Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Rove / Plame game: some adults are found

"She was quite prepared to take the consequences and the judge had no choice, she understood that.

I don't see how it could have been avoided because the law is the law. She exhausted her appeals and had no place left to go."

Jason Epstein, book editor, husband of Judith Miller
After a diligent search, I found another adult:

I don't know
...what Valerie Plame’s status with the CIA was in July 2003 when Robert Novak wrote his column...

Since top presidential adviser Karl Rove and top vice-presidential adviser Lewis Libby signed strongly worded waivers releasing all reporters from any pledges of confidentiality, why hasn’t Miller testified? Does that mean her source was someone else who has not signed a confidentiality waiver?

Rove’s lawyer says Rove signed the waiver about a year and a half ago and has never changed it. Why was that waiver not acceptable to Cooper for 18 months and then, on the brink of going to jail, Cooper agreed to testify?

...Tim Russert, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler... Apparently on the basis of waivers signed by sources, they all gave information to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. What did they say?

...Novak must have made some sort of accommodation. Did he testify? Refuse to testify?

On Dec. 30, 2003, the Times published an editorial headlined "The Right Thing, At Last," which said, "After an egregiously long delay, Attorney General John Ashcroft finally did the right thing yesterday when he recused himself from the investigation into who gave the name of a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak."

And then, why did the Times change its position and condemn Fitzgerald who, the paper said, "can’t even say whether a crime has been committed." Why would the Times say that, when it had once been so sure that a crime had been committed?

...the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its bipartisan report, said that "interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that (Wilson's) wife, a CPD employee (a reference to the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division), suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told committee staff that the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name' and a memorandum to the deputy chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from (Wilson’s) wife says, 'my husband has good relations with both (Niger's prime minister) and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.'" So why did Wilson say his wife played no "substantive role" in it?

Was it a smear to say that Wilson got the Niger assignment, at least in part, because his wife recommended him? If so, then the Senate committee "smeared" him, too. If not, what is the smear?

Last year on CNN, he (Karl Rove) said of Plame, "I didn’t know her name and didn't leak her name." Even if he hadn't passed on Plame’s name - just mentioned her as Wilson's wife - why not just say nothing, especially since the whole thing is under criminal investigation?

But don’t worry. At least we can be sure that we will someday know them (all the critical facts), right?
I don't know, either.

My point being that no one else knows the answer to these questions. Right now it is all speculation, punditry, opinion, editorializing, left-wing smear and right-wing knee-jerk defense.

No one knows.

Others who don't know and some who think they do:
Hullabaloo, Wizbang, Fire on the Mountain, Tom Maguire, Seixon, Tom Maguire II, Libertarian Leanings, Overtaken by Events, FlapsBlog, Macsmind, Pejman, Abuse of Discretion, SoCalPundit, Balloon Juice, The Glittering Eye, Eclipse Ramblings, Michelle Malkin, Ramblings' Journal, On the Wright, Basil's Blog, ItsAPundit, UnSpun, Beautiful Atrocities, Dean Esmay, Red State Rant, InstaPunk, Kerfuffles, Jackson's Junction, Conservative Outpost, Blogs for Bush, ScoopStories, Hard Starboard, Blogs for Bush II, Chris Abraham, Bogus Gold, Ed Driscoll, Betsy's Page, What Attitude Problem?, The Anchoress, Lorie Byrd @ PoliPundit, WILLisms, Obsidian Wings, Norbizness

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