Leak Investigation Could Force Out Karl Rove

[oberon]

Leak Investigation Could Force Out Karl Rove
Adviser Has Been President Bush's Right-Hand Man for Years
By NEDRA PICKLER, AP

WASHINGTON (Oct. 12) - Karl Rove's fingerprints are all over everything at the White House, from politics to policy to the shape of President Bush's entire career in government.

It's hard to imagine Bush without Rove, and vice versa. But the question of what would happen if Rove were forced to resign is something to contemplate, now that the grand jury is pressing the president's aide-de-camp in its investigation into who leaked the identity of a covert CIA officer.

White House insiders speaking privately say Rove would be irreplaceable. While Bush has a few other close confidants in aides like chief of staff Andy Card and counselor Dan Bartlett, none combine such an intimate working knowledge of politics and policy with such a long trusted relationship with the president.

The two have been working together since the 1970s, when Rove was helping lay the groundwork for the Bush's father to win the presidency and trying to get the younger Bush elected to Congress.

George W. Bush lost, but it was his last failed campaign. With Rove as his political strategist, Bush won two Texas gubernatorial races and two terms in the White House.

Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar and political analyst at the Brookings Institution, said that it might appear to many outsiders that Bush would have a hard time getting along without his trusted aide. But Bush would manage, Hess said, just as some other presidents in the past have under similar circumstances.

Richard Nixon's aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman left amid the Watergate scandal. Jimmy Carter accepted the resignation of budget director Bert Lance amid allegations of financial irregularities at two banks where the adviser previously worked. George H.W. Bush lost chief of staff John Sununu after it surfaced that he was using government airplanes for personal trips. President Eisenhower's senior aide, Sherman Adams, left after accepting a fur coat and an oriental rug from a man with business before the federal government.

"People said it would be very hard for Eisenhower to get along without Sherman Adams, but he did," said Hess, a former Eisenhower speechwriter. "We quickly realized that it was Eisenhower who was running the administration all along."

Rove has already testified three times in the probe into whether an administration official deliberately leaked the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose husband is an administration critic. Rove has agreed to testify again, possibly this week, and prosecutors have told him they can no longer assure him he'll escape indictment.

Knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is a federal crime.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to determine whether White House aides violated the law in an attempt to get back at Plame's husband, former career diplomat Joseph Wilson for his assertions that the administration intentionally exaggerated Iraq's nuclear capability to pump up support for an invasion.

Rove has acknowledged that he discussed Wilson's allegations with reporters, but he said he was not the one who revealed Plame's identity. Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, also has acknowledged talking to reporters about the Plame case.

People familiar with Rove's testimony have told The Associated Press that Bush asked him in the fall of 2003 for assurances he was not involved in an effort to divulge Plame's identity and punish Wilson -- and Rove told the president he was not.

At first, the White House denied that Rove had been involved. Bush promised to fire anyone on his staff responsible for such a leak. He later stepped back, saying just that he would remove aides who committed crimes.

At a news conference last week, Bush declined to say whether he would remove an aide under indictment. On Tuesday, he told NBC's "Today" show: "I'm not going to talk about the case."

If Rove is forced to resign, it would be a major blow to a presidency already reeling from low approval ratings, the war in Iraq, rising gas prices and the aftermath of two Gulf Coast hurricanes.

Some Republicans suggest the investigation has already taken a toll, weakening and distracting Rove. Some even suggest the botched early response to Hurricane Katrina and the flash of indignation from the political right over the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination might have been averted had Rove been more hands-on.

Frank Luntz, a pollster and analyst who often works for Republicans, counsels against counting Rove out based on what may look like ominous signs from the grand jury.

"Rove has always been a survivor. He's brilliant at understanding the right thing to do at the right moment. He specializes in the ability to handle a crisis. What he has done for the president, I actually expect him now to do for himself," Luntz said. "He'll know what to do and what to say."


10/12/2005 04:09:24


Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

[robbiewebster]

shouldn't this be in world news?