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All the President's Men - and Women
The mushrooming Karl Rove CIA outing scandal increasingly looks like it will rack up quite a body count within the White House. It was only two years ago that President Bush concluded of the Valerie Plame outing, "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official." Now it is beginning to appear that he will have no credible senior officials left.
Bush advisor Karl Rove and Dick Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby, of course, are up to their necks in it. Following the revelations by Matt Cooper about the roles of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in revealing Valerie Plame’s identity to him, leaks regarding the grand jury testimony of Tim Russert and Robert Novak contradict Rove and Libby’s claims that reporters told them about Plame, and not visa versa. Evidence also suggests an immediate, organized White House role to discredit Joe Wilson in the wake of his New York Times op-ed on the bogus Niger-Iraq uranium link.
Now, the PlameGate scandal is quickly bringing attention to a long list of other key figures of the first and second term Bush teams:
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- Alberto Gonzales. On Face the Nation on Sunday, the Attorney General and former Bush White House counsel raised that possibility that we should all, as they on the London Underground, "mind the gap." Contacted by the Justice Department about the launch of its investigation on Monday evening, September 29, 2003, Gonzales told only Chief of Staff Andrew Card that night, waiting til the following morning to alert President Bush. On the same day Scott McClellan referred to suggestions that Karl Rove was involved as "ridiculous", White House staff were not given instructions to preserve all relevant documents until the following morning. In a move that would have made Nixon secretary Rosemary Woods proud, Gonzales created a 12 hour gap that could have allowed the shredding to begin.
- Andrew Card. Gonzales’ admissions clearly put the spotlight on White House chief of staff Andy Card. Gonzales’ heads up to Card gave the White House a half day opportunity that, in Schieffer’s words, "would give people time to shred documents and do any number of things." Complicating matters, Card was also on Air Force One during the now infamous July 2003 Africa trip when the secret State Department memo revealing Valerie Wilson’s identity and role was being perused.
- Scott McClellan. McClellan, the idiot non-savant of the White House press operation, has seen his credibility destroyed. The usually docile press corps beat McClellan like a rented mule over his bogus 2003 claims that the allegations against Rove were "ridiculous" and that the President "knows" Rove was not involved. If not a bald-faced liar, McClellan was at least terminally clueless.
- Ari Fleischer. Fleischer, McClellan’s predecessor, may have be in much hotter water. According to a New York Times source, Fleischer told the grand jury that he had never seen the damning July State Department memo describing the Wilson mission to Niger and the role of his wife Valerie. But Bloomberg has reported that not only did Ari receive a call from Robert Novak (whose column outed Plamed) the same day the memo was prepared, he was “was seen perusing the State Department memo” on the flight to Africa with President Bush.
- Karen Hughes. Long before Jeff Gannon was a mouthpiece (so to speak) of the Bush administration, Karen Hughes was the mouthpiece for George Bush. Despite having formally left the White House in July 2002, Hughes helped sell the case for war with Iraq while on the White House Iraq Group along with Card, Rice, Mary Matalin, Rove and Libby. Despite her dismal record and outspoken support for Karl Rove (“Karl has said he was not involved”), Hughes’ nomination to the State Department’s top PR post sailed through committee without Democratic opposition last week.
- Condi Rice. While no one so far is suggesting that then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice played a part in outing Valerie Plame, hers is an interesting role nonetheless. Rice, after all, was a member of the President’s entourage for the July 2003 African swing, and may have seen the State Department memo. Importantly, it was Dr. Rice who on July 14, 2003 in the wake of the Wilson op-ed said of Bush’s Niger claims in the 2003 State of the Union, "it is 16 words, and it has become an enormously overblown issue." This despite having said on June 8, 2003, that the claim from the British report "was not credible."
- Stephen Hadley. Rice’s underling and successor at NSA is also involved in the Rove web of intrigue. Following his July 11 conversation with Matt Cooper, Karl Rove emailed Hadley to let him know that "I didn't take the bait" regarding the impact of the Wilson revelations about Bush’s bogus Niger claims.
- John Bolton. No discussion regarding White House wrong-doing on weapons of mass destruction would be complete without John Bolton. Bolton, who as part of his U.N. nomination process must reveal any imvolvement in on going legal activities, did not disclose to the Senate his testimony to the Plame grand jury. Blogosphere speculation that Bolton may have been Judith Miller’s regular source on WMD issues has led to rumors that he is the person the jailed Miller is trying to protect.
Yes, the gang is all here. It's beginning to sound like "all the President's men" - again.
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