WASHINGTON, 5 July 2005 — As Americans celebrate their nation’s independence, persistent stories about Karl Rove, known as “Bush’s Brain,” are setting off their own political fireworks over the long holiday weekend.
In what is fast becoming the Administration’s worst scandal since taking office, Rove, President Bush’s closest political adviser, is at the center of a criminal investigation into allegations that he leaked the name of a CIA agent in an attempt to suppress criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy.
Under US law, it is a federal crime to reveal the identity of an undercover US intelligence official, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines.
Rove recently was identified by several respected sources as the mysterious “senior administration official” who leaked the identity of an intelligence agent to the world in a fit of political pique.
One is Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC’s senior political analyst and panelist on “The McLaughlin Group” talk show.
Michael Isikoff, writing in the July 11 edition of Newsweek magazine, cites two lawyers involved in the case as reporting that emails surrendered by Time magazine to a grand jury probing the leak of a CIA agent’s identity show Rove was one of the sources.
White House officials have deflected calls for an independent inquiry but allegedly have urged their staff to cooperate with a justice department investigation.
This week, FBI agents will question Washington journalists and administration officials about claims that Rove and others in the White House deliberately blew the cover of Valerie Plame, a CIA expert on weapons of mass destruction.
Rumors that Rove “ratted out” Plame in retaliation against her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, have been in and out of the news since the story first appeared in 2004, but Rove has repeatedly denied that he is involved.
Wilson, a former US ambassador who accused the White House of misleading the nation over claims of Iraq’s attempts to buy uranium in Africa, wrote in a New York Times commentary that he had been sent to Niger to check such claims in 2002 and found them to be baseless.
Wilson wrote: “Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”
In his 2003 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush stated that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa so it could make weapons of mass destruction.
Current focus on the “Downing Street Memo” is related to the larger question of whether government officials were basing their speeches on facts or on propaganda.
A few days after Wilson went public with his allegations, a conservative columnist, Robert Novak, wrote that he had been told by “two senior administration officials” that Wilson had been sent on the Niger mission at his wife’s suggestion.
Rove, meanwhile, has admitted he spoke with Time’s Matthew Cooper during a critical week in July 2003 when Cooper was reporting on Wilson.
Rove did not leak the name of the CIA operator Plame, Robert Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, said again Saturday night.
“Karl did nothing wrong. Karl didn’t disclose Valerie Plame’s identity to Mr. Cooper or anybody else,’’ Luskin told the Washington Post.
Time’s Matt Cooper, and the New York Times’ Judith Miller who investigated the story, but didn’t write about it at all, became part of the story themselves became when a special prosecutor was named to investigate the information leak.
The special prosecutor assigned to this investigation, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, issued subpoenas for notes and the names of Cooper and Miller’s anonymous sources. No subpoenas have been issued for Novak.
