According to an article in today’s
New York Times, Patrick Fitzgerald is not planning on releasing a report
into his findings. This heightens expectations that indictments will be coming
out of the two year old investigation. They are saying that they don’t expect
Mr. Fitzgerald to take any actions in the case this week, pushing any findings
back to next week when the grand jury expires.
The New
York Daily News also has an interesting article today, where they talk about
sources within the White House who have disclosed the fact that George Bush knew
Rove was involved in the leak:
Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Wednesday, October 19th, 2005
WASHINGTON – An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl
Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told
the Daily News. “He made his displeasure known to Karl,” a presidential
counselor told The News. “He made his life miserable about this.”Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and
even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President’s
rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world.As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald nears a decision, perhaps as
early as today, on whether to issue indictments in his two-year probe, Bush
has already circled the wagons around Rove, whose departure would be a
grievous blow to an already shell-shocked White House staff and a President
in deep political trouble.Asked if he believed indictments were forthcoming, a key Bush official
said he did not know, then added: “I’m very concerned it could go very, very
badly.”“Karl is fighting for his life,” the official added, “but anything he did
was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates
that.”Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with
Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the
press about the Plame leak.Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously
and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House
damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame’s
husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush’s claim that
Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying
Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack
were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the
President.“Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that
they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way,” the source said.None of these sources offered additional specifics of what Bush and Rove
discussed in conversations beginning shortly after the Justice Department
informed the White House in September 2003 that a criminal investigation had
been launched into the leak of CIA agent Plame’s identity to columnist
Robert Novak.A White House spokesman declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of
Fitzgerald’s investigation.
This strongly goes against everything Bush has said in the past regarding
this leak. He has made such comments as “if anyone in my administration leaked I
would like to know about it”. Well apparently he has known about it since it
occurred. Reading further into this article, it also shows the fact that Bush
was not upset over the fact someone in his administration did something so
treasonous, he was just upset of the fact that they got caught doing it. This
really lowers the level at which the White House will operate.
On the outside, this story may not seem that big. A CIA agent being ousted,
oh well replace her and move on. That is just on the outside though. If you look
into the underlying story, this case is about the intelligence that sent us to
war with Iraq. This case is about nearly 2,000 soldiers who have been killed and
billions of dollars lost. Joe Wilson proved that Saddam was not trying to buy
yellow cake from Niger and the memo that was said to have proven he was trying
to obtain it has been dubbed a forgery.
We have learned about an intense effort by the White House to sell the war to
the American Public. The White House Iraq Group (WHIG) was formed to “catapult
the propaganda” to the people in order to gain the support of the American
people. This group is the same group that choose to publicize bad intelligence
in order to wage war.
We see that Bush is not a victim of some wrong doing in his administration.
In fact he is knee deep in the wrong doing.
Time will judge those who don’t get indicted, but those who do need an
instant booting out of our government. Should Bush end up giving pardons to
anyone convicted in the crimes of this case will truly send a message to the
American people that he does not care about our security, only the “loyalty” of
his friends.