Looks like Newsweek just came out with their article about the source in the Valerie Plame case, based on what Time magazine decided to hand over to prosecutors. And the finger goes on – Karl Rove himself.
This is interesting; while I’m not even slightly surprised that he was the man behind it, it’s very unusual for someone so highly placed to directly involve himself in this sort of business. The style is a bit unusual in recent years, too – it essentially amounts to the use of government power (in this case knowledge of people’s secrets) to directly attack political opponents of the administration.
The legal issue is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes the knowing revelation of an undercover agent’s identity a felony; given the high profile of this investigation so far, it’s going to be increasingly difficult for the Justice Department to avoid making at least some prosecutions in this case. There will probably be some conflict between the actual prosecutors and the AG’s office in this case, with the AG not wanting to prosecute anyone too high-profile (remember that Rove is a friend of Gonzales) but the prosecutor not wanting to drop a public case. Media impact will probably have a strong effect on this – if Rove’s picture is in front of a lot of newspapers with questions like “what did he know?,” it probably will go to trial, but if the newspapers wait for Fox News to take it first, the odds are that enough false rumors will start circulating (e.g. that Cooper’s e-mails were hoaxes) that no prosecution, or other adverse consequences, will actually happen.
If this does concern you, get in touch with your local papers, television stations, and so on, and ask them for more coverage of the story. If they know that their readers are interested, they’ll push the matter.
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 