Gotcha Games Continue

Jim Van Der Hei has an interesting Washington Post article concerning Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s latest Grand Jury Probe. SP Fitz will interview Time Reporter Viveca Novak under oath; the Rove people think that her testimony will exonerate Karl.

Why? My guess is that Viveca talked to Karl Rove independently of her Time colleague Matt Cooper, who originally got Rove in dutch by saying that Rove mentioned Plame as a CIA asset. Rove had originally testified that he had not mentioned Plame to Cooper, but a Rove e-mail contemporaneous with the original Cooper/Rove conversation mentions that the Plame subject had come up. Thus Karl seemed to have mis-stated his conversation with Cooper. Rove says that he “forgot” the original conversation with Cooper about Plame and when he did have a hidden memory pop back up, Karl says that Cooper had mentioned that Plame was CIA and Rove said “I heard that too.” "Ah, what a tangled web we weave......."

My hunch is that Viveca Novak talked with Rove about Wilson subsequent to the Rove/Cooper conversation and Rove did not bring up anything about Amb. Wilson’s wife being in the CIA. Thus it is the case of the dog that did not bark. Therefore, Rove's subsequent silence about Plame could plausibly mean there was no campaign to smear Wilson, just an attempt to give another side to the story.

This case for exoneration of Rove will go down hard with the hard-core Left, which simply wants payback for what Ken Starr did to Clinton. The Democrats want a re-borking to occur and if they can’t stop Alito, their no-machine will take no prisoners among White House operatives.