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Conflict of Interest? CIA Leak Despite Longtime Rove-Ashcrof
Thu Oct 2 02:46:21 2003
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Wednesday, October 1st, 2003
Conflict of Interest? White House Rejects Call for Independent Counsel On CIA Leak Despite Longtime Rove-Ashcroft Ties

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/01/1435242

President Bush’s closest aide Karl Rove was a consultant for John Ashcroft since 1985 in his gubernatorial and senatorial bids and pushed Bush to nominate Ashcroft as Attorney General. Rove has been accused of blowing the cover of a CIA operative to retaliate against her whistleblower husband. We speak to the author of Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush President. [Includes transcript] Click here to read to full transcript
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/01/1435242#transcript

The Justice Department announced yesterday that it has begun a full criminal investigation into allegations that Bush administration officials leaked the name of a CIA operative to the media.

The operative's identity was published in July, a week after her husband, former acting ambassador to Iraq Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger for possible use in nuclear weapons.

But the White House has rejected calls for an independent counsel even though Bush’s closest aide Karl Rove, who has been accused of having a role in the leak, once served as a consultant to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Rove had done campaign work for Ashcroft since 1985 in both his gubernatorial and senatorial bids in Missouri and lobbied hard for Ashcroft’s nomination as Attorney General after the Missouri Senator lost his seat to a dead man - the late Mel Carnahan.

After encountering strong opposition to his nomination, Rove and others reportedly told Bush that spilling some blood over Ashcroft was "a no-lose proposition."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) yesterday joined Democrat demands for a special prosecutor saying: “Given allegations about the involvement of senior White House officials and the past close association between the Attorney General and one of those officials, the investigation should be headed by a person independent of the administration. If there ever was a case for the appointment of a special counsel, this is it.”

Nearly three months after officials within the White House outted the operative, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered the preservation of any documents related to the case.

In particular, Gonzales cited any contacts with conservative columnist Robert Novak who first revealed that Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative. He also cited Timothy M. Phelps, Washington bureau chief for Newsday, and Knut Royce, a staff writer for the paper.

Newsday Editor Howard Schneider said last night his newspaper has had no contact with the White House or Justice Department about the memo. He said, however, that Newsday was probably singled out because the newspaper was the first to report that the CIA officer publicly revealed in Novak’s column worked at the CIA "in an undercover capacity."

* James Moore, co-author of the book Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush President. He has been writing and reporting on Karl Rove for over 20 years. His new book, scheduled to come out next spring, is Bush’s War for Re-Election.
Website: Bush's Brain.com
* Tape: President George W. Bush speaking on September 30, 2003.
* Tape: Attorney General John Ashcroft speaking on September 30, 2003.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: George Bush yesterday was raising money in the Midwest, but recorders were asking questions about the blowing of the cover of a C.I.A. operative.

[tape]

GEORGE W. BUSH: Let me just say something about leaks in Washington. There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch; there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.

And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. And so I welcome the investigation. I -- I'm absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job. There's a special division of career Justice Department officials who are tasked with doing this kind of work; they have done this kind of work before in Washington this year.

I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative. I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Bush yesterday.

The White House ordering its employees to preserve all records relevant to the probe, the justice department notified the White House Council’s office of the investigation Monday night and asked it to preserve its records, but allowed it to wait until yesterday morning before ordering White House staffers to do so. This according to White House spokesperson, Scott Mcclellan.

Newsday today, a piece says that 11hour lag drew fire from administration critics such as senator Charles Schumer of New York. Who said, “Any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence.” Schumer said the issue underscored the need to turn the probe over to an independent prosecutor.

We're joined now by James Moore, he is coauthor of Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

JAMES MOORE: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go for a minute to Attorney General John Ashcroft, yesterday. Attorney General John Ashcroft actually refuses to speak and sit down interviews to the print press but he had a quick statement yesterday where he referred to another issue and then talked about opening the probe into who blew the cover of the C.I.A. operative.

