It's not the heast, it's the humidisty....
Posted on 05/31/2006 2:48:18 PM PDT by Laverne
WASHINGTON, May 31, 2006 — Thermometers have finally hit the 90's, and Washington is getting the lazy, sultry look that comes as May dissolves into June.
We Washingtonians tend to slow down, but the news doesn't. And it won't this summer either, with a decision expected this summer from Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald that will finally determine whether a top White House aide will face serious federal charges in the CIA leak case.
Those old enough to remember Watergate will recall the fiercely hot summer of '74, when scandal revelations brought down Richard Nixon's presidency.
Now Washington waits to see what this summer holds for the Bush White House. No one believes the scandal will approach the grand scale of Watergate, but when it hits it will certainly qualify as breaking news.
We refer, of course, to the CIA leak case that has already produced the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff.
Will there be more indictments? Will President Bush's top political aide, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, escape indictment and continue plotting strategy for Republicans to maintain control of Congress? Or will Rove be indicted and, as Libby did, turn in his White House pass?
Many in Washington who are in a position to know believed we would have an answer by now. But Fitzgerald never set a deadline, so he doesn't have to meet one.
Fitzgerald, so we are told, is carefully, very carefully, sifting through evidence of what happened three years ago when Rove spoke to two reporters about undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Rove appeared five times before the grand jury that heard evidence in the case. He said he did not consciously mislead the grand jury when he failed to disclose a conversation with Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. Rove said it was simply a faulty memory that caused him not to reveal his conversation about Plame, the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a caustic critic of President Bush who accused the president of using faulty intelligence to help justify the Iraq War.
Fitzgerald has assembled evidence that Rove was active during that period in July 2003 in defending the president's reasons for going to war.
But Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said: "It does not follow that he [Rove] was necessarily involved in some effort to discredit Wilson personally. Nor does it prove that there was even an effort to disclose Plame's identity in order to punish Wilson."
Plame's outing as a CIA officer was what led to Fitzgerald's investigation. He set out to discover whether administration officials knowingly revealed Plame's connection to the CIA.
It is unclear whether that would actually have been a crime, and in fact, no one has been accused by the special prosecutor of doing that.
Libby was indicted on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice. In other words, Libby is charged with covering up something that may or may not be a crime.
It appears that Fitzgerald is considering similar charges against Rove. If anyone other than Rove is in danger of indictment, we don't know about it.
Rove's fate is an obsessive topic in Washington because he has been such an important player in GOP electoral victories, not just for George Bush but for Republicans on Capitol Hill as well. Even Democrats acknowledge Rove is a grand master at political chess.
It would be a stunning blow to Republicans if his talents are not available this fall, when Democrats will challenge them for control of both Houses of Congress. And even though Rove recently lost some of his responsibilities at the White House, the president still relies heavily on him for political advice.
Clearly, this is not an easy call for Fitzgerald. If it had been, Rove would already be cleared or indicted.
Past forecasts of a timetable for Fitzgerald's decision have proved wrong. What is the new forecast? We asked a lawyer who was at one time involved in the case and who does not want to make predictions with his name attached.
"Soon," he said, "Fitzgerald can't delay this much longer."
What does soon mean, we asked.
"Oh," he said, "one hot day when you least expect it."
John Cocoran is a Gore Guy.
I thought this was a Patty Heast thread.
LOL Didn't even catch that! Admin mod: can you please fix my typo in the thread title?
They want to find out who revealed the existence of undercover DNC operatives at CIA.
They ought to be investigating who at CIA is blowing classified operations, such as the supposed "secret prisons" or safe houses, the "secret flights", the use of captured cell phones, the use of phone records to roll up Al Qaeda cells, the monitoring of Bin Ladin's satelite phone, and so on.
Every one of these cases alerted the enemy to our methods and tactics, and in most cases caused them to alter their practices in response.
This is the way espionage is done these days. You don't use tradecraft to pass information to your handler, you use the New York Times as your cutout, your handler gets the same information, and you're covered legally. If on the off chance you do get popped, the worse that happens is you lose your job, and you are a hero to the Left.
If Aldrich Ames and Pollard had used this method, they would be free men today.
The Libbey case is a dry hole. Cooper already knew Plame was CIA when he talked to Libbey, just as Novak already knew when he talked to Rove. And Novak called and got confirmation of her employment from CIA. If someone is undercover at CIA, CIA doesn't confirm their employment. Thats not the way it works. If you have non-official cover, your "cover" employer confirms your employment. The CIA denies knowledge of you.
CIA confirmed her employment, therefor she is not undercover, therefor no one outed her, except the CIA, and according to reports, her husband. But investigating something that never happened keeps people from focusing on intelligence breaches that really did happen.
R-U-S-S-E-R-T
Why would they bring us back to 1974 when there was a much more recent crisis in the white house?
Oh, no! Evidence! Of engaging in the political arena while being a Republican! Off with his head.
It's not the heast, it's the humidisty....
CIA Leak Case Heast Up Hazy Summer
I hate it when the summer heast up.
With the support Rove has been providing the Senate's amnesty bill, I hope he does get indicted to shut him up. Even if Fitz has as much credibility as Ronnie Earl, I would rather see Rove huddling with his defense lawyers instead of twisting House members arms on the amnesty bill.
she looks pretty good for 43.
Thanks for the ping!
High time for term limits on the MSM!
If it had been Rove .. Fitz would have already indicted him
The case against Libby is based on what a few reporters wrote about
Translation .. Fitz is toast
They ought to be investigating who was behind the Niger Embassy burglary that spawned the forgeries to begin with. It wasn't Rocco, he was a stooge. All roads seem to lead back to the disgruntled CIA and Wilson. Hang 'em high.
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