www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_07_10.php#006045
print) With everything coming out today about Karl Rove, it's worth stepping to bring a few things into focus. It's been pretty clear since fall of 2003 that Karl Rove did this. It's been a near certainty since then that if it wasn't Rove than Advertisement it was someone in a very similar position. After all, Bob Novak said in his now-notorious column that "senior administration officials" had tol d him about her. We don't know that the president knew about the decision to use Plame's w ork at CIA against Wilson in advance, though given the high-level workin g group assembled at the White House to go to war with Wilson, it's reas onable to suspect that he did. But at a minimum the president has known about this as long as the rest of us -- that is, almost exactly two year s And he -- unlike anyone else in the country -- had the power to call Rove into his office and ask him whether he did this or knew who did? Whether he knew before or after, he's known for a very long time. And pre tty clearly he didn't want Rove held to any account. Indeed, he's gone t o great lengths to prevent this from happening. And of course few report ers in DC have cared to press this essential point.
Question: Do you want to retract your statement that Rove -- Karl Rove w as not involved in the Valerie Plame expose? The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating full y with the investigation, that means we're not going to be commenting o n it while it is ongoing. Question: But Rove has apparently commented, through his lawyer, that he was definitely involved. McClellan: You're asking me to comment on an ongoing investigation. Question: I'm saying, why did you stand there and say he was not involve d? McClellan: Again, while there is an ongoing investigation, I'm not going to be commenting on it, nor is -- McClellanN: -- any remorse? McClellan: -- nor is the White House, because the President wanted us to cooperate fully with the investigation, and that's what we're doing. And you were perfectly willing to comment from that podium while the investigation was going on, and try to clear Karl Rove. Why were you willing to say Karl R ove was not involved when -- and talk at length about it, when the inve stigation was going on, and now that he's been caught red-handed, all o f a sudden you've got a new line? McClellan: No, I don't think it is the way you characterize it, as new, because I have said for quite some time that this is an ongoing investi gation, and we're not going to get into discussing it while it's an ong oing investigation. Question: But you did -- you did discuss it while it was an ongoing inve stigation. You stood there and told the American people Karl Rove wasn' t involved.
Question: Scott, is the President aware of Karl Rove's role in leaking i nformation about Joe Wilson's wife? Mr McClellan: Again, this is a Question relating to an ongoing investig ation, and you have my response. Question: Scott, without commenting on the investigation, you said in Se ptember of '03, if anyone in this administration was involved in it, th ey would no longer be in this administration. They are questio ns relating to an ongoing investigation, and the President directed us to cooperate fully with that investigation. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than he does and -- Question: -- the standard then still apply? Mr McClellan: The investigation is ongoing, Peter, and we're just not g oing to -- we're not going to -- Question: Did the President set a timetable -- Question: It's not about the investigation, it's about the White House d ecision -- Mr McClellan: We're not going to talk about it further from this podium . The above is not the on-air late-morning early-afternoon press br iefing. But it's not televised and the official transcript is not released to th e public.
Later, Mr Waldman asked whether Time's disclosures and a blanket waiver form his source had signed were enough to allow him to testify. In an e-mail message on Tuesday night, Mr Cooper said he believed the forms could have been coerced and thus worthless. The only thing that would do, Mr Cooper wrote, was a "certain, unambigu ous waiver" from his source. Around 7:30 on Wednesday morning, Mr Cooper had said goodbye to his son , resigned to his fate. His lawyer, Mr Sauber, called to alert him to a statement from Mr Luskin in The Wall Street Journal. "If Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source," Mr Luskin told T he Journal, "it's not Karl he's protecting." "I was not looking for a waiv er," he said, "but on Wednesday morning my lawyer called and said, 'Loo k at The Wall Street Journal. Mr Luskin said he had only reaffirmed the blanket waiver, in response to a request fro m Mr Fitzgerald. "Karl was not afraid of what Cooper is going to say and is clearly tryin g to be fully candid with the prosecutor," Mr Luskin said. If you read the whole article Advertisement (which is quite good), it's clear that Cooper really didn't want to go to prison over this and was looking for a way out. But he was willing to serve time if he couldn't find a way to extricate himself that he could square with his understanding of journalistic ethics. Not unreasonably, he thought the blanket waivers of confidentiality that Rove had signed at the request of Patrick Fitzgerald were meaningless because they were coerced. That sounds right to me since a member of the White House staff probably wouldn't be free to refuse such a request -- particularly since he might legitimately fear that such a refusal would find a way to make itself p ublic. But as the article makes clear, there really was no sudden personal commu nication from Rove, at least not as I understood it to have occurred in the initial reports. What seems to have happened is that Luskin availed himself of the opportu nity to talk tough and categorically to the Journal at his client's appa rent expense. The key of course is the second to last graf that I've exc erpted, in which the Times author says Luskin was 'surprised' at what Co oper and his attorney read into his statement to the Journal. He had mea nt it only as a blanket restatement of their position to date. Presumably, once Cooper and his attorney took this interpretation with th e judge, there was no turning back for Luskin. I'm curious whether others read the article this way too.
bio at Patton Boggs says ( emphasis added) Mr Luskin has extensive experience defending cases involving allegation s of official corruption. Formerly Special Counsel to the Organized Cri me and Racketeering Section of the US Department of Justice, Mr Lusk in helped to supervise the ABSCAM investigation, and thereafter represe nted the Justice Department in hearings before Congress concerning the investigation. I remember reading that late last Advertisement night and being impressed.
bio page says he graduated from Harvard Law in 1979 -- in other words, June 1979. Remember ABSCAM was a series of FBI sting operations targeting sitting me mbers of Congress -- a touchy and quite delicate proposition. Was Luskin such a comer that they let him supervise the investigation whi le he was still in law school? Or did they put him in charge as his firs t assignment at DOJ? Presumably some aspects of the investigation continued on through 1980 an d 1981.
"Law Clerk to Judge Louis F Oberdorfer, US District Court for th e District of Columbia, 1979-1980. Special Counsel, Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, US Department of Justice, 1980-1982." So presuma bly he went to DOJ in late 1980, after most of the ABSCAM indictments we re already going to trial.
contradictory statements ov er the last week or so, each necessitated by further revelations about h is client's conduct. So I was curious: Is Robert D Luskin the sort of lawyer who never gets c aught in a fib or a misstatement on his client's behalf? Well, it turns out that Luskin is a rather colorful figure with not a bad sense of humor. In 1999, when the Legal Times asked him why he was shut ting down his boutique litigation firm, he quipped: "To paraphrase Hobbe s: The life of a boutique is solitary, p...
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