JOHN ASHCROFT: Yesterday the department of justice informed the White House Council's office of this investigation, hand requested that the White House preserve all documents that might be relevant to the investigation, to the extent not already done in the normal course of their activities.

A similar request has been made of the C.I.A. Such requests are standard procedures in investigations of this type.

Due to the fact that this is an ongoing investigation of alleged criminal violations, I will not be making any further comment regarding this matter at this time.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday saying no to an independent council so often called on during the Clinton years. James Moore, in your book Bush’s Brain you talk about what clearly represents a conflict of interest here, and that is the relationship between Karl Rove, one of the people who has been named by Joseph Wilson as a possible source of the information that outed Wilson's wife as a C.I.A. operative. The relationship between Karl Rove and John Ashcroft, it goes back years.

JAMES MOORE: It goes all the way back to the mid 1980's when John Ashcroft first ran for governor and then when he ran for the United States senate against Mel Carnahan.

Karl was so intimately involved; he was a general consultant and he chose, for instance, the media director of Mr. Ashcroft's campaign, the person who was to produce the television ads for the campaign, the messages in those ads.

So I think it's very difficult on its surface for John Ashcroft to be taken seriously as an investigator. You can make your charges of politics all you want, that a Republican cannot adequately investigate this. That’s not necessarily a grounds for refusal, but because this has happened before.

In this case, there is a close relationship between someone who is a high profile suspect and the individual who is leading the investigation of him. And it immediately goes to the question of credibility and validity of that particular investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: So Karl Rove works on campaigns for John Ashcroft, first for governor of Missouri then senator. You also talk about the long time relationship between Karl Rove and Robert Novak also the center of this firestorm.

JAMES MOORE: This relationship has existed for some time; and it's not surprising that another Bush, George H. W. Bush had Karl fired for this relationship.

Karl was a lead consultant in the Bush/Quayle 1992 campaign in Texas, and at that time, a story was reported by Robert Novak that the Texas campaign was in disarray for Bush/Quayle.

This story we all believe, and obviously, the President George H.W. Bush believed was the result of Karl who had gone head to head with Robert Moss Bacher jr. of Houston, who was in charge of the campaign in Texas, and Rove decided to leak a story to Robert Novak that the campaign was in disarray. The article appeared in Novak’s column and George H.W. bush decided it was clearly Rove and his relationship with Mr. Novak, and Rove was fired at that time.

There are other anecdotal pieces of information related to this. For instance during the presidential campaign, when reporters started to step up the questions about the National Guard, I recall standing on the tarmac outside of the campaign plane when Rove told a number of us reporters gathered around that, when we were asking questions about where did Mr. Bush go during his assignment in Alabama his commander said he never showed up for duty, Rove told us all we were making too much of the “few missed meetings at the guard”.

It wasn't 48 hours later you could turn on the television hear Robert Novak talking about reporters making too much of a few missed meetings. It was almost the exact same language that Rove had used.

This relationship is known to virtually everyone in the Washington political press Corps. It's not a surprise that if in fact six reporters got this phone call to write this story and they all turned it down because they were uncomfortable with it, it is not a surprise to anyone in the Washington press corps that the only person who wrote the story was Robert Novak.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's step back for a minute. Actually yesterday, when we were calling bookstores to get your book, it was a little odd calling up and saying, do you have Bush’s Brain But you are the author of Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, can you talk about who Karl Rove is?

JAMES MOORE: Certainly. I think that's an important question to ask right now when he is being accused of this. You have to look at pattern of behavior. One thing that's being overlooked in all of this is Karl's Achilles’ tendon; as a political operative, the only thing that I have ever seen as his weakness is his unbridled, uncontrolled temper.

When you cross this man in the political arena, he gets even; and he gets even in a way that he doesn't just defeat you, he is compelled to destroy you.

This has happened on any number of occasions throughout his political career with his former partner, and it has happened with a number of people who have stood in his way.

