Rove's lawyer acknowledges he was Time reporter's source AFP 7-10-05 Top White House aide Karl Rove discussed a former US ambassador and his CIA agent wife with a Time magazine reporter, according to a report. The Newsweek weekly quoted Rove lawyer Robert Luskin as confirming that Rove was the source who gave information to Time reporter Matt Cooper under a pledge of confidentiality, and last week released him to testify about that conversation to a grand jury. Cooper had been ordered by a US federal judge to testify before the grand jury investigating whether the agent's identity was illegally leaked. Rove, President George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff, has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson or his wife, Valerie Plame. And Luskin told Newsweek last week that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Plame's was first published in a column by veteran reporter Robert Novak in 2003, which cited senior administration officials. Wilson claimed she was outed as punishment for his contradiction of Bush's assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Africa. Miller researched the story, but didn't write it, and Cooper only mentioned it in passing. ***** Matt Cooper's Source What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter. By Michael Isikoff Newsweek July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA. Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute "personal consent" from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court. Another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, refused to identify her source and chose to go to jail instead. For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify. The controversy arose when Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying that he had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson said he had found no evidence to support the claim. Wilson's column was an early attack on the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify going to war in Iraq. The White House wished to discredit Wilson and his attacks. The question for the prosecutor is whether someone in the administration, in an effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, intentionally revealed the covert identity of his wife. In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... " Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK. A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa. Fitzgerald is known as a tenacious, thorough prosecutor. He refused to comment, and it is not clear whether he is pursuing evidence that will result in indictments, or just tying up loose ends in a messy case. But the Cooper e-mail offers one new clue to the mystery of what Fitzgerald is probing—and provides a glimpse of what was unfolding at the highest levels as the administration defended a part of its case for going to war in Iraq. ***** Is Rove Going Down? By Arianna Huffington, HuffingtonPost.com Posted on July 8, 2005 How is it that the second most powerful man in America is about to take a fall and the mainstream media are largely taking a pass? Could it be that the fear of Karl Rove and this White House is so great that not even the biggest of the media big boys are willing to take them on? Does the answer to that one go without saying? Chatter about the Rove story has come to dominate the downtime at the Aspen Institute's five-day Ideas Festival. Whenever participants are not in sessions, they're gathering in small groups and dissecting, analyzing, and speculating about the outcome of this surprisingly slow-breaking scandal. One such discussion took place just after David Gergen had finished a conversation with Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose-Driven Life," which has sold 25 million copies in hardback. A cluster of high-powered media insiders quickly switched over to "The Gossip-Driven Reality." The well-informed suppositions were flying faster than the peloton at the Tour de France. I can tell you what was said, I just can't tell you who was saying it. (Just look at it as an anonymous twist on the HuffPost BozBlog). According to the players, the key to whether this story has real legs -- and whether it will spell the end of Rove -- is determining intent. And a key to that is whether there was a meeting at the White House where Rove and Scooter Libby discussed what to do with the information they had gotten from the State Department about Valerie Plame being Joe Wilson's wife, and her involvement in his being sent on the Niger/yellowcake mission. If it can be proven that such a meeting occurred, then Rove will be in deep trouble -- especially if it is established that Rove made three phone calls leaking the info about Plame and her CIA gig? one to Matt Cooper, one to Walter Pincus, and one to Robert Novak. Other than intent, the other big legal question raised was: will Rove be able to get away with claiming that he did not know Plame was an undercover agent? We all know what happened after Rove placed those calls. The question is, what will happen now? From the way they've acted so far, the mainstream media would rather this scandal just go away (bloggers take note). Just look at the way Newsweek handled the Rove-outed-Plame story in this week's edition. The editors obviously knew they had a hot story and could have pushed it hard. Instead, it's clear that they lawyered it within an inch of its life -- a bunch of legal eagles with faint hearts removing any juice and most of the meat from it. As one of the Aspen wags put it: "Once Newsweek flushed the Koran down the toilet, you can bet they'll think twenty times before they pull down the handle again." Want another example? Just look at how the White House press corps is dealing with the story: by avoiding it completely. Today's press gaggle took place aboard Air Force One on the way to Scotland. Now, given that Rove may or may not be the subject of a federal investigation, one would think that our intrepid White House reporters might, you know, ask the White House spokesman about that. But if you do a text search for the word "Rove" in this transcript, you'll see that not a single press person thought that the fact that the President of the United States' most trusted advisor is, at the very least, a key player in a criminal investigation was worth a single question to Scottie McClellan. Not a one. This is all the more significant because of the role McClellan may eventually play in Rove's fate. As Newsweek reported and I blogged about, when this story began heating up, McClellan went out of his way to defend Rove -- saying that he'd been "assured" that Rove was not involved in the leaking. "Rove will have no compunction about lying through his teeth to save himself, counting on the fact that Cooper's emails are, apparently, not cut and dried," one of the group said. And it doesn't hurt that Rove's underlings would rather fall on their swords than tell the truth... which, in the Bush White House, is seen as selling out. All of which would leave McClellan to "take one for the team and eat major crow about all the assurances he'd given the press." Of course, if they continue to avoid asking him about it, he may not even have to do that. As the group started walking to the next seminar, my mind turned back to the Gergen-Warren conversation. Near the end, a woman stood up, identified herself as Jewish and asked Warren if she would be saved. He told her that he