Way back when, John DiIulio, the head of Bush’s White House faith-based office, said of his administration colleagues:
“There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything — and I mean everything — being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”
The New York Times had a report today on the Plame story, considering Rove’s and Libby’s mess from a slightly different angle. In the process, the Times helps highlight just how right DiIulio was.
At the same time in July 2003 that a C.I.A. operative’s identity was exposed, two key White House officials who talked to journalists about the officer were also working closely together on a related underlying issue: whether President Bush was correct in suggesting earlier that year that Iraq had been trying to acquire nuclear materials from Africa.
The two issues had become inextricably linked because Joseph C. Wilson IV, the husband of the unmasked C.I.A. officer, had questioned Mr. Bush’s assertion, prompting a damage-control effort by the White House that included challenging Mr. Wilson’s standing and his credentials. A federal grand jury investigation is under way by a special counsel to determine whether someone illegally leaked the officer’s identity and possibly into whether perjury or obstruction of justice occurred during the inquiry.
People who have been briefed on the case said the White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby, were helping prepare what became the administration’s primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been in Mr. Bush’s State of the Union address six months earlier.
They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president’s political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet.
At the same time, they were grappling with the fallout from an Op-Ed article on July 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Mr. Wilson, a former diplomat, in which he criticized the way the administration had used intelligence to support the claim in Mr. Bush’s speech.
The work done by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby on the Tenet statement during this intense period has not been previously disclosed.
No, it hadn’t, which is part of why this is so interesting.
In terms of the Bush White House, what we see here is a complete breakdown between the executive branch’s national security interests and political interests. There is, unfortunately, no difference between them, which is why we see Rove writing statements for the director of the CIA. It explains quite well why everything — from 9/11, to Iraq, to intelligence — has been politicized by the Bush gang.
In terms of the Plame scandal, this report also helps demonstrate the extent to which Rove was involved in the coordinated effort to smear Joseph Wilson. Rove was dealing with the entire story from start to finish and, it appears, may have learned about Plame’s identity while working on Tenet’s statement.
And then there’s that press secretary’s name again…
Among those asked if he had seen the memo was Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, who was on Air Force One with Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell during the Africa trip. Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor’s admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.
Mr. Fleischer’s role has been scrutinized by investigators, in part because his telephone log showed a call on the day after Mr. Wilson’s article appeared from Mr. Novak, the columnist who, on July 14, 2003, was the first to report Ms. Wilson’s identity.
If Fleischer did see that document, and Fitzgerald seems to think he did, he’s in a world of trouble.