July 13, 2005
Rove Roundup
Buildling on my last post, several Rove/Plame Scandal twists have hit today.
- On TPMCafe, Larry Johnson, a former covert CIA officer, explains exactly what burning Plame means. If you didn't believe me when I said it's a serious, serious matter, believe him.
- The spin machine is finally whirling up its turbines in response to the strong media coverage. Rove's lawyer responds in the National Review Online that Matt was the one who called Karl, and anyway Karl just wanted to stop him from publishing Wilson's claims, not burn a CIA operation. Of course, who called who is rather immaterial, and I refer you again to my previous post as to why the second contention is more an admission of guilt in lying to the public than a defense for outing Plame. (via Laura Rosen)
- One of the primary Republican responses to Rove's current plight is to again bring out the attacks on Joe Wilson that prompted the whole thing in the first place. It's completely irrelevant to the core issue - the burning of a covert operative for political gain - but Josh Marshall bothers to do some take down here. (In fact, Talking Points Memo is once again the goto source for information on all this.)
- Definitely check out this blogpost at "Whatever Already!". Apparently, Novak has been debriefed. [shudder] (via Talking Points Memo, which has some important commentary on the post as well)
The National Review Online link quotes Luskin saying that Matt Cooper was misrepresenting what went on between him and Karl, that:
"By any definition, he burned Karl Rove," Luskin said of Cooper. "If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame."
That would be really terrible of Matt, if it wasn't a completely accurate description of what was going on:
As longtime fans will remember, the story that first gave Plamegate real legs appeared in the Washington Post about two months after the original Robert Novak column that mentioned Plame and the David Corn column that called attention to it. Here's what it said: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.Got that? Two White House officials. Phone calls to at least six reporters. This wasn't just a single offhand comment at the end of a phone call with Matt Cooper about welfare reform. It was Karl Rove and someone else systematically making sure they mentioned Plame to every reporter they talked to.
(Via Kevin Drum of Political Animal) And once again, the fact that Matt Cooper called Rove ostensibly about welfare reform has absolutely zero relevance to any of this. If Rove didn't want to talk about Valerie Plame, he knows how to say No Comment with the best of them.
Posted by ben at July 13, 2005 01:38 PM