Operation Save Rove's Ass is about to be dealt another serious blow, as their flanking attack with Roberts was at best a minor diversion. Roberts proved to lack in the, what would you call it, "Ann Coulter factor". Democrats took a look at him, saw a conservative but not the worst kind, and said, "we'll get to him in September". Not much for the press to dig into, really.
The Rovians didn't count on another fact -- that most news organizations have more than one reporter. So they could assign one to cover Roberts, and a second to continue digging on the Rove affair. And Roberts or no Roberts, the Plame Affair is still one juicy story.
If Olberman and Raw Story are right, the real fireworks are about to begin.
First of all, Olberman is saying that state department memo was more obviously "secret" than previously thought.
Olberman reporting that there will be a piece in WSJ tommorow stating that the Memo was marked "Top Secret", and that it was not to be shared with other nation's intellegence agencies, no matter how how friendly.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News supposedly has the bombshell of bombshells:
Bloomberg News has slotted a story alleging that senior Bush advisor Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff 'Scooter' Libby provided false testimony to the special prosecutor to a Washington-based grand jury, RAW STORY has learned.
The story is expected to hit after midnight, when Bloomberg typically moves stories.
Patrick Fitzgerald, the Chicago special prosecutor appointed to investigate the outing of former covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson, may also be looking at whether other crimes -- such as perjury, obstruction of justice or leaking classified information -- were committed.
What will the children think? It's not the blowjob endangering national security by outing an undercover CIA agent, but the lies about it!
Actually, it is the national security thing. The lies are just the icinig on the cake.
Update: Think Progress has the Bloomberg piece.
Two top White House aides have given accounts to the special prosecutor about how reporters told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to persons familiar with the case.
Lewis “Scooter'’ Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief
of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first
learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of CIA
agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush
administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has testified before
a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s
identity.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson. Novak, according to a source familiar with the matter, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor.
These discrepancies may be important because one issue Fitzgerald is investigating is whether Libby, Rove, or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation.
