www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006782.php
scoop of the day on Plame/Fitzgerald: the president knew what Karl Rove had do ne from the very beginning. So all that mumbojumbo about wanting to get to the bottom of it and fire the bad actors was, to revert to the King's English, crap. An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily N ews. "He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told T he News. Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and e ven political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President 's rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world. But when you read further down into the piece you see that what got the p resident angry wasn't the leak; Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously a nd he generally approved of such contacts, one source said. But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage- control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's hu sband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger. A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implyin g Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counteratt ack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to prote ct the President. "Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that t hey handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said. But the most important two are probably these: Thomas DeFrank. DeFrank's the byline and he's the Daily News DC Bureau Chief.
suggested he'd actually been in the running to be chi ef Pentagon spokesman, before the job went to Tori Clarke. I'm not including this background information to suggest that DeFrank is in the tank for the Bush crowd. Indeed, I have the sense that the relati onship has become more strained or perhaps attenuated over the last few years. I add these details because the nature of DeFrank's access is uni que in Washington. And this article carries more weight than it would wi th another byline.
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