ON MSNBC: Rowe outed the CIA Agent

MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove as Source in Plame Case

By E&P Staff

Published: July 01, 2005 11:30 PM ET

NEW YORK Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source, and what might happen to him or her. Tonight, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name--and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

Here is the transcript of O'Donnell's remarks:

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury, the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"And I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper.

Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller, held in contempt for refusing to name sources, tried Friday to stay out of jail by arguing for home detention instead after Time Inc. surrendered its reporter's notes to a prosecutor.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said Friday that several unidentified Senate Republicans had placed a hold on a proposed resolution declaring support for Miller and Cooper.

``Cowards!'' Lautenberg said of the Republicans. ``Under the rules, they have a right to refuse to reveal who they are. Sound familiar?''

Lautenberg's resolution is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) It says no purpose is served by imprisoning Miller and Cooper and that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press.

Wow - no shit!

Treasonous git.

Whoever it is, he'll face more than a perjury charge.

Outing a CIA agent is a federal offense.

Karl Rove didn’t out no CIA agent! No! Never! None! Nada! Not none!

That left wing rag, Time Magazine made the whole thing up and now that liberal controlled MSNBC is reporting it. Liberal pussies. It’s CBS all over again.

It’s all a plot by some seditious left wing group, probably that bunch at Move-on.org. Hell they probably had someone imitating Rove’s voice make the call.

Karl Rove didn’t do it and the liberal media needs to quit reporting such lies and focus on supporting the war. We are at war and the left wing media needs to remember that.

This country was attacked and the left wing media needs to quit picking on the patriots who are protecting this country.

Fuck all the media, except FOX.


Eddie The Enraged

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Edward Teach said:

Karl Rove didn’t out no CIA agent! No! Never! None! Nada! Not none!

That left wing rag, Time Magazine made the whole thing up and now that liberal controlled MSNBC is reporting it. Liberal pussies. It’s CBS all over again.

It’s all a plot by some seditious left wing group, probably that bunch at Move-on.org. Hell they probably had someone imitating Rove’s voice make the call.

Karl Rove didn’t do it and the liberal media needs to quit reporting such lies and focus on supporting the war. We are at war and the left wing media needs to remember that.

This country was attacked and the left wing media needs to quit picking on the patriots who are protecting this country.

Fuck all the media, except FOX.


Eddie The Enraged

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Click to expand...

I just love it when you say liberal pussy.




(And please forgive my cavalier attitude towards this latest proof of deceit in this administration but I am beginning to feel as they do, that they are untouchable.)

sweetsubsarahh said:

I just love it when you say liberal pussy.




(And please forgive my cavalier attitude towards this latest proof of deceit in this administration but I am beginning to feel as they do, that they are untouchable.)

Click to expand...

Liberal pussy IS nice. Real nice. The best.

Sorry to hear that you are beginning to feel untouchable.


Ed

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Shocking.




Seriously, I'm willing to bet that when the dust settles, the reporters who tried to protect Rove's confidentiality as a source will have suffered more from this than anybody at the White House. Any takers?

shereads said:

Shocking.
Seriously, I'm willing to bet that when the dust settles, the reporters who tried to protect Rove's confidentiality as a source will have suffered more from this than anybody at the White House. Any takers?

Click to expand...

I agree.

Miller and Cooper were protecting their sources and their integrity as journalists.

They'll be discredited, Time magazine will be attacked again, and in the end, nothing will happen to Rove.

I don't have any sympathy for the reporters. I don't have any for Time either. You are not required to print everything you know and in the vetting process someone, somewhere, along the chain should have asked, will this disclosure endanger the person? It's fucking irresponsible, if not bordering on criminally negligent.

That said, and understanding I have a good deal of anger at them, it also is likely to show the danger inherent in printing something where your sources wish to remain unidentified. The most logical argument from the Rove camp is "I've never met these people in my life, I have no idea what hat they drew my name out of, but the allegations are bullshit."

Now what do you do? Unless Karl let them tape an interwive, or sent a memo to them in his own hand, they are likely to have very little if any evidence he was the source. If Rove is the source, and he handled this with the political animal cunning he has displayed so often, he may well sue them for scandal/lible. And he just might win.

Revealing the information, especially in light of allegations it was motivated as payback, is perhaps one of the lowest, meanest, pettiest, things I have ever heard of a politician doing, and their record is filled with mean, low and petty things. It didn't have to be printed though.

