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Plugging Leaks -- Karl Rove's testimony
Wed Mar 10 02:01:53 2004
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Plugging Leaks -- Karl Rove's testimony is revealed for the first time.
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:14:33 -0000
From: celestial_shamanka celestial_shamanka@yahoo.com

Plugging Leaks
More details emerge on the Plame investigation, as Karl Rove's
testimony is revealed for the first time.

By Murray S. Waas
Web Exclusive: 3.8.04

President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in
an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging
information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the
White House, outside political consultants, and journalists,
according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the
ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter.

But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the
administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a
covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last
July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about
Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI,
the same sources said, that circulating the information was a
legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated
criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what
sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson
through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information
regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as
conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to
achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the
administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have
named at least six other administration officials who were involved
in the effort to discredit Wilson.

Rove, through an aide, declined to comment for this story. The White
House also declined comment, referring any further inquiries to the
Department of Justice because of the ongoing criminal investigation.

These revelations come on the heels of a Newsday report that Justice
Department officials had subpoenaed the phone records of Air Force
One for several days in July before the Novak column ran. In
addition, according to Newsday, officials subpoenaed records from the
same time period of the White House Iraq Group, an internal task
force created to strengthen the case for war made to Congress and the
American public. In addition to Rove, prominent members of the task
force included National Security Council deputy Stephen J. Hadley; I.
Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney; and former
Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs Nicholas E. Calio.

The leak of Plame's name to Novak last July came at a time when
Plame's husband was criticizing the Bush administration for using
faulty intelligence to bolster its case to go to war with the Iraqi
regime of Saddam Hussein. Wilson had led an eight-day, CIA-sponsored
mission to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had attempted
to purchase uranium to build an atomic weapon. Wilson reported back
to the CIA that the allegations were contrived and that documents
purportedly revealing the scheme were crude forgeries.

Still, President Bush, in making the case to go to war with Iraq,
cited the allegations in his 2003 State of the Union address. Bush
has since admitted that using the Niger information was a mistake,
and he has appointed a presidential commission to investigate that
and other instances of faulty intelligence considered by Congress
before it authorized war.

It was last July, when Wilson first made public his criticisms, that
Novak wrote his now-infamous newspaper column alleging that Wilson
had received his assignment because his wife had recommended him for
the position. The claim has since turned out to be untrue. Novak
revealed that Plame was a covert CIA operative in the context of
incorrectly asserting that she was responsible for her husband's
appointment.

According to sources, Rove, in his interview with the FBI, said that
he and others on the White House's political staff wanted to contain
the political fallout from Wilson's allegations, and that they
thought the charge of favoritism was a legitimate issue. Rove added
that when he steered others in the direction of the now-disproved
charges, he believed them to be true, in part because he regarded
Novak as a credible news source.

When the Justice Department investigation began last September, the
White House press corps repeatedly questioned White House press
secretary Scott McClellan as to whether Rove was the person who
leaked Plame's name to Novak. Initially, McClellan said that Rove had
denied that he was the leaker.

Then, on September 28, The Washington Post reported:

"Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's
column ran, two top White House officials called at least six
Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of
Wilson's wife. `Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,'
the senior official said of the alleged leak. A source said reporters
quoted a leaker as describing Wilson's wife as `fair game.'"

A subsequent Newsweek story suggested that the Post had been
incorrect in some details. According to the magazine's account, the
calls to "at least six Washington journalists" took place after
Novak's column appeared, rather than before. Furthermore, Newsweek
made an assertion (confirmed by Wilson) that MSNBC talk-show host
Chris Matthews called Wilson in July, a full week after Novak's
column appeared, telling the former ambassador that "Karl Rove … said
your wife was fair game."

When grilled on this variation of Rove's involvement, McClellan
became evasive. McClellan insisted that the criminal investigation
only centered on "whether someone leaked classified information;"
questions regarding the "fair game" report were "down the road of
rumor and innuendo and unsubstantiated accusations."

McClellan then warned reporters "not to read anything into what I
said," refusing to answer questions about whether it was, in one
reporter's words, "ethical for a senior administration official to
advance a story about an illegal disclosure of a CIA operative,
basically giving that story legs."

McClellan then repeatedly refused to exonerate Rove, according to a
transcript of his remarks, instead insisting that any White House
comments were merely a matter of "setting the record straight" rather
than "spreading information to punish someone for speaking out,"
something the White House "would not condone."

As a result of the Post report, federal investigators are now hunting
for not only the identity of the administration official who leaked
Plame's name to Novak but also the administration official who told
the paper about the telephone calls to the six other reporters. The
investigators believe it likely, according to an attorney familiar
with some aspects of the criminal investigation, that the source of
the Post story may very well know the identity of the person who
leaked Plame's name to Novak.

In interviews with potential witnesses, investigators have taken to
referring to the story and its mysterious source as "one by two by
six," meaning that one official may know the identity of two other
administration officials who spoke to the six reporters.

"If they find 'one by two by six,' then just maybe… they have also
found their guy," said one attorney familiar with the criminal
investigation.

Still, little else is known regarding special counsel Patrick
Fitzgerald's investigation of the Plame leak. A federal grand jury
only recently began hearing evidence in the matter. FBI agents
working on the probe have signed unprecedented secrecy agreements as
a condition for working for the special counsel, and Fitzgerald has
asked government officials and their attorneys appearing before his
grand jury to agree not to disclose anything to the press or the
public.

Media attention has so far focused largely on four current and former
White House aides who have testified: McClellan; Claire Buchan, a
deputy press secretary; Adam Levine, a former White House
communications aide, and Mary Matalin, a former adviser to Vice-
President Dick Cheney.

But several sources have said that some news reports were reading too
much into the recent grand-jury appearances. One government official
familiar with the inquiry suggested that the grand jury was focusing
on the "periphery of the action" and working toward "ruling certain
people out and certain theories wrong." Reporters, meanwhile,
were "maligning people simply because they did not know anything and
had nothing to write." Questioning of more than one witness who has
appeared before the grand jury, said an attorney familiar with the
inquiry, was "truncated ... and over fairly quickly," adding
that "they gave every impression they were closing some doors."

Murray S. Waas is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. (Read more
at http://www.waasinfo.com. ) Research assistance for this article
was provided by Jeff Dubner.

Murray S. Waas

Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation:
Murray S. Waas, "Plugging Leaks More details emerge on the Plame
investigation, as Karl Rove's testimony is revealed for the first
time.," The American Prospect Online, March 8, 2004. This article may
not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any
kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct
questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

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• Plame Gate: Did Robert Novak willfully disregard warnings — Murray S. Waas, Wed Mar 10 02:06