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September 29, 2003

White House says Rove isn't the source of the Plame leak

The White House today has said that Karl Rove is not responsible for the leak of Valerie Plame's identity.

...the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said today that he had spoken to Mr. Rove and had been assured that it was "simply not true" that Mr. Rove had had anything to do with the leak.

"The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved," Mr. McClellan said at a midday news briefing. Pressed on just how the president knew that, Mr. McClellan said, "Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place," adding, "It is simply not true."

The Times article also notes that the initial request for the Justice department to look into whether any administration officials were invovled in the leak or not was first made back in July by the CIA's office of general counsel. This recent burst of attention to the scandal has come about because of a report on Friday that the CIA had made such a request. Right now, however, I'm not sure if the request referred to in Friday's story is the one from July, and someone in the CIA just got tired of the Justice Department sitting on the matter, or if the initial request was somehow deficient and the CIA had to do additional investigating before resubumitting their inquiry request to the Justice Department. I'll let you know if I find out what the timeline on this is.

Additionally, the article comments on numerous Democrats calling for someone other than John Ashcroft to be responsible for deciding if this goes to the FBI or not and, if it does go to the FBI, to oversee the course of the investigation. There is widespread concern that Ashcroft won't be able to remain neutral enough to run a fair investigation.

"This administration has played politics with national security for a long time, but this is going too far," one of those Democratic hopefuls, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, told Reuters, suggesting an independent commission look into the accusations. "I don't think, in this administration, the Department of Justice will have the credibility it needs to reassure American allies abroad, and people around the world, about this matter."

Posted by thorswitch at September 29, 2003 05:59 PM

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Posted by: Philip at September 29, 2003 06:08 PM