOUSE THREATENED?

2005-07-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

MiddleEast.org - Mid-East RealitiesWashington Scene:

WHITE HOUSE THREATENED?

MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 6 July: Is it really conceivable that in 2005 a legal investigation about who in government leaked the name of a secret CIA operative to the media could unravel the Bush Administration? There are so many differences from what happened to President Nixon in his second term. But even so legal proceedings have a kind of insolation from normal politics, none other than top Bush Adviser Karl Rove is being fingered as the man who did it, and supoenas are said to have now been issued for White House and Air Force One records involving Rove.
Add to this mix the growing awareness in the public that the Bush Administration, with Rove right at the center of its dealings, purposefully and repeatedly lied to bring about the Iraq invasion/occupation -- a war which has gone very bad and now seems to have no end -- and there is a sense that the Bush Administra- tion is more vulnerable than even before.
Actor Robert Redford's call for the Press to seriously investigate 'All the President's Men', coupled to his comparison to what has been going on in Washington to the Nixon years, has created more of a buzz about all this in recent days. Redford, many recall, played the role of Bob Woodward in the movie All The President's Men that made the Watergate scandal and 'Deep Throat' famous.

Rove 'Knowingly' Refusing Interviews on Plame Leak
Editor & Publisher

New York - Two days after his lawyer confirmed that his name turned up as a source in Matthew Cooper's notes on the Valerie Plame/CIA case, top White House adviser Karl Rove refused to answer questions about the development today.
Rove traveled with President Bush when he spoke at a July 4 event in West Virginia today, but refused all requests for interviews about his role in the controversy that threatens to send Cooper, of Time magazine, and Judith Miller of The New York Times to jail this week for refusing to reveal sources.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had called on Rove to clear the air on Sunday. "We've heard it from his lawyer, but it would be nice to hear it directly from Mr. Rove that he didn't leak the identity of Valerie Plame, and that he didn't direct anyone else to do such a dastardly thing," said Schumer.

Outside the presidential rally in Morgantown, one protester made reference to the case, holding a sign that read: "Jail Karl Rove," according to a New York Times dispatch.

Rove's lawyer has asserted that while he was interviewed by Cooper he was not the key source who revealed Plame's identity as a CIA agent. Rove's critics, however, suggest that he could be charged with perjury if he did not tell the truth about this to a grand jury.

Several dozen other protesters demonstrated against the war in Iraq, the paper said, chanting, "Please support our troops, not the president!" But a large turnout for the president more than countered that.

Meanwhile, Lawrence O'Donnell, the MSNBC analyst who first broke the Rove/Cooper link on Friday, wrote on the Huffington Post blog today, that Rove's lawyer had "launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client 'never knowingly disclosed classified information.' Knowingly.

"Not coincidentally, the word 'knowing' is the most important word in the controlling statute (U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent 'knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States.'" 4 July

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pivate Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case
By Scott Shane
New York Times, Tuesday 05 July 2005

Washington - For nearly two years, the investigation into the leak of a covert C.I.A. officer's name has unfolded clamorously in the nation's capital, with partisan brawling on talk shows, prosecutors interviewing President Bush and top White House officials, and the imminent prospect that reporters could go to jail for contempt of court.

But the woman at the center of it all, Valerie E. Wilson, has kept her silence, showing the discipline and discretion that colleagues say made her a good spy. As her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, has become a highly visible critic of the administration and promoted his memoirs, Ms. Wilson has ferried their 5-year-old twins to doctors' appointments, looked after their hilltop house in the upscale Palisades neighborhood of Washington and counseled women with postpartum depression.

On June 1, after a year's unpaid leave, Ms. Wilson, now known to the country by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, returned to a new job at the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get her career back on track, her husband said. Neither the agency nor Mr. Wilson would describe her position, except to make what might seem an obvious point: she will no longer be working under cover, as she did successfully for almost 20 years.

"Before this whole affair, no one would ever have thought of her as an undercover agent," said David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor for seven years who got to know the Wilsons well over back-fence chats, shared dinners and play dates for their grandchildren with the Wilsons' children, Trevor and Samantha.

"She wasn't mysterious," Mr. Tillotson said. "She was sort of a working soccer mom."

He recalled his incredulity on July 14, 2003, when his wife, Victoria, spotted in The Washington Post, in a syndicated column by Robert Novak, a line identifying their neighbor by her maiden name and calling her an "agency operative." Ms. Tillotson kept calling out: "This can't be! This can't be!"

The Wilsons' neighbor on the other side, Christopher Wolf, was similarly aghast. As he sat on his deck staring at the Novak column, Mr. Wilson came out his back door.

"I said: 'This is amazing! I had no idea,' " Mr. Wolf recalled. "He sort of motioned to me to keep my voice down."

A Jaguar-driving, cigar-smoking, silver-haired former ambassador, Mr. Wilson, 55, interpreted the leak of his wife's C.I.A. connection as an act of vengeance from White House officials for his public accusations of deceit in building a case for the Iraq war. Days before the leak, he had gone public in a New York Times Op-Ed article and television appearances to charge that the administration had covered up his own debunking of reports that Iraq had bought uranium in Africa.

What he calls a "smear campaign" against the couple has catalyzed his transformation from nonpartisan diplomat - he worked closely with the first President Bush and his top aides during the first gulf war - to anti-Bush activist.

On Wednesday, a federal judge is expected to decide whether two reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine, will go to jail for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigation into the leak. That the leaker appears willing to permit journalists to be incarcerated rather than taking public responsibility for his actions simply shows the leaker's "cravenness and cowardice," Mr. Wilson said.

It is not known what information, if any, Mr. Novak supplied to prosecutors, but he is not facing jail time.

Meanwhile, Ms. Wilson, 42, whose husband said she has used her married name both at work and in her personal life since their 1998 marriage, declined to speak for this article. She has guarded her privacy, with rare exceptions. She posed with her husband for a Vanity Fair photographer, wearing sunglasses and with a scarf over her blond hair. She drafted an op-ed article to correct what she felt were distortions of her and her husband's actions, but the C.I.A. would not authorize its publication, saying it would "affect the agency's ability to perform its mission."

Former C.I.A. officers differ on the impact of Mr. Novak's identification of Ms. Wilson, who had been working against weapons proliferation in Europe and elsewhere while posing as an analyst for a shell company in Boston, Brewster Jennings & Associates, set up by the agency.

Clandestine service officers working under such "nonofficial cover" - rather than the traditional guise of diplomat - are considered to hold the most sensitive and vulnerable jobs in intelligence, lacking the protection of diplomatic immunity if they are unmasked overseas. Disclosing the C.I.A. employment of officers under cover can endanger the officers, their operations and their agents, as well as violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, the law that prompted the current leak investigation.

"This situation has been very hard on her, professionally and personally," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, a former C.I.A. case officer and a friend of Ms. Wilson. "Not only have you removed from the playing field a very knowledgeable counterproliferation officer at a time when we really need her services. But before this she was on a fast track as a candidate for senior management at the agency. With something like this, her career will never recover."

But other former C.I.A. officers say that by 2003 Ms. Wilson's cover was already thin. Any serious inquiry would have revealed that Brewster Jennings was little more than a mailbox. Though she traveled regularly, Ms. Wilson, who speaks French, German and Greek, had been working for some time at agency headquarters in Langley, Va. And her marriage to a senior American diplomat, Mr. Wilson, ended any pretense of having no government ties.

"At that point, she looks, walks and quacks like an overt agency employee," said Fred Rustmann, a C.I.A. officer from 1966 to 1990, who supervised Ms. Wilson early in her career and calls her "one of the best, an excellent officer."

Yet outside the spy world, word of her real employment came as a shock. To have such a carefully nurtured identity shattered in a single stroke was traumatic, Mr. Wilson said. "Your whole network of personal relationships over 20 years are compromised," he said.

Ms. Wilson had to explain to friends and relatives that she had never leveled with them since joining the agency shortly after graduating from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in journalism in 1984.

"My sister-in-law turned to my brother," Mr. Wilson recalled, "and said, 'Do you think Joe knew?' "

Joe knew. As their relationship grew serious after they met at a 1997 reception at the Turkish ambassador's residence, Valerie Plame revealed her real job to Mr. Wilson, who had a top secret clearance. Three months after they married, he retired from the State Department after a 23-year career that included an ambassadorship to two countries, Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe. Now he consults on business projects in Africa as J. C. Wilson International Ventures.

Their marriage was her second and his third; he is also the father of 26-year-old twins from his first marriage. Friends say that after the birth of their twins in 2000, Ms. Wilson suffered postpartum depression, which prompted her to become active in helping other mothers.

The Wilsons have had a low-key social life, friends say. Mr. Wilson said they had attended only one "A-list Washington party," given by Ben Bradlee, the retired Washington Post editor. Before July 2003, some neighbors knew them from the playground only as "Trevor and Samantha's mom and dad."

Their turn in the limelight changed that temporarily, as liberal celebrities embraced them; they were honored in late 2003 at a dinner at the guesthouse of the television producer Norman Lear, with guest list that included Warren Beatty.

The couple's actions in 2002 have become, in the polarized politics of the Iraq war, subject to divergent interpretation. All agree that Mr. Wilson traveled to Niger in February 2002 at the C.I.A.'s request to assess reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium there. There the agreement ends.

In the version of his Republican critics, laid out in part by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, Mr. Wilson's trip was a junket orchestrated by his wife. Further, the critics say, Mr. Wilson's findings on the uranium question were equivocal. But as a partisan Democrat, they say, he exploited his minor involvement to attack the president, asserting that Mr. Bush misled the American people by citing the questionable uranium claim in his 2003 State of the Union address.

Mr. Wilson has laid out his own account in interviews and in his memoir, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's C.I.A. Identity." The 514-page book, which features on the back cover photographs of Mr. Wilson with the first President Bush, President Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein, has sold 60,000 copies in hardcover, according to the publisher, Carroll & Graf. The just-published paperback includes an 11,000-word essay by Russ Hoyle, an investigative reporter recruited by Carroll & Graf to examine factual disputes raised by the case.

Mr. Wilson said that though his wife wrote a memorandum describing his expertise at the request of a C.I.A. superior, she did not propose him for the Niger trip. He scoffs at the notion that a trip to one of the poorest countries on earth, for which he was paid only his expenses, was some kind of prize.

He has acknowledged he may have misspoken about a few details, like the date he became aware of forged documents purporting to show a uranium sale. But conservatives' attacks on his credibility, he said, are merely an effort to distract Americans from a far graver fact: that the United States went to war on the basis of flimsy, distorted evidence.

"I'm deeply saddened that the debate before the war did not adequately take into consideration issues that a number of us had raised," Mr. Wilson said.

