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Jewish World Review July 15, 2005 / 8 Taamuz, 5765 Bad faith in Rovegate By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
What tangled webs we weave. A few days ago, The New York Times,
the most representative outlet of liberal opinion in the country,
was extolling government leaks as absolutely necessary to the First
Amendment and to public knowledge of the workings of government. A
prosecutor who asks a reporter to reveal his anonymous sources could
chill such leaks, and freedom of the press in America would enter a
long twilight period.
Now, a leaker in the Valerie Plame case, which was the occasion
for this dire inanity from the Times, turns out to have been White
House adviser Karl Rove. That puts things in a new light. Even
though his leak — that Plame, a CIA officer, got her husband and
President Bush critic Joe Wilson a jaunt to Niger to probe whether
Saddam Hussein had attempted to acquire uranium there — added
important new information to the public knowledge of the case, the
Times has the vapors. Surely Thomas Jefferson couldn't have crafted
the First Amendment with icky Karl Rove in mind?
Thus the Plame controversy continues to churn out bad faith the
way Willy Wonka's factory produces chocolate. At first, the media
hyped the leaks about Plame as practically the Lindbergh baby
kidnapping for the 21st century — a spectacular and dastardly crime
(revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative potentially
violates the law). The furor forced the administration to appoint a
special prosecutor to investigate. He has managed to get one Times
reporter, Judith Miller, jailed for refusing to testify about who
leaked to her, and he nearly bagged Time magazine reporter Matt
Cooper too.
The prospect of jail time for its members prompted The Fourth
Estate to begin to argue in its court filings that, contrary to its
initial feeding frenzy, no crime occurred in the Plame leaks. This
opportunistic argument is correct. The statute in question is
narrowly written to target persons deliberately attempting to
disrupt U.S. intelligence operations. The question is whether the
elite media will stick to this understanding now that visions of
ousting Rove dance through their heads like sugarplums.
Rove's leak was to Cooper. Cooper called Rove to talk about
welfare reform, then asked him about Wilson at the end of the call.
It was a mystery how Wilson had been selected for this mission, and
Rove was simply providing an explanation. Rove was not trying to
punish Wilson or endanger his wife. He appears not to have even
wanted Cooper to use the material, giving it to him on "double super
secret background" — a ground rule that usually comes with a secret
decoder ring — as a way to warn him not to take Wilson too
seriously.
The White House has contributed bad faith of its own. It went
along with the pretense that something awful had happened in the
Plame leaks, acquiescing in the appointment of a special prosecutor.
It provided false assurances during the investigation that Rove
wasn't involved. Now suddenly the White House is saying it won't
comment during a still-ongoing investigation, and probably will
eventually argue that the leaks weren't a big deal after all.
The newest position of liberalism as represented by The New York
Times at that point will be difficult to predict, except that it
will be calculated to inflict maximum harm on Karl Rove.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
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