Spinning the Spin

By now, you've probably noticed the media swarm over Karl Rove and his involvement in the CIA leak case, and you've probably noticed the Republican response to said media swarm. From the White House, nothing. They're stonewalling, waiting for this story to go away, and given the ADHD-challenged news media, it probably will unless there are some new developments soon. After all, there's still a pretty, blond woman missing in Aruba, and Tom Cruise is still having his midlife crisis and there are serial killers, child molesters and shark attacks to cover. Meanwhile, an army of operatives and surrogates are out there on every news show trying their best to chip away at the story. It's been humorous, exasperating, and even infuriating at times to see the lengths they'll go to to take the heat off the man the president affectionately calls "Turd Blossom." It's been quite the spectacle.

The talking points go something like this: Karl Rove didn't do anything wrong. He didn't mention her name. He just said Joe Wilson's wife; he might have been talking about some other Mrs. Wilson. She wasn't covert. Karl was just trying to keep poor Matt Cooper from getting the story wrong. Joseph Wilson's story was wrong. Joseph Wilson voted for John Kerry so he's a Democratic stooge. His wife did send him on the trip so she's fair game. Etc., etc., etc. They've got a big list of talking points and they're hitting them all. Hell, Karl Rove probably typed the list of talking points up and sent the surrogate army out himself.

The funniest surrogate (actually a surrogate disguised as a reporter) is Faux News's John Gibson, who's "My Story" went something like this: Karl Rove didn't do anything wrong. He didn't leak her name, but if he did, he deserves a medal because she should have been outed by somebody. But he doesn't deserve a medal because he didn't leak her name.

The most infuriating surrogate (there were more than a few candidates) is RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. On Tuesday, on Wolf Blitzer's show on CNN, Mehlman hit ALL the talking points. If this man were paid by the lie, he'd never have to work again. This was the first question and answer...

BLITZER: Now you were the political director at the White House. You worked very closely with Karl Rove at the time of this leak. What did you know about Karl Rove's conversations with Matt Cooper of "TIME" magazine?

MEHLMAN: This wasn't something that Karl and I discussed. What I've always known about Karl -- I've known Karl for a number of years is, first of all, he's a friend. He's a good public servant. He's somebody that has the highest ethical standards, and he's somebody that very clearly, as you pointed out, has stated that he was not the leaker. And I believe that he is -- I know he is fully cooperating with this investigation. What's so unfortunate, Wolf, and what we're seeing is unprecedented, is the fact that people like John Kerry, someone who ran for president, Hillary Clinton, former first lady, Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democrat Party, would follow the angry left and MoveOn.org.

A few things about this brief exchange: First, notice that poor, poor Karl didn't do anything wrong. He's just the victim of an ugly political smear campaign, a victim of Kerry, Clinton, Dean, the angry left, and MoveOn.org. Second, Karl has already been outed as one of the leakers. Third, describing Karl Rove as "a good public servant" and someone with "the highest ethical standards" is such a blatant lie I'm surprised Mehlman's pants didn't spontaneously burst into flames. Rove, a protege of Watergate conspirator Donald Segretti and the man who introduced George H. W. Bush to Lee Atwater (you old timers remember them, don't you?), got his start in politics at the tender age of nineteen when he showed up at the campaign headquarters of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon, stole a letterhead, printed up a bunch of flyers promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing," and distributed them at rock concerts and homeless shelters. Much later, he admitted to this prank and justified it by saying, "I was nineteen and I got involved in a political prank, but I'm not sorry. The ends justify the means, and I mean for Republicans to push Democrats off the face of the earth." Whenever there has been any sort of dirty trick involving the Bush family, Karl Rove has always been the prime suspect, but he's always managed to escape prosecution and the ass kicking he so richly deserves. Here's just a few of the dirty tricks he's allegedly been involved in in his illustrious career as "a good public servant"...

In 1986, during the Texas gubernatorial campaign, Rove claimed that Democrats bugged his office phone. It was later alleged that Rove bugged his own phone for the resulting media coverage. An investigation failed to uncover exactly how Rove's phone got bugged. No charges were ever filed.