While his wife has shunned publicity, he has become an always-available news media voice, lending the weight of international experience and insider status to criticism of Mr. Bush's conduct of the war.

Despite conservatives' efforts to portray him as a left-wing extremist, he insisted he remained a centrist at heart. But after his tangle with the current administration, he admits "it will be a cold day in hell before I vote for a Republican, even for dog catcher."

Mr. Wilson ended a long interview in a downtown hotel when he realized he was late to pick up the twins. As the first gulf war loomed, and Mr. Wilson was the last American official to meet with Saddam Hussein, his older twins, Joe and Sabrina, were 12 years old, and worried that their father might not make it out of Baghdad to join them in the United States, he said.

During this war with Iraq, the gravest danger to him has been political vilification. He and his wife, Mr. Wilson said, have tried to insulate their children from the hubbub that followed the leak of her name.

It has not always been easy. Once, when Trevor was 3, he recognized his father on yet another show.

<> "He banged on the TV," Mr. Wilson recalled, "and said, 'Dad, get out of the box!' "

Is Rove It? - Yahoo! News

2005-07-06T18:09:00.000-07:00

Is Rove It? - Yahoo! NewsDavid Corn
Tue Jul 5, 1:46 PM ET

The Nation -- Is it Karl Rove?

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This past weekend, a pundit and a journalist each reported that Rove, Bush's uber-strategist (and now, officially, the deputy White House chief of staff), was a source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper, who has resisted cooperating with a court order to reveal his sources to Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the Bush administration leak that revealed undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. (Plame, a.k.a Valerie Wilson, is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a Bush administration critic). Last week, after the Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal from Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller (who also was subpoenaed by Fitzgerald for her sources), Time magazine decided to cooperate with Fitzgerald and turn over Cooper's notes and emails. (Cooper said he disagreed with--but understood--his employer's decision; Miller and the Times vowed to continue resisting.) Appearing on The McLaughlin Group--which was taped on Friday--commentator Lawrence O'Donnell said that the documents handed over byTime to Fitzgerald would reveal that Rove had been Cooper's source. The next day, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek posted a piece that reported,

The e- mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article.

O'Donnell's comment and Isikoff's report set off a wave of reaction. I received numerous emails proclaiming "Rove is it, he's the [deleted] who revealed Plame's identity." But a careful reading of the available facts leads to this unsatisfying conclusion: not so fast.

The issue at hand is the identity of who told conservative columnist Robert Novak that Plame was an undercover CIA official working on counterproliferation (that is, anti-WMD) matters. On July 14, 2003, Novak published a piece that was essentially a conveyor belt for White House criticism of Joseph Wilson. A week earlier, Wilson had written a much-noticed op-ed piece in The New York Times that argued that George W. Bush had misled the nation in his January 2003 State of the Union speech by claiming that Iraq had been shopping in Africa for uranium to be used in a nuclear weapons program. In his article, Wilson revealed for the first time that he had been dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate rumors of such Iraqi activity and had reported back that it was highly unlikely that Iraq was procuring weapons-related uranium there. Wilson's article--which followed his previous criticism of the administration for launching the war in Iraq--placed him in the line of fire. Republican and conservative allies of the White House blasted away. In the course of this attack, Novak wrote the piece that outed Wilson's wife and suggested that Wilson's trip to Niger had been a nepotistic junket of some sort.

Novak seemed to attribute his disclosure about Plame (which destroyed her career and perhaps threatened anti-WMD operations) to two unnamed "senior administration officials." (I use the word "seemed" because the attribution was technically indirect, though it appears clear these were Novak's sources.) Two days after Novak's column was published, I became the first journalist to write that these two Bush administration sources might have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection act of 1982, which makes it illegal for a government official (not a reporter) to reveal the identity of an undercover intelligence official. (It would not be until September 2003 that the CIA would ask the Justice Department to investigate this leak and an official inquiry would begin. ) Then on July 17, 2003, Time posted a piece by Matthew Cooper, Massimo Calabresi and John Dickerson headlined "A War on Wilson?" The article noted,

And some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched [to] Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore, sometimes referred to as yellow cake, which is used to build nuclear devices.

This passage raises several obvious questions. Who told Time about Plame? Were these "government officials" the same as Novak's "two senior administration officials"? And when did these government officials tell Time about Plame? Presumably it was before Novak's column appeared, though these two sentences don't say that outright.

Which brings us to Rove.

His name has emerged in this scandal before. In the summer of 2003, Joseph Wilson appeared at a public event in Seattle and was asked about the investigation of the Plame leak. Wilson replied, "Wouldn't it be fun to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs?" Wilson subsequently conceded that he had no basis for accusing Rove of leaking his wife's CIA identity. But to explain his wish to see Rove in prison, he pointed to a news report that maintained that Rove had told Hardball's Chris Matthews after the leak that Wilson's wife was "fair game." On October 10, 2003, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with reporters. McClellan said he had spoken to Rove and the others and that they had "assured me they were not involved in this."

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Don't forget about DAVID CORN's BLOG at www.davidcorn.com. Read recent postings on the Fourth of July, McCain's disingenuous targetting, and Limbaugh's gal pal.

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So does the recent revelation place Rove in jeopardy?

Luskin, Rove's lawyer, told Isikoff that Rove spoke to Cooper three or four days before the Novak column appeared but that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." He also noted that Rove had appeared before Fitzgerald's grand jury and had signed a waiver that would permit reporters to set aside any confidentiality agreement they had with him and testify about what Rove had told them.

If Luskin is telling the truth, Rove has nothing to fear. But defense lawyers have been known to spin the facts. The contents of Cooper's emails and notes might support or challenge Luskin's account. They might be inconclusive. (You should see my notes sometimes.) That Rove, a top White House aide, spoke to Cooper, who was covering the White House for a major newsmagazine, during this white-hot episode would not be unusual. And the piece Cooper co-wrote covers far more ground than Plame's post at the CIA (which accounted for only two sentences). It is certainly conceivable that Rove was tossing other anti-Wilson information at Cooper (and others) at this point. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, also talked to Time for this article, and he was quoted by name saying that Cheney had been interested in the Niger allegation but didn't know about Wilson's trip to Niger. (After Libby gave permission to Cooper to tell Fitzgerald about their conversations, Cooper did so.)

Rove talking to Cooper days before his piece--and Novak's--was written is an intriguing lead for Fitzgerald. But this does not solve the mystery. Before anyone can expect to see Rove frog-marching, Fitzgerald will have to determine what was said in these conversations. (Perhaps Fitzgerald will continue to pursue Cooper on this point.) [UPDATE: On Tueday, Fitzgerald did just that. He demanded that Cooper testify before his grand jury despite Time's decision to surrender Cooper's emails and notes to Fitzgerald.]

But all the hubbub stirred by the disclosure that Rove was a source for Cooper raises other interesting questions.

* Both the Novak column and the Time piece refer to a plural number of sources for the Plame information. Novak cited "two"; Time referred to "officials." Apparently Rove--or whoever--did not act alone. Shouldn't Fitzgerald be seeking more than one name from Time, Cooper, and the coauthors? Are there other names in the material turned over by Time? Or must Fitzgerald continue his pursuit of Time?

* The Time magazine article, as I've noted, had three co-authors. Why no subpoenas for Cooper's co-writers? Does this suggest that Fitzgerald chased after Cooper because he had information in addition to the article--such as emails, phone logs, etc.--from suspects?

* Rove's lawyer stated that Rove did not "knowingly" disclose classified information. Does this mean he "unknowingly" revealed such information? The distinction is important because the Intelligence Identities Protection Act essentially says that for a crime to have been committed the offender must have realized that he or she was disclosing top-secret information. (Otherwise someone could be prosecuted for making an honest mistake.) True, Rove's mouthpiece also said that Rove "did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." But his use of the word "knowingly" can be read by those wishing to see Rove frog-marching as the start of a criminal defense strategy.

It is not too difficult to envision such a defense being concocted should any White House official come to be officially accused. The law only covers government officials with "authorized access to classified information" and who "intentionally" disclose information revealing the identity of "a covert agent...that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal." Consider this scenario. Rove--let's just use him as an example--hears someone at a meeting say, "Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, does counterproliferation work at the CIA and we hear she was involved in sending him to Niger." Then he tells this information to Novak, not realizing that Plame is officially undercover (after all, not every CIA officials work undercover). He could then argue that he did not break the law. (In October 2003, I wrote a piece that reported that a CIA colleague of Plame was working at the National Security Council at the time of the Plame leak. This person might have told White House aides about Plame's connection to Wilson's Niger trip. I suggested that Fitzgerald ought to make sure to interview this possible witness. I did not name the person, who was still working undercover. Since then, I have seen no reference to this person in any news accounts.)

Fitzgerald has a difficult mission. He has to determine (a) who in the administration spoke to Novak and Time--and perhaps other media outfits, like The New York Times--about Wilson, (b) what precisely was said in these conversations, and (c) whether the get-Wilson leakers knew they were slipping classified information to the journalists.

The news about Rove might be of use to Fitzgerald, though I suspect he already knew about Rove and Cooper. And, of course, unless the notes say something like, K.R.: JW's wife--Valerie Plame--works undercover at CIA and this is TOP SECRET, the material turned over by Time may not make the case. Optimistic Bush-bashers can hope that Fitzgerald is also investigating perjury or obstruction of justice violations--which would probably be easier to prove. If White House Aide X testified before the grand jury that s/he did not speak to Reporter Y and notes or emails show otherwise, Fitzgerald could have an easy indictment.

But this is all speculation. And that is mostly what Plame-leak-watchers have had to work with from the start. Fitzgerald's investigation has been remarkably low on leaks. But the recent Rove revelations--whether they aid Fitzgerald or not--have served a valuable purpose. They have focused attention on the original sin: the leak. Ever since Fitzgerald started to go after reporters other than Novak (who apparently has cooperated in some fashion with Fitzgerald for he was not subpoenaed by the prosecutor), this case has been discussed primarily as a media-and-the-law matter. Can reporters shield their sources? What will happen to journalism if Fitzgerald forces Time and The New York Times to give up their sources or if Cooper or Miller have to go to jail to protect these sources?

Those are indeed damn important questions. But the news about Rove has shifted the discussion back to the leak itself and the question, whodunit? It's been two years since the leak occurred. In that time, Bush has expressed little outrage about this despicable act. His White House took no steps of its own to determine who leaked the Plame information. At one point, Bush practically joked that finding the leaker would be rather hard. Even if the leak, for reasons I noted above, does not meet the threshold for a prosecution, it still was a thuggish act and a firing offense. Does Bush want on his staff people who out CIA officials (who are working to protect the nation from the WMD threat) in order to score political points? If Fitzgerald, at the end of the day, says he does not have enough evidence to indict anyone, will Bush take actions of his own to find and boot the leakers? He has given no indication he feels so compelled. On Capitol Hill, the House and Senate intelligence committees, controlled by Republicans, never mounted investigations of their own. And, by the way, Fitzgerald, should he fail to bring indictments, has no obligation at the end of his inquiry to produce a public report that explains what he did and did not uncover.

