The Plame-gate Escape Hatch
I’m not doubting the reliability of Murray Waas or his sources, but I’m shocked that anyone would actually believe this crap :
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors.During the same conversation in the White House two years ago-occurring just days after the Justice Department launched a criminal probe into the unmasking of Plame as a covert agency operative-Rove also assured the president that he had not leaked any information to the media in an effort to discredit Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson. Rove also did not tell the president about his July 2003 a phone call with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, a conversation that touched on the issue of Wilson and Plame.
I don’t doubt for a second that Murray Waas’ sources are correct about what the grand jury has been told, but let’s be serious here. What’s the more likely scenario? Karl Rove lying to the Patrick Fitgerald or George W. Bush?
Considering the connections the White House has at both the Justice Department and the CIA, they had to know that the shit was gonna hit the fan before the investigation officially started and that should have given them more than enough time to get their stories straight. After all, the first thing they teach you in “Criminal Conspiracies 101″ is that you should always protect the boss. It’s especially true in this case since “the boss” has the power to pardon anyone who ends up getting in trouble along with the plausible deniability of being “in a bubble” and “completely retarded”. Assuming the indictments, trials, and convictions happen at a reasonable pace, we can start expecting those pardons after the mid-terms. Trust me, this article is just evidence that the fix has been in since Day One.
And before you starting thinking I’m a conspiracy theorist or something, I’ve got two words for you : Iran-Contra.
7 comments
Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Exactly. I am glad someone else is getting out in front of the breathless orthodoxy that has been shifting the focus to the “little picture” of Rove, Libby, Miller, and Novak. This orthodoxy seems to be peddling various strands of minutiae while ignoring the big picture.
In these theories, Rove and Libby oil themselves in the State Department report, completely destroying their status as conduits with deniability that would allow a Miller story to proceed with an “unnamed source” as the name-giver. No way. Who creates a paper sh!t trail and then rolls in it?
And everyone’s backup theory is, “Well, Cheney/Bolton/Hadley/State Dept just told Rove and Libby straight up.” Riiight. Based on their knowledge obtained how? From the INR report? Why not just call the CIA director? Unless of course, you did, and he said he couldn’t/wouldn’t tell you right away, and so you started digging, and started getting fed info from the outside such that you and everyone around you became radioactive. Why not just put some more heat on your CIA director to get moving, or just wait until he tells you the answer?
I just can’t see why Bush, Rice, and Cheney, fully cognizant of the lessons of Watergate and Iran Contra, would follow or become caught up in such a ridiculous plan as is being spun on some blogs with “sources”. In my estimation, Cheney in particular (since he was the one who went to the CIA to clear his name, in response to the original NYT article tagging him as giving the order for Wilson’s trip) would do something far simpler at the outset. The fact that it later came back to bite the entire staff in the ass might be interesting, but it’s not where the big fish swims. Then again, Nixon only would have gone down for obstruction in Watergate, and maybe that’s what will happen to Cheney here and everyone will pat themselves on the back thinking “Oh, that’s all that really happened,” ignoring the logical consequence: It takes the main actor out of their primary role as director/approver/establisher of deniability. It’s like saying Nixon didn’t know about Watergate but tried to cover it up.
Comment by NHL — October 9, 2005 @ 1:35 pm
“Bush, Rice, and Cheney, fully cognizant”? This blog must origionate in a parallel universe.
Comment by kamachanda — October 9, 2005 @ 2:20 pm
Trust me, this article is just evidence that the fix has been in since Day One.
amen. seems like karl rove is the new oliver north.
and kamachanda, when it comes to protecting their own asses, the asshole brigade is fully competent
Comment by almostinfamous — October 9, 2005 @ 3:15 pm
I agree that the pardons will start flying out of the Oval Office, but I wonder if BushCo truly expected things to go this far. Did they really anticipate that someone might seriously investigate all of this, instead of Ashcroft just sweeping it under the rug along with all the other scandals?
Comment by Geoduck — October 9, 2005 @ 3:53 pm
Get the latest PlameGate articles, briefings, timelines, statutes and other essential documents in the Rove/PlameGate Scandal Center.
Comment by AvengingAngel — October 9, 2005 @ 9:50 pm
What possible reason could Rove have for telling Bush the truth on this subject? It’s just the kind of thing that would get Bush upset and not in a good way. Considering the way Rove stage manages Bush’s intake (as described in The Price of Loyalty) I can’t fathom he’d actually incriminate himself in front of Bush.
Comment by Aaron Swartz — October 9, 2005 @ 10:19 pm
I thought it was interesting that Atrios decided to post the original Sept 2003 Washington Post article this morning, which fingers the two staffers but insulates Bush and doesn’t even mention Cheney. It’s sad to see the “liberal” blogs buying into this…and maybe “buying in” is a more apt phrase than we know, since so much of the debate on the highly publicized blogs seems staged these days.
Anyhow, the whole WaPo article reads like a cover story, playing up the “revenge” story angle and downplaying Cheney’s link to the Niger memos as being hearsay from Wilson. The fix has been in from the start, as you say.
Comment by NHL — October 10, 2005 @ 10:27 am