Nbadan
10-08-2005, 01:00 AM
Karl Rove Lied to the FBI (and implicated the President at the same time)
Jason Leopold
Looks like Karl Rove did break the law, the same federal law that got Martha Stewart sentenced to six months in prison.
It now appears that Rove, President Bush's chief of staff, may have lied to the FBI in October 2003 - a federal crime - when he was questioned by federal agents investigating who was responsible for leaking information about a covert CIA operative to the media.
During questioning by the FBI about his role in the Plame affair, Rove told federal agents that he only started sharing information about Plame with reporters and White House officials for the first time after conservative columnist Robert Novak identified her covert CIA status in his column on July 14, 2003. This is according to a report in the American Prospect about Rove's testimony in March 2004, a copy of which can be found here.
But Rove wasn't truthful with the FBI as evidenced by the disclosure of Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper's emails, which reveal Rove as the source for Cooper's own July 2003 story identifying Plame as a CIA operative, and show that Rove spoke to Cooper nearly a week before Novak’s column was published and, according to previously published news reports, spoke to a half-dozen other reporters about Plame as early as June 2003.
"It was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized (Wilson's) trip," says Cooper's July 11, 2003 email to his editor and obtained by Newsweek. "Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counter proliferation division."
Moreover, evidence suggests that President Bush was aware as early as October 2003 that Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, were the sources who leaked Plame's undercover CIA status to reporters. After the president was briefed about the issue, he said publicly the source of the leak will never be found.
Furthermore, a few aides to Condoleezza Rice, then head of the National Security Council, may have played a part as well by being the first officials to learn about Plame's role as a CIA operative and gave that information to Rove, Libby and other senior administration officials.
--
Here's the fullest account yet of how the events leading up to the disclosure that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative unfolded, and how it all leads back to Rove. But first let's get to the real story behind the leak, the catalyst behind this issue.
Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-leopold/karl-rove-lied-to-the-fbi_b_8524.html)
Jason Leopold
Looks like Karl Rove did break the law, the same federal law that got Martha Stewart sentenced to six months in prison.
It now appears that Rove, President Bush's chief of staff, may have lied to the FBI in October 2003 - a federal crime - when he was questioned by federal agents investigating who was responsible for leaking information about a covert CIA operative to the media.
During questioning by the FBI about his role in the Plame affair, Rove told federal agents that he only started sharing information about Plame with reporters and White House officials for the first time after conservative columnist Robert Novak identified her covert CIA status in his column on July 14, 2003. This is according to a report in the American Prospect about Rove's testimony in March 2004, a copy of which can be found here.
But Rove wasn't truthful with the FBI as evidenced by the disclosure of Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper's emails, which reveal Rove as the source for Cooper's own July 2003 story identifying Plame as a CIA operative, and show that Rove spoke to Cooper nearly a week before Novak’s column was published and, according to previously published news reports, spoke to a half-dozen other reporters about Plame as early as June 2003.
"It was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized (Wilson's) trip," says Cooper's July 11, 2003 email to his editor and obtained by Newsweek. "Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counter proliferation division."
Moreover, evidence suggests that President Bush was aware as early as October 2003 that Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, were the sources who leaked Plame's undercover CIA status to reporters. After the president was briefed about the issue, he said publicly the source of the leak will never be found.
Furthermore, a few aides to Condoleezza Rice, then head of the National Security Council, may have played a part as well by being the first officials to learn about Plame's role as a CIA operative and gave that information to Rove, Libby and other senior administration officials.
--
Here's the fullest account yet of how the events leading up to the disclosure that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative unfolded, and how it all leads back to Rove. But first let's get to the real story behind the leak, the catalyst behind this issue.
Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-leopold/karl-rove-lied-to-the-fbi_b_8524.html)