David Corn: Karl Rove's Reality-Free Defense

[deminks]

(snip)

Let's play the trendy, new game: which Karl Rove line of defense is worth bupkis?

But while the White House tries to wish this scandal away, Rove's pals at the GOP and within the conservative media have fashioned a defense. It breaks down to three main points. All are them are untrue or misleading. So spin the wheel:

Rove did not ID Plame/Wilson by name. Perhaps. In Cooper's email, Cooper reported that Rove had discussed "Wilson's wife." Maybe he didn't use her name in his conversation with Cooper. But this is irrelevant. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, it's a crime for a government official to disclose intentionally "any information identifying" an undercover intelligence officer. To commit a crime, it is not necessary to say the person's name. Noting that a person's spouse is a CIA officer is certainly identifying that CIA officer. After all, it would not have been too hard for Cooper--or any other reporter--to find the name of Wilson's wife; it was available on the Internet.

Rove was merely trying to help Cooper. How kind of him. First, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act does not say that it's okay to out a CIA official as long as you're trying to assist a journalist. This is no defense. Secondly, Rove's pals claim that he was attempting to prevent Cooper from writing a piece with false information in it. But, according to that infamous memo, Rove said that "Wilson's wife" had "authorized" Wilson's now-controversial trip to Niger, where he was sent to by the CIA to check out allegations that Iraq was shopping for weapons-grade uranium there. (He concluded there was nothing to this charge.) The aim for Rove was to challenge Wilson's account of his trip. But Wilson's wife had not "authorized" the trip. She had recommended to her colleagues that they talk to Wilson about the Niger allegation, and his trip emerged out of these discussions. Rove was passing bad info to Cooper. He was not performing community service as a pro bono factchecker for Time magazine.

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