Back to the Leaky Leak

Now that George Bush has unsuccessfully swayed my attention away from Karl Rove aiding terrorism, I want to do a couple updates about the continuing saga.

On July 19th, The Wall Street Journal published an article which indicates that the now famous secret State Department memo that disclosed the relationship between Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie-- which is where Rove is believed to have gotten the information that he leaked-- did in fact make it very clear that the information contained within the said memo was secret and shouldn't be shared. On July 21st, the Washington Post published an article about the same secret State Department memo clarifying even further that:

"A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials."

Of course, and again, only those who read the memo, and we're still not certain who all read the memo, would have known about Plame, her identity, and not to leak the sensitive material. Rove claims to have learned Plame's identity through journalists, and so far all the journalists that Rove has mentioned have disagreed with him on that matter. One thing, however, the memo does do, is it demonstrates that Plame's identity was secret and not to be shared. Whether Rove knew this or not, does not matter. Because, I do not care about this being a criminal act. This is about national security. And Rove leaked a covert counter-terrorism agent's identity. What to do about that?

Continuing the coverage today, many media outlets, led by Bloomberg, are reporting that Rove along with Libby and maybe Fleischer are being investigated and could be facing possible perjury charges for their testimony to the grand jury about how they first learned of Plame's identity. It appears their stories are not checking out.

Now, if I'm not mistaken, perjury is a serious federal crime, which can lead to even further charges such as obstruction of justice, that have and can lead to the impeachment of a president. If at any time, charges of perjury are warranted, especially against those in the White House, separate independent investigations should be opened into such claims as have been in the past. If the accusation of perjury can lead to the impeachment of the President of the United States, well, then, we have us an important investigation on our hands.

It may appear that Rove did not knowingly leak the identity of a covert agent, which is extremely doubtful but anyway, lied in covering his tracks as to where he obtained the information. Now if Rove so gently offered information to a reporter which Rove did not believe to be sensitive material, then why cover your tracks by lying to a grand jury? And if Rove did not get the information from the journalists like he's claiming, and the journalists are claiming that they got it from Rove, then where did Rove get the info? It couldn't be from the secret State Department memo that connected Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, and the memo didn't mention her name either just like Rove's email, to the case of fake intelligence about WMD could it?