C.I.A. Leak Case Recalls Texas Incident in '92 Race (Rove and Novak)

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/06/politics/06novak.html?ex=1123992000&en=6b6edd469cb78b16&ei=5059&partner=AOL


August 6, 2005
C.I.A. Leak Case Recalls Texas Incident in '92 Race

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - These hot months here will be remembered as the summer of the leak, a time when the political class obsessed on a central question: did Karl Rove, President Bush's powerful adviser, commit a crime when he spoke about a C.I.A. officer with the columnist Robert D. Novak?

Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit. ........


But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime.

[salin]

1. Gee Ms. Busmiller

you just "heard" of this? Wow, what a revelation. Guess it has been so widely reported OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS that you either a) finally became aware of it; or b) realized that you would appear to be the adminbuttkissing reporter (that many of us believe you to be) if you didn't ever make mention of it - so better late than never. :eyes: