Karl Rove: Lying or Fudging?
ThinkProgress and Reuters have outlined the method used by Rove to attempt to conceal his involvement in outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
It was the same method that DID NOT work for Bill Clinton in trying to conceal his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky. The method could be called “wordsmithing and the careful-parsing of statements” or it could be called “LYING”. Bill Clinton was impeached and lost his law license for a similar offense. What will happen to Karl Rove?
Reuters states:
- “Rove has carefully chosen his words when questioned about the leak. “I didn’t know her name. I didn’t leak her name,†he told CNN last year when asked if he had had anything to do with it.”
OK. And Bill Clinton said: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
Bill Clinton chose his words carefully. To Clinton at the time the words “sexual relations” did not include the act of oral sex, which he had had with Lewinsky. Therefore in Clinton’s mind he was telling the truth. To the rest of us, it was a big fat lie.
Rove’s alibi was: “I didn’t know her name and didn’t leak her name.” [CNN, 8/31/04]
In fact from reporter Matt Cooper’s now released private e-mails we see that Karl Rove may not have actually leaked Valarie Plame’s name but the information that the wife of Joe Wilson worked at the CIA.
OK. He may not have leaked her name but he leaked that fact that Joe Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative.
Therefore in Rove’s mind he was telling the truth. To the rest of us, it IS a big fat lie.
But ThinkProgress concludes that Rove did not choose his words carefully enough. Rove was asked by ABC “Did you have any knowledge or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press?” Rove’s protestations to the press (and perhaps to the Grand Jury?) that he “didn’t leak her name” may have been technically correct but when he answered “No” to ABC News producer Andrea Owen’s question as to whether he had “any knowledge”, Rove was clearly lying.