Bush Under Fire [View All]

...One man who has fallen victim to Rove is Jim Hightower, who faced off against Rove's Republican candidate in a Texan election in 1989. Rove leaked extensively to the local press that Hightower was facing an FBI investigation. The allegations decimated Hightower's polls and he went on to lose the election. Hightower was never charged, by the FBI or anyone else.

For Hightower, last week's scandal bears all the hallmarks of Rove's tactics. 'No kind of political action like this is going to be taken without Rove's office putting the stamp of approval on it,' he told The Observer. 'He may not have made the actual phone calls, but that's irrelevant.'

...But the investigation of the leak has also exposed another facet of the tightly knit Bush administration - patronage. In resisting calls for a special counsel, the investigation is in the hands of Attorney-General John Ashcroft. Bush appointed Ashcroft to his job, meaning he is now effectively being asked to investigate his own boss. Rove has also worked for several of Ashcroft's campaigns in the past. He was also influential in getting him appointed to his current post when Bush's first choice fell through. 'They will never appoint a special counsel. This shows ruthlessness gone awry,' said Joe Conason, author of Big Lies, a book on the Bush administration and its use of the media.

...'There has been a huge shift in the national atmosphere. It is no longer considered unpatriotic to ask questions, to be critical,' Conason said.

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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1056168,00.html