The Rove affair

The revelation that the White House aide was indeed involved with the outing of a CIA operative further erodes the Bush administration's credibility.

A Times Editorial
Published July 14, 2005

The Karl Rove affair is the paperback novel stuffed in the beach bag, a sleazy summer diversion from terrorist bombings, hurricanes and an impending Supreme Court appointment. It turns out the president's top adviser was involved in the outing of a CIA operative despite months of denials from the White House. While it is unclear whether Rove could be charged with a crime and unlikely that Bush would fire him, this administration's ever-eroding credibility continues to wash away.

The Bush team does not hesitate to go after its critics, and Rove has perfected the stealth attack on the campaign trail and in Washington. Former diplomat Joseph Wilson's 2003 column in the New York Times that argued Bush exaggerated Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear arsenal was not appreciated. Wilson had gone on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out U.S. and British claims that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium.

Rove told Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper that Wilson's wife "apparently works" at the CIA and had authorized her husband's African trip, according to a newly disclosed e-mail by Cooper. Yet for two years Bush and his spokesman have expressed outrage that Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA official, welcomed the investigation by a special prosecutor, denied Rove leaked confidential information and pledged anyone involved would be dismissed.

The law on identifying CIA agents is specific. A government official must deliberately identify a covert agent, know that the agent is undercover and know that the government wants the name kept secret for a violation to occur. Cooper did not say in the e-mail that Rove named the agent, and Rove has said he didn't know her name. But regardless of the legalisms and the sometimes parsed defenses by the White House, Rove's hands are far from clean. He is a master at dealing with reporters off the record and pushing them in the direction he wants while protecting himself and his boss. Unfortunately, too many journalists are willing to go along.

There are other loose ends in this dirty little affair. Columnist Robert Novak, who first published Plame's name based on anonymous sources, remains curiously unscathed. Cooper, who included Plame's name in his article later, avoided a jail sentence after Rove released him from his confidentiality agreement. Cooper appeared before the grand jury Wednesday. New York Times reporter Judy Miller has been jailed because she will not reveal her source for a story she never wrote.

Regardless of whether anyone is charged with a crime, assuming a crime has been committed, there will be no winners. The Bush administration has once again demonstrated its lack of regard for the truth and fair play. The symbiotic relationship between Washington journalists who rely too heavily on unnamed sources and administration officials who use the press to spread dirt anonymously undermines the credibility of both. And a skeptical public has another reason to doubt what they hear and read from the nation's capital.