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 News.
“He made his displeasure known to Karl,” a presidential counselor told The News. “He made his life miserable about this.”
Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President’s rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world.
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Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and 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 husband, 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 implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.
“Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way,” the source said.
So, it’s not the crime per se, but the fact that they got caught which upsets him so.
That could plausibly be last ditch damage control, also. If they know that Fitzgerald can trace this all the way up to the President, the least they can do is frame the circumstances as “he didn’t know beforehand and was very, very upset when he found out.” Of course, that still means Bush lied publicly several times on the issue, but there might be nothing for them to do about that.
Obviously, that’s purely conjecture based on a probably unfounded report.
[size=2]edit: dirt beat me by six minute because I don’t know how to be succinct.[/size]
DeFrank’s the byline and he’s the Daily News DC Bureau Chief. DeFrank has a unique relationship to the Bush world, particularly to the older generation. He cowrote James Baker’s diplomatic autobiography The Politics of Diplomacy, for instance. And back in the summer of 2001, The Weekly Standard suggested he’d actually been in the running to be chief Pentagon spokesman, before the job went to Tori Clarke.
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The nature of DeFrank’s access is unique in Washington. And this article carries more weight than it would with another byline.
IMHO that’s not back pedaling. Firing someone just because they’re accused is lame. On the other hand he’s certainly shown he’s not actually interested in investigating what happened, and didn’t take it seriously – and clearly there would have been a much different response had Wilson been on his side of the ideological fence.
Didn’t he inititally say “involved”? I agree that “accused” is a pretty low bar, but “involved,” even if not quite “convicted,” would seem to be fire-worthy.
The very fact that Bush said one thing when he thought he wasn’t in trouble, and another when realized that he might have to own up to his “tough talk” is backpedaling.
And in other news . . . The president sat down with his advisors for his morning briefing one day. He was told that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in an accident over the weekend. Upon hearing this news, the president burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably and wailing. His advisors were taken aback by his reaction, considering they it was only three soldiers, and they weren’t American soldiers at that. Still red in the eyes and sniffing from his crying, the president looked up and asked, “How many is a brazillion?”
One says, “I operated on a musical prodigy who had lost his hands in a terrible accident. I was able to re-attach them, and he went on to play to a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall.”
The second says, “That’s nothing. I operated on an athlete who had lost both arms and both legs in a terrible accident. I was able to re-attach them, and he went on to win a Gold medal at the Olympics.”
The third says, “That’s nothing. I operated on a cowboy who had been in a terrible accident. All that was left was a cowboy hat and a horse’s ass. Today, that man is the President of the United States.”
You are a professional photojournalist covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. From your helicopter, you see a man clinging to some flotsam in the flood waters below. He’s struggling and clearly will not make it without the immediate aid that only your helicopter can provide. As you close in, you realize the struggling man is George W. Bush. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take an award-winning photograph and win the accolades of your peers, but if you shoot the picture, you wouldn’t have time to save him.
So do you shoot in full colour or opt for the classic simplicty of black and white?
