[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 94 (Wednesday, July 13, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1484]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


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               PUTTING ALLEGATIONS IN THE PROPER CONTEXT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. MARK E. SOUDER

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 13, 2005

  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, in the press for the past few days, I have 
reportedly heard all sorts of allegations and innuendoes against Karl 
Rove. Most of these seem to be political, rather than factual. I 
believe this Wall Street Journal article puts the debate about what was 
said by whom into a proper context. Former Ambassador Wilson has been 
largely discredited. Karl Rove, though it has been implied that he 
broke the law, does not appear to in fact have done so.
  It is Wilson whose politically motivated comments who should be under 
scrutiny, not Rove.

               [From the Wall Street Journal, July, 2005]

                        Karl Rove, Whistleblower

       Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying 
     for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA 
     nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On 
     the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru 
     deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the ``Truth-
     Telling'' award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. 
     Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him 
     as a fraud.
       For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real 
     ``whistleblower'' in this whole sorry pseudoscandal. He's the 
     one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to 
     be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told 
     the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for 
     the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President 
     Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In 
     short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans 
     could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but 
     was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an 
     election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.
       Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke 
     any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played 
     a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to 
     investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in 
     Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence 
     Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have 
     deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that 
     she was an undercover agent and using information he'd 
     obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove 
     didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about 
     her work at Langley from other journalists.
       On the ``no underlying crime'' point, moreover, no less 
     than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do 
     the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in 
     March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's 
     Judith Miller out of jail.
       ``While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is 
     far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime 
     took place,'' the Post noted the other day. Granted the media 
     have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to 
     protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that 
     Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.
       The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first ``outed'' 
     himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times 
     op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly 
     debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that 
     President Bush had mentioned in his now famous ``16 words'' 
     on the subject in that year's State of the Union address.
       Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert 
     Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in 
     selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as 
     adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere 
     in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's ``Meet 
     the Press'' and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.
       But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The 
     bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July 
     cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her 
     husband for the Niger mission. ``Interviews and documents 
     provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD 
     [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name 
     for the trip,'' said the report.
       The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged 
     documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even 
     entered intelligence channels until eight months after his 
     trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he 
     provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion 
     that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger.
       About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's 
     Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: ``We 
     conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of 
     the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that `The British 
     Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought 
     significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-
     founded.
       In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd 
     discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told 
     the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The 
     media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though 
     the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking 
     as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can 
     remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly 
     discredited, let us know.
       If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire 
     episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and 
     media attention, not to mention inspire a ``special counsel'' 
     probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, 
     since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor 
     Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the 
     issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an 
     unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not 
     disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the 
     time that no underlying crime was at issue.
       As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to 
     be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the 
     truth.

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