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July 03, 2005

Cuffing Karl?

Yesterday's internet buzz about Karl Rove went largely unnoticed by me, mostly because I wasn't on the computer for the better part of the day. (Imagine that...a life!) When I finally did sit down to do my late afternoon blog surfing...Wow. The collective blogasm from the left was reaching it's zenith. I even called Kevin to make sure he had seen.

I would love for Rove to be the leaker (or one of them). I hope it's him, in fact. Few things would be more satisfying that watching that smug sonofabitch do a perp walk on national television.

One of the things Kev and I discussed was if Rove does turn out to be the leaker (or one of them), how does Bush extricate himself from Karl Rove? Can he at all? If Rove goes down..does the Republican Party in general tank as well, a la Watergate? How much of this did the President know about and did he approve it?

And what about that antiAmericans speech Rove gave last week? The White House released the full copy of the speech and then sent their hacks out to talk Rove up. Did they do this knowing that Rove was going to be named as a party to the Plame leak?

Over at Americablog, Joe in DC catches the White House spinners in a contradiction:

Granted, this was a leaked version of what Rove said, but this is the key line, I think:

Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column.

From Newsweek, we learn that might not be quite accurate:

But according to Luskin, Rove's lawyer, Rove spoke to Cooper three or four days before Novak's column appeared. So which was it? Before or after?

The "braintrust" at Captain's Quarters are looking for an out for Karl:

But let's play a little thoughtgame: suppose it turned out that Karl Rove was actually the person who outed Ms. Plame. Would Rove be "prosecuted," as a couple of people on the right and a few million people on the left insist? Well... not likely. The reason is the way the law itself is written.

The applicable section of the U.S. Code is "Section 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources." There are three classes of leaker covered by this law.

Section (c) refers to persons engaged in "a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents." Consider this the "Philip Agee" subsection, and it clearly does not apply to Rove.

Sections (a) and (b) differ slightly. The first applies to "whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent," while the second applies to "whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent."

I hate to rain on your parade dude...but if Rove is the leaker they're not going to get him on the leak itself. They're going to get him on the coverup. That's why this is so potentially damaging for the White House. This kind of coverup would involve multiple individuals at the upper tier of the Bush Administration.

Josh at Talking Points Memo has this interesting tidbit on the criminality angle for Rove:

What's implicit in Isikoff's report, however, and in the Tribune too, is that the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald is after Rove for some felony arising out of the case (perjury after the fact? conspiracy?) but not the immediate and original act of leaking the name.

My Rove perp walk fantasy might not be so far fetched.

Posted by Carla at July 3, 2005 08:32 AM