Peenie Wallie

Although Rove isn't widely known outside the Beltway, he's the diabolical genius behind the the coup de ta that conspicuously inserted George W. Bush into the White House. If it weren't for Karl Rove, GW would still be squandering his families money wildcatting for oil in West Texas. Rove is widely regarded in D.C. as an evil genius. A master of the black art of politcal warfare.

I'd never heard of Karl Rove before I saw the movie Bush's Brain at SXSW film festival in Austin in 2004. The movie portrays Rove as vicious competitor, beginning with his early childhood. In 1986, Rove's Republican candidate Bill Clements found himself in a dead heat with Democrat Mark White, a bugging device was found in Rove's office. Rove is widely alleged to have bugged his own office, then called in reporters to reveal that his office had been bugged. Many claim this chicanery turned a close race in Clement's favor.

Rove is infamous for his alleged "whisper campaigns" of disinformation, and purported propensity for the most despicable actions, if he felt it would benefit his clients. Joseph Wilson quotes Rove saying that Wilson's wife was "fair game."

2) Who is Valerie Plame? Valerie Plame used to be an undercover CIA agent. The work she did was specifically related to keeping Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's) out of the hands of foreign countries.

3) Why did Karl Rove allegedly expose her as a CIA agent? This is where things get a little more complicated. Valerie Plame's husband is Joe Wilson. Wilson is a mouthpiece for the translucent liberals. For some reason, he was asked by the CIA to go to Niger to investigate claims of "yellowcake" uranium sales to Iraq. (Yellowcake is a form of lightly compressed uranium ore).

Predictably, he returned claiming he found no evidence that any such Uranium sales had occurred. He claimed that the uranium mines in Somair and Cominak were run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German, and Nigerians, with oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Therefore, he felt that there such a sale would have been impossible, and promptly stated as much when he verbally debriefed the CIA on his trip.

But subsequently, in January of 2003, the president mentioned the fact that Iraq had attempted to aquire uranium from Africa in his State of the Union address in 2003. (There are four countries in Africa that produce Uranium: Niger, Gabon, South Africa and Namibia).

So, in a Sunday, July 6, 2003 article in that reprehensible rag the New York Times, Wilson authored an article laying out the Democrats' position that the president led us into a war under false pretenses. The article embarassed the administration and, a week later, Wilson was repayed for his efforts.

On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak revealed that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, formerly Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent. His intent was to cast aspersions on Wilson's qualifications for his fact-finding mission in Niger.

Instead, he ignited a firestorm of controversy as people stumbled all overthemselves to discover the source of his information. After all, under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, exposing an undercover CIA operative is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and up to a $50,000 fine.

An investigation to determine the source of the leak was launched and, in December 2003, attorney general John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation. One might rationally conclude that he knew who the source of the leak was.

So, Ashcroft handed the case over to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Technically, they're calling Fitzgerald a "Special Counsel". (Independent counsels like Kenneth Starr are a thing of the past because Congress didn't renew the independent counsel statute in 1999.)

Apparently, Fitzgeral was able to finally ferret out the guilty party, and has exposed Karl Rove as the source of the leak.