Everyone seems so ready to tar and feather the source, but no one seems even mildly upset at those who made the information avialable for public consumption and I just don't understand that.

dr_mabeuse said:

Whoever it is, he'll face more than a perjury charge.

Outing a CIA agent is a federal offense.

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Better than that. It's treason.



In this case, the CIA agent was involved with the War on Terror, which makes the crime Double High Treason with a Triple Back-Flip Dismount.

The alternative sentence is firing plus a position on the board of Halliburton Industries - with no corner office!

This could get ugly...

Colleen Thomas said:

I don't have any sympathy for the reporters. I don't have any for Time either. You are not required to print everything you know and in the vetting process someone, somewhere, along the chain should have asked, will this disclosure endanger the person? It's fucking irresponsible, if not bordering on criminally negligent.

That said, and understanding I have a good deal of anger at them, it also is likely to show the danger inherent in printing something where your sources wish to remain unidentified. The most logical argument from the Rove camp is "I've never met these people in my life, I have no idea what hat they drew my name out of, but the allegations are bullshit."

Now what do you do? Unless Karl let them tape an interwive, or sent a memo to them in his own hand, they are likely to have very little if any evidence he was the source. If Rove is the source, and he handled this with the political animal cunning he has displayed so often, he may well sue them for scandal/lible. And he just might win.

Revealing the information, especially in light of allegations it was motivated as payback, is perhaps one of the lowest, meanest, pettiest, things I have ever heard of a politician doing, and their record is filled with mean, low and petty things. It didn't have to be printed though.

Everyone seems so ready to tar and feather the source, but no one seems even mildly upset at those who made the information avialable for public consumption and I just don't understand that.

Click to expand...

Oh, make no never mind, the idiotic "I don't know my Woodward from my Wordsworth" deserve every bit of the tarring and feathering awaiting them. You'd think the first thing taught at investigative journalism school is you do not play patsy to a treasonable offense. They should be publicly slapped by Woodward and tied to the comically oversized rail.

That being said, the axe must also fall heavily on the person who actually committed treason.

No quarter.

This whole thing is straight out of George Orwell. Every 'fact' in this pathetic happening has been twisted by our esteemed administration.

Truth: Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA at the request of Dick Cheney to research the claim that Iraq was buying or trying to buy uranium from Niger. (uh, it became one of the major justifications for the Bush war against Iraq.) Wilson undertook the effort on the behalf of our government, spent the time, did the research, and concluded that it just didn't happen. There was absolutely no evidence that Sadaam had any formal dealings with Niger related to uranium acquisition, period. (and according to Wilson, the facts were incontrovertible.)

He was asked to do a job and he dd it. However his report created a firestorm within the administration - all designed to kill the messenger.

Bush Admin Distortions: First, even though Cheney requested the mission to Niger, Joseph Wilson was labeled a 'Clinton appointee' (even though Wilson has worked MORE for Republican adminmistrations than Democrats.)

A leaker within the administration (and now it is more and more evident that Carl Rove is that leaker) called several different news agencies/reporters to say that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent working on learning about weapons of mass destruction, and that Joseph Wilson going to Niger was HER idea. Several of the people who got the leak refused to publish the information. First to break the News: that bastian of Liberalism, Robert Novak.

Wilson's wife was put at risk of her life through this outing. And of course she was rendered impotent as an active undercover agent, so the USA lost that source of intelligence about WMD's in the Middle East - the very thing that the Bush Administration has claimed it was trying to control.

When news finally came out of the outing, the White House was shocked! shocked! They said that they would start looking into the facts of the outing almost immediately - actually the next day. By announcing this, they gave the guilty parties twenty-four hours to destroy the evidence.

So now, everyone is shocked! shocked! that Karl Rove is the source of this despicible leak. BTW, this leak SHOULD be considered to be treason based upon a bill passed during the Bush I administration.

This gets curiouser and curiouser.

Miller. She may write, for money, but she never was a journalist.

In somewhat related news, Jeff Gannon just plain outed!
*snicker*
Jeff Gannon

Perjury my ass. A featherweight plea. But his ostensible boss is getting away with worse because his toadies control the Senate and House.

Dear Scott McClellan, thank you for another rousing press conference about nothing. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/07/12/cia.leaks.ap/index.html

Alfie Higgins said:

This whole thing is straight out of George Orwell. Every 'fact' in this pathetic happening has been twisted by our esteemed administration.

