CooperOn July 2, 2005, Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that his client spoke to TIME reporter Matt Cooper "three or four days" before Plame's identity was first revealed in print by commentator Robert Novak. (Cooper's article in TIME, citing unnamed and anonymous "government officials", confirmed Plame to be a "CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction". Cooper's article appeared three days after Novak's column was published.) Rove's lawyer, however, asserted that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA". This second statement has since been called into question by an e-mail, written three days before Novak's column, in which Cooper indicated that Rove had told him Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. If Rove were aware that this was classified information at the time, then both disclaimers by his lawyer would be untrue. Furthermore, Luskin said that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury "two or three times" (three times, according to the Los Angeles Times of July 3, 2005 [11]) and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him and that Rove "has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else." Rove's lawyer declined to share with Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoffthe nature or contents of his client's conversations with Cooper. [10] [12] [13] [14] [15]
On July 6, 2005, Cooper agreed to testify, thus avoiding being held in contempt of court and sent to jail. Cooper said "I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions for not testifying", but told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance at court he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" an indication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep his source's identity secret. For some observers this called into question the allegations against Rove, who had signed a waiver months before permitting reporters to testify about their conversations with him (see above paragraph). [16]
Cooper, however, stated in court that he did not previously accept a general waiver to journalists signed by his source (whom he did not identify by name), because he had made a personal pledge of confidentiality to his source. The 'dramatic change' which allowed Cooper to testify was later revealed to be a phone conversation between lawyers for Cooper and his source confirming that the waiver signed two years earlier applied to conversations with Cooper. Citing a "person who has been officially briefed on the case", The New York Times identified Rove as the individual in question, [17] a fact later confirmed by Rove's own lawyer. [18] According to one of Cooper's lawyers, Cooper has previously testified before the grand jury regarding conversations with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, after having received Libby's specific permission to testify. [17] [19]
Cooper testified before a grand jury on July 13, 2005, confirming that Rove was the source who told him Wilson's wife was an employee of the CIA. [20] In the July 17, 2005 TIME Magazine article detailing his grand jury testimony, Cooper wrote that Rove never used Plame's name nor indicated that she had covert status, although Rove did apparently convey that certain information relating to her was classified: "As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak's column or Googled her, I can't recall which,...[but] was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me." [21] Cooper also explained to the grand jury that the "double super secret background" under which Rove spoke to him was not an official White House orTIME Magazine source or security designation, but an allusion to the 1978 film Animal House, in which a college fraternity is placed under "double secret probation". [19]
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As if the fact that Armitage, a member of the bush administration, the one who told Novak (after Rove told Cooper), but was the first to publish her identity, was RELEVANT to the point being made....
You are the stupidest, most insipid, bubble headed, foulest author of the dumbest, least relevant, least revealing, least contributory, most insignificant, immaterial posts on the entire SI site. YOU ARE A MOROOOOOOOOON!!!! Go away and do everyone a grand favor.
Al |
