Reporter Editor:
About a recent letter to the editor ("Rove being wrongly persecuted by jealous liberals," The Reporter, July 20), I'd like to mention a few facts.
Brewster-Jennings & Associates was a front company in Boston set up by the CIA with the intent of tracking down and gathering information on the worldwide proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the political activities of certain Middle Eastern companies. Yes, it was a company of spies, but they were our spies, American spies on the inside, working to protect us, the American people.
To set up an operation like this costs millions of taxpayer's dollars, not to mention the huge amount of time and effort required to build an operation like this. They were the "good guys" and Karl Rove's actions took down the whole thing, all gone the day after columnist Robert Novak divulged a CIA operative's name.
Now Rove says that he didn't say Valerie Plame's name; he stated "Wilson's wife" as in former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife. That would be like saying, "I'm thinking of a number and I won't tell you what it is, but it is between 4 and 6."
Rove is not being persecuted; he's just being investigated. Jesus was persecuted.
Manuel Zagala, American Canyon
http://www.thereporter.com/letters/ci_2913294
==========================
NEWSWEEK COVER: The World According to Karl Rove
FindLaw Corporate Counsel Center - Articles, News, Business Contracts, Court Dockets and Research Tools for Aerospace, Defense, Automobile, Construction, ...
http://news.corporate.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20050717/17jul20051202.html
NEWSWEEK COVER: The World According to Karl Rove
NEW YORK, Jul. 17 /PRNewswire/ --
NEW YORK, July 17 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 use the jujitsu of media flow to flip the energy of your enemies against them. The Boss never discusses political mechanics in public. But in fact everything is political -- and everyone is fair game, writes Chief Political Correspondent Howard Fineman in the July 25 Newsweek cover, "The World According to Karl Rove" (on newsstands Monday, July 18). In a familiar Washington twist of fate, Rove's theory of politics is being turned against him -- and he is being forced to deploy the Republican machine, which he built on Bush's behalf, for a more personal task: his own defense. "The Manichean politics that Rove had perfected over three decades now threaten to engulf him, or at least render him as something less than what he has been to Bush: the mastermind of Republican hegemony," Fineman writes.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050717/NYSU002 )
A source close to Rove told Newsweek last week that Rove "doesn't remember" where he heard the crucial information that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent working in weapons of mass destruction issues. But, the source said, Rove is "pretty sure he heard it directly or indirectly from a media source." The source close to Rove later acknowledged that Rove had been questioned by investigators about conversations he may have had with Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Rove couldn't recall any specific exchange with Libby about Wilson's wife, the source said.
Fineman writes that in May 2002, the State Department's intelligence unit had prepared a secret memorandum about the provenance of Joe Wilson's journey and its classified results -- including the curious fact that Wilson's wife had been involved in planning the mission, and even had suggested that her husband undertake it. Still, there had been no cause to criticize Wilson -- let alone mention his wife. But then Wilson went public, and soon enough, Rove had drawn a bead on Wilson.
Fineman reports that Rove used his heavyweight status to push the message machine run by his Texas protege and friend, Dan Bartlett. On a long Bush trip to Africa, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and Bartlett prompted clusters of reporters to look into the bureaucratic origins of the Wilson trip. How did the spin doctors know to cast that lure? One possible explanation, writes Fineman: some aides may have read the State Department intel memo, which Secretary of State Colin Powell had brought with him aboard Air Force One.
Meanwhile, in transatlantic secure phone calls, the message machinery focused on a crucial topic: who should carry the freight on the following Sunday's talk shows? Condi Rice, who was on the Africa trip with the president, was pressed into duty. To allow her to prepare on the long flight home to DC, White House officials assembled a briefing book, which they faxed to the Bush entourage in Africa. The book was primarily prepared by her National Security Council staff. It contained classified information -- perhaps including all or part of the memo from State. The entire binder was labeled TOP SECRET. It is a felony to willfully disclose information from a classified document -- which the State Department memo and, apparently, the Condi briefing book, were. There is no indication that Rove saw the briefing book or that anyone disclosed classified information. But no one in the administration seems to have noticed the irony -- or the legal danger -- in assembling a TOP SECRET briefing book as guidance for the Sunday talk shows, Fineman writes. Also in the cover package:
* In "The Mystery Man," General Editor Jonathan Darman and Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff profile Patrick Fitzgerald, special prosecutor to the Valerie Plame Wilson leak investigation. Associates say Fitzgerald is wary of reporters, dating back to his days trying terrorist cases. Concerned about protecting national security, he'd go to extraordinary lengths to keep sensitive material secret, only to see it published by meddling journalists. Darman and Isikoff write that a particularly annoying offender, coincidentally, was Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter Fitzgerald sent to prison earlier this month. In an earlier, unrelated clash, Fitzgerald had accused Miller of compromising a probe into Islamic charities by phoning one of the groups just before a government crackdown. Launching a leak investigation, he tried to get ahold of Miller's phone records and those of a colleague at the Times. The Times claimed that its reporters were following standard practice and a federal judge quashed Fitzgerald's subpoenas. Fitzgerald is intentionally keeping reporters and everyone else guessing as to what's really going on in his head. Last week, Newsweek has learned, after Time's Matthew Cooper provided grand-jury testimony on his July 11, 2003, conversation with Karl Rove, Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, placed a call to Fitzgerald to make sure he didn't need anything more from Rove in light of Cooper's claims. Fitzgerald didn't bite: "We'll get back to you," the prosecutor replied curtly, and quickly got off the line. * In "Why The Leak Probe Matters," Senior Editor and Columnist Jonathan Alter writes that for all the complexities of the Valerie Plame case, for all the questions raised about the future of investigative journalism and the fate of the most influential aide to an American president since Louis Howe served Franklin D. Roosevelt 70 years ago, this story is fundamentally about how easy it was to get into Iraq and how hard it will be to get out. Even if the disclosure was unintentional and no law was broken, Karl Rove's confirmed conduct -- talking casually to two reporters without security clearances about a CIA operative -- was dangerous and wrong. The frantic efforts of the GOP hit squads to change the subject to Joe Wilson show their fears that Rove -- the master of their universe -- will be held accountable for his destructive carelessness. What does it say to the people doing the painstaking work of building spy networks when the identity of one of their own becomes just another weapon in the partisan wars of Washington? (Read entire cover package at http://www.Newsweek.com .)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8600327/site/newsweek/ - Howard Fineman's cover story
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8599914/site/newsweek/ - "The Mystery Man" (Darman, Isikoff)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8598301/site/newsweek / - Jonathan Alter: "Why the Leak Probe Matters"
Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050717/NYSU002
AP Archive:
AP PhotoExpress Network: PRN2
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com Newsweek
CONTACT: Abigail Lorge of Newsweek, +1-212-445-4078
Web site: http://www.newsweek.msnbc.com/
Freedom House: A CFR Front
Non-partisan and broad-based, Freedom House is led by a Board of Trustees ... Freedom House, obviously a front for the Council on Foreign Relations, ...
http://watch.pair.com/FreedomHouse.html
Message Board by American Patriot Friends Network [APFN]