Karl Rove really IS an evil genius!

So why doesn't that make me lose sleep at night?

The saga which has come to be known as the Valerie Plame Affair has all the makings of a great suspense story. Seriously. It includes international crisis, questions of war and peace, mysteries over atomic bomb materials, secret connections, secret leaks, spies, and new revelations every few months. To recap:

In the months leading up to the Iraq War, President Bush asserted during his annual State of the Union Address that British intelligence had told the U.S. that the Iraqis had been trying to buy weapons grade plutonium in Africa.

This bolstered his claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to build weapons of mass destruction which could be used to destabilize the Middle East more than it already was, to attack Israel, or even to arm terrorists on missions to the United States.

Former dipmlomat Joe Wilson loudly responded in the days following the State of the Union Address that he personally had investigated those claims at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and that no Iraqi agents had been trying to buy plutonium in Africa.

Journalists covering Wilson's claims, most notably Robert Novak, revealed in their investigations that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was actually a CIA employee and that it was she, and not the vice president, who had arranged his investigative trip. Furthermore, his trip was not so much an investigation into weapons trafficking as it was an opportunity to get a little vacation while networking and claiming to be on the scene of international events.

Because of the British intelligence connection, and a massive media over-reaction to those claims in Britain, civil servants started committing suicide and media execs began getting fired on the Sceptered Isle. As a result, the BBC received a black eye bigger than the one handed to CBS over the Dan Rather fiasco.

Wilson (still loud, still complaining) charged that Robert Novak had blown his wife's cover as a CIA operative, endangering her life, compromising United States Security, and breaking the law.

Federal investigators moved in. Novak cooperated with them, and never suffered any recriminations for his reporting. However, Reporters Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine refused on principle to reveal their sources, and were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Amid all this maneuvering, a successful war was prosecuted in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. However, no weapons of mass destruction were found, bolstering Democratic claims that the war was based on a lie. Meanwhile, an ongoing insurgency waged by ruthless terrorists was unleashed against American forces and Iraqi citizens attempting to facilitate the creation of a stable democracy in that troubled land. Despite this setback, the president was reelected, due in large part to the outstanding political strategizing of his trusted campaign manager, Karl Rove.

After a series of investigative and judicial maneuvers reminiscent of the television series "Law and Order", Federal investigators finally secured the information that at least some of the information which led to the possibly illegal exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative came from none other than the president's trusted advisor, Karl Rove.

Which brings us to this week.

What do we have?

Apparently, Rove revealed the existence of a CIA agent in the context of relating the circumstances of Joe Wilson's trip to Africa. However, he did not reveal the agent's name. If he revealed the existence of that agent with the purpose or expectation that his partial revelation would lead to a full identification, then what he did might, in fact, be illegal. If he did it, however, for the purpose of preventing a lie from being told against the administration, then he did nothing wrong. Whether a criminal intent can be established in court is a wholly separate question. I'm not sure it can be proven.

Wilson was using the United States intelligence services not to bolster the national security of the nation he serves, but to embarrass a president whose agenda he opposed. No Prince Valiant there.

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame (does she have something against using her husband's last name?) was not so much a CIA agent as a diplomat's wife in a privileged, sinecured position. Her exposure did not endanger her, but did underline the need for a serious reform in that agency where much of the intelligence information accrued is not merely worthless, but is often used for partisan political purposes. When Robert Novak published Valerie Plame's identity, he did the nation a service. Wilson was no Prince Valiant, and his wife was no distressed damsel.

Reporters Judith Miller of the Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine where placed in the ironic position of protecting a source whose information helped a president opposed by their publications. That's what I see as the bizarre beauty of this whole thing. Rove manipulated his media contacts so that the opposition press actually helped the administration which they despised.

This is where the evil genius in the movies gets to cackle while rubbing his hands and monologing: "You fools! You played right into my hands from the beginning! Now, all that you love and cherish belongs to me! And you are in jail and I am free! Congratulations: I couldn't have done it without you! Now I'm off to complete my plan to conquer the universe!"

As an American, I suppose I should be outraged at this. But I'm not. First: I support the war effort. I support it whether there was uranium to be bought in Africa or not. I support it because Saddam Hussein was part of a Middle Eastern order which perpetually supported international terrorism, opposition to the United States, and undermined the American economy. This is not to mention that Hussein was a murderous dictator and enemy of democracy.

Second: and on a more puerile note, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Judith Miller, and Matthew Cooper are all smart-alecks of the leftist intelligentsia who have spent their entire careers cynically proclaiming their love of America while finding some reason to hurt their country just about every chance they get. I simply love the idea that they have all been out-maneuvered by those whom they look down upon as so many numbskulls.

Here is what would make the whole thing perfect. The president orders Rove to resign. On the eve of a Federal indictment being handed down, Rove receives a blanket pardon for anything he might have done in connection with the Plame affair. He takes a year or two off, and resurfaces in mid 2007 as Jeb Bush's campaign manager for the 2008 presidential election.

Why don't I feel guilty or ashamed? In all his manipulative cynicism, Rove is not one bit worse than Wilson, Plame, and company. Indeed, I think Rove is somewhat better than our former evil-genius-in-chief, Bill Clinton, and his old sidekick, James "Watch-Me-Sneer" Carville. At the same time, there are two major differences between Rove and his opponents. First: Rove is successful at what he does. He gets the president reelected, promotes his policies, and keeps him out of trouble. Not only does President Bush have "plausible deniability", but I really do think he stayed out of the infighting. Second: Rove is working to build the republic up, not tear it down.

Now that Rove has been exposed, can it hurt the Republicans? Possibly: in two ways. First, it can be used to further undercut the war on terror. Second, it can hurt any conservative presidential candidate who campaigns to follow in the footsteps of George W. Bush in 2008.

Both these contingencies, in my mind, would not only hurt the Republicans, but would hurt America as well.

And yet, the drama is fascinating.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update (Saturday, 7/16/05, 5:30 pm)

I just figured out that Joe Wilson was never a U.S. Senator, and have made appropriate editing changes above. It would be better if I used a strike-out wherever I wrote "Senator", but I haven't figured that little trick out, yet. Bad blogger. Bad, bad blogger.