By MARTIN SCHRAM
Jul 13, 2005, 06:43


Today we take a close-up look at White House lying about the outing of a
covert CIA agent - and the news media's complicity in covering it up.
We also shed new insight upon what is the apparent real motive of a special
prosecutor who has appeared to be running amok in probing whether any Bush
official committed a federal crime in blowing the cover of covert CIA agent
Valerie Plame. It is a bizarre probe that has so far jailed no Bush official, and
not even journalist Robert Novak, who revealed Plame's CIA tie. The only one
jailed has been a journalist who never wrote a word about it.
And finally, in a bizarre twist in what has become a federal-city fandango,
we will reveal the identity of the source of The New York Times Monday news
story that President Bush's top strategist, Karl Rove, was the secret source of
Time magazine's Matt Cooper. (Just after Novak's column appeared, Cooper wrote
that government officials were privately seeking to discredit Bush Iraqi
policy critic Joseph Wilson by saying he was sent to check whether Iraq sought
uranium in Africa only because his wife, Plame, worked for the CIA.)
We begin with one thing we know for sure: Journalists consider it a solemn
duty to discover when politicians are lying and tell the news to the people.
And yet at least one journalist from Time knew firsthand that the Bush White
House had repeatedly lied to the American public since 2003 by denying that
Rove had any role in outing Plame. Yet Time withheld that news from the public
while printing White House denials that Rove had any role.
Cooper knew because Rove was his source. Cooper wrote an e-mail to his boss,
Time Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy (which Newsweek printed this week):
"Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he
went on vacation ..."
Timeout: "Double super secret background" is nutty language that has no
journalistic basis. Cooper's memo later indicates the info shouldn't be sourced to
the White House. In a story in which the CIA, Pentagon, State Department and
White House are all at odds, reporters should never be so swooning over the
privilege of talking to a real-live senior official that they trade away their
ability to tell readers which faction is spreading which tale.
Throughout the 2004 presidential campaign, special prosecutor Patrick
Fitzgerald probed, Bush spokesmen denied and Time's journalists kept mum. Much to the
discomfort of most in our journalistic craft, Time's grounds are supported by
journalists who say they cannot break a promise to a source, even when they
later lie about it to protect their political assets. But journalists contacted
by Rove and others needed to respond to the White House lies by pressing
their sources again to tell the truth and by urging Bush in every single press
conference to summon his officials one by one, in the presence of Fitzgerald, and
have them either lie to his face or tell the truth at last.
Meanwhile, consider Fitzgerald and his motives for pushing so hard to get
Time's memos and testimony and jailing The New York Times' Judith Miller for
refusing to testify about her contacts even though she never wrote a story.
Lawyers in the case have suggested that Novak has cooperated with Fitzgerald and his
source (or sources) have, too. It is only a federal crime for someone to know
that a CIA agent's identity is a government secret and to then reveal it.
Most likely, Novak and his source or sources have said they never knew Plame was
a covert agent. So, if Fitzgerald is probing further, it must be to determine
whether Novak's source or sources told other journalists Plame was a covert
agent. That would be two crimes: outing a covert agent and lying to a federal
investigator.
Which brings us back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Rove was the Bush campaign architect who (as I've written in the past)
concluded that Bush could not win unless Democrat John Kerry was destroyed. And lo,
the "Swiftboat Vets" sprang from nowhere, smearing without substantiation
Kerry's Vietnam service and the medals he won. Rove always denied any connection
with the Swiftboat Vets, even when those bankrolling the vets turned up with
past ties to Rove. Were those denials as solid as his others? We have no
in-house media memo on that one _ yet.
EPILOGUE: The source of The New York Times' July 11 report that Rove was
Cooper's source - and the shocking news that Cooper hadn't gotten his release of
confidentiality directly from Rove - turns out to be The New York Times' July 7
story. In the 24th paragraph of the July 7 story about Miller being jailed,
the Times reported news that should have been way up at the top - that Rove was
identified as Cooper's source. And Rove's release of confidentiality came
after lawyers for Rove and Cooper met.




(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service.
E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)


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