by seemslikeadream » Wed Jul 06, 2005 1:47 am
Rove To Be Indicted?<br>by Joshua Frank<br>www.dissidentvoice.org<br>July 5, 2005<br><br>Occasionally I get emails from Washington folks who work on the Hill claiming to possess juicy insider digs on our public servants and their corporate paymasters. I usually delete said emails, as I don't want to be responsible for propagating dirty rumors or false information that can't be corroborated. I'd rather let Judith Miller and the New York Times do that. Nonetheless, in the past 24 hours I have been contacted by three separate congressional Democrats in Washington, by email and later phone, who all say the same thing: Karl Rove is about to be indicted.<br><br>All this comes on the heels of events that transpired over the weekend, as two different individuals, journalist Michael Isikoff and political commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, both claimed that Karl Rove was responsible for leaking the identity of an undercover CIA officer's identity to Marc Cooper of Time magazine. As Isikoff of Newsweek wrote on July 3: <br><br>“The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with Newsweek, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article.”<br><br>If what Isikoff and O'Donnell claim is indeed true, it still does not necessarily mean that Rove was also Robert Novak's inside guy, although it surely raises suspicion. The indictment, as I am told, will most likely be of felony weight. In fact, Karl Rove may be accused of perjury, as Bush's top strategist told a grand jury that he was not responsible for leaking Plame's identity to Time. <br><br>So the charge may not be for leaking top-secret information to the press, but for perjuring himself.<br><br>Sources also all say that this indictment is likely to come down either late this week or early next week. Of course Rove's lawyer denies that his client ever “knowingly” handed over classified information to the media, or is the “target” of any investigation. Perhaps Rove “unknowingly” leaked the information, and he's the “subject” rather than a “target” of an investigation. Time will tell. <br><br>Apparently, I'm not the only one who has been leaked this information either. Over at Redstate, a right-wing Internet blog, one member who calls himself “Ohsure”, also claims that “[four] Great sources confirmed” the matter, and later added: “I not only don't do this, I have never done this. But here it is; ‘Karl Rove will be indicted late this, or early next week.’ I'm trusting a source. So either I am made a [sic] into an overzealous horses a**, or..., I have good sources and may be more trusted to get these things right.”<br> <br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July05/Frank0705.htm" target="top">www.dissidentvoice.org/July05/Frank0705.htm</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><br> DEVELOPING STORY July 5, 2005 -- <br><br>White House Rovegate conspiracy likely to grow to include other senior White House officials<br><br>More on Rovegate: According to Washington insiders, Karl Rove is not the only "person of interest" being investigated by a Federal special prosecutor and the FBI for leaking the name of covert CIA agent to the media. In addition to the leak, itself a crime, prosecutors are looking at criminal conspiracy involving a non-White House "pass through" that leaked the classified information on Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings Associates to Robert Novak. Although Novak's now infamous column appeared on July 14, 2003, the focus is on a phone call or calls made by Rove to a non-White House player on July 6, 2003, the same day Ambassador Joseph Wilson's OP-ED on the bogus Niger intelligence appeared in The New York Times. It is also known that the White House knew at the time of Bush's departure that the "16 words" on Africa, Iraq, and uranium used in the State of the Union were false. Ari Fleischer said, a few hours after Rove made his first phone call, "we've said this repeatedly -- that the information on yellow cake did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect." However, the trashing of Wilson and continued exposures of his wife continued even after this information was known to the White House.<br><br>July 6 was the same day that President Bush departed Washington for Africa -- and it is also known that the prosecutor subpoenaed phone records from Air Force One from July 6 to July 30 -- but the focus is on July 6 -- the evening Air Force One departed Andrews Air Force Base for Senegal (EDT) (the aircraft arrived in Senegal on July 7) and the day Rove called the White House "pass through," said to be one of the journalists subpoenaed by the Grand Jury. Rove's lawyer is now claiming that Rove did not "knowingly" disclose the name of a CIA agent. Rove's claim is incredulous considering the fact that it is doubtful Rove would have cared about Plame's identity and then sought to spread it throughout the media, if she worked for the Bureau of Land Management or the Comptroller of the Currency. <br><br>New information: There is word that Karl Rove met with FBI agents who are part of the Fitzgerald probe 6 months ago and was given a "clean pass." However, this meeting may have been a sign that Rove was nervous and sought to gauge the prosecutor's case, if any, against him. Any prosecutor would have jumped at the chance to have a target like Rove get nervous and talk to them voluntarily, especially if he contradicted his previous Grand Jury testimony.<br><br>There are also growing suspicions that Rove coordinated the exposure of Plame and her network through an entity called the White House Iraq Group -- an entity created to manage the propaganda for the war. Its members included Rove, Cheney's assistant Mary Matalin, White House communications assistants Karen Hughes and James Wilkinson, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, Legislative liaison Nicholas Calio, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her deputy Stephen Hadley, and Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The entire White House Iraq Group is considered suspect in knowing beforehand about the leak and participating in the subsequent conspiracy to cover it up -- both in conversations between Air Force One en route to Africa and Washington, DC and in group strategy meetings to deal with the subpoena of documents and testimony before the Grand Jury. Although the focus is now on Rove, many insiders also believe Scooter Libby phoned reporters to divulge Plame's identity.<br><br>Given the fact that Rove has been called "Bush's brain" and his political alter ego, it is difficult to believe that Bush would not have known about Rove's plans to divulge Plame and Brewster Jennings to the media, particularly considering what now appears to be Rove's premeditated actions. Bush retained Jim Sharp, a criminal defense attorney, as his counsel in the Plame matter. Cheney retained Terrence O'Donnell of the Williams and Connolly law firm as his counsel.<br><br>more<br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/" target="top">www.waynemadsenreport.com/</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=seemslikeadream@rigorousintuition>seemslikeadream</A> at: 7/6/05 12:05 am<br></i>
