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Fitzgerald's office has no comment--and has not exonerated Rove--there are many possibilities still open, other than that Leopold's sources got it wrong, and that he made a mistake in believing them. One is, of course, that Rove has bargained his way out of an indictment by giving the Grand Jury and Fitzgerald information on others. Another is that Rove is clear of indictment on ONE KIND OF CHARGE, but not on another (for instance, clear of perjury but not of the main charge--outing Plame--or conspiracy to)--and his lawyer is fudging on the details to make it seem as if he's totally clear. Having followed everything up to this point fairly closely, I'd say it's a good bet that an indictment was filed or seriously threatened, and this got Rove to talk, but that he has to cooperate further, through trial, to stay un-indicted. On the face of it, Fitzgerald has him on perjury. And--unless Leopold/TO were just plain outright burned with deliberate disinformation--it's hard to fathom why their sources would be so convinced that Rove was indicted, if there was nothing to it. It's more likely that behind-the-scenes activities outran their information--or, possibly, that they misheard/misinterpreted something (heard a serious threat of indictment, maybe even with papers drawn up, but misunderstand that it was actually filed).
If Rove is talking, he may be playing out an "aspens" plan to retire Cheney so that a fresh face can be put in as V-P. You've got to figure that the Bushites have fallback plans on this one. The whole story of this crime has been one obstruction and cover story after another, starting with Gonzales giving the WH time to shred documents, and the audacity of their putting him in the AG position. (Any reasonably decent administration would have retired Gonzales real quick, after that and the torture-memo business, but their putting this evil toady in as AG was likely necessary to many coverups, not just this one.) The coverups likely go way back before the night of the shredding, to the crime itself (outing Plame/Brewster-Jennings) being a cover up for something else. (Did they really out the CIA's worldwide WMD counter-proliferation network to punish an ex-diplomat for his dissenting article? Or were they doing--or planning to do--something illicit with WMDs? Or, did they have other crimes they needed to cover up, that the BJ network was onto, or might get onto?) They've been lying, obstructing, perjuring, shredding, shoveling out "talking points," trying to create fall guys, trying to take Fitzgerald's authority away, and doing everything possible to foil this investigation. One of the first fallbacks was Libby's lies to the Grand Jury about how Plame's identity was blown--that "everybody knew." That turned out to be a crock, but it was an organized scenario--seeding the info around town so that it would bounce back to people like Libby, who were doing the seeding, so that they could say, "Oh, yeah, I heard that rumor, too." The lies and coverups go back to the outing itself.
So this was a time-bomb for the Bushites, and they have known it from the beginning. It is a near certainty that they have various political fallback scenarios, depending on how far Fitzgerald gets, and who gets indicted, and who caves and who doesn't. One of them may be to give up Cheney to save Rove (that is, to let Rove give up Cheney, as a bargaining chip to avoid Rove getting indicted--or to avoid indictment before the '06 elections). A Cheney indictment would have to go to Congress. Fat chance anything would happen to Cheney there, but he might play out a wrist-slapping investigation, to help boost the Republicans' dismal numbers, and then retire early, if the incentives were right. (Total immunity? New Orleans as a fiefdom?)
Whether things play out the way they want them to is another question. For the moment, it looks like Rove gets to write the "hate gays and Mexicans and kill Arabs" narrative for their phony comeback "victory" or "staved off disaster" line (no Dem majority in the House) for the fall elections, and also gets to man the computer banks that will make one of his narratives come true, depending on how much of the 70% of Americans who despise them gets to actually vote, and how many of the votes actually get counted. One can see that Rove is far more important to keeping these criminals in power than Cheney is. Cheney is a liability (worse approval rating than Bush).
I know that all the speculation around this investigation has been criticized--and is also fed by the secrecy of the GJ proceedings. But very big political issues are at stake--not to mention the fate of our country and our democracy (for instance, whether we have any "balance of powers" left, or not). The Bushites have enormous power, and we--the Left, representing (as I believe we do) the mainstream of the country--are often in a position of merely reacting to their latest outrage, lie, theft, murder, stolen election or other evil deed. I would like to see us get ahead of them--by closely watching what they do, and what their lapdog press does, and learning to anticipate. I wish I had thought this way back in 2002, when the disastrous "Help America Vote Act" got passed by the Anthrax Congress. I really didn't catch up with it until summer 2004, and didn't really understand its import until Nov. 3, 2004.
How the Bushites are going to try to prevent the will of 70% of the American people from being expressed this November is a very important matter, possibly closely related to the Fitzgerald investigation. We need to be prepared for their next moves. We need to anticipate them. That's a good part of why I engage in speculation on this case. And we need to make some moves of our own--most particularly as to challenging the now entrenched, Bushite-controlled voting system. I have no illusions about Fitzgerald being a "white knight" and saving our country. I think that's up to all of us. But I tend to think that he is honest and has caused quite a stir within the junta. It's our job to follow the scurrying rats and find out what we can find out about the workings of this government, and its weaknesses, and its potential power plays and strategies. I think we NEED to speculate, and I don't think we should permit those who are only interested in dissing Leopold/TO, and continually ragging on them, to waste any more of our time. The Leopold story is part of the picture. He sticks by it. Fine. We need to take that into consideration. He's obviously staking a lot on his sources. How does that fit with everything else we know? And, if it turns out that his sources are wrong, how does that color the bigger picture?
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