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Prosecutor: Karl Rove Not Target of Probe
Plamegate special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had told top White House advisor Karl Rove that he's not a target of his investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA analyst Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. And Fitzgerald has also asked the top Bush aide not to discuss the case in public.Speaking to National Review Online's Byron York late Tuesday, Rove attorney Robert Luskin said Fitzgerald "has told Rove he is not a 'target' of the investigation" - despite media reports suggesting otherwise. Fitzgerald has also made it clear, however, that virtually anyone whose conduct falls within the scope of the investigation, including Rove, is considered a "subject" of the probe, Luskin told York. "'Target' is something we all understand, a very alarming term," he added. For two days straight, the White House press corps has obsessed over Rove's supposed guilt, pummeling Bush spokesman Scott McClellan with dozens of questions about the top Bush aide's role in the cse. Former Reagan Justice Department official Mark Levin told York last night that Luskin's revelation made a big difference. "He is not a target, which is quite different from a subject," Levin said on his WABC radio show. "I know what a target is . . . the prosecutors are chasing you." "If he's not a target, what the hell is the media up to" by making Rove the focus of their questions, Levin asked? Luskin also told York that Rove has not spoken publicly, "because Fitzgerald specifically asked him not to."
Robert Novak: Plame Source 'No Partisan Gunslinger' The Washington press corps and their Democratic friends have been too busy this week chasing down Karl Rove to notice that columnist Robert Novak has offered a tantalizing clue about the identity of just who it was who leaked Valerie Plame's name to him back in July 2003. And judging from Novak's revelation - it wasn't Karl Rove. Apparently it's been a while since any of the big media's newshounds bothered to read Novak's follow-up column on the Plame case on Oct. 1, 2003, where he talked about the man (woman?) who spilled Plame's name and thereby, according to Dems, committed the crime of the century. "During a long conversation with a senior administration official," he wrote, "I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger." No partisan gunslinger? Even fans of Mr. Rove would be hard-presseed to deny he's a "partisan gunslinger" - just the kind of person Novak says his leaker wasn't. Could Novak have been lying to protect Mr. Rove? Perhaps. But by the time he wrote the above words, the Plame leak was already under investigation by the Justice Department, a develpoment that would have guaranteed that he'd have to repeat that falsehood under oath. Posted by: Steve 2005-07-13 |
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