"The Story Caused A Stir"

John Dickerson of TIME, writing in Slate, tells us that Karl Rove's story about Matt Cooper and the missing email does not make sense - it is simply implausible that Rove could have forgotten this.  (By the way, folks with a better memory than Karl's will recall that Mr. Dickerson had a byline on the July 2003 TIME story that made Matt Cooper famous.)

As to what does or does not make sense, let's pick out a few details from Mr. Dickerson's effort.  Here is his theme:

But wouldn't a man [such as Rove] who has such a busy life filled with so many distractions have been extra careful to examine his memory and his files when the question of who revealed the identity of Joe Wilson's wife started to become an issue? Lots of important people in Washington were asking, and some of them had subpoena power.

You tell me.  Here is his first point:

The first time Rove must have considered the question of whether he'd talked about Joe Wilson and his wife was on July 14, 2003, just three days after he spoke to Cooper. That's when a story appeared by Bob Novak (no relation to Viveca) revealing that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. A source close to Rove confirmed to me the widely held speculation that Rove was one of Novak's sources. The story caused a stir because it was a tantalizing new detail in the ongoing White House effort to undermine Wilson's report.

Emphasis added.  First, although the story was published on July 14, it went out on the AP wires on Friday, July 11, the same day Rove spoke to Cooper.  Secondly, Rove spoke to Cooper just before leaving on vacation, so he may have missed the July 14 plot twists.

But in any case, the story caused such a stir that there were no questions about it at the White House press briefings for July 14, 15, and 16 (I quit looking there, but feel free to join in.)

And you will have to trust me on this (or see this contemporaneous UPDATE, or the Washington Monthly, or the Free Republic), but when TIME originally published their web-site only story by Cooper, Dickerson, et al, they said this:

Some government officials, noting that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

By July 22, TIME was so swept up in the "stir" caused by Novak that they amended their story slightly with a parenthetical insertion:

And some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

If Novak created a stir on July 14, it took a while to reach either the White House briefing room or TIME magazine.

Mr. Dickerson also manages to amuse with this:

Rove's conversation with Cooper hadn't been a negligible interaction in his own mind. It was important enough that he wrote an e-mail message about it. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove wrote Stephen J. Hadley, who has since risen to become Bush's national security adviser. "When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

Mightn't Rove at least have checked to see if the country's top newsmagazine took his advice or not about treating Wilson seriously? (In fact, it didn't. Wilson's claims led to a cover story, but the piece did not say anything about Wilson's wife.)

So let's see - Rove talks to Cooper and mentions Wilson's wife.  That detail is not repeated in the Time cover story, but only runs at the TIME website.  And therefore, the conversation with Cooper should be burned into Rove's brain while he is away on vacation and missing all of this?

Well, the DoJ also forgot to ask about Cooper in their original document request in Sept 2003, so forgetting Matt Cooper seems to have been easy to do.  Left unmentioned [See Note!] in this story is that Matt Cooper had been on TIME's Washington desk only a few weeks, and this was one of his first chats with Karl Rove.  That might make it more memorable for Cooper, but it may have had the opposite effect on Rove.

NOTE:  Ahh, left unmentioned except where he mentions it:

Rove can't reasonably be expected to remember conversations that may have had no special relevance in his mind at the time they took place with a reporter he was talking to for the first time.

OK, a Lewis Libby moment for me.  Unstaged, too.

MORE:  Posting may be a bit cryptic today - I can get into my hosting service at Typepad, but I cannot get my site to load, so I am not at all sure what the rest of you are seeing.  However, I see from the comments and traffic that some folks are getting in to something - very odd.

Comments

[TP]

The really astounding thing is how caught up in their own self importance these media guys are. How many people does
Karl Rove talk to on any day and how many of them are more important than Matt Cooper? My guess is that Rove's real task with Cooper was to brush him off as quickly as possible so he could get on with more important things--like removing toe dirt.

[Anonymous Liberal]

Dickerson actually neglected to mention a few facts that could have made his argument stronger. First, there's plenty of evidence that Rove understood the significance of the Novak column. Not only did he give Libby the heads up that Novak was going to write about Plame, but he clearly took that publication as a green light to shop the information around town. He spoke to a number of reporters about Plame in the days after the Novak column ran and reportedly told Chris Matthews that "Wilson's wife is fair game." So not only was he following the news, but his behavior indicates that he knew the publication of Plame's name was significant (i.e. now it was okay to talk about it openly).

