by gg3 » Mon 11 Jul 2005, 09:50:49
The key fact here is that Rove apparently talked to Cooper about Plame before Novak published his story. Cooper's notes and emails have time-stamps on them.
However, Rove apparently told at least the FBI, and possibly also the grand jury, that he didn't speak to anyone about Plame until *after* Novak's article was published.
The prosecutor is going to be able to determine down to the minute, when Novak's story hit the wire, which is the earliest anyone could consider it published in any sense.
If the story hit the wire before Cooper hit Send, then the shit is going to hit the fan for Rove.
At minimum, perjury & obstruction of justice. At most, something closer to treason.
In all probability what happened behind the scenes is that Bush originally said something like, "That Wilson guy (who published the story in the NYT saying the Niger uranium thing was bogus) is a pain in the ass, we've gotta' do something about him," meaning the usual kind of bureaucratic retaliation, assign the guy to a boring desk-job somewhere he can't cause any more trouble.
But what probably happened was that Rove, a diagnosable sociopath with a history of political dirty tricks, took that as license to go get Wilson by whatever dirty methods he could come up with. Hence the leak on Valerie Plame, hence the felony violation(s), hence 60 or so foreign nationals who were "working for" Plame are now apparently quite dead.
But then after the "outing," Bush said in no uncertain terms that whoever was behind this is going to be "taken care of," which is Texas-speak for "strung up from a tree." He's bloody pissed, and well that he should be. And of course Rove went into CYA mode to cover his own little ass for having screwed up bigtime.
And as far as "intent" is concerned, there is presumptive knowledge: Rove should have known, as a matter of his position, to check Valerie Plame's status before leaking her name. And he had the means to do so. If he tries to say "I didn't know or have intent," that is criminally culpable negligence, similar to a civil engineer who doesn't check the specs on the concrete and then the bridge collapses.
Miller, meanwhile, a few years ago tipped off two "Islamic charities" that were about to be raided by the FBI over possible terrorist connections. IMHO that makes her a bloody traitor too.
It's as if these people are doing everything possible to LOSE THE WAR. I can't even wrap my brain around that one.