Newsweek and Conyers on Rove

Newsweek has a new story today on Karl Rove and what he told Time Magazine's Matt Cooper...

July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA...

Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did-and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify...

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"-CIA Director George Tenet-or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.

A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa.

Fitzgerald is known as a tenacious, thorough prosecutor. He refused to comment, and it is not clear whether he is pursuing evidence that will result in indictments, or just tying up loose ends in a messy case. But the Cooper e-mail offers one new clue to the mystery of what Fitzgerald is probing-and provides a glimpse of what was unfolding at the highest levels as the administration defended a part of its case for going to war in Iraq.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Rep. John Conyers sums up what this all means...

Cast in its best light, the Bush Administration's Karl Rove defense boils down to this: Rove never revealed the NAME of an undercover CIA operative because he didn't know her name. He might not have even known she was an undercover CIA operative, and you can't prove it anyway. Actually, he was merely spreading false information about the operative in an effort to smear her husband.

Remember during the 2000 Presidential campaign when the Republican mantra was that President Bush was going to "restore honesty and dignity to the White House?" How's that going? When Vice-President Cheney accepted his party's nomination for Vice-President in 2000, he boldly declared: "They will offer more lectures, and legalisms, and carefully worded denials. We offer another way -- a better way -- and a stiff dose of truth." Is that what we are getting?...

In the 90's, there was a media uproar when literally accurate, but misleading, statements were made about a private sexual affair. Today, when such statements are made out a life and death matter -- the decision to go to war -- for a Nixonian purpose -- to smear truth-telling critics -- there is barely a peep from the press corps. In the days since Rove's role became public, the White House press corps has yet to pose a question to the White House press secretary about it. Not a word about the disgusting hypocrisy of an Administration that came to office promising to "change the tone" in Washington now attacking a critic through his spouse.

According to an earlier Newsweek report, Karl Rove was telling reporters that Wilson's wife was "fair game." Many reporters accepted this repulsive notion. One has to wonder whether their complicity in this smear then has rendered asking the important questions about it today "off-limits."

Back in the 90's, many were outraged about Clinton's literally accurate, but misleading dissemblings - "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is." Let's see how long it takes for Rove's evasions to evoke the same kind of outrage. Sounds like we're getting a stiff dose of something, but it's not truth.

And what the hell is "double super secret background"? Is that anything like double secret probation?

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