THE KARL ROVE AFFAIR: A ONE MINUTE GUIDE

All the leading Democrats got together the other day to demand the resignation of Karl Rove, one of Bush's key advisors, and certainly his key political advisor. The charge is that Rove broke an important law by intentionally revealing the name of a CIA covert operative. Despite the pomp, ceremony, solemnity and high hopes that Democrats bring to this overtly political effort the charge is really just plain stupid and typically Democratic.

Firstly, the law clearly states that the operative must have been covert within the last 5 years. Mrs. Wilson has had a desk job at the CIA for the last 6 years. Period, end of story. Jonathan Alter, however, of Nut Case Radio (Air America) and Newsweek says it doesn't matter because operatives typically go in and out of cover and Mrs. Wilson may have wanted to go undercover again someday. While this does not matter one tiny bit from a legal, technical point of view, it is especially silly when applied to Mrs. Wilson since she recently gave birth to twins and is an unlikely candidate to be playing agent Jane Bond 007 any time soon.

Secondly, based on the actual evidence to date it seems likely that Rove, or someone, at worst, merely identified her as Mr. Wilson's wife at the CIA, in the course of explaining how Mr. Wilson had gotten a nepotistic assignment, through her to investigate Iraq's possible purchase of uranium from Niger, for which he was unqualified and/or too biased. This is not enough to be considered "intentionally" outing or exposing an undercover agent with the specific intent to harm national security according to common sense and Victoria Tensing who helped right the law. Moreover, the most recent evidence is that Rove or somebody got his information from the press; not through official gov't sources, in which case any possible guilt is greatly diminished since Rove, then, was not even the source of the information. And, there is no evidence that Rove even knew her actual name anyway. This again makes it very hard to charge him with intentionally exposing her. When pressed, most insiders are saying there is virtually no chance of Rove being charged, let alone convicted despite what Democrats and their allies in the press would have us believe. Expect Democrats and their allies in the press to get no farther here than they did with the so called Tom Delay junket scandal which fell apart the exact instant Republicans directed the press to look at Democratic junkets too.

The sad fact for Democrats is that the law with which they pray to hang Mr. Rove was written immediately in the wake of the Aldrich Ames fiasco wherein something like 100 American agents were exposed, and some killed as a result, over a period of years by one of the most prolific traitors in American History. In fact, the statute specifically says that to be in violation of the law the effort must be "continuous" as in the Ames case. This is certainly not something you would apply to Mr. Rove unless you were desperate and vicious, which the Democrats are having lost all three branches of gov't and now about to lose the Supreme Court too which heretofore had substantially made up for all of the other losses.

The Democrats seem motivated to defend Mr. Wilson (the ex-Ambassador to Gabon, of all places) specifically because his report indicated that Bush was lying about Iraq purchasing uranium from Niger. Would anyone believe the America hating Democrats are motivated out of passion for defending the CIA when they (Church and Tomaselli in particular) have for decades and decade hated and stripped the CIA bare to the point where it had no idea to whom Niger was selling its nuclear fuel or who was about to attack the World Trade Center? This is desperate disgusting hypocrisy at best. The possibility of a mistaken exposure of one semi-secret agent by a Republican should not obscure the fact that there would be no secret agents or CIA were it not for Republicans.

So why did Rove want to discredit Wilson's report which said that Iraq did not buy or want to buy uranium from Iraq? Perhaps because the evidence showed it was a silly report. Certainly there is no evidence to date, and absolutely none alluded to, whatsoever that it was done to damage national security or expose a CIA agent. Firstly, the report was not a report. Wilson was informally and orally debriefed upon his return from Niger. The non-partisan Senate Select Committee which then formally investigated the matter concluding that the oral report was silly and led more people, rather than less, at the CIA to think there was uranium sold to Iraq.

Before the Senate investigation Wilson was a Kerry presidential adviser with his own website operated by and linked directly to the main Kerry campaign site. Immediately after the Senate investigation had discredited Wilson personally, for lying that his wife had not gotten him the Niger assignment, and professionally, for lying and incompetence regarding his conclusions, the Kerry campaign took down the website.

Secondly, Italian Intelligence first concluded and still does that there was an Iraq/Niger connection. Thirdly, British Intelligence also concluded and still does that there was a connection. Fourthly, the Butler Commission, in England, did a separate investigation and concluded that there was a connection. Fifthly, The Financial Times of London and French Intelligence both have concluded independently that there was a connection. Lastly, it is intuitively obvious that there was probably a connection since Niger is a desperately poor, famine stricken country with tons of very valuable uranium to export, and Iraq was certainly among the most likely destinations for such exports. In fact, even Wilson discovered and admitted that Iraq had approached Niger with the intention of "expanding commercial relations". This could only mean one thing given that Niger had nothing to trade but yellowcake uranium.

In short, Karl Rove broke no law in the course of discrediting a fraudulent oral report based on a nepotistic field trip to Niger by Mr. Wilson, the ex-Ambassador to Gabon.

On the plus side for the Democrats is 1) even the Republican CIA was angry about the incident, 2) a Federal prosecutor was persuaded to pursue the case doggedly based on the CIA recommendation, 3) The White House did inexplicably lie saying that Rove had no involvement at all, and 4) judges who have seen secret files pertaining to the case have ruled on various motions related to the case is such a way as to indicate that the case has legitimacy and 5) the White House did have the means given that in its possession was a document indicating the Niger connection between Mr. Wilson and is wife.

The case has an odd quality too in that, amazingly, despite all the obsessive press coverage, no one actually knows for sure exactly what charges are being investigated. It might turn out that the difficult "exposure" issue will be secondary to a charge related to revealing classified information, and of course there is always the threat that innocent people will panic when threatened by an investigation and thereby subject themselves to perjury or obstruction of justice charges. In the end one has to predict it will probably turn out to be a huge waste of national energy that should have been devoted to radiating the Democratic cancer that has so infected our country.

Ted Baiamonte
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