Anonymous Message on Rove: "This One Will Stick"

In doing my gig as guide/editor of US Liberal Politics at About.com, owned by the New York Times, I very occasionally get anonymous/fake name emails. Several were parties trying to appear innocuous while snooping around about my sources for an article.....which is curious, to say the least. (Two come to mind.....one clearly feeling out how much I knew about the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert "gay escort in the White House press corps" story, and one wanting to know my sources for details of Medicaid spending.)

Last night, I got a cryptic message from an anonymous sender in response to my About.com blog post about the whole Rove leak affair. All it said was this....."This one is going to stick."

There's a theory that someone needs to be the scapegoat for the public perception of the Bush Administration as dishonest and untruthful. And that control-freak Dick Cheney has selected the powerful (rival?) Karl Rove, newly installed in a White House office suite, as the goat.

Under that theory, I guess that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice believe that public perception of trustworthiness will be restored to their team once Karl Rove is excised from its ranks. And maybe....just maybe...they can blame the entire Iraq War debacle on Rove.

And, of course, underground rumors have swirled for ages about skeletons in Rove's closet. Perhaps the administration wishes to avert more Rove scandal that could be coming.....It is fascinating that two days ago, President Bush and uber-politico Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, both evangelical Christians, shied away from overt support of Mr. Rove.

It's intriguing, juicy stuff, worthy of potboiler novels and made-for TV movies, and it could all be a lot of hot-air paranoia and hooey. Today, it does appear that conservative pundit-leaker Robert Novak and Mighty Mouse Karl Rove may take each other down in a nasty "he said/he said" act of mutual political cannibalization. (Now, those cross-allegations would be sensational.)

This much I know is real.....I get a few strange, anonymous emails in direct response to to the subject matter I write on at About.com. And the message yesterday was odd.

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Meanwhile, from the Center for American Progress....

In August 2004, Karl Rove told CNN, "I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name," referring to then-covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame. The New York Times reveals this morning that Rove was not truthful on both counts: "Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist [Robert Novak] the name of the C.I.A. officer" and confirmed that she was employed at the CIA. Rove told Novak upon hearing of Plame's identity and occupation, "I heard that, too." Lost in all the details of “who-talked-to-whom-when” is a disturbing conclusion: a senior White House official willfully undermined U.S. security in an effort to tar a critic of the administration’s case for war in Iraq and continues to have top level oversight of national security policy today.

Karl Rove spoke with columnist Robert Novak a week prior to publication of Novak's column outing undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame. According to the Times, Novak called Rove shortly after former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame’s husband, published an editorial in the New York Times which concluded that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." In that 7/8/03 conversation, Novak brought up Plame's role at the CIA, and Rove confirmed for the reporter that Plame did indeed work at the CIA. On July 14, 2003, Novak reported that "two senior administration officials" confirmed that Plame worked for the CIA as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

This means that Rove was complicit in undermining our national security for political purposes. Despite White House claims that Rove’s involvement in this matter was “ridiculous,” Americans now know Rove was at the center of an orchestrated White House effort to out a covert CIA operative as retaliation for her husband’s criticism of the administration’s use of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Rove continues to have full access to our national security decision making today.

The burden is now on President Bush: he must show Americans that he will not tolerate or cover-up any threats to national security within his own administration. This is no longer just about Rove and summer political intrigue in the nation’s capital. President Bush promised Americans that he would uncover those responsible for the outing and fire anyone involved in the episode. Rove is now proven to have been directly responsible for the matter and the president should honor his word and commitment to the American people.