| Tuesday, July 26, 2005 |
| Meet 'the Russert deal' |
Never one to keep his nose out of presidential scandal, Michael "Blue dress" Isikoff delves into the Plamegate waters, specifically the question of whether prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is probing, not just what Karl Rove and Scooter Libby may have learned from classified documents, but what they may have learned from reporters.
Rove, as we know, apparently told investigators he only learned of Valerie Plame "from a reporter," or from someone who heard it from a reporter. And word on the street is, he fingered NBC's Tim Russert as that reporter. Unfortunately for Rove, Russert and NBC struck a deal for the MTP anchor to talk to the grand jury, and he apparently contradicted Rove's "recollection." That's not new news, since it was previously scooped by Bloomberg and the American Prospect. But this tidbit from Isikoff is interesting:
The agreement between Fitzgerald and NBC avoided a court fight over a
subpoena for Russert's testimony about his July 2003 talk with Dick Cheney's top
aide, Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The deal was not, as many assumed, for Russert's
testimony about what Libby told him: it focused on what Russert told Libby. An
NBC statement last year said Russert did not know of Plame, wife of
ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, or that she worked at the CIA, and "he did not
provide that information to Libby."
This now appears significant: in pursuing Russert's testimony, Fitzgerald was testing statements by White House aides—reportedly including Libby—that they learned about Wilson's wife from reporters, not classified documents. Libby's lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. A source close to Karl Rove, who requested anonymity because the FBI asked participants not to comment publicly, says the White House aide—who passed info about Wilson's wife to Time's Matt Cooper—only knew about her CIA job from either a reporter or "somebody" who heard it from a reporter; he can't remember which or who. Rove did not initially discuss his talk with Cooper with the FBI, but later volunteered info about it and called agents' attention to a subpoenaed e-mail he had written to national-security aide Stephen Hadley mentioning the conversation, the source said. At some point in the investigation, Rove clearly realized that the reporters he talked to might cut deals and talk, and so he started talking, too. The question is, will Fitzgerald nail him for his initial failure to tell FBI agents about his convos with reporters, or on the conflicting testimony between him and Russert, or is this still about violating secrecy laws?
Or might Fitzgerald cut a deal with Karl to nab an even jucier fish? Now THAT would be great political theater...
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