How the Media Created Rovegate - (CIA LEAK; MSM deliberately falsifying facts; McClellan)

In a July 17 story, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of the Washington Post had to admit, in recapping White House statements about the Valerie Plame case, that White House spokesman Scott McClellan was usually careful to disavow involvement "in any illegal leak, though his public statements clearly left an impression of a White House aloof to the affair."

This is the key to understanding White House statements about the case and the reported White House role. If you read the transcripts of McClellan's briefings, it is clear that McClellan had denied a White House role in a criminal disclosure of classified information.

But when McClellan then took the stand that he would not comment any more on the case because of the ongoing investigation, members of the White House press corps descended like sharks in the water, creating the impression that there was a cover-up.

That was a mistake on McClellan's part. He should have reiterated that the White House position was always against illegal leaks of classified information, not discussing the case with reporters. And that's what has been revealed in this case. Bush official Karl Rove's big "crime" so far has been exposed as discussing the matter with reporters. It's clear, based on the notes of his discussion with Matt Cooper of Time, that Rove wasn't aware of the facts and didn't have access to classified information about Valerie Plame's service or status in the CIA. He said she "apparently" worked at the agency. In any case, it turns out she isn't covered under a law designed to protect the identities of secret CIA agents.

The handling of this yellowcake controversy was a White House botch job from the beginning. The president was and still is correct when he cited British intel. that indicates Saddam's agents were in Niger seeking to obtain yellowcake uranium. Suddenly a partisan hack like Joe Wilson comes along (he worked for the Kerry campaign, likely secretly before doing so openly) and contradicts the president on this and the media goes into full feeding frenzy mode based on little more than his word.

Not one media outlet bothered to look into the merits of the Wilson investigation, including those in Niger who say Wilson never talked to them as he claimed and quite a few people remember him doing little more than lounging around a hotel rather than conducting an actual investigation. Certainly no questions were ever asked about who commissioned this investigation and why. They still aren't asking.

But all that was enough for the shamelessly partisan US news media to pronounce Bush a liar. Unfortunately some in the administration, most notably Condi Rice, Colin Powell and George Tenant allowed their damage control to get out ahead of the facts and backed-off the yellowcake claim, even at one point confusing the British intelligence the president's remarks drew on with an earlier discredited memo from Italian intelligence on the same topic. This was astonishingly sloppy and knee-jerk by a Bush administration renowned for its message discipline.

The administration got hood-winked into backing off the yellowcake story all too soon during a heated-up election season and as a result has been totally run-over by a never-ending parade of lies by Democrats and their media parrots. Indeed, the administration failed terribly in June of 04 to get the message out that it was right afterall when the Senate Intelligence Committee uninamously concluded that in fact the yellowcake story was true and credible, backed up by similar findings by British intelligence and the European Intelligence Agency. Their damage control had simply gotten out too far ahead of the facts on this and they would have looked silly, or at least so they thought, backing off their earlier back peddling on yellowcake.

And the administration continues to get run over by this story now in the form of this Rove dust-up and continues to show the same timidity in not calling Wilson and his wife for the phonies, traitors and felons that they are, and in not showing the vicious lies used to try to damage the president with in Wilson's phony "investigation" in 2003, all done by a guy who later worked for John Kerry's campaign. And as Karl Rove gets run over nightly in the news, Bush continues to maintain his silence about this episode and continues to get flogged by lies being told by Democrats who probably can't believe their good fortune and not having a word of it answered by an adminstration they would stop at nothing to destroy, including by damaging US natl. security to claim Saddam was not seeking yellowcake uranium.

What a terribly incompetent moment of political impotence by the Bush administration communications and political team. The Clinton people would never have allowed their enemies to get away with something like this. Hell, they destroyed people telling the truth about them! Our man Bush and his people just sit there and suck their thumbs out of fear of of speaking up in advocacy of the truth in fear that the media will flog them with it, as if they're not flogging them already.

This whole yellowcake thing will go down as Bush's poorest moment in terms of communicating truth to the public and in failing to expose evil liars like Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame for the partisan traitors they are. Very sad.

Great post, Mike, but GDI, I'm grinding my teeth over how you described the ass-backwards outcome of the yellowcake intelligence. The Dims, libs, nuts, and related pukes are now having a non-stop jamboree of wild Bush-slamming, and undoubtedly without consequences, since, as you said, it's the admin's botching that started it all.

Even aware citizens are confused about this. I think Bush
should (1) make a special report to the nation and tell the yellowcake story like it really is, and how he messed it up, and gave the MSM and his critics carte blanche to criticize and tell lies. (You could write the speech, Mike! 8-D )

(2) Get a competent and capable replacement for McClellan.

Rove will survive the investigation unscathed, I believe, and unless some dunce gets nailed for perjury, the whole, entire mess was just a one-coat-covers-all sh*tstorm that damaged Bush for no good reason, except the botch.

Thanks Randi. I actually had more to say than that but needed to be somewhere so cut it short!

I agree with you that I think come October when this unconscienable Grand Jury adjourns they will not take any action against Rove or anyone else. But the media will never report that with the same incessant drumbeat they reported the initial slanders.

It's the same way the media screamed headlines about the yellowcake story being false, but then barely reported only a year later when multiple international investigations, including a bipartisan finding by the Senate Intelligence Committee, that in fact the yellowcake story was highly credible! That was barely even mentioned by the media and certainly not with the same breathless, incessant coverage the media gave the initial charge.

But I have to blame Bush for a lot of that information not getting out. Clinton and his people were masters of using the media to get their message out. Granted they had a compliant media machine more than willing to parrot their party line. But if Bush and his people were out there shouting from the roof tops the exhoneration of the yellowcake story, the media couldn't help but report it. Hell, send Condi Rice and the CIA director onto the Sunday Shows if nothing else to talk about nothing but!

And the administration will remain similarly mum when Rove is cleared, fearing to incite the media to contradict them or somehow attack them on the matter. It's time the administration stop acting so sheepish in front of these media pukes and call them on their slander and lies. Fight them with truth and facts and the public will line up on your side against a terribly co-opted media propaganda machine!

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