Rove may be in trouble. Or this could be a false alert. But this did-Rove-do-it bubble is a useful reminder. Two years ago, senior Bush administration officials revealed classified information, undid the career of a national security official, and endangered ongoing anti-WMD programs in order to pursue a political vendetta against a critic, and to date there has been no accountability.

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IT REMAINS RELEVANT, ALAS. SO DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An UPDATED and EXPANDED EDITION is AVAILABLE in PAPERBACK. The Washington Post says, "This is a fierce polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of research.... [I]t does present a serious case for the president's partisans to answer.... Readers can hardly avoid drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's painstaking indictment." The Los Angeles Times says, "David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the current president. He compares what Bush said with the known facts of a given situation and ends up making a persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations.... Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." And GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS, "I'd like to tell you I've read [ The Lies of George W. Bush], but that'd be a lie."

Googlezon: The Internet vs. Karl Rove

2005-07-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

Googlezon: The Internet vs. Karl RoveThe Internet vs. Karl Rove
Things heated up over the Independence Day weekend regarding Karl Rove’s involvement with the leaking of a secret CIA agent’s identity. The problem is that the mainstream media is NOT touching the Rove angle with a proverbial 10 foot pole. Although there is clearly something going on here, the big shots of big media are treating Rove like he’s the most feared man in the country. It appears that the only way this story is going to stay alive is if the blogosphere keeps it alive.

For weeks we’ve been hearing about Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper and The New York Times’ Judith Miller’s failure to cooperate with federal investigators and name the source of the leak of the secret CIA agent. The mainstream media likes this story because it involves two brave souls standing up for journalistic integrity. Never mind that these two never published any stories about the secret agent, but rather the agent was outed by none other than super conservative columnist Robert Novak. While Cooper and Miller face up to 18 months in jail, oddly enough Novak has been left alone. Why is that?

Even though Cooper has refused to cooperate, Time Magazine (rarely credited as being a model of journalistic integrity) blinked and turned over all of Coopers notes to federal investigators. Reportedly, Cooper’s notes indicate that Karl Rove was a source of information, but it is not clear what information. Since this connection has been made public, it has been widely speculated throughout the blogosphere that Rove revealed the agent’s identity to Novak, either directly or via Cooper/Miller, in retaliation for the agent’s husband’s open criticism of the Bush administration’s reasons for going to war in Iraq. Did you follow that? Do we need a diagram here? Perhaps we should restart from the beginning.

There is this guy. He’s an experienced Ambassador. His name is Joseph Wilson. In 2002, the CIA asked Ambassador Wilson to investigate information given to US intelligence by Great Britain that Iraq was trying to obtain weapons grade uranium from Niger to make, you guessed it, Weapons of Mass Destruction. Wilson agreed. That’s his job. So, Wilson traveled to Niger, investigated the situation and reported back that the claims were impossible. This report was widely circulated throughout the executive branch. Wilson was done. Everyone now knew the truth.

A few months later, the Bush administration submitted a draft of the President’s State of the Union address to US intelligence. In it were the British claims about Iraq, Nigeria, uranium, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. This was a cornerstone of the justification for going to war in Iraq. But, intelligence officials had those claims removed because they simply were not true. However, when Bush delivered the address he included the now infamous line "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." It was a lie. US Intelligence knew it was a lie. The Bush administration knew it was a lie. Ambassador Wilson knew it was a lie too.

Wilson was upset to see the claims about the Iraq / Nigeria connection used to justify the war. He asked the administration to revise their claims. The administration refused. So, he wrote an op-ed piece in the July 6th NY Times explaining everything. It made the Bush administration look really bad. It made them look like they completely made up the central reason for invading Iraq. Wilson’s piece essentially called the Bush administration liars.

A few days later, syndicated columnist and noted conservative Robert Novak blasted Wilson for his op-ed piece, but also included in his write-up that little extra tidbit that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. That was not public knowledge. In fact, that was quite secret information and by outing her, Novak had not only potentially put her life in danger, he may have committed a federal crime. Got that? It is a federal crime to out a secret agent.

It turns out that it is only a crime to *knowingly* reveal that someone is a secret agent. Novak can claim that he didn’t know that Valerie Plame’s status as an agent was a secret. When the feds came a knocking on Novak’s door, he just smiled and pointed to his sources, which apparently was Cooper and or Judith Miller. They provided the Plame information and they would know who originated it. It seems the feds let Novak wash his hands and walk away. But, when the feds went to see Cooper and Miller, they stated the journalistic principle of protecting one's sources and refused to cooperate.

Now, I’ve never been to journalism school, but I must say I’ve never heard the journalistic principle to protect politicians that use you as a pawn to retaliate against their critics. The principle of not naming your source is about protecting innocent whistle blowers, not vengeful Washington power elite. Right?

It is unlikely that the Time / Cooper notes draw a direct line between Plame and Rove. All we seem to have now is guilt by association. Only Cooper and/or Miller (or possibly Novak) can actually finger the source of the Plame leak. As much as I wish they would, as much as they absolutely should, they won’t. Rove will likely get away with yet another dirty trick. After all, he got away with the McCain smears in 2000 and the Kerry Veterans (not) for Truth attacks in 2004.

Rove has just released a statement through his lawyer that he didn't *knowingly* reveal any secret agents. The lawyer was careful to include the word knowingly. The man is as slippery as a snake and always seems to get away. Let’s just hope the blogosphere doesn’t let up. Let us hope that this scandal is the one that finally brings Rove down.

:|: Suburbia :|: :: Karl Rove Again Linked-Democracy Now! :: Staticfiends.com's Message Boards/Forums ::

2005-07-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

:|: Suburbia :|: :: Karl Rove Again Linked-Democracy Now! :: Staticfiends.com's Message Boards/Forums ::Wednesday, July 6th, 2005
Karl Rove Again Linked to Outting of CIA Operative Valerie Plame

Listen/Watch
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/06/1428238
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Two years after Ambassador Joe Wilson first named Karl Rove in the outting of his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, all eyes turn again to the man some say is the most powerful unelected official in the country - Karl Rove. We speak with Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff. [includes rush transcript]
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Two reporters might be ordered to jail today for refusing to reveal their confidential sources. Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine were held in contempt of court last year for refusing to cooperate in the investigation of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Since December of 2003, Fitzgerald has been investigating how the name of undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame, ended up in a column written by conservative columnist Robert Novak. Disclosing an undercover agent is a federal crime and Fitzgerald had been investigating whether someone from the White House leaked the story to the press. In court filings, Fitzgerald said, "Journalists are not entitled to promise confidentiality -- no one in America is."
Valerie Plame is the wife of former U.S Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the last US official to meet Saddam Hussein before the start of the 1991 Gulf War. After President Bush's controversial State of the Union address before the invasion of Iraq in which Bush made his case for the war, Wilson wrote an Op-ed piece in the New York Times disputing one of President Bush's key claims - that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. This was the administration's main evidence that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program and it's chief justification for the invasion. The White House later recanted the claim. Eight days after Wilson's op-ed appeared in the Times, Novak's column in which he revealed Valerie Plame's identity, was published. At the time Wilson charged that it was an attempt by the Bush administration to intimidate other whistleblowers from going public.

Miller who conducted interviews related to the leak and Cooper who published Plame's name after Novak did, have consistently refused to testify about conversations with their sources. Novak is apparently not facing prison time and has refused answer whether or not he is cooperating with the investigation.

Chief Judge Hogan of the federal district court in D.C had ordered Miller and Cooper to be held up to eighteen months in jail for refusing to disclose their sources. Last week the Supreme Court upheld Hogan's ruling. On Friday, Cooper and Miller filed papers arguing for home confinement if incarceration is required. Yesterday, Fitzgerald vehemently opposed those requests and insisted on jail time. He also insisted that Cooper still testify even though Cooper's employer -- Time Magazine -- last week agreed to hand over a copy of Cooper's notes.

Now, many eyes in Washington turn their focus back on the man some say is the most powerful unelected official in the country--President Bush's chief advisor, Karl Rove. From the start of this scandal, Rove has been suspect number one for many critics of the administration, not the least of whom is Plame's husband, Joe Wilson. In fact, about a month after Novak's column was initially published, Wilson named Rove, saying he wanted to see him "frogmarched" out of the White House in handcuffs. Wilson made these comments when he spoke at the Ensley Forum in Washington state in August of 2003. Democracy Now! was the first to broadcast these remarks in September of 2003.

Joseph Wilson, speaking in Seattle, August, 2003.

Up until now the Bush administration has claimed Karl Rove had no role in the case. Here is White House spokesman Scott McClellan at a press conference in September of 2003 denying that Rove was in any way implicated in the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

White House Press Briefing, September 29, 2003.

In May of last year, Joseph Wilson appeared on Democracy Now! to talk about his new book, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity." During the interview, Wilson said again that he had information that Karl Rove was involved in the outing of his wife as an undercover CIA agent.

Joseph Wilson, interviewed on Democracy Now!, May 14, 2004.

On Friday, Political commentator Lawrence O'Donnell announced that Mathew Cooper's notes and e-mails, released last week by Time, would show Karl Rove was the source behind the public outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Also, this weekend, Newsweek investigative reporter, Michael Isikoff wrote that the documents showed that Rove was one of Cooper's sources. He also writes that Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin confirms that Rove talked to Cooper but insists that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and "did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."A Identity." During the interview, Wilson said again that he had information that Karl Rove was involved in the outing of his wife as an undercover CIA agent.

Michael Isikoff, investigative correspondent for Newsweek.

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Joseph Wilson speaking at the Ensley Forum.

JOSEPH WILSON: I don't think we're going to let this drop. At the end of the day it is of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs, and trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.

AMY GOODMAN: That was former U.S. ambassador, Joe Wilson speaking at the Ensley Forum in August of 2003. Up until now, the Bush administration has claimed Karl Rove had no role in the case. Scott McClellan also said this at a news conference in September of 2003, denying that Rove was in any way implicated in the outing of covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame. We turn right now to Michael Isikoff, who is a spokesperson – who writes for Newsweek magazine. Welcome to Democracy Now!

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, good to be with you, but I’m not a spokesperson for anybody.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, I know. Can you talk about what you have learned in the last piece you have done in the Newsweek magazine?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Yeah, well, what we reported is that the computer notes and emails that Time magazine turned over to Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald last week do identify Rove as one of Matt Cooper's sources for the article in question that he wrote on July 17, online with two other reporters that, among other things, said that some government officials have noted that Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, worked for the C.I.A. on weapons of mass destruction.

