Continuing with the Fitzmas countdown, an article in today's New York Daily News reports that in 2003, President Bush learned that Karl Rove was responsible for leaking the news that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA operative.
The article buries the lede. If it's to be believed, Bush knew two years ago that Rove committed treason. An election followed, with the president knowing that his chief political strategist was a criminal.
What makes the article credible and strange? Instead of focusing on the president's longstanding knowledge of Rove's criminality, its angle is that the president was furious with Karl Rove in 2003, when Rove first came clean about his leakiness. Thus, the article spins the president's knowledge of (and continuous allegiance to) a traitor in his midst into a portrait of an engaged leader, let down by his closest aide and angry about it. Clearly, the Daily News's reporters were given this account by someone close to the president in an attempt to portray the president as principled but loyal, remaining fidelitous to his friends while expressing disapproval.
Of course, the other interpretation is that the president had direct knowledge of the identity and the aims of the leakers; that he opted to take no internal actions; opted not to make any information public; was reelected through the counsel of a man he knew engaged in criminal conduct; and has yet to take an affirmative steps to clean house.
Even Nixon wasn't so brazen: "Men on the payroll of my reelection committee broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee. I want the public to know that I'm mad about this, but because they did it for my benefit, I'm sticking by them."
Question: Isn't this the kind of thing that a typical White House counsel knows about?
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1 comment:
Yes, one would think that a White House Consel would know about this sort of thing...but then again, as we're learning, the current WH counsel doesn't seem to know much of anything...even whether it's really important to pay her dues and, you know, remain admitted to the DC bar.
But I think she should be asked about it, anyway. You hear me, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden?
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