Tomorrow just might be as historical of a day America will ever witness. With half of the Gulf Coast states reeling from a season of disastrous hurricanes, the White House is wondering if they're going to be struck with a political storm of their own.
Tomorrow is the day the investigation lead by Patrick Fitzgerald regarding the leak of Valerie Plame wraps up. Indictments and/or an extension of the grand jury term are the talk of, well, practically the entire world, especially since the investigation has reached across the Atlantic to Italy within the past few days.
Over the past two years, I have been following PlameGate, as it was called early on, when Wilson was on the media circuit. From his interview with Men's News Daily from California, he revealed the timeline of the events and what he knew about the leak:
TN: But the question again: Is Karl Rove the leaker?
Wilson: I don't know the name of the leaker. I will say this: the CIA is an executive branch agency that reports to the President of the United States. The act of leaking the name of a national security asset to the press was a political act. There is a political office that is attached to the office of the President of the United States. That office is headed by Karl Rove.
It is a useful place to start asking questions. Now, nobody has told me the name of the leaker or who authorized the leak. I did not know until I saw the Washington Post article that there were apparently two waves. There was the wave of the leak, two by six, two leakers to six journalists. And then there was a subsequent wave when Karl Rove and perhaps the communications office were pushing the story.
TN: Novak says it wasn't the White House.
Wilson: Well I don't care. Novak has changed his story so much that it's hard for me to understand what he is talking about. He also says that he isn't one of the six, but that issue is somewhere between Novak and the Washington Post and the person who leaked. I can tell you only that Novak called me before he wrote his story asking for a confirmation, and he confirmed to me after he wrote the story that there were two senior administration officials who provided the information to him. And I can tell in the week after his story appeared, I was getting calls from reputable members of the press saying that the White House was pushing the story.
And then there was that turn of events in early June of 2004 when Bush sought legal advice from Jim Sharp in regards to the leaking of the CIA agent, Valerie Plame. Bush's comment on this was as follows: "This is a criminal matter. It's a serious matter. I met with an attorney to determine whether or not I need his advice, and if I deem I need his advice I'll probably hire him."
Of course this should not be perceived as evidence that he was involved. But the image it paints does indeed place him in the middle of the fray. And right now, it's the appearance of complicity that is the unraveling of the Republican Party.
In light of this, the latest article Shipwrecked, by Sidney Blumenthal sounds as close to a death knell for Bush and the current Republican Party than anything I have read. "There is no one left to rescue the Republican Party from George W. Bush," Blumenthal begins. "He is home alone. The Republican-establishment wise men whose words were once quiet commands are shouting unheeded warnings. The Republican leaders of Congress are distracted and obsessed with their own crisis of corruption."
Come tomorrow, Fitzgerald might just make that crisis a political disaster.
*****
Other exceptional articles regarding the investigation:
Scooter Libby: Shark Bate, by James Wolcott
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