Can Rove spin himself out of trouble? (“Photo” courtesy Democratic Underground)
When you’re dealing with a spinmeister like Karl Rove, reading between the lines is the only place you’ll find any useful information. And that’s exactly what Lawrence O’Donnell does in his latest Plame/Rove update on The Huffington Post.
Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, finally admitted that his client did indeed talk to Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper, prior to Robert Novak blowing Valerie Plame’s cover. But O’Donnell focuses on the words with which Luskin chose to defend Rove’s actions.
Luskin then launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client “never knowingly disclosed classified information.” Knowingly. That is the most important word Luskin said in what has now become his public version of the Rove defense.
Not coincidentally, the word ‘knowing’ is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent ” knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States.”
So, Rove’s defense now hangs on one word