I think it was nearly two years ago, following all the fooferah about those 16 words in the President’s State of the Union address, that I said something along the lines of “Jesus! One of these days, some of this stuff has got to start sticking!” The general source of my frustration, at the time, was that one potential scandal after another surrounding the Bush administration just kept sliding off of them. This particular outburst was related to the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity to Robert Novak.
If you haven’t been following this story, Wikipedia has a decent synopsis.
Long story short, it’s looking more and more like Bush advisor, confidante, and deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove is responsible for revealing Plame’s identity to Novak. This despite that fact that Bush and his various White House flacks have on, no shortage of separate occasions, declared that not only did they not know who was behind the leak, but that the President would fire anyone that might turn out to be the guilty party.
Will it stick this time? Who the hell knows. My guess is that nothing will come of it. However, it makes for entertaining/depressing White House press briefings such as today’s (read the full transcript here).
I highly recommend reading the transcript, but the exchange goes something like this: reporters repeatedly ask White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan questions such as “Does the President stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?” McLellan say the White House won’t comment on an investigation that is currently underway. Reports ask why the White House had no problem making multiple comments on said investigation last year and the year before. McLellan provides more vague evasions. Eventually, we get the following exchange (and mind you, the briefing had been going a good ten minutes at this point):
MR. McCLELLAN: If you’ll let me finish –
Q: No, you’re not finishing — you’re not saying anything. You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American people, he did, indeed, talk about his wife, didn’t he?
MR. McCLELLAN: David, there will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.
Q: Do you think people will accept that, what you’re saying today?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I’ve responded to the question.
HI-larious!
Seriously, if I didn’t know better, I would say that there is some serious blood in the water.