Blast from the past

July 11, 2005

I was reviewing some old stories about the Plame scandal and came across a quote from The Guardian’s Julian Borger from September 2003.

“Several of the journalists are saying privately, ‘Yes it was Karl Rove who I talked to.’ Now, the thing is that the journalists are not going to name Karl Rove publicly because you don’t name your sources, and to do so would discredit them as journalists. So the White House is safe for the time being, but Karl Rove’s name is very much out there.”

Interestingly enough, at the time, Borger characterized this as an open secret that the media establishment knew, but wouldn’t report. Journalists, talking amongst themselves, apparently had no qualms about discussing Rove’s leaks because they all received the same calls from him.

Some of the recent media reports, such as this one in the LA Times over the weekend, literally ask, “Was it Karl Rove, after all?” Of course it was Rove. These reporters are feigning surprise at a revelation they knew two years ago. It’s like telling a friend to pretend to be stunned at his surprise birthday party after he’s already heard about it.

Let’s not forget that Novak received the leak about Plame from two White House sources, but the Washington Post reported way back in September 2003 that WH officials involved with the leak contacted “at least six” other DC journalists with the information before Novak’s column ran. Time’s Matt Cooper was apparently one of them, but there are still several others, many of whom probably work at top-tier media outlets, who’ve known all along about the leakers’ identities but have helped keep them secret.

In fact, if some of the leakees wanted to become the leakers, we could have learned a lot more about this scandal a long time ago.

This is a good point as it comes to the “protect the source� arguments. The argument rests, in a journalistic sense, on maintaining the flow of information leading to newsworthy information, presumably because that information would expose corruption and criminal activity.

Thus, reporters who knew that Rove committed a crime by leaking the name were, in effect, undermining the entire premise on which the value of confidential sourcing rests.

  • Sorry to double-post, but I noticed something. Since this was most likely an intentional political hit from the Rove team, and since it involved more than one source, it would stand to reason that this most coordinated on a WH also coordinated both leaks, right? Maybe with Bolton, with an opportunity to help attack and gut the UN as his reward (if not for the leak, for the info gather)?

    Either way, when criminal activity is coordinated, it’s a conspiracy, which opens up many more legal angles with which to go after Rove, and other top WH staffers.

  • I’m with Eadie. Rove couldn’t have done this all by his lonesome.

    It gets even more interesting when one realizes that the WH for a long time (even now?) was denying that the information on the Yellowcake story being phony had reached them before Bush trumpeted it in the State of the Union address. The fact that the WH was leaking Plame’s identity before the SOTU suggests that they in fact had this information, fully understood its importance for undermining their case for war, and consequently elected to make a concerted effort to destroy Wilson.

  • When did it become part of a journalists job to protect liars and criminals, who threaten national security over cheap political hatchet jobs? Plus, I’m appalled at the White House’s cynical use of journalistic ethics—protecting sources—to subvert the investigation into who leaked Plame’s name. As to who the second guy is, my money is on Scooter Libby.

  • Oh, one more thing, if you haven’t read Paul Lakusiak’s post at TPM Cafe, please do so. Because he quotes a Walter Pincus article that suggests the White House orchestrated the entire campaign against Wilson and Plame as early as 2002, in order to use them as cover in the phony Niger story. The White House had seen two earlier reports that said Niger could not have sold Iraq uranium. Yet the White House went ahead and requested a third report from Wilson. They planned to shift the focus off the phony Niger story and fixed intelligence at the expense of Wilson and Plame. I wonder what Plame was working on, in regards to WMD, that the White House would be willing to sacrifice her? Or maybe they just pulled her name out of a hat because anyone would suffice?

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