Karl Rove: Abuse of Power?

Ok, lets come out and say it. The Bush administration has its problems. One of them shouldn't be this scandal involving Joseph Wilson and Karl Rove. Well, really its about Rove and Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, but thats a minor point at the moment.

What we have here is a known liar making a false report about what he found in his 2002 mission to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger and also misleading everyone into thinking his wife had not RECOMMENDED him for that position. Mr. Wilson is a joke and a corrupt State Department official who thought he could bring down a presidency. If he hadn't lied to so many people, then there would have been no reason for the Senate Intelligence Committee to waste time correcting the misimpressions he created and the lies he told. In addition to the so called ousting of his wife, which is kind of hard since it has been reported that it was widely known that she worked for the CIA (another point how can this "undercover" agent be in danger if she works a desk job at Langley?).

In looking at Mr. Rove's role, the much talked about Time Magazine Cooper email reveals the context of Mr. Rove’s disclosure that Mr. Wilson hiring was urged on by his wife. The context strongly suggests that Mr. Rove's comments about Mr. Wilson's wife was not retaliation, but rather it was part of a discussion trying to correct any misimpressions of how Mr. Wilson was hired for the Niger mission. According to the Cooper email, Rove discussed whether the Director of the CIA or Vice President Cheney had authorized the trip.

Now, did he break any laws? To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act , Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Mr. Wilson's wife knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he had obtained in an official capacity. From the Cooper email, it appears Mr. Rove did not even know Mr. Wilson's wife name and had only heard about her from newspaper reporters. So it appears that his "contact" came from a secondhand source. At any rate, legally Mr. Rove most likely cannot be prosecuted under the 1982 Act. But this doens't even get into whether he lied to the White House or just did not tell them anything.

Returning to Mr. Wilson, at this point it would be good to ask him whether he thought that by lying about what he found in Niger and what he told the CIA and how he was selected, he was gambling with his wife’s safety. How could he be sure that people would know that his wife was a covert agent, or that there was a law against revealing her identity? Perhaps someone might have reasonably believed that they were correcting misimpressions that Mr. Wilson himself had created. Did Mr. Wilson realize that he had put the Administration in something analogous to a Catch-22?: Mr. Wilson can lie about how he was hired but the Administration cannot correct his lie without outing his wife. Did Mr. Wilson consciously decide to gamble with his wife’s safety by lying in a way that would be hard for the Administration to correct?