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."
Pinging you for interest; a plamegate story by abcnews.
Garbage.....nothing more but trying to keep the story alive...
Fitzgerald has not indicted anyone for outing Plame....he will not say whether it was a crime for outing her....it "appears" Rove will be indicted...
The longer this drags out the more it becomes apparent this is nothing more than a witchhunt to satisfy the rats...
LOL! Oh, man, I know it's not funny at all, but I do find it hilarious how the MSM will insist with a straight face that they are unbiased.
We've had enough heast here already..
LMAO, I love the attempt to compare Bush to Nixon and this "scandal" to Watergate. Some scandal. Fitzy can't even find a real crime to charge anyone with. The best he can come up with is indicting on a fuzzy memory. LOL, only the pukes in the media give a flying you know what about this story anymore, them and a few in the swamp fever crowd over at the DU and KOS. When was the last time anyone you know had two words to say about this story? Yet the lapdog media keeps hyping this fart of a story with its breathless predictions of a "hot summer" for the White House comparable to 1974 at the Nixon White House. Give me a break.
Where's the story about this being a witch hunt? The story about the vendetta the special prosecutor has against the administration? Oh yeah, this is not a Democrat being investigated.
No kidding. There's been nothing new on this story for months. But the media just keeps beating the sh-t out of it trying to ring dry a little more blood out of this stone. Crap, why don't they just resurrect Iran/Contra?
And where are the endless price tags being attached to this investigation like the fictional $40 million figure the Democrats and their media lapdogs attached to the Clinton perjury story? I really would like to know what this enormous fart of an investigation is costing us. So far it's produced nothing but innuendo and misinterpretation of the law.
Also notice too, that the article doesn't even mention the well known fact that FITZY KNOWS WHO THE LEAKER is, and has chosen NOT to indict -- because there WAS NO CRIME. ABC was disappointed that didn't get their fitzmas, so now they are looking for fitzicane (bad attempt at humor for hurricane season)!
It's amazing how poor the reporting on this story has been. First off, no one in DC cares about this as the article states. I live in DC and no one cares. People are not talking about it, except the political types on both sides.
This article has not one new piece of news on this story, it is only speculation by an unnamed source, who unlike most unnamed sources, admits he's clueless.
So what's the agenda here. Get My Lai and, ok my ribs are hurting, Watergate going at the same time.
It's really time for Gonzalez to give this guy 30 days to wrap it up then to pull the plug. The independent council statute expired in the late 90s. Fitzloser serves at the pleasure of the attorney general. Time to give this guy and his make-work investigation his walking papers.
But that won't deter dimwits like John Cochran from making the comparison...
I think the whole thing will shut down by the end of this week. Fitzy knows he doesn't have ANYTHING, Cooper is his primary witness against Rove, and Cooper has already been shown to be unreliable to Fitzy's case against Libby. Fitzy will look like a prosecutor out of control if he doesn't shut down soon. It would be nice to see someone take Fitzy to task for all the errors he has put out in the public domain, starting with his Libby indictment presser.
Hugh and series heast. Buah's fault.
Note to John Cochran: Dream on,,,little dreamer, dream on.
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