We also quoted Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, acknowledging that Rove did speak to Cooper late on the week prior to the article coming out, which would have been July 10 or 11. He wasn’t sure exactly which day, but what’s noteworthy about that is that is also before Valerie Plame is first identified in the Robert Novak piece that ran on Monday, July 14. Mr. Luskin also says that Rove did not knowingly disclose classified information and did not tell any reporters that Valerie Plame worked for the C.I.A.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back for a moment now to Scott McClellan, to the spokesperson for the White House and what he was saying in September of 2003. The White House being very clear that Karl Rove had nothing to do with it. Let's go to Scott McClellan.

REPORTER: …morning, quote: “The President knows that Karl Rove wasn’t involved.” How does he know that?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, he made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. I saw some comments this morning from the person who made that suggestion backing away from that, and I said, “It is simply not true.” So, I mean, it is public knowledge, I’ve said that it’s not true, and I have spoken with Karl Rove. I’m not going to get into conversations that the President has with advisors or staff or anything of that nature. That’s not my practice.

REPORTER: The President has a factual basis for knowing that --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, I said -- I said it publicly. I said that. So –

REPORTER: I’m not asking what you said, I’m asking, the President has a factual basis for saying, per your statement, that he knows --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: He’s aware of what I’ve said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion. And I have -- I have spoken with Karl about it.

AMY GOODMAN: That was White House spokesperson Scott McClellan speaking at a news conference in September 2003. In May of that year, Joseph Wilson appeared on Democracy Now! to talk about his new book. This was May of 2004. The Politics Of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s C.I.A. Identity, the title of the book. During the interview, Wilson said again he had information that Karl Rove was involved with the outing of his wife as an undercover C.I.A. operative. Here he is, May 14, 2004:

JOSEPH WILSON: I was not going to respond to Novak's article publicly. I was not going to comment and did not comment on my wife's employment other than to say, hypothetically, if she was what Novak asserts, then he might be in violation of the law, and refer all questions to the C.I.A., which was appropriate. So I was laying low, but the communications office was calling around to all of these journalists, and over the course of the weekend, I was getting calls every day from people saying, the first call was, “The White House is telling us so many off the wall things, we can't even go with them, but we’d like you to come on so we can ask you some questions.” I didn't rise to that bait. Andrea Mitchell called me and said, “The White House is saying that the real story here is Wilson and his wife,” and then finally Chris Matthews called me and said, “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, ‘Wilson's wife is fair game.’”

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Joe Wilson on Democracy Now!, May of last year. Michael Isikoff, of Newsweek, your response to what Wilson said?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, look, I don't know that I have a response to what Wilson said. We did report – Newsweek was the first to report, actually, late in October of 2003 that Karl Rove did call Chris Matthews of MSNBC's “Hardball” show after the Novak piece and tell him that Wilson's wife was fair game. So that, you know, directly implicated Rove in the spreading of the accusation, if that's what you want to call it, about Valerie Plame after the Novak column, but that’s not a crime. At that point he can be plausibly described as acting on, you know, what’s already been published in the newspaper. The crucial question is what happened before the Novak column. And that's why the new disclosures are so significant.

AMY GOODMAN: What about –

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Potentially significant, by the way, because we don't know exactly what's in Matt Cooper's notes, and we don't know -- and we don't still know the answer to the crucial question of whether it was Rove or somebody else that revealed Valerie Plame’s name to him.

AMY GOODMAN: And we don't know what Robert Novak did, whether he cooperated with the Grand Jury. Of course, it looks like he did, because he is not being targeted by Fitzgerald. What is your knowledge of this?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, I think the operating assumption of everybody is that Novak has provided information to Fitzgerald in one form or another. There is simply no plausible construction of the known evidence that leaves out Novak either providing a proffer through his lawyer of what he would say if he testified or having testified directly.

AMY GOODMAN: And Michael Isikoff, what are your thoughts on Cooper and Miller going to jail?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, I think it's horrible. I mean, you know, look, I'm a journalist. I assure confidentiality to sources all the time. It is, you know, a tragic chain of events that things have gotten this far. I think Judge Hogan used the analogy, “a perfect storm,” and, you know, if it turns out that the source in question that Cooper is protecting is Karl Rove, you know, that sets off a whole other line of questions that one would want to ask oneself about the circumstances here. It's a very tough choice, and I do not envy either Matt Cooper or Judy Miller being in this position one bit.

AMY GOODMAN: The website RawStory is reporting Congress member John Conyers is circulating a letter to other House Democrats that calls on Karl Rove to explain his role in the outing of Valerie Plame or resign his office. Conyers is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. How significant do you think that is?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, it’s John Conyers, and, you know, he's not exactly in power at the moment. You know, this is -- one can imagine how life would be different if one body of Congress was controlled by the other party, there would be subpoena power and there would be all -- mechanisms to get to the bottom of all sorts of issues of controversy. But there isn't and so it’s not going to go very far.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see any possibility of Karl Rove going to jail?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: I mean, you know, unless he's indicted and convicted, no, and we're a long way from that. But I do think that as more information gets out there and the thought crystallizes that one of the people Matt Cooper may be protecting, or is protecting by not talking, is Karl Rove, I think that may put a little more pressure on the White House to provide more details about what it is exactly Rove has testified to. He has testified before the Grand Jury three times. We know that from his lawyer. He has not made public his testimony. If -- you know, it seems to me that if we see Matt Cooper being carted off to jail today, a lot of people may find that, you know, a very upsetting thing. I would hope everybody does, and, you know, it might increase public pressure. There's nothing to prevent Karl Rove from calling a press conference right now and saying, “Here's exactly what I’ve testified to. Here’s exactly what I said to Matt Cooper.”

By the way, Matt Cooper has testified about his conversations or talked to Fitzgerald about his interview with Scooter Libby. He did so because Scooter Libby personally assured him that he had no problem with him doing so. It is true that Rove, as all White House officials have done, has signed this White House written waiver, waiving confidentiality of his conversation with reporters on this matter, but Time has taken and Cooper has taken the position that those waivers are irrelevant, they are implicitly coercive, and a reporter cannot rely on such a waiver in testifying to break confidentiality. What he got from Scooter Libby was a personal assurance that Scooter Libby didn't mind him talking about what the two of them talked about. There is nothing to prevent Karl Rove from calling up Matt Cooper today and saying, “Matt Cooper, I have absolutely no problem with you telling -- talking to Fitzgerald about what the two of us talked about.”

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Michael Isikoff. We have to break, then we will come back to him to conclude our conversation.

http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl

Rep. Obey puts Rove in right place

2005-07-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

As you may have read in E.J. Dionne's column on this page earlier this week, Wisconsin Congressman Dave Obey doesn't kowtow to despots, no matter what their political stripe.

And in today's political climate, where you are called un-American if you take a stand against George Bush or anti-Christian if you speak out against government forcing religion on people, that takes more than a little courage. More than one political career has been ruined because someone took a principled stand. That's how bad it is these days.

But for those of us who have known Obey over his long and illustrious political career, he has always stood up for what he believes. It probably explains why Wisconsin's 7th District has re-elected him 15 consecutive times. Wisconsin voters, after all, like leaders who show some intestinal fortitude.

Bush's senior adviser, the notorious Karl Rove, got the liberal Obey's blood boiling last week when he told the audience at a Republican fundraiser: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for out attackers."

Obey went to the House floor the next day and delivered the following speech:

"Mr. Speaker, in light of Karl Rove's savage attack on the patriotism of liberals in this country, I have a couple of questions.

"Two days after 9/11, the gentleman from Florida (C.W. Young, a Republican congressman) and I, on a bipartisan basis, pushed a $20 billion package through this House in response to the attack. We had to sit in the speaker's office and defend the president's request against people like Phil Gramm and Don Nichols (two senators) of the president's own party. Are those the liberals that Karl Rove was talking about?

"One month after 9/11, the gentleman from Florida (Young) and I went to the White House and urged the president to support a greatly increased homeland security budget. The president, without even looking at what we were proposing, said, 'If you add one dime to our budget for homeland security, I will veto the bill.' Mr. Rove was sitting over his shoulder when President Bush made the remark. Is President Bush one of those out-of-line liberals that Mr. Rove is talking about?

"I come from the state of Wisconsin," Obey added. "I know a third-rate Joe McCarthy when I see one and I saw one in Mr. Rove's comments yesterday."

Indeed, Karl Rove, like Joe McCarthy, has no decency. Obey hit the nail on the head once again.

:They're just making it up as they go along.

2005-06-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Hit by friendly fire
With his polls down, Bush takes flak on Iraq from a host of critics--including some in his own party
By Kevin Whitelaw

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

That's strikingly blunt talk from a member of the president's party, even one cast as something of a pariah in the GOP because of his early skepticism about the war. "I got beat up pretty good by my own party and the White House that I was not a loyal Republican," he says. Today, he notes, things are changing: "More and more of my colleagues up here are concerned."

Indeed, there are signs that the politics of the Iraq war are being reshaped by the continuing tide of bad news. Take this month in Iraq, with 47 U.S. troops killed in the first 15 days. That's already five more than the toll for the entire month of June last year. With the rate of insurgent attacks near an all-time high and the war's cost set to top $230 billion, more politicians on both sides of the aisle are responding to opinion polls that show a growing number of Americans favoring a withdrawal from Iraq. Republican Sens. Lincoln Chafee and Lindsey Graham have voiced their concerns. And two Republicans, including the congressman who brought "freedom fries" to the Capitol, even joined a pair of Democratic colleagues in sponsoring a bill calling for a troop withdrawal plan to be drawn up by year's end. "I feel confident that the opposition is going to build," says Rep. Ron Paul, the other Republican sponsor and a longtime opponent of the war.

Sagging polls. The measure is not likely to go anywhere, but Hagel calls it "a major crack in the dike." Whether or not that's so, the White House has reason to worry that the assortment of critiques of Bush's wartime performance may be approaching a tipping point. Only 41 percent of Americans now support Bush's handling of the Iraq war, the lowest mark ever in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll. And the Iraq news has combined with a lethargic economy and doubts about the president's Social Security proposals to push Bush's overall approval ratings near all-time lows. For now, most Republicans remain publicly loyal to the White House. "Why would you give your enemies a timetable?" asks House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "[Bush] doesn't fight the war on news articles or television or on polls."

Still, the Bush administration is planning to hit back, starting this week, with a renewed public-relations push by the president. Bush will host Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and has scheduled a major speech for June 28, the anniversary of the handover of power to an Iraqi government from U.S. authorities. But Congress's patience could wear very thin going into an election year. "If things don't start to turn around in six months, then it may be too late," says Hagel. "I think it's that serious."

