Missing Rove Emails Point to Violation of Records Act
By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t Report
Monday 21 May 2007
Three years ago, Robert Luskin, the attorney who defended White House Political Adviser Karl Rove in the CIA leak case, made a startling discovery: a July 2003 email Rove sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that proved Rove was far more involved in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and the campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, than he had let on during interviews with federal investigators and in testimony before a federal grand jury.
Curiously, the email Rove sent to Hadley that Luskin had found never turned up during an exhaustive document search ordered a year earlier, in September 2003, by Alberto Gonzales. At the time, Gonzales, who was White House counsel, enjoined all White House staff members to turn over any communications pertaining to Plame Wilson and her husband, a vocal critic of the Iraq war, who had accused the Bush administration of twisting pre-war Iraq intelligence. Gonzales's order to turn over documents and emails came 12 hours after former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card had informed him that the Justice Department was launching an investigation into the leak.
The order Gonzales sent to Karl Rove and other administration officials demanded "documents that relate in any way to a contact with any member or representative of the news media about Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife's purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency."
The Rove/Hadley email was not included in the thousands of pages of documents turned over to the FBI. The reason? Apparently the "right search words weren't used," Luskin told Newsweek in October 2005. The email Rove sent to Hadley in July 2003 has never been released publicly. It's unclear whether the email was sent via the White House computer system or from Rove's email account maintained by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which, according to the National Journal, is what Rove uses to conduct 90 percent of his White House business, in what would appear to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
Deja Vu All Over Again
The narrative about the single email that tied Rove to the Plame-Wilson leak that was lost and then found is a complex one. But the story has deja vu written all over it as Rove finds himself smack in the middle of the latest high-profile scandal plaguing the White House - the apparent politically motivated firings of nine US attorneys last year. Once again, lawmakers are doing their darnedest to obtain copies of Rove's emails linking him directly to the US attorney scandal, and once again serious questions are being raised about the lengths to which Gonzales, as head of the Justice Department, and the Bush administration are willing to go to insulate Rove.
Last week, the Justice Department responded to a wide-ranging subpoena issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee that demanded all of Rove's emails, including those emails sent and received during the height of the Plame-Wilson leak that Rove's attorney surrendered to CIA leak Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, by releasing a single email that was sent to several DOJ and Bush administration officials and to Rove at an account he used that is maintained by the Republican National Committee - kr@georgewbush.com. The email was hardly a smoking gun. It simply showed that Rove was kept in the loop about the news surrounding the issue.
Using search terms such as "Rove, Karl, kr, gwb43.com, georgewbush and rnchq.org," the Justice Department could only find a February 28, 2007 email that J. Scott Jennings, a special adviser to President Bush who works in Rove's shop, had cc'd Rove. And as for emails the Judiciary Committee requested that Rove sent or received during the Plame-Wilson leak and thereafter that were allegedly turned over to Fitzgerald?
"The Office of Special Counsel Fitzgerald also conducted a search using the same search terms referenced above and we have been advised that this effort did not identify any responsive documents," said the Justice Department letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. "Mr. Fitzgerald noted that his office did not obtain all of Mr. Rove's emails, but rather obtained access to his electronic media for the purpose of searching for documents responsive to search terms relevant to his investigation. Only records responsive to Mr. Fitzgerald's investigative search terms were retained by his office...."
If that's the case, then it certainly calls into question the integrity of Fitzgerald's investigation as it pertains to Rove.
Sloan, the CREW director, said her organization has no direct evidence proving that Rove intentionally withheld emails from Fitzgerald's probe. But the CREW attorneys doubt that Rove and the White House have been forthcoming about Rove's involvement in the leak of Plame Wilson's covert identity in light of the fact that thousands of emails Rove sent and received during the height of the leak probe have not been recovered. Moreover, Sloan said it's difficult to determine whether Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, has been forthcoming with Fitzgerald about the changing stories that Rove and Luskin told the special prosecutor regarding Rove's role in the Plame-Wilson leak and the discovery of the email Rove sent to Hadley.
"He is a well known lawyer and I would give him the benefit of the doubt, but there is no way to know if he was telling the truth or not at this point," Sloan said. More from Truthout.
Jason, find out if Luskin's claim that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald faxed a letter to him regarding Rove not being charged with as a leaker is legit! I often wonder if Luskin is telling the truth!
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