He doesn't know how to do a measured response when he is angry, and so he leaks information about people that destroys them. Whether it is a scurrilous rumor or whether it is something that is marginally based on fact. He goes after people for this reason.

Those of us who have watched Karl's character and his absolute desire, not just to control everything, but to defeat his opponents are not surprised by these allegations.

I will also say that he is a man who is completely obsessed with control, down to the most minute level. His level of minutia for a campaign manager or a political operative is so detailed that it's astonishing. He can look at the big picture and do the smaller stuff.

Everyone within the White House, within the Republican Party, and every reporter in the Washington press corps knows that no leak ever comes out of the White House without Karl's approval.

It is impossible for any of us to believe that this happened without Karl knowing about it. Furthermore, it's impossible for us to believe that Karl sent a low level intermediary or someone else to carry his water on this. This is the kind of thing that Karl would have done on his own to make sure that it had credibility and weight.

If Mr. Novak didn't get this directly from Karl, I'm almost Mr. Novak picked up the phone and called Karl to get it corroborated; you do not get to quote senior administration officials by getting the message from some intermediary at the R.N.C. or from a White House staffer.

These are firsthand conversations that occurred between Mr. Rove and, in my estimation, the other suspect involved in the phone campaign, probably scooter Libby of the Vice President’s office.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to James Moore, he is an Emmy Award winning TV news correspondent with more than a quarter of a century in print and broadcast.

He is coauthor of the book, with Wayne Slater, Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove made George W. Bush Presidential. We'll come back with him and look at the history of Rove with George Bush back before Bush became even governor of Texas.

After that, we'll be speaking with Nat Hentoff about the U.S.A. Patriot Act, about librarians, about the history of the war on the bill of rights and the gathering resistance. Stay with us.

[¶MUSIC BREAK¶]

AMY GOODMAN: I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with James Moore, author of Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove made George W. Bush Presidential..

Actually, I want to go back further, before George Bush became governor. Let’s go back to the beginning of Karl Rove's political career.

JAMES MOORE: Karl Rove began his political career as he traveled around the country trying to become the head of the College Republicans. Even that turned controversial where there was a fight over who won a shouting match at the convention. He and Lee Atwater were trying to get Karl elected, and the votes were not properly counted. It almost foreshadowed what happened in Florida, for crying out loud. Then, ultimately, there was an allegation by Rove that his opponent went to the media complaining about the election and the party, et cetera.

George H.W. Bush, who was the head of the R.N.C. at that time, wrote Karl’s opponent to say how dare you talk to the media even though he had no proof that this gentleman had done it.

What he did know that was that Karl had tipped him to it, it appeared in the Washington Post and the president, who later became the President, but at that time was R.N.C. head said that the greatest sin here was not so much that Karl stole the election, but that someone would talk to the media about it and go outside the R.N.C. family. He chose Karl to come in and run the College Republicans. That began his relationship with George H.W. Bush. At that time, George W. Bush was coming down from Harvard on weekends to see his dad and hang out in Washington and Karl met him at that time.

Karl was sort of a geeky, dweeby fellow and here comes the blue-eyed gum snapping W., wearing a leather bomber jacket, and having wavy hair and looking good and Karl admired him. He said so to us.

Ultimately he went down, Karl went down when Mr. Bush moved back to Texas to run for congress, Karl came to Texas not too long afterwards. He helped Mr. Bush in the fund for limited government, which later became his presidential campaign. He set up a political consulting here in Texas began fundraising and consulting gubernatorial campaigns and statewide campaigns.

He branched out to other states, U.S. senate and gubernatorial campaigns; Ashcroft is an example of one. Ultimately, he became so effective that he took Texas, which had been a democratically dominated state for decades, and just removed every single elected Democrat from the landscape of this state. To this day the legacy of Karl is we do not have democratic statewide office holder here in Texas today.

One of his former clients is a U.S. senator, K. Billy Hutchison, and Rick Perr

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