Off the hook...

Karl Rove is off the hook. Even for perjury. To accept the excuses given for revealing Valerie Plame's identity, one must admit that Rove did so for the pettiest of reasons. He claims he wished to show that Vice-President Cheney never authorized husband Wilson's trip .. odd given that Wilson never claimed the Vice-President had .. and that the trip was a "boondoggle" (to use the word used by another administration spokesman) set up by his wife. In other words, Rove was trying to besmirch Wilson at a time when he knew that Wilson was only telling the truth. And while Plame did recommend Wilson for the trip, the government had already determined the need for an investigation (see FactCheck's rundown of events).

The administration was angry because Wilson claimed that his investigation unequivocally demonstrated that there was no Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection at a time when they were trying to prove the opposite. Of course it has now come to light that Vice-President Cheney knew knew as much prior to our entering the war.

While we have allowed Rove to destroy the career of a dedicated CIA covert agent, and in so doing also to compromise CIA operations, we have also decided -- that is, Attorney-General Gonzalez has decided -- to prosecute government employees who leak classified government information to the public. This kind of brings up some interesting issues. When Deep Throat revealed that the Nixon administration was behind the burgling of Democratic headquarteres, was he committing a crime? In other words, if government employees make journalists aware of flagrant instances of law-breaking by our government, should they be arrested and charged?

But not Karl Rove, whose leak was carried out for the smallest and meanest of political objectives: to cause an adversary harm by getting at him through his wife -- kind of like being angry at some guy and punching out his girlfriend.