Confirmed... ______ Rove 'Knowingly' Refusing Interviews on Plame Leak NEW YORK Two days after his lawyer confirmed that his name turned up as a source in Matthew Cooper's notes on the Valerie Plame/CIA case, top White House adviser Karl Rove refused to answer questions about the development today. ______ Meanwhile, Lawrence O'Donnell, the MSNBC analyst who first broke the Rove/Cooper link on Friday, wrote on the Huffington Post blog today, that Rove's lawyer had "launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client 'never knowingly disclosed classified information.' Knowingly. "Not coincidentally, the word 'knowing' is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent 'knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States.'" full link
let me see if i understand this properly. you all are suggesting the Times, WaPo, Newsweek, and Time knew during last fall's election that Rove was the source of the Plame leak and sat on the information? this beggars belief. either they're incompetent, completely entranced by the Rove reality distortion field, or there's no story here. personally, I vote for all of the above...
To basso's credit, I think he found this important tidbit during the much larger Plame thread. (Why this one particular issue gets his goat so bad, I don't understand.) Even if Rove personally leaked the info, I just don't think he's going to be convicted. First off, I imagine they'll try and put the blame on a subordinate. But if the evidence points to him, then the 'knowing' part will be a lynchipin of the defense. Intent is difficult to prove in court, if not impossible without a witness/recording/document. That being said, I hope the investigation is as thorough and intense as the Clinton one.
remember, the times has recently decided, when their reporter was threatened with jail, that there was no crime. if Rove gave Novak the name, will they change their tune?
yes, i did point this out in the larger thread, and it's critically important. if it weren't, then we'd be prosecuting john kerry for statements he made during the bolton hearings.
We've been over this before. First off, you state this as if each organization knew the name. Two journalists, dude. Two journalists. You remember when you did your CASE CLOSED thing back when lawyers representing the media companies tried to get the case dismissed? (lol in retrospect on that one.) You read the news. After the supreme court refused to hear the journalists plea to stay out of prison, there was an almost universal outpouring from all media that the journalists' right to keep their sources secret must be protected? Even though all media is of course liberal and would love nothing more than to roast anything regarding Bush, it has become quite obvious that far more important than that is the ability to get info from inside sources and protect the source. Without that, no more juicy stories, no more whistleblowers, no more media ability to keep the government in check and accountable. We went over this AD NAUSEUM in your huge Plame thread.
you're suggesting cooper and miller didn't tell their editors where the leak came from? and you're also suggesting they get such juicy leaks from Rove that they'd essentially punt on an opportunity to bring him down, turning Rove into deep throat and nixon all rolled into one? the only explanation, assuming rove gave them the name, and that's a HUGE assumption, is that there is/was no crime.
No, that was the media saying they didn't KNOW if a crime had been a committed, not that there was no crime committed.
Or that they value their future sources more than any one story. If it was so clear that there was no crime committed, there wouldn't be a grand jury anymore.
When this story first broke, I was working with a senior producer at NPR on a side project. I asked him point blank who leaked Plame's name and he said it was Rove. This doesn't make it true, but he presented it as fact, not rumor.
Actually, I don't know exactly how it works in a journalistic institution. Do you? If the editors know, why hasn't the court forced them to reveal the information? Are you reading any of my posts? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's a matter of choosing between future journalistic freedom over a shot at Rove, which, even if he did do it, would be terribly difficult to convict him. We've all got push-button issues, and the Liberal Media is one of yours. I agree with you that the NYTimes and other organizations have a left bias. Dan Rather was a good example of a guy that put everything out there on crappy evidence to try and peg Bush on his military record. He got burned bad, and rightfully so. That doesn't mean that every journalist out there, even the despicable evil liberal ones, will sacrifice their future for a shot at a conservative. If you've done any reading of the news lately, you'll see that most media would prefer to see this case just go away, rather than the dangerous precedent of forcing a journalist to reveal sources. I think your hatred of liberal media is blinding your judgement on this. It's too early to assume that it was Rove, anyway. Just because what's his name said so on MSNBC doesn't convince me. I have a hard time picturing him taking a risk like that when a subordinate could do it. It's obvious that Plame's identity was blown as revenge for the refutation of the yellowcake story.
i'm actually astounded to see you write "It's too early to assume that it was Rove, anyway" since that's exactly what you and others have been doing in this thread. moreover, your assumption that "Plame's identity was blown as revenge for the refutation of the yellowcake story" is also completly off base, since it's just as likely that whoever gave Novak her name did so in a completely off-hand manner, w/o thought to her covert status since it was already (as has been thoroughly documented) widely known. and the only reason why this is any kind of story now is that the, liberal, media has trumped it up. and have you forgotten Wilson's comment about wanting to see "Karl Rove frog-marched out of the whitehouse" in handcuffs? as i said earlier, it simply beggars belief that any of the media outlets i mentioned earlier had the story that karl rove was the leaker and sat on it to protect their access to karl rove. the very idea is worthy of Colonel Cathcart.
In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak's column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson's wife was "fair game." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8445696/site/newsweek/ i have a hard time believing it was an accident when rove makes statements like this... if there was no malicious intent he wouldnt be calling her "fair game".
Except in that case, there would not be even a possible crime and there wouldn't be a grand jury. Since there is ...
