Is it a crime again?

In the continuing saga of Joe and Val, prominent parties in the press, believing fervently that Karl Rove had committed the dastardly crime of outing Valerie Plame, demanded and got a Special Prosecutor.  We thought for sure we'd be treated to a new craze called the Frog March.  Alas, it was not to be.  Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself and hard nosed Patrick Fitzgerald took on the role of Special Prosecutor.  But as Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation wore on it became less and less likely that anybody in the Administration would be charged.  Then when Mr. Fitzgerald called in two of the reporters who had learned the identity of Valerie Plame, and asked them to say who told them, suddenly, according to the press, no crime had been committed.  It was at that point that I boldly predicted,

Once reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper are beyond Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiries, whether by escaping jail or spending time in it, it'll be a crime again.

Well, what do you know, here we are again.  Almost.  Karl Rove has always been the target of liberal wrath in this affair.  The liberal wisdom (Is that what is known as an oxymoron?) has it that Rove shopped for reporters who would reveal Valerie Plame's CIA status.  His supposed purpose was to silence her husband Ambassador Joe Wilson who took an eight day trip to Niger and returned to say he had proven conclusively that Iraq had never, ever tried to get uranium from anywhere on the continent of Africa.  This, he claimed, debunked President Bush who said in his State of the Union address, that British intelligence had learned just the opposite.  Who to believe?  The British intelligence services with thousands of agents working round the clock for years, or Ambassador Joe who spent eight days, mostly drinking green tea?

It was a tough choice, but the press with near unanimity, came down on the side of Ambassador Joe.  What choice did they have really?  If they didn't act like they believed Ambassador Joe's ridiculous story, who would?  And if Ambassador Joe's ridiculous story wasn't believed, why would anybody care who the hell Valerie Plame is?  And if nobody cared who Valerie Plame is, how would they ever manage to kick dirt on the Administration?  But I digress.

Now Democrats and other lefties are calling for the President to fire Karl Rove.  This means they don't think they can pin a crime on him, but they still think they can make the case that he's evil.  The new line of attack is, yes Rove did shop for a reporter for the purpose of outing Valerie to silence Joe, but he was clever enough to be sure it was not a crime, only something evil. 

Oops.  Bad news.  Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin, in an interview with Byron York reveals that Rove was not shopping for anything.  In fact, he was being a really nice guy and warning a reporter off of a weak story.

According to Luskin, Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling. According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are "indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out."

"Look at the Cooper e-mail," Luskin continues. "Karl speaks to him on double super secret background...I don't think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the name of Wilson's wife."

Nor, says Luskin, was Rove trying to "out" a covert CIA agent or "smear" her husband. "What Karl was trying to do, in a very short conversation initiated by Cooper on another subject, was to warn Time away from publishing things that were going to be established as false." Luskin points out that on the evening of July 11, 2003, just hours after the Rove-Cooper conversation, then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement that undermined some of Wilson's public assertions about his report. "Karl knew that that [Tenet] statement was in gestation," says Luskin. "I think a fair reading of the e-mail was that he was trying to warn Cooper off from going out on a limb on [Wilson's] allegations."

We're so lucky to have a free press.  Now, what would really be cool as a moose? Having a free and honest press!  We're part way there. John Podhoretz speculates that it was not Rove shopping for a taker with Plame's identity, but Ambassador Joe in an effort to enhance his status with the press, in particular Walter Pincus and Nicholas Kristoff.

Wilson had gotten very cozy with a couple of them -- Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times among them. What if he spilled the beans to enhance his own standing in the story somehow, to bolster his supposed findings?

What if -- and here's where it gets really interesting -- what if the real object of interest where Fitzgerald's investigation is concerned is now none other than the jailed Judith Miller of the New York Times? What if she let it all slip and in the giant game of telephone around the nation's capital, Miller was the original source of the "Plame's in the CIA" info? What if Fitzgerald needs her notes to discern whether Miller knew or didn't know of Plame's supposedly covert status?

Fitzgerald already has a major bone to pick with Miller. He believes she materially and dangerously impeded his investigation into a terrorist-financing scheme run by the Holy Land Foundation.

When Miller found out that Fitzgerald was on the verge of indicting Holy Land, she called the Foundation for comment -- and right after her call Fitzgerald believes the Foundation may have commenced a shredding party that ensured prosecutors would find little paperwork to go on when they raided the Holy Land offices.

As the Washington Post put it, "On Dec. 3, 2001, Times reporter Judith Miller telephoned officials with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based charity accused of being a front for Palestinian terrorists, and asked for a comment about what she said was the government's probable crackdown on the group. U.S. officials said this conversation and Miller's article on the subject in the Times on Dec. 4 increased the likelihood that the foundation destroyed or hid records before a hastily organized raid by agents that day."

Fitzgerald sought her phone records on that occasion to uncover the source of a potential leak in his own office and was blocked by a liberal New York judge named Robert Sweet. Miller didn't get so lucky this time. Fitzgerald thinks Miller has a loose tongue, and for good reason. It's possible he's trying to figure out what other mischief her loose tongue might have caused.

I think it's a crime again.  Or perhaps a better way to put it would be, I think a crime has been committed.  What I'd love to know is, what crime.  And another thing, it doesn't look like anything that can be pinned on the Administration. 

York and Podhoretz articles via Power Line.  Also see Just One Minute for all sorts of good information on the Legend of Joe and Val.  Finally, all emphasis above is mine.