Ranting and Rove-ing

According to recently released documents from TIME magazine, Karl Rove, the President's closest advisor, provided information to journalist Michael Cooper that led to the unmasking of Valerie Plame. Plame is the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, and is herself of ex-CIA agent. During the prelude to the Iraq War, Wilson went public with criticism of the Bush Administration's claim that Saddam Hussein sought enriched uranium - referred to as "yellowcake" - for use in his alleged WMD programs. Around that time is when Cooper contacted Rove for a piece on welfare reform. After a long email exchange, Cooper got Rove to go off-the-record about Wilson's claims, and the leak began to gush.

While Rove did not provide Plame's name to Cooper, he did mention Wilson's wife "apparently" worked at the CIA in an attempt to paint Wilson as the spouse of a disgruntled employee that was refusing to play ball in the case against Saddam. Of course, Rove is not an idiot. Cooper is a reporter, and the natural next step for a journalist would be to check into Wilson's wife, and long story short, the identify of a classified operative gets un-confidential real quick. Rove knew this likelihood when he told Cooper, and though it is unclear whether Rove knew of Plame's covert role in the agency, he knew enough to label his emails to Cooper "P&C" (Personal and Confidential). True, officials speak off-the-record about even mundane and non-sensitive matters, but the recklessness of Rove's actions must not be pardoned.

Known simultaneously as "The Architect" and "Turd-blossom" to those in the Administration, Rove is perhaps both the most celebrated and hated presidential advisor of all time. On the one hand, he is a formidable opponent on the campaign trail, and arguably the best strategist Washington has ever seen. To the anti-Bush crowd, "Bush's Brain" is an evil genius, controlling the world like a kid with his dad's gun. Yet, within the White House, he is irrelevant on issues of substantive policy. Unless there's, say, a presidential campaign to run, Rove does little else than serve as part of a PR team (#2 to Karen Hughes, by the way) that helps Bush achieve his agenda and deal with the media.

But there is no doubt that Rove is a visible face within the Administration. The vagueness of his official title - "Special Advisor to the President" - belies his immense pull on Bush as a close friend, and his immense power as a private citizen. The investigation is still un-folding, and it is far too early to be sure that Rove was the only, or the most crucial, of the sources that led to the revealing of Plame's identity. The White House publicly stated that Rove had nothing to do with the leak. I'll believe that's what Bush thought (would you want your Boss to know you f-ed up THIS bad?). But Bush also said that if someone within the administration turned out to be the source of the leak, then they would be fired.

I am a Bush-backer. We all know this. But 5 years ago, this President ran on a campaign of cleaning up Washington. The days of the Clinton Administration - and the Zippergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Pardongate, and Whitewater scandals along with it - were supposed to be in the past. Unlike Slick Willie's quest for the meaning of "is," there should be no hair-splitting. It doesn't matter if Rove didn't use her name, and while his lack of knowledge as to her covert status mitigates his conduct somewhat, heads should roll when an intelligence agent's identity is revealed by his/her own government. There is only one way for President Bush to live up to his promise while demonstrating that his comments were made in good faith, without the knowledge that Rove was the leak. Rove should be handed his pink slip, and Bush should personally do the handing.