Posted on 07/04/2005 7:11:53 AM PDT by MikeJ75
MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, who broke the news Friday that notes taken by Time magazine's Matthew Cooper indictate that top Bush advisor Karl Rove leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak, said Sunday it's likely that Rove broke no laws.
Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledged on Saturday that his client had indeed spoken to Cooper before the Novak column hit in July 2003. But Luskin insisted that Rove never revealed Plame's identity.
Speaking to WABC Radio host, Internet guru Matt Drudge late Sunday, O'Donnell noted: "What [Luskin] has said is very careful lawyer language. . . We live in a world where we have to discover, in the 90s, that there are people who aren't sure what the meaning of 'is' is."
The MSNBC talker posited:
"That could simply mean he did not use the words 'Valerie Plame.' He may have said [Joseph] Wilson's wife, for example. He may have said all sorts of things that still fit what we're talking about."
But even if Rove was behind the disclosure, it doesn't mean he broke any law, he argued.
"[Luskin] is insisting that Karl Rove did not commit a crime," O'Donnell told Drudge. "That may very well be the case."
The MSNBC talker said he had studied extensively the statute allegedly broken in the Plame case, concluding that is "a very difficult statute to violate."
For one thing, he said, "Perhaps [Plame] really wasn't a covert agent - doesn't fit the statute's definition of covert agent. I think that's possible."
Another factor that could mitigate allegations of an illegal disclosure, said O'Donnell, was that whoever revealed Plame's identity "would have had to intentionally disclose it knowing that the CIA is trying to hide it.
"Karl Rove may not have known that," he added.
If indeed Rove was behind the disclosure: "All [of the above] would add up to the fact that no crime was committed in the transmission of this information by Rove to Cooper," O'Donnell said.
March, 2004
Plugging Leaks
More details emerge on the Plame investigation, as Karl Rove's testimony is revealed for the first time.
By Murray S. Waas
Web Exclusive: 3.8.04
Print Friendly | Email Article
President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter.
But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson
My bet has always been on her husband doing this.
And no he won't go to jail. He'll probably get a book deal and a show.
Mike, I posted this to EXTENDED news so more people could see it on the sidebar, and, I will link my previous threads on this matter to this thread.
See my post #45 re Lawrence's blog link. You may find it interesting to read some of the posts to his blog!
What a creeply liar.
Thanks.
First, may I say I get a chuckle every time I see "Lassie O'Donnell"? LOL
Second, those are very interesting comments, especially "Robert S. Finnegan
Managing Editor
Southeast Asia News"
I just Googled him and it sounds like the type of tripe he puts out. It's no secret they have been striving mightily for Nixon redux and his fantasy that Rove will play Agnew (they've tried "Cheney-Halliburton" for just that reason) is a stitch.
N= On
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