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What did he ask, and when did he ask it? With Words UnspokenBy Rick Horowitz
"So tell me, Karl," the president says. "Did you have anything -- anything at all -- to do with the Valerie Plame leak?" And Karl Rove says -- Well, we don't really know what Karl Rove says, do we? In fact -- and here's the beauty part -- we don't even know if the president asked. It would have made perfect sense, of course, for the president to ask. After all, the Valerie Plame leak was a very big story, a very big mystery, and the president said he wanted to know all the facts. He not only wanted to know all the facts, he said, but he promised stern action against whoever was responsible. So did he ever ask Karl Rove about it? Karl Rove, after all, was "The Architect" -- the president's memorable description of the ultimate go-to guy. It would have been just as accurate to call him "The Repairman"; if some part of the Bush machine was malfunctioning, or endangered, Karl Rove was the guy who figured out how to fix it. It would have been just as accurate to call him "The Hit Man." Karl Rove took no prisoners. So when Joe Wilson published his op-ed piece in The New York Times back in July of 2003, suggesting that at least one of the administration's main arguments for war with Iraq was bogus, and when the identity of Wilson's CIA-employed wife soon became public, it wouldn't have been too big a stretch to wonder if somehow, somewhere, Karl Rove might have been involved. Patrick Fitzgerald certainly seems to think so. By all accounts, Rove is the now-famous "Official A" in Fitzgerald's indictment of Dick Cheney's own go-to guy, Lewis Libby, for perjury, for making false statements to FBI investigators, and for obstruction of justice. "Official A," the special counsel says, had a conversation about Valerie Plame with the columnist Robert Novak not long before Novak spilled the beans about Plame. Whether that conversation was illegal is another matter. (Fitzgerald is said to be still sorting that out.) But was "Official A" part of the effort -- illegal, or simply highly improper -- to publicize Plame's CIA ties? Absolutely. So here's the question: Does Patrick Fitzgerald know more about Karl Rove's involvement than George Bush does? And if so, why? George Bush is, after all, the president of the United States. Karl Rove is an aide to the president. The president is the most powerful person in the entire government. (At least that's what it says in his job description.) Karl Rove serves at the pleasure of the president. The president works in the Oval Office. Karl Rove works only steps from the Oval Office. They see each other, and speak to each other, multiple times a day. So how difficult would it have been for George Bush, who insisted he wanted to know the answer, to put the question to Karl Rove, the person most likely to have the answer? "So tell me, Karl," the president says. "Did you have anything -- anything at all -- to do with the Valerie Plame leak?" So then the bigger question is: Did Karl Rove deceive the president when he answered that question? Or did the president never even ask him? For that matter, did Lewis Libby deceive the president? Or did the president never even ask him? For that matter, did Dick Cheney deceive the president? Or did the president never even ask him? (Or did Dick Cheney tell the president to mind his own business?) There are other possibilities, of course -- that the president did ask Rove, and Libby, and Cheney, and they all said, "You don't want to know." Or that he asked them, and they told him the truth, and he chose to keep it to himself. That would certainly be an interesting choice. There's still another possibility, of course -- that George Bush knew about it all along. So which is it? Posted 11/1/05. Here's
a fact: Rick has excited readers coast to coast! (Have you told your
friends about him?)
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Rick Horowitz
