Smelling like a Rove

The Bush administration said it would fire anyone involved in outing Valerie Plame. Even Karl Rove?

By Farhad Manjoo

Jul 12, 2005 | Karl Rove, George W. Bush's chief political strategist, has not been having an especially happy second term. His boss's political fortunes are in the dumps, and nothing Rove plans -- the Terri Schiavo fight, or the Social Security whistle-stop tour, or the president's recent prime-time speech, offering more non-answers on Iraq -- has righted Bush's sinking ship. Now Rove himself has the law breathing down his neck.

The law in this case is Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department a year and a half ago, to determine who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent to Robert Novak, the conservative syndicated columnist. The undercover operative is Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who questioned the veracity of Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa. In the summer of 2003, Wilson wrote an Op-Ed column for the New York Times, revealing that in 2002 he'd been sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate the uranium claim -- and found nothing.

The leak to Novak of Plame's identity looked like an attempt by the White House to punish Wilson for speaking out, and Wilson has accused Rove of being involved in the effort to reveal Plame's identity. In the fall of 2003, the Justice Department opened an investigation into the matter. Since then, Fitzgerald has been quietly assembling his case. But the public has only begun to get some hint of investigation's status in the past few months, as Fitzgerald has pressed two Washington journalists -- Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of the New York Times -- to testify about their conversations with White House sources regarding Wilson's claims. Miller was sent to jail last week when she refused to speak.

It's what Rove said to Cooper -- who suddenly agreed, under mysterious circumstances, to testify -- that's now got the strategist in trouble. According to reports of conversations between Rove and Cooper, Rove appears to have disclosed Plame's identity -- while not specifically her name -- to Cooper. But what this means for Rove -- whether he'll be fired, or jailed for what he did -- is a matter of furious speculation. This doozy of a case is not, as you may have guessed, easy to get your mind around. So we've prepared this handy primer.

Is Karl Rove going to jail?

Don't know yet. It's clear from recent reports in Newsweek and the Washington Post that Rove was involved in, and possibly headed, a White House effort to discredit Wilson. What's not clear is whether Rove committed a crime, either by leaking Plame's identity, or by lying to investigators who are trying to determine whether he leaked Plame's identity. Even if Rove did violate the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which prohibits divulging an intelligence agent's identity, investigators may lack the necessary evidence to charge him. Rove continues to deny any wrongdoing.

What do we know about Rove's involvement?

We know that on July 11, 2003 -- the Friday after Wilson's article, What I Didn't Find in Africa," was published in the Sunday New York Times -- Matthew Cooper, who'd just started covering the White House for Time magazine, called Rove to ask what he made of Wilson's story. After the conversation, Cooper sent his editor an e-mail describing what Rove had said. Cooper, who moonlights as a stand-up comedian in Washington, labeled the e-mail "double super secret background." Newsweek obtained it after Time decided to hand it to prosecutors.

The e-mail suggests that Rove gave Cooper an earful. Rove warned the reporter not to "get too far out on Wilson" -- that is, not to put too much stock in what Wilson had written -- because Wilson's trip to Africa, Rove attested, had not been authorized either by George Tenet, the director of the CIA, nor Vice President Dick Cheney. Wilson had only been sent to Niger to check out claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium there because, Rove told Cooper, "wilson's wife, who apparently works at the [Central Intelligence] agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues" had "authorized the trip." In other words, Rove was telling Cooper, Wilson only got the assignment because of nepotism, so there's no reason to believe what he's saying about Saddam.

Rove, Cooper added, said that not only was the "genesis of [Wilson's] trip ... flawed an[d] suspect," but so were Wilson's conclusions about Saddam's WMD search in Africa. Rove "implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger."

Close readers will spot what Rove did not tell Cooper: Valerie Plame's name. It's not clear whether Rove went into detail about Plame's status at the CIA; she was an operative who often worked undercover and so needed her identity to remain cloaked. In the legal case against Rove, this omission is key, as Rove's attorney says that because Rove didn't name Plame, Rove didn't do anything wrong.

Is that true? Or did Rove violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act?

Again, it's not cut and dried. As the Washington Post pointed out, "To be considered a violation of the law, a disclosure by a government official must have been deliberate, the person doing it must have known that the CIA officer was a covert agent, and he or she must have known that the government was actively concealing the covert agent's identity."

Based on Cooper's e-mail with Rove, it isn't clear that Rove knew Plame's name. But even if Rove did know Plame's name, which is likely, that fact is not as important as knowing her CIA status. In pointing out her occupation and association to Wilson, Rove was clearly identifying Plame. Was he then knowingly and deliberately disclosing a CIA operative? For that, Rove would have had to know that Plame was undercover. If he didn't know that fact -- if Rove knew Plame simply as Wilson's wife who happened to work on WMD at the CIA -- he didn't commit a crime.

So to stay out of the slammer, can't Rove simply say he didn't know who Plame was?

Yes, and that's essentially Rove's defense. Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, told the Washington Post on Sunday that Rove had no idea who Plame was, other than that she was Wilson's CIA wife. Luskin says that Rove's conversation with Cooper "was not an effort to encourage Time to disclose her identity. What he was doing was discouraging Time from perpetuating some statements that had been made publicly and weren't true." Those allegedly untrue "statements" are claims made by some at the time that Wilson's trip was Cheney's idea; according to Luskin, Rove only mentioned Wilson's wife to show that it was her idea, not Cheney's, for Wilson to go to Africa.

That said, we don't know what Rove told other reporters; specifically, we don't know whether Rove gave Plame's name to Robert Novak, the first journalist to name Plame, who appears to have talked to the prosecutor. But it's a fair guess when you look at the similarity between what Rove told Cooper and what Novak said Bush administration sources told him, and the fact that Cooper spoke to Rove on July 11, a Friday, and Novak's column was published the next Monday.

Here's what Novak wrote in his column outing Plame: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report [which suggested an effort by Saddam to buy uranium in Africa]. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."

To recap: Novak was talking to "senior administration officials" around the same time that Cooper was talking to Rove. Novak got the same story from "senior administration officials" that Cooper got from Rove. As we're pretty sure they don't say in Texas, the whole thing sure does stink of turd blossom. And here's where it could get hairy for Rove. If Novak did get Plame's identity from Rove, and if Novak has said as much to special prosecutor Fitzgerald, with whom he's allegedly cooperating, Rove may yet face legal troubles.

Next Page: Democratic Senate leaders: Rove must go

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