Saturday, July 02, 2005

Mercury Rising

It appears from several reports including this one that on this week's edition of The McLaughlin Group, Lawrence O'Donnell claims that the Time documents reveal that Karl Rove was the leaker in the Valerie Plame/CIA case. From the E&P report of the transcript of the show:
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.
When Rove spoke about "the motives of liberals" on June 22, my first thought was that sort of incendiary comment from someone like Rove does not happen in a vacuum when there's no election at stake. It's a table setter that indicates something's coming. And if he is indeed about to be fingered as the Plame leaker, obviously it would qualify as a classic preemptive Rovian strike.

But if this is true, it's going to take more than a ham-handed comment about Dick Durbin to save Rove's bacon. We already know what George H.W. Bush thinks of all this. From a speech he gave at the CIA in 1999:
Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.
Of course we've already seen what the strategy will be to defend what the former president calls treason: everyone "already knew" about Plame. But there would be lots of juicy questions, like who told Rove about Plame in the first place? And maybe it's appropriate that Watergate was just in the news; the question about what the president knew and when he knew it would certainly come up, particularly since Bush is on the record with public statements about the Plame leak. Oh, and by the way---does anyone still think that the recent trashing of Mark Felt was in any way about Mark Felt?

If this plays out as it appears it might, it has important implications beyond politics. It could seriously affect the stock market, for example; market volatility is at a ten year low right now, which means essentially that most investors are extremely complacent and place very little premium on downside protection. Right now it would not take much to pop that psychology bubble, and a major scandal in the White House's inner circle---with so much at stake politically and geopolitically---could do it. We're entering a seasonally weak period on Wall Street anyway and a blockbuster like this, which would increase both the stakes and the rancor of the battle over a SCOTUS nominee, would exacerbate that.

It feels like things are about to get interesting, doesn't it?


Update: O'Donnell has now posted some additional comments here.

Update 2: Newsweek now has a piece out that provides more color.

21 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Long. Hot. Summer.

7/02/2005 11:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, game on eh?

7/02/2005 2:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We should form a choir.

7/02/2005 2:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rove/Plame, O'Connor replacement, Bolton, the cousin of Iraq'UN ambassador allegedly shot by US Marines (see juancole.com today), Afghanistan flaring, Iraq ever closer to all-out civil war, Bush ratings tanking, 42% of Americans believe Bush should be impeached if he lied about the reasons for war (Zogby poll yesterday) ... and the list goes on.

Long hot summer indeed! It's a helluva price being paid, especially by Iraqis, to destroy these bastards, but at least it's looking more and more like the house of cards is finally, FINALLY, collapsing. Ain't gonna be pretty.

7/02/2005 2:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oops, a little too quick to comment there, Shep. I see CR covers the UN cousin death story himself in the preceding post. (But if you haven't discovered juancole.com, it's still worth checking out.)

7/02/2005 2:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Karl needs "therapy and understanding" ... right after he's hand-cuffed and frog marched off the White House lawn.

7/02/2005 2:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting indeed. Anyone wonder why Novak, the guy that actually wrote it, got off scott free. John Stewart on the Daily Show doesn't hold back when he speaks about Novak. There's a weird incestuous relationaship with him and Regnery Publications (who appears to publish a lot of radical right books). Novak wrote a book supporting the Swift Boaters (now all truthful intelligent conservatives know the swifties were BS). Here's the rest of the story.

If Karl Rove doesn't pay in this lifetime for all the evil he has done, I pray it is in the next. The crap he pulls, is destroying the fabric of our nation. I hope this is more than wishful thinking.

7/02/2005 2:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Karl Rove and Dick Cheney will spend eternity on the 100th foor of either tower.

7/02/2005 3:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your cynicism is well deserved, cyrus, but I think you will be proved wrong. It's a matter of straws and the camel's back. Said back is drooping under great strain already, and this straw, or if not this one, the next, or the next (there will be no straw shortage) will finally do it's proverbial job. These criminals are toast. Bets, anyone?

7/02/2005 4:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can't help but wonder how many of the Republicans that have drank the Kool Aide will care about this? To me what happened is disgusting and immoral, and being frog marched out of the White House is too kind for the likes of Rove. What he did was treason during a time of war.

Well at least we know one Republican, CR, doesn't condone this s^&&#. Maybe there are still other grownups left in the Republican party.

Thank you CR, for your thoughtful posts. You give me hope for our country.

7/02/2005 4:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No, of course the Kool Aide drinkers won't care. Any attempt to sway them is, and always has been, futile. It's those moderate Repubs that have just gone along for the ride out of habit and apathy that count. And they will care, at least enough of them to bring on the tipping point, imo.

7/02/2005 6:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have no idea what the FBI and ohers are up to lately..with this and the very public raid on GOP'er Duke Cunningham..but I hope it has something to do with my thoughts long ago that the CIA and FBI aren't going to take the shit that the neo's and mafia wannabe's in this adm have been laying on them.

7/02/2005 7:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This IS about to get interesting.

7/02/2005 8:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The point about Bush is a good one, since he has made several statements about wanting to get to the bottom of this, etc. So...yes, what did he know and when?

7/02/2005 8:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fitzgerald obviously has some major goods on a major whale. Remember, the word "conspiracy" casts a wide net, as we saw in Watergate.

7/02/2005 8:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Are there enough good Republicans that care about the truth, morals, our laws, and our nation's future?

I couldn't say it better than this article about Sen Lindsey Graham. This is the type of leadership our Republican party needs. Well, all parties.

7/02/2005 9:15 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm with Cyrus too. The media has spent the last four years getting whiplash from looking the other way on this administration. The only thing the press will pick up on is a sex scandal (like Bernard Kerick). Torture? Treason? Corruption? Eh, not interested.

At this point I believe the only way this administration would go down is if video was found of George W. Bush engaged in homosexual sex.

7/05/2005 8:30 AM  
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