I’m not a huge fan of scandals, and I haven’t followed the Plame spy scandal very closely. Still, anyone who reads blogs has known for at least a week that Karl Rove, Bush’s closest advisor, leaked the name of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, as part of a political vendetta against her husband, Joseph Wilson. Bush has presumably known this for many months, the media similarly have known for a long time, and so on. This is a serious offence, at a minimum requiring Rove’s resignation. Yet the average American, reliant on the mass media knows nothing about it, and, as noted at Obsidian Wings there seems to have been no interest in finding out about it.
The NYT has finally woken up to the story, but what took them so long?
If I thought this meant that US journalists were going to give up covering scandal and focus on serious issues, I’d be cheering them on, but there’s no indication of this. Instead, as with the Downing Street memos, the Washington press seems to have been cowed into silence by the Bush machine.
John Quiggin 
John – if you take a look at the transcript of today’s White House press briefing, I think you’ll find that the Washington press has woken up, to put it mildly …
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/07/20050711-3.html
Surely what too the press to catch on to this was the very real uncertainty in who it in fact was. Presumably this was a well guarded secret. It could possibly have been someone fairly junior. When it was not known that it was Rove it was potentially a small, but unpleasant detail.
On the other hand the US press certainly failed to investigate the alleged WMD issues in Iraq.
But has the US press ever investigated or campaigned against the incitement toward war from Washington? The only mistake is to think that things have changed much since Hearst said “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Tompkin Gulf anyone? How much was put against the US entering WWI, after all, a president who was elected to oppose the war then went into it? How much was known about the possibilities and possible intelligence about an attack on Pearl Harbour? I really don’t know if the US press has ever looked at these things.
If you want understanding you read widely and read books and take the press with more than just a grain of salt. It hasn’t changed and it looks unlikely to ever change.
But hey, it’s a happy day when the prince of darkness is in very, very serious trouble. Perhaps Bush has something to learn from his mate across the pond, there is quite a resemblance here to Peter Mandelson.
Tonkin Gulf actually.
But to be fair to the US press, they did ask the hard questions about issues vital to the health of the body politic when it matter, such as Nixon’s attempt to subvert the constitution, whether it was a cuban cigar that Clinton got someone else to, um, inhale and…
Oh fuck it sien, yer right. I’m off to watch Phantom of the Paradise on DVD.
That has to be one of the funniest press conferences of all times. Thanks for link Mork. Having been sprung, Rove , will be laughing, too.
A promotion for him, in the wind , for sure.
Umm. You may have fallen for a highly speculative meme on this one.
One side: http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200507121626.asp
“The lawyer for top White House adviser Karl Rove says that Time reporter Matthew Cooper “burned” Rove after a conversation between the two men concerning former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s fact-finding mission to Niger and the role Wilson’s wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, played in arranging that trip. Nevertheless, attorney Robert Luskin says Rove long ago gave his permission for all reporters, including Cooper, to tell prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about their conversations with Rove.”
The other:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/politics/12rove.html&OQ=pagewantedQ3D1&OP=143dd841Q2FVQ25Q26DVK!gQ7Bh!!AZVZQ3BQ3BQ3EVQ3BQ5EV(ZVT!dFAFgQ7BV(Zh!xQ26Q3AnAQ5Dd
Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush’s senior adviser, deputy chief of staff and political strategist, was plunged back into the center of the matter on Sunday, when Newsweek reported that an e-mail message written by a Time magazine reporter had recounted a conversation with Mr. Rove in July 2003 in which Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. operative at the heart of the case WITHOUT NAMING HER. (emphasis added)
Now, if even the NYT is saying this, then I suspect the meme you have mentioned as if it is unvarnished fact is probably not factual at all.
MarkL
canberra
MarkL, this seems to me to be classic hairsplitting. Rove clearly fingered Plame. The question of whether he named her seems totally irrelevant to me, since “Joseph’s Wilson’s wife” is a unique identifier.
The fact that “even the NYT” is running soft merely confirms my original view (and of course Judy Miller is still covering for Rove on the basis of a misguided principle of protecting leakers).
You can read the relevant report here
If he does not get a promotion because he gets sacked then I am sure that a few suitable board posts will become available after any spell he may serve in an institution.
