More from Murray Waas, published Oct. 7, 2005 in
Quote:
http://nationaljournal.com/about/njw...05/1007nj3.htm
WHITE HOUSE
Rove Assured Bush He Was Not Leaker
By Murray Waas, Washington-based journalist, for National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Oct. 7, 2005
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors.
During the same conversation in the White House two years ago-occurring just days after the Justice Department launched a criminal probe into the unmasking of Plame as a covert agency operative-Rove also assured the president that he had not leaked any information to the media in an effort to discredit Plame's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson. Rove also did not tell the president about his July 2003 a phone call with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, a conversation that touched on the issue of Wilson and Plame..................
............In his first interview with FBI agents working on the leak probe, Rove similarly did not disclose that he had spoken to Cooper, according to sources close to the investigation,
But in subsequent interviews with federal investigators and in his testimony to the grand jury, Rove changed his account, asserting that when the FBI first questioned him, he had simply forgotten about his phone conversation with Cooper. Rove also told prosecutors that he had forgotten about the Cooper conversation when he talked to the president about the matter in the fall of 2003.
In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson, according to sources familiar with the president's interview. Bush said that Rove never mentioned the conversation with Cooper. James E. Sharp, Bush's private attorney, who was present at the president's interview with prosecutors, declined to comment for this story.
Sources close to the leak investigation being run by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald say it was the discovery of one of Rove's White House e-mails-in which the senior Bush adviser referred to his July 2003 conversation with Cooper-that prompted Rove to contact prosecutors and to revise his account to include the Cooper conversation.......
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The "state" of this thread, is what you make it..........those who posted to distract from the subject, the emerging possibility of a constitutional crisis, even managed to distract a moderator.
Murray Waas seems to have the best and most knowledgeable "inside" sources to this historic chain of events.
I lean towards an opinion that Rove is a criminal, possibly even a traitor. Rove seems to be running a criminal conspiracy, widely known as the "Bush presidency". If the above report is true, Bush is reduced to keeping Rove in his present position on Rove's terms, not Bush's. We are watching Bush make one more compromise, in a long, long, line of compromises, of his own integrity and reputation, in exchange for the "results" that Rove has delivered, until recently. Bush made the decision to sell his soul for the fruit of Rove's tactics, more than a decade ago. The problem for the rest of us Americans, is that it affects the lives and the futures of all of us, event those of us who identified Bush and Rove as the unprincipled outlaws that they were in 2000, and continue to be, today.
Bush is this nation's chief law enforcement officer. When it became apparent that Rove lied to him about his role in leaking Plame's identity to membes of the press, Bush seemed to have a sworn duty to revoke his security clearance and restrict his access to the white house, and to place him on suspension from his government paid position, and to avoid further contact with him. We know that none of these steps were undertaken by Bush.
IMO, after Matt Cooper wrote his article about his own testimony in July before Fitzgerald's grand jury, Bush's lack of action against Rove makes him a suspected co-conspirator and an abettor of Rove by continuing to employ him and by seeking and acting on his counsel.
The veneer is off now, and this administration must be exposed, prosecuted, and brought down.