Maybe MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell should read Salon and the LA Times. She might learn something about giving [tag]Karl Rove[/tag] the benefit of the doubt.
This morning, O’Donnell badgered Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) about why the White House’s purge-scandal offer — “interviews” with Rove with no oath and no transcript — isn’t good enough. When Leahy tried to explain, O’Donnell accused him of wanting a “show trial,” adding, “You’re going to get the truth from Karl [tag]Rove[/tag]. What’s wrong with that?”
You’re going to get the truth from Karl Rove? Since when? At what point, exactly, did Rove develop a reputation for veracity?
Just this morning, two items were published that O’Donnell probably should have checked before urging Leahy to give Rove the benefit of the doubt. The first is from James C. Moore, co-author of “Bush’s Brain,” who explained in an LAT op-ed, “Bush’s top political aide has built his career on diverting and deceiving; he’d do the same [tag]under oath[/tag].”
Whether Rove chats or testifies, Congress will surely be frustrated. Asking Rove questions is simply not an effective method of ascertaining facts. Reporters who, like me, have dogged the presidential advisor from Texas to Washington quickly learn how skilled he is at dancing around the periphery of issues. Any answers he does deliver can survive a thousand interpretations. Few intellects are as adept at framing, positioning and spinning ideas. That’s a great talent for politics. But it’s dangerous when dealing with the law.
Rove has testified under oath before investigative bodies twice, and in neither case was the truth well served…. If Rove winds up under oath before Congress, members will get a command performance by a man with masterful communications skills. They can expect to hear artful impressions, bits of information and a few stipulated facts. But they should not expect the truth.
Moore points to one example in which Rove was sworn in before the Texas state Senate as a nominee to East Texas State University’s board of regents. Lawmakers wanted Rove to explain his relationship with a controversial FBI agent named Greg Rampton. The state Senate’s nominations committee chairman asked Rove how long he’d known Rampton.
Rove paused for a breath. “Ah, senator, it depends — would you define ‘know’ for me?”
On a related note, Joe Conason has an item in Salon today that spells out the problem in a more blunt way, with a more recent example.
The proposal to interview the president’s chief political counselor without an oath or even a transcript is absurd for a simple and obvious reason. Yet the White House press corps, despite a long and sometimes testy series of exchanges with Snow, is too polite to mention that reason, so let me spell it out as rudely as necessary right here:
Rove is a proven liar who cannot be trusted to tell the truth even when he is under oath, unless and until he is directly threatened with the prospect of prison time. Or has everyone suddenly forgotten his exceedingly narrow escape from criminal indictment for perjury and false statements in the Valerie Plame Wilson investigation? Only after four visits to the grand jury convened by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, and a stark warning from Fitzgerald to defense counsel of a possible indictment, did Rove suddenly remember his role in the exposure of Plame as a CIA agent.
Not only did Rove lie, but he happily let others lie on his behalf, beginning in September 2003, when Scott McClellan, then the White House press secretary, publicly exonerated him of any blame in the outing of Plame. From that autumn until his fifth and final appearance before the grand jury in April 2006, the president’s “boy genius” concealed the facts about his leak of Plame’s CIA identity to Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper.
There is no reason to believe that Rove would ever have told the truth if Fitzgerald had not forced Cooper to testify before the grand jury and surrender his incriminating notes, with a contempt citation and the threat of a long sojourn in jail. Indeed, there is no reason to think that even knowing Cooper had testified would have made Rove testify accurately. He failed to do so from July 2005 until April 2006, after all. But in December 2005, Fitzgerald impaneled a new grand jury and started to present evidence against him.
In the embarrassing aftermath of that very plain history of lying, covering up and gaming the prosecutor, Rove’s friends offered two cute explanations. Explanation one was that he supposedly didn’t remember that he had spoken about Plame with Cooper until Time reporter Viveca Novak reminded his attorney of that fact. Explanation two was that he didn’t say Plame’s name aloud to Cooper but merely referred to her as Wilson’s wife and said she worked at CIA. So technically, when he claimed he didn’t name her, he wasn’t literally lying. Except that he didn’t remember doing any of that anyway.
And yet, MSNBC’s O’Donnell apparently feels comfortable stating, in a matter-of-fact way, that senators can count on getting “the truth from Karl Rove.” Please.
Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a far more realistic perspective. He told CNN yesterday that he’d consider waving the oath for some White House witnesses — but not Rove.
“When you’re dealing with the cast of characters we have, you might consider putting people under oath,” Reid said. “Karl Rove is an example — who came within this close to being indicted for involvement in the Valerie Plame case. So I certainly think people should be under oath. At least Karl Rove.”
Good call.