Out of the Hole Rove is The Rat. That is to say, the president's senior political advisor was the White House source in the case of CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose cover was blown by conservative columnist Robert Novak in 2003. Her husband, Joseph Wilson, knew it the entire time. Back then, he told the press, "It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words." At the time, Bush's press secretary was also using an abacus to formulate his answers to a curious media. When asked specifically about Rove being the source of the leak, Scott McClellan got busy. "I haven't heard that. That's just totally ridiculous. But we've already addressed this issue. If I could find out who anonymous people were, I would. I just said, it's totally ridiculous." The reporters, ever courteous to Scott for fear of losing their passes, gave it one last gentle try, and then let go of the story for the next two years. But did Karl Rove do it? His needle stuck, the public servant obfuscated as best he could, which is his job. "I said, it's totally ridiculous." The same repetitious malady gripped McClellan yesterday as a riled-up press corps demanded new answers. They got variations of one (singular). "While that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment," he might say, or, "This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation." Or just, "Ongoing criminal investigation." McClellan used that answer, in effect, a total of 22 times. In all, he delivered non-answers to 35 questions about the Plame case. He was asked, in light of his statements from two years earlier, if he owed the American people a fuller explanation (you know, like the one the media should have given us during the entire run-up to the war). "There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it," he mewled. This is the spokesman for the President of the United States, a fact he wouldn't want to be lost on you at this moment. "No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States," he said at one point, "And I think the way to be most helpful is to not get into commenting on it while it is (all together now) an ongoing investigation." At this point, it would be a mystery as to why the president "wants to get to the bottom of it" when the White House has now backed away from McClellan's 2003 assurances to the public, that whoever had leaked the information "would no longer be in this administration." But since The Rat is Karl Rove, to whom Bush is beholden for pretty much everything he's ever had in political life, maybe that's no longer the case. And here all this time I thought it was Dick Cheney's point man, "Scooter" Libby. Apparently not; from the surrendered e-mailbox of TIME reporter Matt Cooper (today a free person, unlike Judith Miller of the New York Times), Rove's own words condemn him. "It was Wilson's wife," he messaged to Cooper, "who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues, who authorized the trip." That would be Wilson's trip to Nigeria, where he determined - as did the Central Intelligence Agency - that the "yellow cake" story about Saddam Hussein was pure fudge. Since this was just six months after the war officially began, it didn't look good in the papers. To get back at Wilson, Rove used Novak as his instrument of smear. While the name "Valerie Plame" is not mentioned in Rove's e-mail to Cooper, this is still a violation of the law, punishable by up to ten years in prison. You don't need proper nouns to reveal someone's identity. For instance, if I say, "It was Bill Clinton's wife", people know who that is. To really be a punishable offense, it would have to proven in court that Rove knew that Plame was an undercover agent, which is dicey to say the least. If this administration had any courage or morals, it would go far beyond merely jettisoning Karl Rove - why does a lame duck need a political advisor anyhow? If Bush possessed even the tiniest fibers of integrity or character, he would say, with the conviction with which he accused Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction, that Rove's actions placed the nation's security at risk and compromised the CIA's ability to function during a time of war. If they charged The Rat with treason, that would be fine with me. Ten years? For what these clowns have done, such a slap on the wrist should be reserved for a guy like Novak, the bitter little partisan who couldn't resist throwing a ball of mud. As for Matt Cooper... Well, he and his publication surely did crumble in the face of subpoenas, grand juries and a judge who wouldn't budge. He truly deserves some cover from the magazine for which he labors. As of right now, he's the Man of the Year. Paul Heller 7/12/05 << back to the archives
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