Posted on 07/20/2005 8:49:30 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Karl Rove — whistleblower, patriot and hero. That's an epitaph you won't read with regard to the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. But those are precisely the words that dominated commentary about Watergate leaker Mark Felt little more than a month ago.
Felt, of course, did the country a great service by secretly revealing to the media the cancer that was growing on the Nixon presidency.
But Felt, it should be remembered, had more than simply altruistic motives for doing so. Richard Nixon slighted Felt by passing over him for the top job at the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover's death. That indignity was magnified by the efforts of elected officials to rein in and reform the FBI after Hoover's long and abusive tenure.
But there was more. As the third- and then second-ranking official at the bureau during this tumultuous period, Felt was in charge of uncovering the source of the Watergate leaks and silencing Deep Throat, whom he knew to be himself.
Yet Felt used his authority to direct the FBI investigation toward Richard Gerstein, a county prosecutor in Miami who was investigating the Watergate money trail. Does a hero and patriot put the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency on the hunt after a man he knows to be completely innocent?
We now know, from Time magazine journalist Matthew Cooper's own words, that Rove did not disclose the name of a covert CIA officer. What Rove did tell Cooper was that former Ambassador and Kerry campaign adviser Joseph Wilson's wife had a hand in sending Wilson to investigate claims Saddam Hussein wanted to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger.
In another time, the story here would be one of potential nepotism at the highest and most sensitive levels of government, or of the conflicts of interest that can arise when members of the intelligence community become active participants in partisan politics.
Or the story might be about the investigations conducted by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee or Britain's Butler report confirming that Saddam Hussein was indeed interested in buying uranium yellowcake from Niger.
Or it might be about the fact that, contrary to Wilson's later assertions in the service of the Kerry campaign, his own investigation — according to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee — "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency reports on the uranium deal."
We also know from Wilson's own book, misleadingly titled "The Politics of Truth," that Plame had not operated overseas under official or non-official cover since at least 1997, when she came back to Washington, married Wilson and had children.
Which means even if Rove acted intentionally and maliciously in 2003 by inferentially disclosing Plame's identity, he statutorily could not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
A violation of the act requires, among other benchmarks, the intentional disclosure of a covert agent "who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States."
So please, let's dispense with the feigned indignation about national security. Where were all these intelligence hawks and experts on classified information when Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national security adviser, illegally removed from the National Archives and later destroyed copies of a classified document covering the Clinton administration's record against terrorism?
Anyone in a position to do so who didn't castigate Berger in a far more severe manner than Rove or who in Mark Felt saw the savior of the Republic yet perceive in Rove the Antichrist of democracy is hereby sentenced to 40 lashes with a wet subpoena by the court of partisan hypocrisy.
Rove is no hero in the Plame affair, nor is he a felon. He is guilty of handling sensitive information in a careless manner, for which he deserves punishment.
He also deserves credit, not least from journalists, for exposing potential misuses — if not outright abuses — of positions of power.
I disagree. He made an unguarded, inadvertent remark, but look what has come of it! If Fitzgerald gets to the bottom of what Plame, Wilson and Miller (probably) were attempting to do, it could end up being a major political scandal for the DEMOCRATS as well as their all too eager, willing accomplices in the liberal media.
"Felt, of course, did the country a great service by secretly revealing to the media the cancer that was growing on the Nixon presidency."
I disagree with this also. Felt was a CAD! If he truly "felt" (pardon the pun) that there was questionable behavior in the Nixon administration, he could have reported the facts as he knew them to the proper authorities.....although I admit that getting past John Mitchell, who was in Nixon's back pocket, might have been a tad difficult.
Char :)
Don't agree here. If Karl Rover learned of Plame's CIA status from a reporter, as he says he did, he wasn't even handling sensitive information.
Felt broke the law. Rove didn't. That is a significant distinction.
That's what I said in my comment following this article, but you've said it much better. That's the point exactly. I don't see how this writer comes to such a lame conclusion that Rove "deserves punishment" for having HEARD something from a reporter and simply repeated same to another reporter. Geez leweez.
.....and BTW, I rather like the idea of ROVE RUMSFELD 2008 !! ......with Cheney as Secretary of Defense and Condi still at State!......and Janice Rogers Brown as Chief Justice at SCOTUS!
Thanks for your comment!
Char :)
That Rove sent an email to a White security advisor after the conversation with Cooper about "not taking the bait" indicates something. Not sure what.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.