05 July 2005

Rove source of Plame leak, big surprise

This is excerpted from Editor & Publisher, in a piece by Greg Mitchell:

. . . Friday night, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name--and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

Today [July 1], O'Donnell went further, writing a brief entry at the Huffington Post blog:

"I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's e-mails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but sidn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

"Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow."


Here is the transcript of O'Donnell's McLaughlin Group remarks:

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury--the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper. Besides his career at a TV journalist, O'Donnell has served as a producer and writer for the series "The West Wing."

According to published reports, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, has interviewed President Bush and Vice President Cheney and called Karl Rove, among others, to testify before the grand jury.

"The breadth of Fitzgerald's inquiry has led to speculation that it has evolved into an investigation of a conspiracy to leak Plame's identity," the Chicago Tribune observed on Friday, "or of an attempt to cover up White House involvement in the leak."

3 comments:

  1. Talk about girlie men! It looks to me like both Rove and the New York Times are hiding behind a skirt. They're letting Judith Miller go to jail for not revealing her source, which protects all of them. No wonder the spineless Times wouldn't run the story.

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  2. Another problem with this story is that it is the summer, it is not an election year, and the outing of a diplomat is way too arcane for the nonvoting public, and possibly too arcane for the few who do vote. It's a big story all right. But will anyone read it or listen to it?

    Don't forget that Rove is still on the job, spreading doubt and disinformation. He will be coating the president, the vice president, and himself with several layers of teflon.

    People who care about this country and the idea of democracy that it is supposed to be representing will be upset by this information. Alas, the majority of folks don't seem to care.

    I'm afraid I don't see this story going anywhere...though I'd love to be wrong.

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  3. Only Plame is not a diplomat... she was a CIA agent, and divulging the identity of a working CIA Agent is a felony.

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