Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
A Bit of Trivia on the Karl Rove Controversy
The Karl Rove/Valerie Plame story has reached critical mass and even the mainstream media is discussing it. I won’t bother to reiterate the facts or speculate further since everyone is blogging, chatting and otherwise electronically interacting. If you feel the need, simply go to HuffingtonPost.com or DailyKos.com and you’ll find as much speculation and discussion as anyone could desire. There are two interesting points that a casual observer might miss, however.
Point #1
This story is somewhat controversial (and murky and complicated so bear with me) but Valerie Plame may not be the first undercover agent to be outed by the Bush Administration for political purposes. On July 2004, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a high-level al Qaeda operative, was arrested and “turned” by Pakistani intelligence. Khan had been communicating through encrypted emails with an al Qaeda cell that was planning an attack in Great Britain; his laptop also contained 3-year-old information about a possible attack against financial buildings in the U.S.
On July 26-29th, 2004 the Democratics held their 2004 convention and nominated John Kerry with the usual fanfare. Typically, this type of three-day-long political advertisement provides the candidate with a bump in the polls. On Aug. 1, 2004, Tom Ridge issued an alert that al Qaeda was planning an attack on financial buildings in the U.S. and gave some background information to reporters. John Kerry did not get any significant improvement in the polls, possibly due to fear and the public perception that Bush had a “tougher stance” on terrorism. The New York Times printed Khan’s name on Aug. 2nd and British intelligence had to prematurely arrest 13 suspects. They had to release 5 of them due to lack of evidence. British officials were really pissed off.
The question is, how did the NY Times get the name? The reporters stated in this article that they received the name from a Pakistani source. But how did the reporters know they should be looking in Pakistan? I’m completely sure that Karl Rove had prior knowledge about Ridge’s announcement; Rove was running the campaign and this warning had obvious political implications. On the other hand, could Ridge be sure that a U.S. attack was not imminent? If he guessed wrong and an attack occurred, the consequences would be dire. For more info, check here on wikipedia.org, here on cnn.com and here on antiwar.com.
It’s late so I’ll finish this tomorrow.
Technorati Tags: Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, Karl Rove
I think I’ve said this here before, but the Plame incident is just the tip of the dirty deeds iceberg.
Jeff
Since the Bush Admin is one of the corrupt on record, God knows how many crimes have been committed. Obviously, the biggest crime was the invasion of Iraq without a U.N. resolution to legitimize it, but it will be a miracle if Bush ever faces charges. However, Kissinger did get nailed in The Hague, albeit only as a formality.