Bush's exit strategy--which depends on a successful Iraqi political process--got a boost last week when Sunni and Shiite politicians ended weeks of wrangling over how to increase Sunni representation on the constitution-writing committee. Now, however, committee members have less than two months before their mid-August deadline. And given how long it took to resolve who gets to draft the document, it's hard to imagine a quick accord on the politically explosive issues they face.

EXCUSE ME, ROVE, YOU PRICK?

2005-06-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

JUNE 24, 2005 – Sorry Karl boy, but now there is actually a place - The Moderate Independent - where a real, actual liberal gets to say what liberals believe, not fake liberals or "progressives" or lying right-wing scum like you.

So, to correct the truly deranged, completely inaccurate dribble you spewed about what liberals wanted to do in response to 9/11, let me straighten a few things out for you.

While in your sick little world where the fictional liberals you beat down everyday are little wusses afraid to stand up to anything, real liberals like myself are the ones who were working to prevent 9/11 to begin with by trying to stop people like Bush, Sr. from doing things like arming Saddam in the first place, from working with butchers like Osama bin Laden in the first place, from participating in covert actions that kill innocent people abroad and come back to bite America in the ass by killing innocent Americans down the road.

We tell you not to be killing people in Colombia right now. We tell you not to be trying to overthrow governments in Central America.

We want criminals like John Negroponte held accountable - not with therapy, but with punishment - for the thousands of deaths and torture stories they are accountable for.

We want idiots like you to get the fact that your stupid little ideology is completely flawed, that your, "They don't understand what needs to be done," rhetoric is bullshit, and that it is you moronic conservatives that keep creating the problems that you then say we need more of the same stupid policies to fix.

In reality, we know your ultimate goal is to never have peace, to have constant war. After the Cold War, all you could talk about was, "What will be the next Cold War," because you are all so cowardly you can't face yourselves or your lives but instead need, at all times, someone to hate and blame. It doesn't matter who and there doesn't have to be any fact or logic behind it. Tell a conservative to hate the French, they hate the French. Hate the Chinese, they hate the Chinese. Arabs? Fine. Indians? Sure. Mexicans? Why not. The Dixie Chicks? Of course, if you say so. Hate on command. All that is required is a constant target of hate.

And so today, in desperation, with all of your ideologies having been proven flawed, be it your stupid economic lying scheme that said we have to give lots of money to rich people in order to help us all, or your stupid war scheme that really believed the Iraqis would "greet us with flowers" and that the oil there would pay for the war and rebuilding, you turned again to making dumb conservatives hate the fake version of liberal that only exists in your mind..

Today, Americans can plainly see all of your stupid right-wing schemes are just bogus games to turn America into what you have helped create all throughout South and Central America, nations of a permanent wealthy, ruling class and a powerless, desperate underclass; a propaganda-machine-fed society. And so you trotted out, in utter desperation, your fictional version of what a liberal is. You claimed that we, on 9/11, simply wanted to sit down a give therapy to those responsible for the attacks, to issue a few indictments.

No Karl, on 9/11, we wanted the wholesale rounding up and cruelest of punishments for those responsible - except we really wanted it for those who armed and trained Osama in the art of terrorism to begin with, with those we built up Saddam and then were involved in the mess that led to the first Gulf War, and for all of this bullshit that led directly to 9/11. From Eisenhower deciding to overthrow the government of Iran back in the fifties right up until September 11, 2001, the idiotic conservatives of our nation have been playing illegal, covert games that our nation has been paying the price for again and again.

And on 9/11, only we liberals had the balls to want the heads of those truly responsible, and to want to take the only actions that actually could prevent future 9/11's from occurring.

The Bushes armed and trained Osama, the Bushes were friends with bin Laden's and Saudis, many in previous administrations have been criminally involved in covert actions that our nation has been paying for and will continue to pay for for years to come.

While cowardly, deranged conservatives took their orders to hate on command without question as always and allow you morons to again make things worse, only we liberals - and there were but a handful of us, just check the Iraq War vote - had the balls to face the truth. The problem was not in Iraq. The problem was in the White House, in Texas, in the CIA.

Sounding familiar? Oh yeah, this is what actual liberals say, Karl boy.

Conservatives like to pretend they are Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, saying that liberals, "...can't handle the truth." In fact, the whole world knows it is only American conservatives who can't handle the truth. Every sheep farmer in every hill of the most remote part of the most remote nation and every person in every city of every nation knows what you - the biggest pussies on the planet - American conservatives don't have the balls to face: 9/11 rests on your hands.

And while we were saying butchers like Osama should be punished from the beginning, you were saying, "No, he is just misunderstand, let us work with him, we can coach him to come around." Yes, it was you who thought therapy would work with Osama.

And you thought it would work with the Butcher of Baghdad. We said, "Don't give that murderer chemical weapons, don't have anything to do with him." You said, "No, we can coach him, we can steer him in a more positive direction."

So cry, and attack your fake wussy version of liberal which really doesn't exist. We know it is because you can't face yourself or reality and the fact that you are directly responsible for the deaths of those 3,000+ Americans on 9/11. You and your clearly mentally incompetent puppet leader who lives in the White House - yes, go back and watch the tape of the first debate against Kerry; that was reality - the man is undeniably a mental defective.

So there is the simple truth, Karl. I know you can't handle it. So call your names and attack your fake liberal stereotype and issue your threats, keeping up the media's game of deeming anything an actual liberal says as an attack on America - while the actual attacks on America come as a result of your actions and our words seek only to protect and defend our nation against the assaults you bring.

Make your attacks, but make no mistake: we real liberals have never been tricked by your attempts to throw blame here or there, we have never taken our eyes off the real criminals for even a single instant, and we never will until justice comes around. Because we love America, and have the actual courage to stand up in defense of our nation, while you destroy it to keep up your wall of cowardice.

As for Osama - I think, personally, we should have nuked Afghanistan for not being willing to turn him over. But you cowardly conservatives would never do something like that - that would be a solution, when all you really want is perpetual war so you can have a focus for your perpetual need to hate so as to avoid dealing with yourselves and reality.

Pussy.

With our economy in the trash, and our men and women dying in Iraq...why is this ASSHOLE laughing?

2005-06-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

See evil,speak evil, and hear evil

2005-06-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

I see...I see Georgie winning a third term through Sensenbrenner's Constitutional Amendment

2005-06-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

"And it's hard work..."

2005-06-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

And it's hard work being this big of an ASSHOLE!

Rove Controls Bushy's words from across the room...

2005-06-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

Pie-Faced Goo-Head "Faux Well"..tries to pass a "Rove-log"

2005-06-25T06:40:00.000-07:00

Rove practices his ventriloquist act.,..

2005-06-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Note, Rove never talks while Bush talks. He's a good ventriloquist.

Rove takes a walk with his Puppet

2005-06-25T06:31:00.001-07:00

Mr. Rove...what is your IQ please....

2005-06-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

MonkeyBoy Bush, before they make up his face

2005-06-25T06:13:00.000-07:00

PHXnews.com | Letter to Karl Rove

2005-06-25T05:56:00.000-07:00

PHXnews.com | Letter to Karl RoveLetter to Karl Rove
Posted by Big Daddy on Friday June 24, 2005 at 12:21 pm MST [ Send Story to Friend ]
Dear Mr. Rove,

Your comments yesterday about the War on Terror seemed to suggest that you feel very passionately about defending America, and sending others into combat. As you know, America is facing a serious enlistment crisis right now, at the very same time more casualties mount in the Iraq War. Therefore, since you have said you are so committed to this war, I have attached this enlistment form from the U.S. Army for you to fill out and submit. You are still young enough to contribute to the military and to the frontline war effort you say you care so deeply about.

Clearly, if you support forcing others to risk their lives for your ideological beliefs (without even providing them proper armor and weapons), you will no doubt be willing to risk your own. And I am sure you would not argue that your responsibilities as a partisan political adviser to the president is more important than fighting in combat for your country.

Please let me know when you fill out the enlistment form, and drop me a line when you get to Iraq to let me know if your still believe we should be sending troops to die for a war you lied about.

Sincerely,

Democrats Call On Karl Rove To Resign For Bashing Liberal Response To 9/11

2005-06-25T05:55:00.000-07:00

NY1: PoliticsDemocrats Call On Karl Rove To Resign For Bashing Liberal Response To 9/11

June 23, 2005

The president’s top advisor is facing calls that he resign over comments he made in New York City Wednesday in which he claims liberals did not understand the consequences of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In remarks at a Conservative Party fundraiser in Midtown last night, White House Senior Advisor Karl Rove said liberals responded weakly to the 9/11 attacks, and later put American troops abroad in danger by criticizing their actions.

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding to our attackers," said Rove.

Democrats were outraged by the comments. Calling the statements “insulting,” Senator Hillary Clinton on Thursday demanded an apology from Rove and called on Republicans to repudiate his comments.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NY1’s Rita Nissan filed this report.

The president's top advisor has never been one to mince words, but Democrats say Karl Rove crossed a line at the New York State Conservative Party fundraiser Wednesday night.

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding to our attackers," said Rove.

Democrats call those words partisan and hurtful, especially because they say they were behind the president after 9/11.

“It’s appalling. It's saddening,” said Senator Charles Schumer. “It was clearly opportunistic what he said, but it goes way beyond that.”

Democrats say Rove must apologize or resign.

Senator Hillary Clinton brought Governor George Pataki into the debate. The two rarely criticize one another, but Clinton wants Pataki to speak up because he and Rove stood shoulder to shoulder after he made the comments.

“I would also call on Governor Pataki to repudiate these comments. He was at that dinner last night,” Clinton said Thursday.

But the Republican Pataki says Clinton is a hypocrite. He says she never condemned Democratic Senator Dick Durbin for likening the Guantanamo Bay prison to Nazi concentration camps, and Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean for saying many Republicans never earned an honest living.

“Senator Clinton might think about her propensity to allow outrageous statements from the other side that are far beyond political dialogue,” said the governor.

While Pataki defended Rove, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement: "We owe it to those we lost to keep partisan politics out of the discussion and keep alive the united spirit that came out of 9/11."

At the White House, reporters bombarded press secretary Scott McClellan with questions.

“Karl was simply pointing out the different philosophies and different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism,” said McClellan.

McClellan says Rove will not back down.

Michael Long says there's no reason to. He's the chairman of the Conservative Party, and invited Rove.

“I think it was on target, fair and appropriate,” said Long.

The crowd, which stood in applause, agreed. But Democrats will do all they can to prove Rove went too far.

