WASHINGTON: President Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove finds himself at the centre of a growing scandal over the alleged leaking by the White House of a covert CIA agent’s name, in possible violation of the law. A recently published e-mail shows that Mr Rove disclosed agent Valerie Plame’s name in a conversation with Time magazine’s reporter Matthew Cooper. The White House has been denying for two years that Mr Rove had anything to do with this disclosure.
The scandal is also embarrassing Mr Bush who had promised to fire anyone in his administration who is found to have revealed the agent’s name, which was published in a column by Robert Novak in July 2003. Revealing the identity of a covert CIA agent is against the law.
So far the White House has refused to comment on the scandal, saying that it would wait for special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to complete his investigation before offering any comments.
The revelation of Ms Plame’s CIA job was part of an attempt to discredit a report from her husband, Joseph Wilson, that questioned Mr Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq.
The investigation into the leak also has challenged the media’s ability to protect anonymous sources. Mr Cooper narrowly escaped going to jail for refusing to reveal his source to Fitzgerald; Time magazine turned over notes. New York Times reporter Judith Miller is in jail for refusing to reveal her source, which may or may not be Mr Rove.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan took a grilling in news briefings on Monday and again on Tuesday after he repeatedly refused to comment on Mr Rove’s possible role in the scandal, saying that his comments may harm the ongoing probe.
But the media are not willing to accept this argument. Hereunder is what Mr McClellan had to face at one of the briefings at the White House:
“I want to be helpful to the investigation. I don’t want to jeopardize anything in that investigation,” said Mr McClellan before a reporter interrupted him.
“If you’ll let me finish,” said Mr McClellan. “No, you’re not finishing — you’re not saying anything,” the reporter responded.
Mr Bush also refused to answer when a reporter asked him whether he would fire Mr Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff.
Leading Democrats, such as Senators John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, are calling on the President to fire Mr Rove.
“Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the President,” said Mr McClellan when a reporter suggested that Mr Rove had lost Mr Bush’s confidence.
The scandal has its origins in the run-up to the Iraq war, when Mr. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa for his purported nuclear-weapons programme.
In July of 2003, Ms Plame’s husband, a former US ambassador, wrote an article saying that he had checked out the allegations on an investigative trip to Niger made on behalf of the CIA and found no evidence that Iraq had sought uranium.
Soon after his claim, articles began appearing in the US media, identifying his wife as a CIA agent and implying that Mr Wilson had got the job to investigate the allegations against Saddam because of nepotism.
When it emerged that identifying Ms Plame may have involved a violation of a law protecting the identity of undercover agents, Mr Bush stated he would dismiss anybody involved in the leak.