believed that you can only be saved through Jesus Christ. I only wished I had stood up and asked Warren: What will it take for Karl Rove to be saved? Find more Arianna at Ariannaonline.com. ***** TalkingPointsMemo.com July 10, 2005 Now that we know that Karl Rove was involved in leaking Valerie Plame's identity and her role at CIA before the information had appeared in Robert Novak's column, attention will now inevitably turn to whether Rove (and whoever else was leaking) knew Plame was covert. If they can plausibly claim that they thought she was simply a paper-pusher, then the statute would not apply to them. But I think any enterprising reporter will be able to see why this is almost certainly not true. A close look at the wording Novak used in his column and a careful review of previous Novak columns over the years shows he only ever uses the word 'operative' to refer to covert agents. And that's the word he used to refer to Plame. So Novak knew she was covert. And that pretty clearly means his sources knew too. How else would he have found out? -- Josh Marshall ***** Steve Chapman Claims Support for Opposing Miller's Stand in Plame Case By Dave Astor July 07, 2005 EditorandPublisher.com NEW YORK If the reaction received by columnist Steve Chapman is any indication, there are more than a few people who think the case that sent New York Times reporter Judith Miller to jail is not a good one to take a protect-the-source approach. Chapman said his columns have drawn some negative reaction from journalists, "but I've been surprised that many of my colleagues are largely in agreement or at least very ambivalent." He has written three columns about the case, with the latest one published this week. In that piece, the Chicago Tribune/Creators Syndicate commentator supported Time Inc.'s decision to "obey the law" and release Matthew Cooper's notes. Chapman also said Miller's "fortitude would be admirable in a noble cause, which unfortunately this is not." She has "chosen to shield someone who blew an American agent's cover for political revenge" -- an action which "may serve to protect a serious felon from being brought to justice," Chapman wrote. The agent, Valerie Plame, ended up being named in a 2003 piece by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak -- who, like Chapman, is syndicated by Creators. Reaction from the Tribune (where he is also an editorial writer)? "My editors have a perfect record of letting me write whatever I want without objecting, and this issue is no exception. I did lose the debate in the editorial board," replied Chapman. "I've gotten no reaction from client papers [he has about 50 via Creators] except one nice note of disagreement from an editor." Reader reaction? "I've gotten a higher than average response," said Chapman. "I'd say it's split, though lately it's more sympathetic than earlier. A lot of readers are confused about Novak's role and ask about that." Chapman's other two columns on the topic appeared this February and last October. In the 2004 piece, he wrote: "(T)hough I normally root for the press in conflicts with the government, I have to say that in this instance, the news media are in the wrong....There are instances where it would be a terrible thing for journalists to be sent to jail for refusing to name their sources. But this isn't one of them, and the press should stop pretending it is." Dave Astor (dastor@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P. ***** Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting FAIR.org FAIR Calls for Revealing Sources in Plame, Lee Cases Courts should respect anonymity of genuine whistle-blowers 8/19/04 FAIR, the national media watch group, encourages the reporters and news outlets who have been asked to reveal their sources in the Valerie Plame and Wen Ho Lee cases to cooperate with investigators. Protecting the identities of confidential sources is a journalistic right that should be recognized by the courts, but only when it protects genuine whistle-blowers, not when it shields government wrongdoing. Plame is the covert CIA officer whose identity was apparently leaked after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, charged the Bush administration with misuse of intelligence. Lee was a scientist falsely charged by the Clinton administration with being a Chinese spy, and officials seem to have leaked selective information about him in an effort to discredit him in the press. Reporters in both cases are being told by investigators to reveal the specific members of the government who transmitted information. FAIR believes that attorneys' attempts to discover these sources are legitimate, and the ethical journalistic choice is to assist their efforts. The ability to protect confidential sources who reveal government wrongdoing is an important journalistic protection that deserves judicial respect. In both the Plame and Lee cases, however, the journalist's sources were not revealing government wrongdoing, but committing government wrongdoing . In both cases, the alleged crime was the act of revealing protected information to journalists in order to harm the government's enemies. Given that the alleged criminal acts apparently involved oral conversations between government officials and journalists, it is likely that no evidence of these purported acts would exist except for the journalists' potential testimony. Unless one believes that the government ought to be able to surreptitiously use its enormous information-gathering powers to attack opponents with impunity, investigators must have the ability to ask journalists for their sources in such cases, and to compel them if necessary. Some have presented these cases as government assaults against the freedom of the press. "Journalists should not have to face the prospect of imprisonment for doing nothing more than aggressively seeking to report on the government's actions," declared Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times (8/13/04), whose reporters have been subpoenaed in both cases. But in neither case were reporters reporting on governmental activities; rather, they were taking part in a governmental activity, namely the selective and illegitimate revelation of information to damage an individual. Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press told AP (8/18/04): "All this has to do with secrecy. The government is trying to keep more and more secrets all the time, and journalists are working harder to uncover those secrets." Dalglish misses the larger context, which is that the government's misuse of the power of information involves both concealing and revealing information as it suits its purposes. The reporters who revealed protected information about Wen Ho Lee were not exposing government secrets, but violating an individual's privacy. And the journalists who are protecting the identity of the officials who outed Valerie Plame are actually participating in a cover-up of official wrongdoing. The motive and effect of government leaks are the critical questions, and courts can and should make a distinction between legitimate whistleblowing and illegitimate governmental attempts to use information as a weapon. If Valerie Plame's name had been leaked to expose an illegal covert operation, it would be an entirely different matter and should be treated as such by the legal system. The First Amendment exists so that the press can be a check on government abuse of power, not a handmaiden to it.