- Rita Nissan

U.S. Newswire : Releases : "MoveOn PAC Responds to Rove/Bartlett Attacks"

2005-06-25T05:54:00.001-07:00

U.S. Newswire : Releases : "MoveOn PAC Responds to Rove/Bartlett Attacks"MoveOn PAC Responds to Rove/Bartlett Attacks

6/24/2005 2:06:00 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: National Desk, Political Reporter

Contact: Trevor FitzGibbon, Jessica Smith, or Steve Smith, 202-822-5200, all for MoveOn PAC

WASHINGTON, June 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by MoveOn PAC:

Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett have attacked MoveOn in the last two days, including on this morning's Today and CBS Early Shows.

"Well known political hatchet men Rove and Bartlett are trying to divert attention from the President's reckless, failed policy in Iraq by attacking us," explained MoveOn PAC Executive Director Eli Pariser. "Attacking a 3.3 million member organization of Americans is bizarre and won't work."

"It reminds me of another President who, while sinking under the weight of a failed war, created an 'Enemies List.' MoveOn is apparently on Bush's updated version," Pariser added.

"Rove is well known for twisting the facts and deceiving the public in his campaigns. He and Bartlett are lying about MoveOn's record. The organization never opposed the attack on Afghanistan post 9/11. In urging a multi-pronged approach to fighting terrorism, the organization has always supported measured military action as part of the mix," Pariser continued.

"My own then-unaffiliated Web site, which I started prior to joining MoveOn, said U.S. response should be 'moderate and restrained,' to avoid provoking more terrorism and enmity against the U.S.," he went on. "Only two days after the attack on the towers, with no proof of who was responsible, urging care was appropriate. Of course I believe the attack on the camps in Afghanistan, which came weeks later, was appropriate, as was other military action against Al Qaeda," Pariser said.

"Contrast this with the reckless, extremist and deceitful Bush policy on Iraq. Our fears that 9/11 would be distorted and misused were prescient. We now know that the White House and the Defense Secretary began immediately to plan what has become the failed war in Iraq, using 9/11 as a phony excuse. They fought the wrong war, and we are all suffering the consequences, especially our soldiers," concluded Pariser.

Early next week, MoveOn PAC will release print and television advertisements opposing the U.S. failed Iraq policy on the day of the President's speech. Stay tuned.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

Why Karl Rove Is Right

2005-06-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

Unconfirmed SourcesEditorial: Why Karl Rove Is Right
(SATIRE)

White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, in an address to a Conservative Party of New York fundraiser on June 23rd, said, "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments an offer therapy and understanding of our attackers." This was the right and proper characterization of the aftermath of that terrible day in 2001.

This reporter wholeheartedly supports Mr. Rove. When this country is attacked by a ragtag bunch of criminals and terrorists who used commercial airliners because they couldn't get their hands on real bombs, most of whom came from our allies country of Saudi Arabia, the perfect response was to invade and occupy Iraq, especially using completely spurious justifications for war. Why? To keep our enemies guessing. And the longer the mastermind of those attacks remains free, the more stressed out he becomes.

Think about it. Osama bin Laden must be afflicted with the worst case of ulcers on the planet wondering when, if ever, the massive power of the United States military under the command of George W. Bush may inadvertently stumble over him while driving through one of the thousands of opium poppy fields owned by our warlord allies in Afghanistan. President Bush has Osama right where he wants him...somewhere...out there...worrying.

As for denigrating liberals, Mr. Rove is spot on. The fact that nearly every Democratic Senator and Congressman supported the invasion of Afghanistan means nothing. The fact that they worried about invading Iraq for no reason is what's deeply troubling. What could these people have possibly been thinking?

In war, as every military strategist knows, the stupidest thing you can do is try to understand the motivations of your enemy. Sure, insight in you're opponents motivations might help you conquer him, but what fun is that? Quick victory can be economically devastating to some of our most important corporations. What if, just follow me now, what if the Iraqi's did actually welcome us with open arms, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured the Senate before the war? No continuing insurgency, which means no blown up Humvees, tanker trucks, helicopters or pipelines. That means no billions of dollars spent to replace them. Very bad for business.

Now however, with Iraq in a shambles, buildings and people being blown up every day, nearly two thousand American soldiers dead and ten thousand permanently maimed, things are going great. Halliburton's bottom line is increasing almost exponentially, coffin and prosthesis manufacturers are raking it in, millions of bullets and rockets are being sold and the best part is the good times are looking like they'll go on forever. If those idiot Liberals had their way, we might have proceeded cautiously and intelligently and the three hundred billion dollars or so that we've spent so far would still be in the pockets of average Americans doing nothing. Yeah, we would still have one thousand seven hundred brave American men and women still alive, the type of people who make this country great, but of course that means that the seventeen hundred people who've taken the stateside jobs of the dead would still be looking for work and being a drag on our economy. It's much better this way, as Mr. Rove rightly points out.

Anyone who disagrees with Karl Rove and his spokesman President Bush should spend a little time in Guantanamo Bay, and this reporter for one hopes that all the horror stories about that place are true. Liberal scum should be beaten and humiliated just as the terrorist prisoners are.

White House aide Karl Rove witch-hunts Iraq war opponents

2005-06-25T05:52:00.000-07:00

White House aide Karl Rove witch-hunts Iraq war opponentsIn a heavy-handed effort to intimidate opponents of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, top White House political aide Karl Rove delivered a speech Wednesday in New York City that all but accused critics of these wars of giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. Rove declared that while the Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attacks by waging war, liberals responded by offering “therapy and understanding for our attackers.”

He denounced recent comments by Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, who compared the methods used at the US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay to those of fascist and Stalinist dictatorships. The previous day, Durbin had made a sniveling recantation on the floor of the Senate.

Noting that Durbin’s original statement had been rebroadcast on Al Jazeera, Rove said it was “certainly putting America’s men and women in uniform in greater danger.” He concluded, “No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

These remarks were a calculated political provocation. Rove delivered them to a convention of the Conservative Party of New York, a rump organization of ultra-rightists that generally lends its line on the statewide ballot to Republican candidates. He spoke in Manhattan, traditionally a stronghold of Democratic Party liberalism, only a few miles from the World Trade Center site where nearly 3,000 people died.

The tone of the speech harkens back to the worst days of McCarthyite witch-hunting in the 1950s, when Republican—and Democratic—redbaiters sought to criminalize every form of left-wing political activity, branding as spies and traitors those who fought for socialist principles or opposed American militarism, racial injustice and corporate domination.

Rove combined allegations of disloyalty and sympathy towards terrorism with militarist demagogy. September 11 was not a time for “moderation and restraint,” he declared. “It was a moment to summon our national will—and to brandish steel.”

Implying that Democratic Party liberals were little better than traitors, Rove continued, “Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said: we must understand our enemies. Conservatives see the United States as a great nation engaged in a noble cause; liberals see the United States and they see ... Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia.”

A beleaguered administration

Behind this reactionary outburst is an intensifying political crisis confronting the Bush administration, the Republican Party, and the ruling elite as a whole, the driving force of which is the sharp turn in American public opinion against the war in Iraq. Polls have shown a dramatic increase in unease over the war and outright opposition to its continuation, with clear majorities believing that the war was launched on false pretenses and favoring withdrawal of some or all American troops.

Prominent senators in both parties have begun to question the Bush administration’s strategy and tactics in Iraq. Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Vietnam veteran, declared last week that “America is losing in Iraq” and that the Bush administration’s claims of steady progress were “completely disconnected from reality about the war.”

Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned in a speech June 21 that the military position of the United States in Iraq was politically untenable, and that the Iraqi government established by the occupation had little authority outside the Green Zone in Baghdad.

The Bush administration’s optimistic rhetoric was completely at odds with the reality, he said, adding, “This disconnect, I believe, is fueling cynicism that is undermining the single most important weapon we need to give our troops to be able to do their job, and that is the unyielding support of the American people. That support is waning.”

The consternation within ruling circles was on display Thursday at Senate and House committee hearings on the progress of the war, where Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and three top military officers testified. More significant than the highly publicized exchange between Rumsfeld and Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, who called for Rumsfeld to resign, were the concerns expressed by fervent war hawks on the senate panel.

Democrat Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut warned, “I fear that American public opinion is tipping away from this effort.” Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, “I’m here to tell you sir, in the most patriotic state that I can imagine, people are beginning to question ... the public views this every day, Mr. Secretary, more and more like Vietnam.”

Another Republican, John Ensign of Nevada, said he believed the US military presence “inspires more insurgents,” and added, “The only way they can win is back here at home, defeating us politically if we lose the support of the American people.”

General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, responsible for both Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Senate panel that soldiers in the field were becoming aware of the shift in public opinion at home, and were asking him “whether or not they’ve got support from the American people.”

He made the obligatory claim that US soldiers were confident of victory, but continued, in an open criticism of Congress and the media, “When I look back here, at what I see is happening in Washington, within the Beltway, I’ve never seen the lack of confidence greater.”

Rumsfeld also blamed his congressional critics for declining public support for the occupation of Iraq. If the American people were turning against the war, he said, “I have a feeling they’re getting pushed.”

It is an article of faith, both in the military brass and in the leading personnel of the Bush administration, that the United States won a military victory in the Vietnam War, but the victory was forfeited because of the activities of the antiwar movement, aided and abetted by sections of the Democratic Party.

This conception recalls the “stab-in-the-back” theory peddled by Hitler and the Nazis, who blamed Germany’s defeat in World War I on the opposition of Jews, Socialists and Communists at home. This served both to cover up the imperialist nature of the war and to provide a suitable domestic scapegoat for the crisis of German capitalism.

The same issue arises in relation to the war in Iraq. Bush, Rove & Co. have drawn the lesson from Vietnam that all opposition to the war must be branded illegitimate, even treasonous. Rove’s speech was a preemptive strike, not so much against the tepid criticism of the Democrats, but against the profound and deep opposition to the war among tens of millions of working people. It is part of a political counteroffensive by the White House leading up to Bush’s scheduled speech on the Iraq, to be delivered on national television June 28.

Rove rehearsed the themes of his New York speech the day before he delivered it, in an interview on MSNBC, where he alternately denied that a majority of the American people had turned against the war and claimed that, if they had, they were giving in to the strategy of the insurgents. “We need to remember,” he said, “that’s part of the goal of the insurgents. Their goal is to weaken our resolve by being so violent and so dangerous and so ugly that they hope that we will turn tail and run.”

Democrats on their knees

In staging such provocations, the Bush administration counts on the spinelessness and impotence of the Democratic Party. Rove’s characterization of the liberals as inwardly sympathetic to terrorism and Al Qaeda is a slander. But his depiction of Democrats as cowardly and mealy-mouthed is apt when it comes to their role as the so-called opposition to the Bush administration.

