| If Rove Leaked, We'd Have Known in '04 |
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July 5, 2005 |
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
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RUSH: Let me say one thing about this Karl Rove business. Let me tell you how I know. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rove is not the leaker. If Karl Rove were the leaker to Matthew Cooper of TIME Magazine, do you think they'd have kept that news private during the 2004 presidential campaign? This leak occurred in 2003. If Karl Rove engaged in criminal activity, do you not think that the media -- who claimed to know it all now -- would have not released that information during the campaign, given it to John Kerry or something and made it a huge campaign issue that the president's chief political advisor is a criminal?
 We have all kinds of stuff leaked all over newspapers, folks. The war plan for Iraq was leaked for the New York Times and the Washington Post. We had all kinds of things leaked during the first term of the Bush administration. All kinds of secrets were let go that were intended to harm Bush. We had forged documents from CBS that were intended to affect the outcome of the election. Do you think if they really had proof that it was Rove that was the leaker of Valerie Plame's name, that the press would have kept that secret during the 2004 campaign? I don't. Why keep that secret? Why go to the trouble of making up and forging documents when you've got the one story here that could really rally people, maybe? Maybe it can't. I don't know how many people really care about this, that Valerie Plame's name was leaked, and I don't know how many people actually consider it a crime, but that was just my first reaction.
END TRANSCRIPT |
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Read the Articles... |
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(NY Times: Private Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case)
Headline: Lawrence O'Donnell: No Crime in Plame Case
Source: NewsMax
Date: Monday, July 4, 2005
MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, who broke the news Friday that notes taken by Time magazine's Matthew Cooper indictate that top Bush adviser Karl Rove leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak, said Sunday it's likely that Rove broke no laws.
Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledged on Saturday that his client had indeed spoken to Cooper before the Novak column hit in July 2003. But Luskin insisted that Rove never revealed Plame's identity.
Speaking to WABC Radio host and Internet guru Matt Drudge late Sunday, O'Donnell noted: "What [Luskin] has said is very careful lawyer language. ... We live in a world where we have to discover, in the '90s, that there are people who aren't sure what the meaning of 'is' is."
The MSNBC talker posited:
"That could simply mean he did not use the words 'Valerie Plame.' He may have said '[Joseph] Wilson's wife,' for example. He may have said all sorts of things that still fit what we're talking about."
But even if Rove was behind the disclosure, it doesn't mean he broke any law, he argued.
"[Luskin] is insisting that Karl Rove did not commit a crime," O'Donnell told Drudge. "That may very well be the case."
The MSNBC talker said he had studied extensively the statute allegedly broken in the Plame case, concluding that is "a very difficult statute to violate."
For one thing, he said, "Perhaps [Plame] really wasn't a covert agent - doesn't fit the statute's definition of covert agent. I think that's possible."
Another factor that could mitigate allegations of an illegal disclosure, said O'Donnell, was that whoever revealed Plame's identity "would have had to intentionally disclose it knowing that the CIA is trying to hide it."
"Karl Rove may not have known that," he added.
If indeed Rove was behind the disclosure, "All [of the above] would add up to the fact that no crime was committed in the transmission of this information by Rove to Cooper," O'Donnell said. |
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