Captain Future's Log

Rover, Rover

Can Karl come over? That seems to be the key question that remains for the Fitzgerald investigation.

Hours after the indictment and resignation of Scooter Libby, there was a growing consensus in the press that Karl Rove had engineered a narrow escape in a last minute meeting with prosecutors. Even the authors of the Raw Story report excerpted here Friday pulled back from their assertions that Rove was up for even more---and more serious—charges, in an investigation that was widening its scope.

Nearly every other sign indicated that more indictments are unlikely, and Rove partisans worked the press to make sure that impression made the conventional wisdom pundit programs from Friday through Sunday.

Still, there was Fitzgerald’s cryptic, “it’s not over.” And the haunting observation on the BooMan blog that Fitzgerald is not somebody you’d want to play poker with. Some suggest that the airtight Libby indictment is a classic prosecutorial maneuver to get Libby to inform, which would broaden the inquiry and bump it up to directly involve vice president Cheney.

There was the fresh revelation, or semi-confirmation, that one of Robert Novak’s sources in the column that started it all by outing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent, was in fact Karl Rove. He was apparently the second or confirming source. He’s referred to in the indictment as official A, and prosecution lawyers were said to be naming Rove as that official.

There is still only speculation on the name of Novak’s original source. If that person isn’t indicted, Fitzgerald will not reveal who it was. But in that case, since it’s likely Novak told the grand jury who it was, he probably will reveal it himself. It will be his last big scoop.

So Rove either lied to Bush about his involvement, or parsed his statement with great precision, or possibly Bush knew and is lying himself. Rove almost certainly lied to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, who told the press categorically that Rove told him he was not involved in outing Plame to reporters. McClellan then passed on the lie to the press and the American people, who were yet to cast their votes in the 2004 election.

This timing was mentioned by Fitzgerald in his press conference, when he was talking about the long process of obtaining Judy Miller’s testimony. He said that if it had been freely given, his investigation might have ended in October 2004 instead of this year. It would have ended before the election. It’s possible that without his lies, Libby and everyone else would have been exonerated. But it’s also possible that the truth could have led to the underlying crimes, the conspiracy to out Valerie Plame and the act of outing a CIA agent whose employment as an agent was classified. Though Fitzgerald did not draw this conclusion, it’s reasonable to believe the 2004 elections might have had a different outcome (assuming Diebold voting machine fraud and the Republicans’ vote fraud and suppression effort wasn’t extensive enough to reverse a decisive majority.)

Though Friday’s events did not have the instant H-Bomb effect on the Bush White House that many expected, desired or feared, it may yet serve to dramatize to a larger audience the pattern of deceit that led to congressional approval of the Iraq invasion and occupation.

But unless there are those additional indictments showing a wider conspiracy, including the effort to distort and sell those distortions in order to trick the US into war, the protracted nature of mostly offstage events could allow the quagmire that is the Bush administration as much as the Iraq war to continue. It’s a depressing prospect.

Those who are counting on the revelations of Libby’s trial may have to wait a long time, and then be disappointed if there is some sort of settlement and subsequent pardon. What needs to happen is for the Democrats to give up their waiting game.

They watched this case and others spill over the media with fresh revelations of Bushie and Republican corruption every week, and then every day. They watched as the tragedies of Katrina and Iraq inflicted more damage on the Bush image than their speeches ever could. And this month they watched Bush’s conservative religious right base revolt over his nomination of Harriet Miers, until he had to essentially withdraw it.

But the time for waiting is over. The concerted effort to win back the Congress by winning the country must begin in earnest.