Senator Durbin’s blubbering apology on the Senate floor—retracting, for the second time, his comparison of Guantánamo to a Nazi or Stalinist concentration camp—was followed by Democratic bluster Thursday in response to Rove’s speech. None of the leading Democrats would call Rove’s speech what it was: an attack on democratic rights and an attempt to deny the legitimacy of political opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, they protested that there were no divisions between liberals and conservatives over the “war on terror.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Rove “knows full well, as do all Americans, that our country came together after 9/11.” Defeated 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry called Rove’s statements “an outrageous attempt to divide the nation.”

Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey said that, after the September 11 attacks, “we weren’t divided. There were no liberals, progressives ... saying that we did not have a need to respond.” He cited the resolution authorizing the Afghanistan war, giving Bush a blank check to use “all necessary and appropriate force,” which passed the Senate 98-0 and the House 420-1.

The subservience of the Democratic Party is rooted in its class position. No less than the Republicans, it is a party of the capitalist ruling elite that defends the interests of American imperialism in the world. Its differences with the Bush administration are purely tactical. They concern the methods being employed, not the goals.

Thus Senator Durbin can denounce torture in Guantánamo, and Senator Kennedy can blast Rumsfeld’s incompetence or Bush’s lies, but not a single leading Democrat will say plainly that the war in Iraq is a predatory war of conquest, aimed at securing oil resources and a decisive strategic advantage for the United States over its imperialist rivals in Europe and Asia.

Both parties support the imperialist aims and goals of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the failure to subdue the insurgencies in both countries has produced differences over how to proceed.

If the Republicans fear that any criticism of their conduct of the war opens the door to a Vietnam-style collapse of political support, the Democrats fear that the arrogance and incompetence of the Republicans are fueling opposition to the war, both within the United States and internationally.

Thus Biden warned in his June 21 speech that “the future, if it results in failure, will be a disaster.” He presented his recommendations for a change of tactics in Iraq, including an appeal for a NATO blocking force to patrol the Iraq-Syria border, as the product of consultations with US military authorities in Iraq. And he claimed that if the American people opposed the war, it was not because of the death toll but because “there is not a plan for success.”

Biden, the chief Democratic spokesman on foreign policy in the Senate, said in his speech: “I want to see the president of the United States succeed in Iraq. It is necessary for the president to succeed in Iraq. His success is America’s success. And his failure is America’s failure. So any good-thinking American would want to see him succeed in Iraq.”

Salon.com | Karl Rove is a liar

2005-06-25T05:51:00.000-07:00

Salon.com | Karl Rove is a liarKarl Rove is a liar
In attacking liberals' reaction to Sept. 11, Bush's senior advisor once again resorts to McCarthy-style tactics.

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By Joe Conason

June 24, 2005 |

Karl Rove is a liar and a scoundrel. He is not a patriot but a pure partisan, as his own record proved long before now.

The other night Rove lied about the liberal reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks and again exploited patriotism for narrow partisan advantage in a time of war. He seeks to divert public opinion from the failures of the Bush administration by suppressing dissent, stigmatizing "liberals" and returning to the same old tactics that the Republican far right has used ever since the McCarthy era.

CTV.ca | Tom Cruise spars with Lauer on 'Today' show

2005-06-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

CTV.ca | Tom Cruise spars with Lauer on 'Today' show
Tom Cruise spars with Lauer on 'Today' show
CTV.ca News Staff

When asked about his fiancee during an interview aired on the Today show Friday morning, Tom Cruise turned on the charm, beaming with his famous megawatt smile, and sometimes breaking into unrestrained guffaws.

But when host Matt Lauer steered the interview away from talk of marriage and on to psychiatry, the mood became somewhat tense.

"You're saying what, I can't discuss what I wanna discuss?" a visibly agitated Cruise asked Lauer when the conversation turned to the topic of anti-depressants and Ritalin.

The interview started off innocently enough. There were the prerequisite questions about Cruise's soon-to-be released film War of the Worlds and his relationship with fellow actress Katie Holmes.

He gushed over what it was like to work with Steven Spielberg in his new blockbuster, calling the director "the greatest storyteller cinema has ever known."

Cruise was also quite candid about his whirlwind romance.

"I have to tell you. It's just a great time in my life. I'm really happy. And, you know, I'm engaged. I'm going to be married. I can't restrain myself," he said.

In fact, Cruise was so forthcoming, Lauer pointed out that he appeared to be more open about his personal life these days.

"You've been on this show in the past at times where you were in other relationships. And I'd kind of broach the subject of a personal life. And you would very gingerly steer it away," Lauer said.

"That was how we came to know Tom Cruise. And now, you're saying, 'You know what? I'm okay with it.' So, it does seem like a different guy."

Cruise acknowledged the shift, but added that the media outlets pumped out the stories whether he was cooperative or not.

"You've got to understand. All that stuff, they'd still write it. They'd still talk about it. And the thing is, I still feel I will talk about what I feel, what I want to talk about," Cruise said, with Holmes looking on.

When asked by Lauer about naysayers who call the relationship a publicity stunt, Cruise once again dismissed the critics.

"You know what? There's always cynics. There always has been. There always will be," Cruise said.

'Matt… you're glib'

However, as the interview progressed, the discussion became a little tense.

In an earlier television interview on Access Hollywood, Cruise criticized Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants to deal with her postpartum depression, as Scientology teaches that modern psychiatry and its medications are harmful.

When Lauer asked Cruise about his comments he defended his position, saying he disagreed with psychiatry even before he became a Scientologist.

"Look, you've got to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields. I think, here's a wonderful and talented woman. And I want to see her do well. And I know that psychiatry is a pseudo-science," Cruise said.

Cruise became increasingly visibly agitated as Lauer asked: "Isn't there a possibility that - do you examine the possibility that these things do work for some people?"

When Lauer pressed Cruise on the topic, he said: "Matt, Matt, Matt, you don't even -- you're glib, you don't even know what Ritalin is."

At one point, Cruise told Lauer, "You don't know the history of psychiatry, I do."

When Lauer said he knew people on Ritalin who seemed to have benefited from the drug, Cruise said that wasn't enough.

"But you're now telling me that your experiences with the people I know, which are zero, are more important than my experiences," said Lauer, who appeared composed despite his resolute words.

"What do you mean by that?" Cruise asked.

"You're telling me what's worked for people I know or hasn't worked for people I know. I'm telling you, I've lived with these people and they're better," Lauer said.

When Cruise suggested Lauer was advocating Ritalin, Lauer said: "I am not. I'm telling you in their cases, in their individual case, it worked."

Eventually, Lauer said he recognized they could "go around in circles on this for awhile," and asked whether one of Cruise's goals was for more people to understand Scientology.

Cruise agreed that this was a priority.

"How do you go about that?" Lauer asked.

"You just communicate about it.... If I want to know something, I go and find out. Because I don't talk about things that I don't understand."

"You're so passionate about it," Lauer said.

"I'm passionate about learning. I'm passionate about life, Matt," Cruise responded.

Some Hollywood observers believe this more-forthcoming Cruise is because of a recent change in publicists.

"Our most in-control celebrity, the same man deeply devoted to the achieve-your-goals discipline of his Hollywood religion, is suddenly, without warning, improvising his media message and letting it all hang Scientologically out," writes Ken Tucker writes in New York magazine.

Tucker believes Cruise wouldn't have had any of his rambling outbursts under the watch of his former publicist Pat Kingsley.

Apparently, Kingsley always made sure Cruise's religion was off limits.

But as he entered his 40s, Cruise wanted to talk more about Scientology.

So he replaced Kingsley in 2004 with his older sister and fellow Scientologist Lee Anne Mapother De Vette.

"How edifying to see a superstar saying things the way he wants to say them, unmediated. Even if some of those things are offensive, or dogmatic, or just plain incomprehensible," Tucker writes.

"Why would he say them if they weren't what he actually felt? He's not winning anyone over with his charm offensive, and that fact only makes his words seem more, not less, candid."

WatchingTheWatchers -- Kills Propaganda Dead

2005-06-23T16:19:00.000-07:00

WatchingTheWatchers -- Kills Propaganda DeadRove: Conservatives Want to Kill, Not Understand

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 22nd, 2005 : Filed by ~A!
Karl Rove, in an effort to further slander the Democratic party, made the following comment at New York states annual Republican dinner:

Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies.

And, of course, both are true. You must defeat your enemies. However, the ignorant, the self serving, and the completely clueless are the only people I know of who want to fight without understanding their enemy.

You know what happens when you don’t understand your enemy? You attack the wrong one. And you lose. Just like we’re losing in Iraq. Just like we attacked the wrong country.

Rove, ever the verbal masturbator, also sprayed the following froth at the crowd of whipped up chickenhawks:

Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers

And, as usual, there is no fact to support such a claim. People like Rove, they don’t need facts. Hell, they have Rush! They have Hannity! They have Lieberman! What use facts, when you have mouthpieces and lots of money?

I challenge anyone to be able to prove the assertion above by Karl Rove. You can’t, because he’s doing that thing where he opens his mouth and shit tumbles out, almost as an autonomic response to a podium and hot lights.

Rove also managed to compensate for his penis inadequacies by trying to beat the drum a little more.

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war

Wow, Karl. That’s so…. powerful. So… mmmmm…. you’re so…. tough and manly.

You fucking tool. My god, do people really not see through this shit?

~A!

BELLACIAO - Karl Rove; 9/11 exploiter and anti-semetic propagandist - Collective Bellaciao

2005-06-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

Karl Rove; 9/11 exploiter and anti-semetic propagandist
Main Entry: fas·cism
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

Karl Rove the "political advisor" to the alleged war criminal and serial constitutional offender he serves has a hard time understanding the english language. He is constantly reminding his faithfull herd what a conservative is. However, Karl Rove or his pack of wolves should pick up a dicitionary to discover that not only is he mistaken as to the true definition of "conservatism", but he foolishly rips off the political strategies of the Fascist parties of years gone by.

Just think, people pay him for stealing other people’s ideas, that’s a genius?

Main Entry: con·ser·va·tism

1 capitalized a : the principles and policies of a Conservative party b : the Conservative party

2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change

3 : the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

I have just established to all the critically thinking readers out there, the definition of fascism and the definition of conservatism. Clearly, Karl Rove & Co. are not conservatives, perhaps when he looks in the mirror and is talking to himself, but I jest.

Those who study propaganda will agree that Karl Rove’s playbook involves nothing more then plagiarism of Hermann Goring, also an architect of Fascism, and nothing like Abraham Lincoln. The party of Lincoln died at the blood soaked hands of the party of Nixon wich is alive and well today. Fascists tend to take over any political party and call it their own. You just have to know the definition to stay clear from radical extremists that use "American values" as a smokescreen to deceive and ultimately for "political capital" which is a fancy name for unbridled power.