In 1992, George H. W. Bush fired Karl Rove from his campaign staff for...are you sitting down?...leaking information to Robert Novak.

In 2000, after George W. Bush lost the New Hampshire primary to John McCain and was trailing badly in South Carolina, a push poll and whisper campaign mysteriously started that implied that McCain was the father of an illegitimate black child. Bush went on to win the South Carolina primary, the Republican nomination, and the presidency.

The presidency in 2000 all hinged on Florida. Rove worked hard to make sure Florida's electoral votes went into Bush's column. His best trick here was bussing in Republican operatives from Washington D.C. They played the part of an angry mob, storming election offices and intimidating officials who were trying to conduct the recount.

Anyway, back to Mehlman and Blitzer...Like I said, he hit ALL the talking points and even came up with some new ones...

Looking at those e-mails, what I saw is Karl Rove discouraging Matthew Cooper from writing a story that was, in fact, false. Karl was right; Joe Wilson was wrong. The story was false. It was based on a false premise, and, of course, the conclusion was false...What Joe Wilson alleged was that the vice president, then he said the CIA director sent him to Niger. He then alleged that he wrote a report which positively proved that, in fact, that wasn't occurring and that the vice president sat on the report...both the Senate Intelligence Committee and others who have studied it have found that, in fact, his report was largely irrelevant to that finding...I don't recall those meetings occurring. What I recall was, at the time, discussing the important issues that we were facing, which is exactly what Karl Rove is doing now. You heard in your earlier report from Suzanne Malveaux, what Karl Rove was doing '03 is what he's doing in 2005, and that is he's working for an energy policy, working to make sure that we have judges confirmed with unprecedented consultation. He was today, I know -- he and I talked about working to make sure we passed CAFTA in the House next week. The fact is, this is someone who serves our president, serves our country incredibly well. It's incredibly unfortunate that there are other people out there, while he fully cooperates with the investigation, that try to smear him and thereby smear the investigation...I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this investigation. What I'm here to talk about is, unfortunately, a political smear that's occurred, and the political smear is people, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean and others...And as I said, I'm not commenting on who I may or may not have talked to as part of this investigation. The issue here, Wolf, is that there is full compliance. There is full cooperation by Karl Rove and by the White House. And on the other side, you're seeing an unprecedented part of the smear campaign...The fact is, Karl Rove did not leak classified information. He did not, according to what we learned this past weekend, reveal the name of anybody. He didn't even know the name, so he couldn't have revealed it...He tried to discourage a reporter from writing a story that was false. He said it would be false. He said, "You shouldn't write it." And the reporter wrote it anyway, even though it turned out to be false. I think what Karl Rove was saying was right; what Joe Wilson was saying was wrong...Let me say, Wolf, I think what -- according to what we've learned from this past weekend, I think what Karl Rove said turned out to be right. In fact, Joe Wilson's story was not accurate. It was based on a false premise, and he tried to discourage the writing of an inaccurate story based on that false premise. Unlike Senator Biden, unlike Mrs. Clinton, unlike Chairman Dean, unlike Harry Reid, I'm not going to go out, and I'm not going to prejudge what is an investigation, which is being fully cooperated with by Karl Rove when I was at the White House, at the same time they work on the people's business. I frankly think that it's unfortunate that all of these Democrat leaders aren't talking about saving Social Security, aren't talking about how we're going to have an energy plan. Instead, they're engaged in a partisan smear campaign...I'm not going to speak for the White House. I'm the RNC chairman, not the White House spokesman...As I said, we've been in contact, Wolf. What we've been talking about is how do we move CAFTA, how do we move the energy deal..We're focused on these other questions. I -- working as RNC chairman, I work with them to try to develop strategy to accomplish these things on the Hill. That's what I've been focused on talking with them about today...My conversations today have been focused on CAFTA, on judges. What you saw this morning, this unprecedented effort by the White House to meet with the more than -- and discuss with more than 50 percent of the Democrats and more than half the Republicans who they should name to replace O'Connor with. That's what they're focused on. They're not for one minute diverted in their attention and their energy of solving the American people's problems...I think, unlike folks that are trying to smear Karl Rove, I'm not going to comment on a pending investigation. I don't think it's appropriate that I do...I'm not going to second-guess the White House on an important question like this. I was political director. I wasn't legal counsel. I didn't have the facts before me. I certainly didn't work in the Department of Justice. And I don't think it's appropriate for me -- and that's what's so outrageous, Wolf, about what you're hearing from them. What you heard about Senator Biden and Mrs. Clinton, Senator Clinton and you heard from John Kerry was folks who are totally prejudging the situation and politically smearing someone...Well, look, at the White House, politics isn't the only important thing to them. There's something more important. It's called justice being done. And what you're seeing from Scott McClellan and then from others at the White House, and what you're seen from Karl Rove for more than a year is total cooperation with this investigation. And obviously, Scott believes, given the investigation, given the sensitivity, given the fact that the Department of the Justice reports to the White House, for him to comment on the record, for him to respond to these questions is wrong.I give him tremendous credit. It's a tremendous statement of what's really important to this president and to this administration, which is justice being done. And it's a tremendous statement, and it was really important to these Democrat leaders, the kind of political smears you're seeing. It's very unfortunate. And it's a real contrast between the two sides.

