Analysis: Two Ways to Look at Rove Controversy

[maddezmom]

Legal and Political Questions Hang Over Karl Rove's Involvement in the Leak Investigation
Analysis By THE ABC NEWS POLITICAL UNIT

Jul. 12, 2005 - There are two important and distinct lenses through which Karl Rove's possible connection to the leaking of a CIA operative's name must be viewed -- the legal and the political.

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The Republican message, for now, is to label the questions surrounding Karl Rove as purely partisan in nature and to assert that he was simply trying to steer a reporter away from what he saw as a story based on a false premise from a questionable source -- Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador who had been critical of the White House.

Whatever else one thinks, these facts are not in dispute:

A. Rove's attorney has acknowledged that he talked about Plame with Cooper, without mentioning her name, days before Robert Novak's column publicly revealed her identity.

B. Rove (and Rove via McClellan) has repeatedly suggested that he had nothing to do with this story at all.

C. The White House has suggested that any person found to have anything to do with the improper leaking of Wilson's name to the press would be fired.

more:http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/print?id=931937