Truth: Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA at the request of Dick Cheney to research the claim that Iraq was buying or trying to buy uranium from Niger. (uh, it became one of the major justifications for the Bush war against Iraq.) Wilson undertook the effort on the behalf of our government, spent the time, did the research, and concluded that it just didn't happen. There was absolutely no evidence that Sadaam had any formal dealings with Niger related to uranium acquisition, period. (and according to Wilson, the facts were incontrovertible.)

He was asked to do a job and he dd it. However his report created a firestorm within the administration - all designed to kill the messenger.

Bush Admin Distortions: First, even though Cheney requested the mission to Niger, Joseph Wilson was labeled a 'Clinton appointee' (even though Wilson has worked MORE for Republican adminmistrations than Democrats.)

A leaker within the administration (and now it is more and more evident that Carl Rove is that leaker) called several different news agencies/reporters to say that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent working on learning about weapons of mass destruction, and that Joseph Wilson going to Niger was HER idea. Several of the people who got the leak refused to publish the information. First to break the News: that bastian of Liberalism, Robert Novak.

Wilson's wife was put at risk of her life through this outing. And of course she was rendered impotent as an active undercover agent, so the USA lost that source of intelligence about WMD's in the Middle East - the very thing that the Bush Administration has claimed it was trying to control.

When news finally came out of the outing, the White House was shocked! shocked! They said that they would start looking into the facts of the outing almost immediately - actually the next day. By announcing this, they gave the guilty parties twenty-four hours to destroy the evidence.

So now, everyone is shocked! shocked! that Karl Rove is the source of this despicible leak. BTW, this leak SHOULD be considered to be treason based upon a bill passed during the Bush I administration.

This gets curiouser and curiouser.

Click to expand...

What you said.

I read an interesting one on another forum I lurk at.

Apparently, Valerie Plame couldn't be outed as a CIA agent as it was already public knowledge.

So this whole thing is just another example of liberals trying to destroy our freedom.

It must be nice, being so certain about how the world works.

One of the most disturbing things about this whole affair is the fact that Rove was careless enough to let himself get caught. Hell, he is supposed to be the smartest man in the whole administration if not the GOP.

That he didn't have others make the leaks, giving himself deniability, is mind boggling.

Hell, he could easily have had his ass covered by dozens of cut-outs.

Either he is so arrogant that he didn't believe there would be any repercussions if he got caught or else he is just plain stupid. Either choice is beyond frightening.


Ed

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Edward Teach said:

One of the most disturbing things about this whole affair is the fact that Rove was careless enough to let himself get caught. Hell, he is supposed to be the smartest man in the whole administration if not the GOP.

That he didn't have others make the leaks, giving himself deniability, is mind boggling.

Hell, he could easily have had his ass covered by dozens of cut-outs.

Either he is so arrogant that he didn't believe there would be any repercussions if he got caught or else he is just plain stupid. Either choice is beyond frightening.


Ed

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I believe it is arrogance.

Remember that "mandate of the people" speech?

"Under the best case scenario, if Rove's conversations about Joseph Wilson's wife were not technically illegal, we still have the president's top political aide covering up a White House lie by smearing an opponent, going after his wife, and in the process 'accidentally' exposing an undercover CIA agent.

"Indeed, the defense isn't that Rove has acted in an ethical and principled fashion; the defense is that Rove is merely a vicious smear artist who helped disseminate classified information to cover his lies about Iraq. But it's not a problem, according to the defense theory, because he didn't literally leak Plame's name. Yeah, that's persuasive."

~ Carpetbagger

Edward Teach said:

One of the most disturbing things about this whole affair is the fact that Rove was careless enough to let himself get caught. Hell, he is supposed to be the smartest man in the whole administration if not the GOP.

That he didn't have others make the leaks, giving himself deniability, is mind boggling.

Hell, he could easily have had his ass covered by dozens of cut-outs.

Either he is so arrogant that he didn't believe there would be any repercussions if he got caught or else he is just plain stupid. Either choice is beyond frightening.


Ed

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There's a third choice: What he accomplished was considered worth the risk.