Reuters AlertNet - W.House rejects apology for Rove's Sept 11 remarks

2005-06-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

Reuters AlertNet - W.House rejects apology for Rove's Sept 11 remarks: "W.House rejects apology for Rove's Sept 11 remarks"W.House rejects apology for Rove's Sept 11 remarks

WASHINGTON, June 23 (Reuters) - Democrats demanded an apology from top White House adviser Karl Rove on Thursday for saying liberals responded weakly to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a request quickly rejected by the White House.

The complaints were the latest aftershocks in a bitter partisan battle in Washington over U.S. foreign and domestic policy and followed a Republican-led uproar over remarks by Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin comparing U.S. treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to that meted out by the Nazis, at Soviet gulags or by Cambodia's Pol Pot.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada issued a statement saying, "It is time to stop using Sept. 11 as a political wedge issue."

"Karl Rove should immediately and fully apologize for his remarks or he should resign," Reid said. "The lesson of Sept. 11 is not different for conservatives, liberals or moderates."

Speaking to the Conservative Party of New York state on Wednesday night, Rove said, "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."

Rove cited a petition the liberal organization moveon.org circulated after 9/11 urging moderation and restraint in responding to the attacks, and Durbin's comment about the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"Let me put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts to the region the words of Senator Durbin, certainly putting America's men and women in uniform in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals," Rove said.

Rove was the architect of President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign and is now a deputy White House chief of staff.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry, last year's Democratic presidential nominee, said, "Karl Rove doesn't owe me an apology ... he doesn't owe Democrats an apology, he owes the country an apology."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan defended Rove's remarks and rebuffed suggestions he apologize. "Of course not," McClellan said.

He said Rove was "talking about the different philosophies and different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism."

"I would think that they would want to be able to defend their philosophy and their approach. I know that the Democratic leadership at this point is offering no ideas and no vision for the American people," McClellan said.

'FAUX OUTRAGE'

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said, "It's outrageous that the same Democrats who stood by Dick Durbin's libeling of our military are now expressing faux outrage over Karl Rove's statement of historical fact."

Rove's remarks were reminiscent of some of Bush's speeches from his re-election campaign last year but seemed to go further in saying liberals had offered therapy for the attackers.

Congressional Democrats criticized Rove in press releases, at news conferences and in comments on the Senate floor. Some echoed Reid's comments Rove should retract the comments or resign.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat, said it was time for all to "just take a breath and calm down and eliminate the divisive rhetoric on all sides."

In New York, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, citing the families and survivors of those killed in the hijacked airliner attacks, said, "We owe it to those we lost to keep partisan politics out of the discussion."

Democrats' demands for an apology from Rove came two days after Durbin yielded to criticism and apologized for his remarks about U.S. interrogation methods at Guantanamo.

Northwest Indiana News: nwitimes.com

2005-06-23T16:15:00.001-07:00

Northwest Indiana News: nwitimes.comDems Say Rove Should Apologize or Resign

By JIM ABRAMS

This story ran on nwitimes.com on Thursday, June 23, 2005 6:05 PM CDT

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WASHINGTON - Democrats said Thursday that White House adviser Karl Rove should either apologize or resign for accusing liberals of wanting "therapy and understanding" for the Sept. 11 attackers, escalating partisan rancor that threatens to consume Washington.

Rove's comments _ and the response from the political opposition _ mirrored earlier flaps over Democratic chairman Howard Dean's criticism of Republicans, a House Republican's statement that Democrats demonize Christians and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin's comparison of the Guantanamo prison to Nazi camps and Soviet gulags.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan came to Rove's defense, saying the president's chief political adviser was "simply pointing out the different philosophies and different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism."

"Of course not," McClellan said when asked by reporters whether President Bush will ask Rove to apologize.

Rove, in a speech Wednesday evening to the New York state Conservative Party just a few miles north of Ground Zero, said, "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

He added that groups linked to the Democratic Party made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.

During the 2004 campaign, Bush dismissed the notion of negotiating with terrorists and said, "You can't sit back and hope that somehow therapy will work and they will change their ways."

Rove's comments quickly escalated the bitter divide between the parties that could get worse as Congress prepares for what may be a drawn-out political fight, possibly this summer, over a Supreme Court nominee.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer said Rove "took something that is virtually sacred to New Yorkers" _ the tragedy of the Sept. 11 attacks _ "and politicized it for political, opportunistic purposes."

"Karl Rove is not just another political operative," added New York's other Democratic senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. "He sits in the White House, a few doors down from the president."

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, Clinton urged Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to repudiate the "insulting comment."

Rumsfeld replied that it "is unfortunate when things become so polarized or so politicized."

Schumer and Clinton joined the four Democratic senators from Connecticut and New Jersey in a letter to Rove requesting that he immediately retract his comments. "To try to score partisan, political points at the expense of the 3,000 victims and their families was unacceptable and opportunistic," they wrote.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., wrote a similar letter to Rove from House Democrats.

Schumer said Rove's comments might have been made in the heat of the moment and he was willing to accept an apology. But "if they try to stonewall," he said, "then I think resignation would be called for."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also said Rove, the political mastermind behind Bush's election victories, should fully apologize for his remarks or resign. Dean said Bush should "condemn Karl Rove's desperate and divisive attempt to help the Republicans regain their political footing."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., went to the Senate floor with Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., whose son served in Iraq. Until America becomes safe, Kerry said, "don't dare question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction."

Republicans, meanwhile, have recently condemned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for calling the Iraq War a "grotesque mistake," and demanded and finally got an apology from Durbin for his linking detainee abuse and Nazis.

And they were unapologetic about Rove's comments.

Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman, speaking in Puerto Rico, said there was no need to apologize because "what Karl Rove said is true." White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, asked about the Rove dispute on CNN, noted, "We have seen pretty hot rhetoric from both sides of the aisle lately."

White House communications director Nicolle Devenish said Rove was speaking "very broadly about the liberal movement" and that he never referred to Democrats. "I think the Democrats are misguided in their attacks on Karl Rove," she said.

Increasing public doubts about the Iraq war have emboldened Democrats to challenge the president's policies. Republicans, in turn, contend that criticism undermines the war on terror.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican running for re-election in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, issued a statement urging both sides to keep politics out of the war on terrorism. "We owe it to those we lost to keep partisan politics out of the discussion and keep alive the united spirit that came out of 9/11," he said.

Wonkette - Rove's Philosophical Differences

2005-06-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

Wonkette - Rove's Philosophical DifferencesRove's Philosophical Differences
By now, every Democrat with an Iowan in their address book has called for Karl Rove to apologize his remarks at a NY Conservative party event; there, he explained why God made Bush President. Because if the Democrats had been in power, they would have "wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." This seems unduly harsh; everyone knows that Democrats would have wanted to pull out the attackers' feeding tubes and cloned their babies. In any case, at today's noon briefing, WH spokesperson Scott McClellan cleared up the motivation for Rove's statement. Despite the President's distaste for "book learning," Rove is quite the philosopher (McClellan used some variation of "philosophy" over 20 times), focusing mainly on "different" ones ("different philosophies," 15 times). Sounds high-flautin, but the talk was C-student friendly -- through it all, Rove was "simply pointing out" (four times). Next week, John Snow on rich men getting into heaven! — WONKETTE

Digest of briefing after the jump.

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan [WhiteHouse.gov]

Q: Will Karl Rove will apologize, and is this elevating the discourse, the way you said the President will do?
Talking about different philosophies and different approaches? That's what Karl Rove was talking about. He was talking about the different philosophies and our different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism. . . Karl was simply pointing out the different philosophies and different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism. . . . I think it's talking about the different philosophies for winning the war on terrorism. . . . This is simply talking about different philosophies and different approaches. . . I think that Karl was simply pointing out the different philosophies when it comes to winning the war on terrorism. . . So he was talking about the different philosophy between conservatives and liberals and different philosophy for approaching the war on terrorism. . . . He was speaking to the New York Conservative Party and talking about different philosophies -- a conservative philosophy and a liberal philosophy -- when it comes to winning the war on terrorism. . . Again, I just said that he was talking about the different philosophies. The President has talked about the different philosophies when it comes to winning the war on terrorism. . . . Karl was simply talking about different philosophies, and we should be talking about what we stand for and how we want to move forward. . . .The President has spoken to conservative audiences, as well, and he's talked about the different philosophies when it comes to how we govern and how we address the important priorities for the American people. [Rove] was speaking to the New York Conservative Party, and he was talking about different philosophies -- the conservative philosophy and the liberal philosophy and how we're approaching different priorities for the American people. That's all it is.

The Village Voice: Power Plays

2005-06-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

The Village Voice: Power PlaysRevved Up Over Rove
Last night Karl Rove gave New York Democrats running for mayor more fuel for their repeated attacks on Michael Bloomberg's Republican ties. Speaking at the New York State Conservative Party annual fete, the president's chief strategist said, "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war . . . Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies."

Those silly liberals! Real 'mericans misunderstand their enemies, and do so proudly, dammit! Unfortunately for the mayor, New York is a haven for these lily-livered defenders of rationality. So Hizzoner was quick to distance himself from Rove's remarks.

"9/11 was an attack on all of America. In the hard days and weeks that followed, we came together as a City and as a country, united in our resolve not only to defeat terrorism but also to rebuild Lower Manhattan. Ever since, we have tried to keep politics out of the discussion," the mayor said in a statement. "We owe it to those we lost to keep partisan politics out of the discussion and keep alive the united spirit that came out of 9/11."

But according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, Rove wasn't playing partisan politics; he was "simply talking about different philosophies and different approaches." It was the Democrats who, by criticizing Rove, were engaging "in personal attacks instead of defending their philosophy, that's their business." Scottie scolded the press, "You want to get caught up in all the process and the back and forth bickering that goes on in this city. We're going to focus on the issues and that's what we will continue to do."

Lucky, that. But Fernando Ferrer—who four years ago was faulted for being divisive for still talking about "the other New York" after the towers fell—said Bloomberg's failure to condemn Rove by name "is an insult to every New Yorker who lived through that terrible day, especially those who lost loved ones."

Posted by Jarrett Murphy at 05:57 PM, June 23, 2005

The Raw Story | Advance: Kerry blasts Rove for 'outrageous' line on Sept. 11

2005-06-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

The Raw Story | Advance: Kerry blasts Rove for 'outrageous' line on Sept. 11Advance: Kerry blasts Rove for 'outrageous' line on Sept. 11
RAW STORY

The following advance remarks were released to RAW STORY, for delivery on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon.

Mr. President, None of us will ever forget the hours after September 11th, the calls to our families, the evacuations, the images on television -- and then the remarkable response of the American people as we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland.

We drew strength when our firefighters ran up the stairs and risked their lives, so that others might live. When rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon. When the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's Capitol. When flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It brought out the best in all of us.