I appreciate that you haven’t been across this issue until recently, John. After all, there are far too many scandals within the Bush administration for any one person to keep up. This has been a live issue, however, for a couple of years now – ever since Robert Novak’s original piece named Valerie Plame as an undercover agent – and fingers have been pointed at Rove throughout all of that time. Regardless of who it was assumed to be, however, it was clear beyond doubt that the source of this leak – a criminal offence – was very close to the heart of the White House. Throughout all of this time, the mainstream media in the US has shown very little appetite for canvassing what is a major scandal by any definition. Very clear echoes here of the abject failure of the Murdoch media in Australia to even pretend to hold the Howard government accountable for any part of its manifest mendaciousness.
Why doesn’t gWb just follow jWh’s lead and ship the guilty party off to Indonesia as ambassador?
From JQ’s link above: “Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame’s name or knew she was a covert operative.”
Rove might have acted improperly, even illegally, but the evidence has yet to be produced. JQ jumped the gun on this one.
When I first saw the headline on Yahoo – “Bush Refuses To Undermine Rove”, I actually thought ‘Those Gold Logies do have value after all’.
Quick follow-up on this issue. Robert Parry has posted an interesting piece on this at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/071105.html. He raises what, in hindsight, is a fairly obvious question – how did a political operative like Rove get access to highly classified information such as the identity of a covert CIA agent? We can only imagine the righteous indignation the Republicans, and many in the mainstream media, would have been able to muster if this had occurred under a Democrat administration.
JF Beck, the evidence for impropriety is clear, and Bush’s now inoperative statements promised the sack for anyone found to have engaged in leaking, regardless of whether a criminal offence was proved.
As I said before, the question of whether the CIA agent was named as “Ms Valerie Plame” or “Joseph Wilson’s wife” is hairsplitting.
JQ, your wishful thinking doesn’t make it so. If Rove didn’t break the law, what did he do that was improper?
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Can the above two commenters really be so completely stupid, or are they just pretending?
It remains to be seen whether he broke the law or not.
Rove’s defence seems to be that he didn’t know she was an undercover agent. But don’t you think that a senior government official should have kept his mouth shut if he knew she was at the CIA but didn’t know what her role was?
So if it was Rove, and if the evidence can be produced, does that mean Rove can be charged with treason?
That would be funny. Mr “The World Has Changed since 9/11(TM)” in a situation as old as civilisation – the treasonous Wazir.
“…what did he do that was improper?”
Well, perhaps, as his country prepared to go to war allegedly over concern about the proliferation of WMD, he identifed a successful and long term covert agent of his own nation to its foreign enemies (and everyone else who can read), whose task was to… control the proliferation of WMD.
Still, not as ‘treasonous’ as holding liberal views in a liberal democracy, eh?
Fafblog has tracked down the goods on this subject.
J F Beck, David Corn at The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=5857) points out the legal position is that anyone who gives out information that identifies a covert agent is guilty of the offence. Focusing on whether or not Rove said Valerie Plame’s actual name is a red herring of Howardesque proportions. Since Wilson has only one wife, he identified her. He’s guilty. Out here in the reality-based community, it’s as plain as the nose on W’s face. Since Rove’s involvement has been publicly admitted, the coyness about doing or saying anything until the investigation is over suggests the Kirribili Rodent really is a close personal buddy of W.
But scandals are very important! Without WorldCom and Enron, would Stiglitz have written “the roaring 90s”? If you see cracks, it’s a fair bet that there is something wrong with the building!
Rove, has been considered the ‘brain’, behind George 11 and Republicans.
Gosh, his demise might create world chaos!.
Happily, the pres has been seen in public with him, as he boarded, plane.
A quick swap—Robb with Rove and things will look better for our alliance.
John will be surely talking up this possibility on visit to GWB ranch.
The Washington Post acknowledges in an editorial that not nearly enough is known about Karl Rove’s involvement in the Plame affair to judge that he acted improperly or illegally:
WaPo editorial is here.
The Washington Post is perhaps the best illustration of the negative view of the Washington press corps that I gave in this post. In relation to this topic, it can’t even tell the difference between Iran and Iraq.
More generally, WaPo swallowed the whole WMD fraud and has never seriously re-examined how it got things so badly wrong. Its editorial shows no sign of improvement.
To restate, Bush indicated that anyone who leaked Plame’s identity would be fired. WaPo runs an editorial headed “Mr Rove’s leak” and then concludes he should not be fired. Running scared, I’d say.
I agree that the WaPo editorial is schizo.
Rove appears to be guilty but might not be. WaPo doesn’t want to make the same mistake with him it made with WMDs. Being prudent, I’d say.