Reflections on the "New American" Revolution
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Karl Rove was deliberately outing Ms Plame
Mr Rove has denied being the original leaker of Ms Plame's name to the columnist Robert Novak. That was "literally" true, said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "but he appears to have done the next best thing.
"The exposure of Ms Plame, in effect ending her career at the CIA, was believed to be political payback for the criticisms her husband, the former US diplomat Joseph Wilson, made of the White House's Iraq policy. In an email to a Time journalist in 2003, Mr Rove spoke of "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD". "Learning the name of a former ambassador's wife would be easy as falling off a log," said the Journal Sentinel.
"Whether or not he used her name, Mr Rove was deliberately outing Ms Plame," said Robert Kuttner in the Boston Globe. "If he played the same word games before the grand jury, he's in trouble."
Mr Rove may not have acted illegally, said the Houston Chronicle's Cragg Hines, but in "guiding a reporter to her ... [he] violated the spirit that supposedly governs the current administration".
The White House had revealed Ms Plame's identity for political reasons, said the New York Times. By promising to sack the official who did so, and by asserting it was not Mr Rove, it had "painted itself into a corner".
When Mr Bush said he would take "appropriate action", he did not mean "promoting the culprit to deputy chief of staff, Mr Rove's title", said the Washington Post's Harold Meyerson: "Or did he? There's no basis to conclude that if Mr Rove was the guy who outed Ms Plame, he told his boss about it. But Mr Rove was, and has always been, Mr Bush's one indispensable aide precisely, though not only, because he would do whatever it took to advance his boss's interests."
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