Friday, July 15, 2005
Fire Robert Novak over CIA Leak
Today's New York Times continues to cover the Karl Rove and the CIA leak scandal.
I think the foucs on a Rove indictment is important, but Rove shouldn't be the only focus.
Isn't outing an undercover CIA agent against the law?
Yes, federal law protects the identities of covert agents.
Novak should lose his job over this scandal.
Pressure should be put on Robert Novak to come clean about what he knows.
One way the Republicans/Fox News are spinning this story is to suggest it's too complicated.
It's not.
Rove didn't mention the CIA agent's name directly, they say. However, can we really sell Rove this short? Rove knew exactly what he was doing.
In today's Philadelphia Inquirer, they quote outted CIA official Valerie Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who is being viscously attacked by the Republican Right. Wilson says this:
"I made my bones confronting Saddam Hussein and securing the release of over 2,000 Americans in hiding in Kuwait," Wilson said. "Karl Rove made his bones doing political dirty tricks."
The scandal was touched off when Wilson wrote that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons material to justify the invasion and ouster Saddam Hussein. In the build-up to war the White House and its supporters had a nearly zero-tolerance for those not hueing the WMD line -- not even someone who knew the facts first-hand, as Wilson did. So the effort to unmasked Plame, using Novak, was one to undermine Wilson's allegations, among other things.
But let's be realistic, Bush is never going to fire Rove. Rove may yet survive, but why should Novak?
Why not start asking for some accountability from Novak and his producers at CNN?
Novack quoted "two senior administration officials" in his story -- who are they? He knows.
Write to CNN to demand that Robert Novak should be fired for his role in the CIA leak scandal:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/dotcom/
See LEAK-GATE for related articles and links from the past two-years on this story.
See the site NEWS HOUNDS and the posts after for more on the scandal.
--TD
