Slow News Day for the MSM
Gee, President Bush ignores questions about Karl Rove, Bush ignores questions about Rove in leak case.
The White House is suddenly facing damaging evidence that it misled the public by insisting for two years that presidential adviser Karl Rove wasn’t involved in leaking the identity of a female CIA officer.
Damaging evidence?
And what evidence is that USA Today and ASSociated Press?
President Bush, at an Oval Office photo opportunity Tuesday, was asked directly whether he would fire Rove — in keeping with a pledge in June, 2004, to dismiss any leakers in the case. The president did not respond.
There is an on-going criminal investigation.
Flap didn’t think it was such a slow news day.
Update #1
White House: Bush Has Confidence in Rove
At a White House briefing afterward, spokesman Scott McClellan was pressed about Rove’s future.
“Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn’t be working here at the White House if they didn’t have the president’s confidence,” McClellan said.
So, Bush is not going to FIRE Rove.
What is the story here?
Update #2
The MSM continues to harass Scott McClellan, Press Briefing by Scott McClellan
The MSM won’t leave it alone until Rove is frog marched out of the White House.
From whom do they get their talking point questions?
Well, we know the answer to that.
In the meantime, Flap directs those idiots continuing to look for a story, Whopper: Joseph Wilson
Update #3
Also, those lefties looking for more, there is SCANDAL IMPLOSION by John Podhertz.
Wilson was the former ambassador sent by the CIA to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium in Africa; Plame, his CIA agent wife.
In that column, I offered my speculation of what an administration official might have said to a journalist to explain just how Wilson — a Clinton administration official — got the assignment in the first place: “Administration official: ‘We didn’t send him there. Cheney’s office asked CIA to get more information. CIA picked Wilson . . . Look, I hear his wife’s in the CIA. He’s got nothing to do. She wanted to throw him a bone.’ ”
Hate to say I told you so, but . . .
According to this week’s Newsweek, Karl Rove said something very similar indeed to Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper:
In the Cooper e-mails just surrendered by Time to the prosecutor looking into the Plame case, “Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a ‘big warning’ not to ‘get too far out on Wilson.’ Rove told Cooper that Wilson’s trip had not been authorized by . . . CIA Director George Tenet . . . or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, ‘it was, [Rove] said, Wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.’ ”
There’s no mistaking the purpose of this conversation between Cooper and Rove. It wasn’t intended to discredit, defame or injure Wilson’s wife. It was intended to throw cold water on the import, seriousness and supposedly high level of Wilson’s findings….
…What isn’t controversial is this: Karl Rove didn’t “out” Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to intimidate Joe Wilson. He was dismissing Joe Wilson as a low-level has-been hack to whom nobody should pay attention. He was right then, and if he said it today, he’d still be right.
And if Valerie Plame wants to live a quiet spy life, she should stop having her picture taken by society photographers and stop getting stories written about her on the front page of the Times.
End of story…..
Captain Ed weighs in here, Podhoretz On Rove: I Told You So
Neither Plame’s occupation nor her name, nor even her familial connection to Wilson appears to have been kept a secret, not even by Wilson and his associates. The reference to her occupation by Rove looks like the typical inside information that the media claims it needs to hold government officials accountable. Their outrage now appears to be nothing more than manufactured partisan bile, utterly undermining their claimed need for anonymous sourcing.
I will presume this tempest in a teapot will fade away as soon as Bush announces his SCOTUS nominee. Let’s hope so, anyway.
YUP!