Details, details
Except that Rove didn’t contact the journalist, about Plame or any other matter. The journalist contacted Rove. The Washington Post has the details that the BBC leaves out.US Democrats have urged the White House to give a full account of senior aide Karl Rove's alleged role in disclosing the name of an undercover CIA officer.
The calls came after revelations that Mr Rove contacted journalist Matthew Cooper about the agent days before her identity was revealed in the press.
A small detail, to be sure, but an important one. The controversy revolves around allegations that someone in the White House deliberately revealed Plame’s role as a CIA agent as payback for her husband’s criticisms of Bush. The suggestion that Rove went out of his way to contact a reporter specifically about Plame lends much more credence to the allegation than if the reporter contacted Rove about a separate matter, and the Plame issue came up as an aside.Instead, Luskin said, Rove discussed the matter -- under the cloak of secrecy -- with Cooper at the tail end of a conversation about a different issue. Cooper had called Rove to discuss other matters on a Friday before deadline, and the topic of Wilson came up briefly. Luskin said Cooper raised the question.
"Rove did not mention her name to Cooper," Luskin said. "This was not an effort to encourage Time to disclose her identity. What he was doing was discouraging Time from perpetuating some statements that had been made publicly and weren't true."
Once again, we find the BBC, whether deliberately or just by natural inclination, carrying water for Bush administration critics.
4 Comments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1526379,00.html
The worst piece of journalism in a very long time.
Thought of this blog.
Oh, let me see... Rove is INNOCENT right? Wow! Thats cool. Jesus was really a republican, man.
I didn't really make clear in my previous post what Rove is guilty of. Let's see...
Well, I'm sure I'll think of SOMETHING. And when I do, boy, will you guys be sorry! (sniff)
The "word on the street" is that most people here are not paying attention to the story. It's basically an "inside the beltway" issue that only politicos care about.
The contention that Democrats make here is not that Rove contacted Cooper. They concede the fact of who called whom, but rather that Rove still "leaked" information he shouldn't have, even though the record says pretty definitively that Rove never mentioned the name of Wilson's wife. I think what Democrats are seizing on now is speculation that Rove revealed that his wife worked for the CIA, and that that's enough to tar and feather him. The name wasn't necessary. Interesting. How can one "out" someone without revealing their name? I talked with a friend about this, and she suggested "Well marriage licenses are public records." So the idea is that Rove left just enough "bread crumbs" for someone else to out her. I don't know if that would hold up as Rove "outing" anybody. Sounds pretty thin to me.
It's unclear exactly what Rove said, since that's only been revealed to the grand jury investigating the leak of her name and her position. Among some, speculation has been running rampant because there's so little information revealed. As usual, this lack of information leaves a lot of space for Bush's enemies to "fill in the blanks" and try to stir something up.
Democrats have also been having a good time calling Bush "Clintonian", and chiding him for redefining "what 'is' is", coining a phrase from Clinton, because supposedly Republicans are trying to redefine the term "leak". Democrats love pointing out Republican hypocrisy. Personally I think it's Democrats trying to redefine "leak". They have a good record doing that. They've done a pretty good job redefining "the false pretenses" for which we went to war in Iraq.
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