Top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby apparently testified to a special prosecutor that they each learned of CIA Operative Valerie Plame's name from reporters — which apparently contradicts infromation provided by the reporters.
Bloomberg Business News, relying on sources familiar with the testimony, reported today that Libby, who is Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned Plame's identity from NBC News reporter Tim Russert.
But Russert apparently has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s identity.
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Meanwhile, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove apparently told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson, has apparently said the opposite. In 2003, Novak said: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."
There are also contradictions between accounts given by Rove and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. The White House aide mentioned Wilson’s wife — though not by name — in a July 11, 2003, conversation with Cooper, the reporter has said. Rove apparently testified that Cooper called him to talk about welfare reform and the Wilson connection was mentioned later, in passing.
Cooper wrote in Time magazine last week that he told the grand jury he never discussed welfare reform with Rove in that call.
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The "he said/he said" has to be sorted out by Fitzgerald, part of a broader effort to determine whether Libby, Rove or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation.
The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a covert intelligence agent.
The CIA requested the inquiry after Novak reported in a July 14, 2003, column that Plame recommended her husband for a 2002 mission to check into reports Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. Wilson, in a July 6, 2003, article in the New York Times, had said President Bush’s administration “twisted” some of the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons to justify the war.
Fitzgerald’s term of service lasts until October, which is also the length of time remaining for the grand jury hearing evidence in the case.
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This article first appeared at Journalists Against Bush's B.S.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Temple Stark
>>Meanwhile, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove apparently told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson, has apparently said the opposite. In 2003, Novak said: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."
Now, this isn't necessarily a contradiction. I speculate, however, that it's a pile of steaming you know what
2 - billy
damn, what new talking point are they going to dream up to get around this?
either rove and libby perjured themselves as well as leaked, or novak and cooper are both lying. given the motives of rove and libby, id bet on perjury AND leaking.
3 - Dave Nalle
You might want to consider that Novak and Cooper are also capable of having motives. The most notable being covering their asses.
Dave
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
Has anyone learned anything new about this for about 2 weeks?
Yet we keep hearing about it.
5 - Dave Nalle
It's all the left has to hammer on to keep their hopes alive.
Dave
6 - Deeno
Matthew,
You may wish it would go away, but yes, we have learned interesting stuff lately. Like that the widely circulated memo from the State Department about Wilson and his wife's occupation had "Secret" stamped all over it and that Rove and Libby were specifically tasked to deal with the Wilson media blitz exposing the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence leading up to the war. Anyone who thinks that both Rove and Libby didn't see that memo are real dupes. And anyone who has the slightest sense of history and doesn't realize that Bush was covering up for Rove over the last two years has their head where the sun don't shine.
This story is fascinating because of it's sense of historic inevitability. Bush is hosed.
7 - Mark Saleski
no true...we also get to enjoy the surreal circus of those on the left spinning like mad.
it's pretty funny.
8 - Deeno
Mark,
So what's to spin on the left? We know for sure that Rove treasonously leaked Plame's identity as a CIA operative to reporters as part of his normal MO of political sleaze. The spin is the Republican party trying to portray this act and the myriad lies by the Bush administration to cover their asses as some sort of public service to "correct" the media. That is the real joke.
9 - Matthew T. Sussman
Yes Deeno, I want it to go away, but I want it to come back when something new and relevant is reported.
Or speculate away. Lord knows we haven't seen enough of that from everyone.
10 - bhw
no true...we also get to enjoy the surreal circus of those on the left spinning like mad.
Did you mean "those on the right"?
11 - Mark Saleski
yikes bhw, i clearly put my brain in backwards this morning.
12 - Dave Nalle
>>So what's to spin on the left? We know for sure that Rove treasonously leaked Plame's identity as a CIA operative to reporters as part of his normal MO of political sleaze.<<
Yes, that's pretty much the spin on the left, to keep saying again and again that we 'know' this and that 'Rove is a traitor' in the hopes that people will start believing them, when in fact the evidence doesn't support those conclusions and the investigation isn't finished. What we DO know right now is that Rove is no longer the target of the investigation. Spin on that for a bit, spinmeister.
Dave
13 - Deeno
Matthew,
I guess that you could say that my assertion that Bush was involved in a cover-up is technically a speculation. But we know for sure that an executive order requiring federal agencies, including the executive branch, that becomes aware of a security breach is required to conduct an investigation, which has not happened and that failure is a breach of law. Then we have the real joke of Bush claiming that "I want to know the facts", yet he seems to have never simply asked Karl if he was involved, even when he was the most obvious "senior White House official" to have been the source of the leak reported by Robert Novak.
Be assured it ain't going away and the conclusion is inevitable: Bush is hosed and exposed.
14 - Dave Nalle
Deeno, where do you get your delusions from? Is it a chemical imbalance?
Dave
15 - Deeno
Dave,
What Rove's lawyer says about who the target of the investigation is isn't exactly a fact, now is it? The target of the investigation is whoever the prosecutor says it is, and he hasn't said and he can change his mind any time he wants. We absolutely do know that Rove leaked to Matt Cooper and I don't need the investigation to conclude to know it was a treasonous act for sleazy political purposes.
16 - Deeno
And Dave, do you want to try a coherent argument or just revert to Jr. High?
17 - David R. Mark
I'm not spinning anything. I'm just passing along a news story.
This is what happens when things get leaked, in dribs and drabs, from what is supposed to be sealed testimony.
You'll note that I draw no conclusion in this article -- I don't say Rove and Libby are lying, just contradicting the reporters alleged testimony.
18 - David R. Mark
The question I guess I have is, why are the conseratives being so defensive?
19 - Deeno
David Mark,
I didn't hear anyone suggest you were spinning. As for me, I'm pretty damn sure Rove and Libby are lying and I'm pretty sure the prosecutor has a reasonable case for a crime. The dribs and drabs will become a flood once the principles in the case face criminal indictments and ten years in the slammer. What did the late Karen Carpenter sing? "We've only just begun..."
20 - Deeno
"...why are the conseratives being so defensive?"
Oh, you know. They love to see themselves as the only true patriots, and for their heros to be caught dead selling out their country for a political hatchet job has to be disturbing.
21 - Matthew T. Sussman
This whole thread = exactly what I'm talking about. Dueling theories. No new info.
Keep yapping, I'll see you all when I hear a real update.
22 - Deeno
Matthew,
So why isn't the new information about the secret memo and the conflicts in testimony "new" to you?
I guess we'll hear back from you when you come up with a justification of treason for the sake of political dirty tricks. Waiting...
23 - Deeno
Isn't it funny how the Rove appologists make excuses to disappear or revert to juvenile insults when they realize they got their asses kicked in a real debate?
24 - todd
Partisanship turns everybody into acrobats.
Its just more fun seeing it happen to the Right, especially after all the crazy things they said about Clinton.
25 - MCH
Deeno and David Mark;
Dave Nalle's shallow defense of Karl Rove is based solely on that old Republican axiom, "Thou shalt not speak ill of another Chickenhawk."