Second, Dickerson forgets to mention that only a few days after the Novak column was published, David Corn wrote a story suggesting that whoever provided Plame's identity to Novak may have committed a felony. I know the Nation isn't exactly the New York Times, but still, I'd bet that word of Corn's allegation reached Rove. I don't know about you, but if I read that I may have committed a felony, I'd at least take a second to think through the events in my head (which were less than a week old at that point) and figure out what exactly I did.

Also, this is a minor point, but how does the fact that this was one of Rove's very first conversations with Cooper help Rove's argument. Wouldn't you be more likely to forget a conversation with someone you talk to regularly than your very first conversation with someone? Rove was surely sizing Cooper in these initial chats, trying to get a sense of the guy. That should make those conversation stand out even more in his memory. When you're dealing with a reporter that you don't know very well, my guess is that you are more careful in choosing your words and more attentive to what is going on.

Anyway, I wholeheartedly agree with Dickerson. I don't think Rove's "I forgot" defense is credible. It's slightly more believable than Libby's, but that doesn't say much.

My guess, Tom, is that you are more or less agnostic on this point. That you find Rove's defense plausible, but don't necessarily believe it. Is that fair?

[Very fair - I can see why Rove would lie (one chat with Novak is a slip, but two become a troubling pattern), but I can see why he would forget, too. And I don't know how one could be sure, even sizing him up in a courtroom.

Sorry for the odd comment structure - I can't get to my own site via the front door, and I have tried both Mozilla Firefox and MS Explorer. Do I need to go Apple, or what?]

[kim]

I've commonly found myself disappointed at the recollections of others. Sometimes, amazed.
================================================

[boris]

That Rove forgot is more credible than starting a campaign of lying to everyone to cover up a two minute conversation. There just wasn't anything noteworthy in the conversation from Rove's POV based on the email. The theory that Rove went rogue over anthing in the email is ludicrous so the logic must be that something too insignificant to make the email was too significant to forget.

Better theory: The email contains the only elements Rove considered significant, and they were forgettable, therefore anything else in the conversation was more forgettable not less.

[Jim E.]

"That might make it [the Rove conversation] more memorable for Cooper..."

And now TM's bolstering the credibility of prosecution witnesses even as TM's right-wing fan club label Cooper a liar. Cool.

[Rick Ballard]

I dunno Kim, it kind of depends doesn't it? Some people think that the vagaries of memory pertaining to unbelieveable profits in cattle futures trading or the location of billing records are completely understandable (not to mention wholly forgiveable) while asserting that a two minute conversation with one of at least a hundred journos of equal standing should be etched in memory with sulphuric acid.

I just wish I could find my car keys.

[boris]

Liar yourself. Find and link two or more members of TM's rightwing regulars labeling Cooper a liar.

[boris]

Last comment was to Jim E

BTW the idea that later significance can restore memories already forgotten is an artifact of hindsight, not reality. Hindsight is tricky, and so-called common sense is rarely accurate.

Once an item is forgotten, it's gone.

[r flanagan]

I've heard Laura outed Valerie while
having her hair done. Or Jenna. Don't
tell Fitz.

[Anonymous Liberal]

But Kim, Rove didn't just "forget" some elements of the conversation. He "forgot" that the entire conversation ever occured. Keep in mind that this is the same conversation that Rove ended with "I've already said too much."

I agree that, all things being equal, it's possible that someone could forget about a conversation like this. But Dickerson's point is that all things are NOT equal. Whether or not Rove thought the conversation was significant at the time (and I think he did), he had reason to understand its significance within a week after it occurred. He had an email sitting there in his 'sent mail' folder memorializing the fact that it occurred. And more significantly, Cooper actually printed the information Rove gave him in that conversation. So how could Rove have totally forgotten about it? If this were Sandy Berger or some Clinton administration operative telling this story, would you believe him?

[Gary Maxwell]

the vagaries of memory pertaining to unbelieveable profits in cattle futures trading or the location of billing records are completely understandable (not to mention wholly forgiveable

Too funny

His meme is lying in ashes on the ground, smoke rising from the embers.

[Anonymous Liberal]

Sorry, that last comment was intended for Boris, not Kim.