What he accomplished:

~ intimidated future whistle-blowers by going after Wilson's wife

~ created a mini-scandal that diverted attention from the major one that should have resulted when Wilson revealed to the Times that Bush lied about the evidence of Saddam's attempt to purchase uranium. Think about it: the New York Times, which was generally cooperative in Bush's rush to war, had published an interview by a source Bush I once called a national hero, who revealed that the president lied in his State of the Union address to generate support for a preemptive invasion. Lied to Congress to take the country to war.

People might have noticed.

Instead, we got the more glamorous story about the Exposed Secret Agent. Suddenly, the uranium story and Bush's lie were yesterday's news. And everyone else who might have had knowledge that the WMD evidence was weak was put on notice that the White House wouldn't hesitate to punish heir families.

The risk:

Considering that the Justice Department dragged its feet on appointing an investigator and then notified the White House a day in advance that it would subpeona e-mail and phone records, it's reasonable to assume that Rove felt he'd be protected from serious repercussions to himself - and that any repercussions to the White House could be postponed until after the election.

Rove is shrewd enough to have punched his converstation with the reporter full of loopholes. He also knew the reporters would protect him as long as they could. For anyone covering the White House, having Karl Rove as a confidential source is nothing to give up willingly. These relationships with the press don't exist only when there's a scandal.

Teach, I strongly suspect it's the third choice. Just as with the Iraq invasion. Cheney and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld knew Ahmad Chalabi was full of crap, and they would have been brain-dead to think that the truth about WMD - and about the happy, bloodless welcome we were going to get from the civilian population - wouldn't come out after the invasion. They gambled that once the invasion was accomplished, it wouldn't matter. They misunderestimated the American public and they won. Same with Rove. If he somehow manages to do a little Martha Stewart time in the white collar prison where Spiro Agnew practiced his golf swing, so what? Rove knows where all the skeletons are buried; he's the one who stripped them of meat to begin with. He's set for life.

rgraham666 said:

I read an interesting one on another forum I lurk at.

Apparently, Valerie Plame couldn't be outed as a CIA agent as it was already public knowledge.

So this whole thing is just another example of liberals trying to destroy our freedom.

It must be nice, being so certain about how the world works.

Click to expand...

That's true, Rob. All undercover agents make their work known to the general public. Otherwise, how would spies know where to contact them to sell secrets?



Are you the only one who didn't have one of Plame's business cards? The one she gave me clearly says, "Undercover Agent for the CIA / Terrorism Division"

Stay the course.

I guess I was.

Sigh. nobody ever tell me anything.

Colleen Thomas said:

...Everyone seems so ready to tar and feather the source, but no one seems even mildly upset at those who made the information avialable for public consumption and I just don't understand that.

Click to expand...

Okay, warm up the tar and take a knife to the pillows!

Start with Robert "Douchebag" Novak, the hard-right (so-called) journalist that "made the information available for public consumption". The one person (Judith Miller) in jail over this (so far) didn't even write a story about it! Not that I'm any fan of hers, but the Federal Judge seems a bit more than "mildly upset".

Add Press Secretary Scott McClellen, who previously labeled any press inquiries about Karl Rove "ridiculous", and now refuses to discuss the demonstrable mistruths he told the media. Did he knowingly lie? Or did he just pass on mistruths fed to him by a duplicitous administration? He's either a liar or a dupe, in any case.

And Karl Rove! Even his best friend "the President" can't muster enough respect to nickname him something better than "turdblossom".

I remember when I was in Jr. High, and a friend showed me how to do a "fartblossom". What you do is, wrap what's left of your foreskin over the head of your penis, tucking the shaft further into your abdomen. Then pull the loose skin of your scrotum up over over that, so that your penis is compressed inside a scrotal package that looks like a slightly misshapen tuber. If you're flaccid enough (and a bit warm and sweaty), when you release your scrotum the effect is uncannily like a time-lapse video of a blossoming penis-rose. Try this at your next hot-tub event - I'm sure it kills!

So, anyway, "the President" nicknames this guy after a crude jr. high penis gag. Somewhere above "crackers" (re: the circle jerk game), but definitely in the same ballpark. Rove is responsible for the worst partisan smears, the "bad cop" to Bush's (several generations of Bush's...) "good cop". Apparently, this lends a token of affection to the "turdblossom" label.

But it's not just "everyone" who is ready to tar and feather the source. "The President" himself is on record, several times, saying that he would fire anyone in the administration that was connected to the leaks.

So, what is hard to understand in this?