PRESIDENT UPSET OVER “CLUMSY” COVERUP….Being on West Coast time has its disadvantages sometimes. Apparently I’ve been missing out on the latest soap opera nugget in the Plame investigation, courtesy of the New York Daily News:
Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak
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.”
….”Karl is fighting for his life,” the official added, “but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that.”
….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.
If this is true ? and it’s credited to multiple sources ? then Rove knew exactly what he was doing, Bush knew what Rove was doing, and Rove flatly lied to the grand jury about it.
Josh Marshall has more about the bona fides of Tom DeFrank, the reporter who wrote the story, as well as Scott McClellan’s subsequent bobbing and weaving at this morning’s press gaggle.