[Gary Maxwell]

What did you have for lunch Monday? Just checking. Its not that far away come on, eating is very important without it you will surely die.

[boris]

he had reason to understand its significance within a week after it occurred

A rather weak assumption to base a chain of deduction on. What indication is there for a claim that Rove was involved in any aspect of the story while he was on vacation? Or is that just because it was SO MOMENTOUS that everyone on the planet could not have missed it.

[kim]

AL, you could stand to read a little clinical psychology on memory.

Is this what your attack on Rove has degenerated to, a sneer at his memory?
=================================================

[Dwilkers]

I haven't seen anybody serious here calling Cooper a liar. Hell I don't know what anyone would think Cooper has said that would be important enough to lie about.

If anything Cooper's inability to recall the welfare angle is evidence that reinforces Rove's claim of the forgetability of the conversation.

I don't know if he forgot the conversation or if he forgot the e-mail and thought he could get away with lying about it. What I do know is it would be real hard to prove he didn't forget about it to 12 people that can't even remember what they had for supper the night before - and that's what a prosecutor would have to prove; that he didn't forget it.

The idea being tossed around the last couple days that Rove is going to be indicted over the Cooper thing has raised my eyebrows a good deal. He might be indicted for something else, but not the Cooper thing IMO.

[Pollyusa]

I'll add another article published shortly after Novak's column that would let Rove know that the Plame outing could become a big deal.

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday Monday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity -- at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak
Newsday 7/21/03

[boris]

He "forgot" that the entire conversation ever occured

Which was my point. Do I need to rephrase it? The parts in the email look pretty forgettable to me. Fogotten. The parts that didn't even make the email were probably even more forgettable for Rove, or they would have made the email.

Don't know if I can make it any clearer with my limited writing ability.

[kim]

We haven't heard enough from Cooper yet to label him a liar. I have little doubt that his memory and Rove's memory of their conversation differ. I'm hoping we'll hear more of his take on the whole thing. Uh, not as a reporter, but as a witness.
==================================================

[Gary Maxwell]

Newsday? This is a joke, right? Come on Polly, what did you have for lunch Monday? You spent way more than 2 minutes on lunch, right ?, and its only three days ago. So?

[M.F.]

Seems to me that nobody defending Rove here or at any other Plamology blog has been able to adequately explain why, if V. Novak's talk with Luskin -- which tipped him off to Cooper's talk with Rove -- was at latest in May, the email didn't get found until September or October. That's just too much time, especially if you take the initial explanation -- "wrong search terms" -- at face value. That is, as soon as that conversation ends, Luskin goes back and types "Cooper" into the search, right? (Aside: The email contained the word "Cooper," didn't it?)

Add the long delay to the apparent fact that the email emerged at almost exactly the same time as it became clear that Cooper would have to testify, and it's hard not to draw the conclusion that Rove was covering up.

Right?

[maryrose]

Rick
I have to compliment you on your excellent article and the truth contained therein. Also your comments regarding selective memory on the part of the Clintons and of course the removed files from Vince Foster's office have always troubled me. How are these kind of people elected? The only criterion appears to be the ends justify the means. I work with young people and I want and hope for a better world for them without all this corruption.

[Eric]

I haven't read anything yet that would dissuade me from the theory that the reporters were looking to entrap a Bush official for something they, the reporters, already knew - Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

The real question then is how the reporters knew. Was is common Washington party circuit knowledge? Did Wilson, as a member of the Kerry campaign, tell them? Did a proxy for him do it?

[Jim E.]

No regulars here call Cooper a liar? Hmmm. All the following are from a single thread about Viveca Novak (Viveca Novak's Tale, Dec. 11)

TS9 at 11:06am, Dec. 11: responding to a comment that Rove was the first to tell Cooper about Wilson’s wife, TS9 wrote: “total BS. Coop knew. Red pill time.”

Maryrose, 12:05 pm: “I do not believe Cooper didn't know about Plame [before Rove phone call].”

Clarice, 12:14pm: “I'd bet my bottom dollar that there's … conflict between Cooper's first Time account of his conversation with Rove and his post-gj report. Nothing like actually having your rearend in the frying pan to make you cut out the furbishes.”

