Rove Scandal: New Mysteries, New Props, New Legal Theories David Corn

Rove Scandal: New Mysteries, New Props, New Legal Theories David Corn
2 hours, 7 minutes ago



The Nation -- The Plame/ CIA leak case is getting what all good scandals need: props.

ADVERTISEMENT

We now have the "missing notebook" and the "missing email." The "missing notebook," as several news reports noted at the end of last week, belongs to Times reporter Judith Miller and reportedly contains notes of a conversation regarding former Ambassador Joseph Wilson that she had with Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on June 25, 2003. The date is intriguing, for this is weeks before Wilson published his now famous <a href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=9&k=new%20york" illegal code"window.status='New York'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;">New York</a> Times op-ed piece (in which he revealed that after traveling to Niger for the CIA he had concluded that the allegation that Iraq had been uranium shopping there was dubious). And, of course, this was weeks before Robert Novak wrote a column outing Wilson's wife as an undercover CIA officer. So why were the two discussing Wilson at that point? Why did this notebook go missing within the paper's Washington bureau? Who found it? Miller or someone else? Why won't the Times explain to its readers how it came to be discovered? What do the notes in this notebook say?

The Case of the Missing Notebook does prompt much pondering. As Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher listed a set of questions raised by the missing notebook in his own column:

-- Did Libby lie to the grand jury about not talking to Miller about Wilson earlier than July 8? Did Miller lie about that? If so, why?

-- How did Fitzgerald find out about these notes? Did he know about the June conversation for quite some time but just recently found out about the notes? Or did Miller come forward herself? If she did, was it after someone tipped off Fitzgerald about the June interview?

snip>
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20051010/cm_thenation/328125;_ylt=A86.I1PZrEpDnU8AAgv9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

<snip>

Who knows if the latest Luskin-Rove account is true? Luskin has peddled misleading information for Rove previously. But Rove's aim appears to be to keep Bush out of the loop--even if that means Rove has to depict himself as a subordinate who did not fully come clean with the president. An account in which Rove does not share the full truth with his boss is better for the White House than one that implicates the president with knowledge. If Bush knew about Rove's conversations with Cooper and Novak, then he would also have known that his White House's assertion that Rove had been uninvolved in the leak was false. With this latest account, is Luskin building a firewall, rather than a stonewall?

<snip>

:shrug: Someone LIED

Just to make sure that all those who should fall on their swords, swallow a pill, sit on a park bench, go canoeing, or take a shoeless dive from a government rooftop really do.

:evilgrin:

They've been vewwy vewwy bad boys it seems and I think Fitz has at least some of them pretty dead to rights.