Here's my favorite part of the whole Mehlman/Blitzer exchange...

BLITZER: Well, what if the shoe were on the other foot. What if the president in this particular case were Bill Clinton and the Republicans were in the opposite. Wouldn't you be doing exactly what the Democrats are now doing?

MEHLMAN: I don't think we would. I don't think you'd have people prejudging an investigation. I don't think you'd have people sending e-mails out to the angry left to try to raise money alleging that somebody is a criminal or that someone ought to lose their job. It's entirely inappropriate. It's entirely unprecedented. It's a political smear campaign, and it's wrong. And it ought to stop.

And if you believe that, you obviously weren't following politics in the 90s.

This whole imbroglio started when Bush uttered the sixteen famous words in the State of the Union that suggested that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium in the form of yellowcake in Niger. Joe Wilson, who had been to Africa and determined that the claim was false, was flabbergasted that Bush would bring it up again and wrote a scathing New York Times editorial debunking the claim. This was the period in which, according to the Downing Street Memo, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." This was all a part of the Bush administration's rush to war in Iraq. Joe Wilson was ultimately right. There was no uranium from Niger, there was no Iraqi nuclear program, there were no WMDs. Rove and the other "senior administration figures" were not just trying to be helpful and steer those poor, misguided reporters away from a bogus story. This was a dirty trick that was right up Karl Rove's alley. They were trying to discredit and cause harm to someone who had dared to question some of their "fixed" "intelligence and facts." In September of 2003, the Washington Post talked to, yes, another senior administration figure...

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. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility. They alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, "The real issue is Wilson and his wife."

A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson's wife as "fair game."

The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said there was no indication that Bush knew about the calls.

It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

This political firestorm will probably die down in another couple of days unless we get some new developments, but don't look for the story to completely go away anytime soon. First, we'll have to wait and see what the special prosecutor is going to do. That might not take long. The word is that Fitzpatrick's last witnesses were going to be Matt Cooper and Judy Miller. Cooper has now testified. Fitzpatrick may drag this out a while to see if Miller can be coerced into testifying or he may just go ahead and bring the investigation to a close. That's when the real fun begins. Will there be indictments and trials? Will there be a real political firestorm? Will we see Rove do the frog march? Do we dare dream? Do we dare dream bigger dreams? That Fitzpatrick will uncover a conspiracy and take down a goodly portion of the Bush administration? Stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you'd like to weigh in with your two cents, several sites have "Fire Karl Rove" petitions, including JohnKerry.com, WorkingforChange, and, yes, MoveOn Pac.

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