Owl, 10:24pm: “[Cooper] only took notes on what 'he wanted out of the call' because he immediately wrote the 'hit piece' on the WH. In other words, I believe Cooper fully has the ability to lie in the gj. Look at his actions all the way through it. . . . Must be nice to plan the plot, write the story and then act as witnesses in the play”

In response to owl, maryrose writes at 12:04 pm Dec 12: “Owl, You are absolutely correct in you analysis.”

[kim]

Of course, Eric.

M.F., we may have not settled it but there was a long discussion for the reasons behind the apparent delay you note on one of these threads recently. I don't remember which one, even though we got quite involved. There were a number of rationales, but the only one I remember was my own. I have it lying around here, somewhere.
======================================

[boris]

nobody ... has been able to adequately explain why ... the email didn't get found until September

Actually that has been explained several times by tech savy posters 'round here.

Let me take a quick shot at it too.

Consider a database of drivers license info: the police have a suspect description ... 5'10" brown hair 175 lbs. Plug that into the database and check all the alibies. All 77 MILLION.

There needs to be a description of the information that not only COVERS the data, but EXCLUDES most of the irrelevant items.

Given what I've seen about the email in question, the only thing they would have had to go on was Cooper's name. How many hits would that provide ??? How long to manually sift through them all ???

[Anonymous Liberal]

"What indication is there for a claim that Rove was involved in any aspect of the story while he was on vacation?"

Boris, I don't know how long Rove's vacation lasted, but as I said in my first comment, there are multiple reports that soon after Novak's column was published, Rove was actively shopping the Wilson's wife angle around town, telling Chris Matthews that Plame was now "fair game.") That hardly seems like the behavior of someone who was not paying attention to the story. Indeed, it suggests that Rove was actively following the development of the Wilson story and understood that, now that Plame's identity on the public record, it was suddenly okay to talk about her.

And for the people comparing this to remembering what you had for lunch...please. That's silly. How many times have you been accused of committing a felony for what you had for lunch? And if you were, don't you think you could probably figure out what you had if you thought hard enough about it? Especially when the accusation comes only a few days later and you have receipts (the email) and other people's recollections (the Cooper article) to remind you? Dickerson brought up that analogy as a joke.

[noah]

Jim E.: very convincing. Yep, Cooper is a liar.

JK!

[boris]

Fair enough Jim E.

Being skeptical of Coop's state of knowledge is not calling him a liar regarding events related to the Rove-Cooper phone call.

Understand your conflation though. I take back "liar yourself".

[TP]

Boris. I guess I don't even understand why anybody would have done a further search before Cooper testified based on water cooler talk about what Cooper's testimony might be (if he testified).

[kim]

Jim E. We are awfully suspicious that at the least Cooper's statement that he first heard about her from Rove is disingenuous. He has parsed his public words so as to be ambiguous.

You should read a little book by Harriet Lerner called 'The Dance of Deception'.

He has used his massive communications ability to deceive. Not good karma.
==================================================

[Jim E.]

Thank you boris.

However, I didn't conflate. You wanted one example, and I presented several -- one of which explicitly called him a liar.

[boris]

Rove was actively shopping the Wilson's wife angle around town, telling Chris Matthews that Plame was now "fair game."

You provide no time frame for these allegations. The transfer window for long term memory is shorter than most "vacations". A flood of later similar events would make recovery even less likely, not more.

[boris]

I believe Cooper fully has the ability to lie

You mean this ??? Don't we all have the ability to lie ??? LOL.

The point seems to be that Cooper could GET AWAY with not telling the GJ he already knew about VP.

Quit while you're ahead.

[maryrose]

When this whole(charade) scenario plays out we"ll find out who has been truthful and who has been disengenious. At that time apologies and 'I told you so's" will be provided in abundance.

[M.F.]

Boris, Kim, et al.

Sorry if i'm rehashing old ground -- can't follow every discussion thread, much as I'd like to. And TM hasn't explained it in a front page post, as far as I know.

Anyway, I'm not sure that Boris's explanation is what I'd call "adequate" -- isn't there a way to narrow down the search to emails that Rove sent within a one month time period with the word "Cooper" in it? How many emails could Rove have sent in a month? Even at a whopping 500 per day, that's only 15,000 emails.

That it would have taken anywhere near three months (and that's the timing most favorable to Rove) strains credulity, imo. A basic search engine could do that in about 10 seconds, I'd think. Why not?

