John Rapley
US PRESIDENT George W. Bush has run a tight ship in his White House, keeping lips sealed and thereby preventing the sort of gossip that constantly hampered his predecessor. However, Mr. Bush now faces what is possibly the biggest scandal of his presidency. And this week, the finger pointed straight to his chief political adviser, Karl Rove.
In question is the matter of whether Mr. Rove broke federal law by blowing the cover of a CIA agent. The case goes back to Mr. Bush's now-notorious claim, made in his 2003 State of the Union address, that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain African uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Mr. Bush used the statement, now known to be false, to help justify the subsequent invasion of Iraq.
Soon after the invasion, Joseph Wilson, the individual commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency to investigate the claim, went public. He said he had in
fact found no evidence to support it, and that the White House
knew it. A hue and cry broke out over alleged lying by the administration.
In the midst of it, the conservative columnist Bob Novak tried to discredit Mr. Wilson. He wrote an article alleging that Mr. Wilson got the job investigating the Iraq-Africa link through the influence of his wife, a CIA employee.
Mr. Novak was suggesting that the mission was a patronage plum of little significance, and thus probably never got reported to the Oval Office. But inadvertently or not, he revealed the identity of Mr. Wilson's wife, who at the time was a covert agent.
FEDERAL OFFENCE
It is a federal offence to knowingly expose an undercover CIA agent. A federal investigation began, and Mr. Bush announced that anyone in his administration caught leaking information would be fired. When asked about the matter, Mr. Rove himself said he didn't even know the name of Mr. Wilson's wife, and certainly didn't leak it to the press.
It now appears that he chose his words carefully. This past week, as a New York Times reporter was jailed for refusing to reveal the name of her source to the federal prosecutor investigating the leak, it emerged that Mr. Rove had, indeed, been the culprit. However, close investigation of what he said to reporters suggests he did not, in fact, mention Mrs. Wilson by name. He referred to her relationship to Mr. Wilson, but left it to journalists to follow the trail leading to her door.
Mr. Wilson contended that Mr. Rove was trying to punish his criticism of the administration by "outing" his wife. Mr. Rove's supporters insisted - as they still do - that he was simply putting Mr. Wilson's comments into context.
For now, Mr. Rove's lawyer says his client is not a target of the investigation. Moreover, most lawyers suggest it would be difficult to convict him of the offence. Still, the investigation continues, and some observers suggest that the prosecutor would not be locking up journalists unless he felt he was closing in for a kill.
Should Mr. Rove be indicted, it will be a bombshell for the administration. So influential is Mr. Rove that his critics have dubbed him "Bush's brain."
Losing Mr. Rove would be devastating to the White House.
Yet even if Mr. Rove is not charged, the Bush administration still has a problem on its hands. Strictly speaking, Mr. Rove was telling the truth when he said that he didn't know or leak the name of Mr. Wilson's wife to the press. But the sentence-parsing is unpleasantly reminiscent of an earlier White House, which produced such timeless classics as "it depends what the meaning of is, is." Mr. Bush came to office in 2001 promising to end such evasion and restore the presidency's dignity. If he stands by Mr. Rove, he will thus compromise his image at a time when his authority in Washington already appears to be weakening.
Still, most people who know Mr. Bush say that unless Mr. Rove is charged, the president will let him keep his job. Mr. Bush stands by his friends, especially those upon whom his political career depends. Democrats, who despise Rove, may not get his head on a platter. But Mr. Bush will be wounded nonetheless.
John Rapley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