[kim]

It's not an echo chamber if the apparent echos are artifacts.
=======================================

[kim]

May I remind you, M.F. that V. Novak didn't tell Ruskin about the email. Where did you come up with the idea of an email?
=========================================

[kim]

Uh, V. Novak didn't tell Luskin about the email. She told him that Cooper had something on Rove, and maybe a thing or two more, but she didn't even know that Rove had sent an email to Hadley. Niether did Luskin. Niether did Rove. And, apparently, niether did Hadley.

Do you start to see why there may have been a delay? Is there reasonable doubt cast in your mind that the reason for the delay in not from Rovian nefariousness, but from the size of the needle and the size of the haystack?
==========================================

[boris]

MF I don't think you're taking into account efforts that didn't pan out. Phone logs, searches based on Wilson, Plame, etc.

The level of interest might have been less than you suppose. Rove had no recollection of the contents or existence of the conversation. Luskin only knew there might be a "Cooper" problem.

The WH archive process might be more archaic and bogged down with red tape and legal oversight than private sector systems modeled for efficiency rather than CYA.

[topsecretk9]

TP
how caught up in their own self importance these media guys are.

You can say that again. It's stunning.

---As to memory...I think it was Maybee who made the most astute male memory observation (universal---sorry fellas)

My Papa Bear can't remember shit unless it involves sex. Important conversations, milestone memorable moment in our lives, anything where and when involving the baby bears, if it's dinner or lunch, where he put his glasses.

And by the way V-Nov had 5 conversations with Luskin and she couldn't even nail down when they took place and I bet if she hadn't felt uncomfortable by what she said, none of the conversations would have been memorable to her.

[M.F.]

Kim --

Point taken, but if you're looking to confirm whether a conversation took place, an email search would probably be something you get to in, I don't know, a few weeks. Especially if the person is Rove, who manages the White House spin op and probably sends lots of emails to lots of people about press contacts. (I'm assuming this last part is true; Fitz knows whether its true.) And you're still discounting the synchronicity argument: court rules against Cooper, email comes out, like clockwork.

[clarice]

How deep in the Bubble do you have to be to think that you're every word in a dying media (news weeklies) is perused and set to memory by busy officials?

[kim]

V. Novak's testimony gives Fitz a reason to doubt an evil provenance for Rove's email.
==========================================

[topsecretk9]

Kim-

Ya think... a 5 AM search makes perfect sense

[clarice]

In any event, IIRC, both TM and I believe Luskin informed the sp immediately after V. Novak told him that newsroom chatter pegged Rove as one of Cooper's sources. Any delay seems to have been occasioned by the difficulty in retrieving any paper notation--it wasn't in the first place they'd have looked, the phone logs. We don't know either when it was turned over to the sp, do we? Only when Rove testified about it and that date may have been set by other scheduling issues, including those of the sp and gj.

[kim]

M.F., you are overly certain that Fitz didn't hear about the email until Cooper lost his battle.
===============================================

[TM]

Seems to me that nobody defending Rove here or at any other Plamology blog has been able to adequately explain why, if V. Novak's talk with Luskin -- which tipped him off to Cooper's talk with Rove -- was at latest in May, the email didn't get found until September or October. That's just too much time, especially if you take the initial explanation -- "wrong search terms" -- at face value.

I have been advised that Jeralynn Merritt suggested an answer - Luskin looked for the email, sent it over, Fitzgerald said thanks, and brought Rove in a few months later.

As an example - in July 2005 Rove offered to come in following Cooper. Fitzgerald finally brought him back in October.

Another idea - Luskin told Fitzgerald he was looking for evidence to track down a lead and jar Rove's memory; eventually, he found the email and later Fitzgerald brought Rove in.

Of course, if it was all so above-board, why is Fitzgerald still so intnerested?

And ocassional stories flicker by where it is suggested that Luskin had some different strategy in mind, and that Rove's real problem lies elsewhere - the way he learned about Ms. Plame, for example.

Hey, it's working! (Maybe...)

[Bill in AZ]

M.F. it's pretty simple - you don't generally go dredging around in old email archives for evidence of a phone call.

[M.F.]

Kim --

No, can't know for sure. It's actually possible that Luskin had turned it over to Fitz a lot earlier, but wanted to delay the public disclosure until it was certain that Cooper would testify. My guess is that the question of when Fitz got that email will play a big part in whether Rove is indicted or not. I guess we'll know soon enough.