Karl Rove, a master of the political attack with added credentials as a cunning operative, suddenly finds himself playing an extraordinarily defensive game, as a federal investigation of who revealed the identity of a CIA operative reaches high into the White House.
Rove, deputy chief of staff and architect of President Bush’s political career, has reached the pinnacle of American politics with a blend of brainpower, discipline and ruthless aggressiveness.
But now, with the White House declining to publicly discuss what role Rove might have played in the possibly illegal disclosure of a covert agent’s identity, the president’s most dedicated brigadier has retreated to the bunker. And as a Time magazine reporter who drew on Rove as a source for his story about the agent testified to a grand jury Wednesday, Bush publicly declined to elaborate on the case.
“Rove is not just any White House staffer. He is the man,” said Scott Reed, a Republican consultant with close ties to the White House. “They haven’t named it the `Roval Office’ at this point, but that’s coming down the pike. At least they should call it the `Rove Garden.”‘
There have been no Rose Garden appearances this week at a White House unaccustomed to being embroiled in such legal controversies. The president merely reiterated what a White House spokesman has said all week long about Rove.
“We are in the midst of an ongoing investigation, and this is a serious investigation,” Bush said Wednesday. “And it is very important for people not to prejudge the investigation based on media reports.”
As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is also the U.S. attorney in Chicago, continues his probe, the White House has backed itself into an uncharacteristically quiet corner. On Wednesday, Fitzgerald took testimony from the Time reporter who has revealed with Rove’s consent that Rove was a “double super-secret” source.
“This is a political question now,” Reed said. “They need to change the subject. It’s one thing to stonewall on a Friday, but it’s hard to stonewall on a Monday and then make it through the week.”
When it was commenting, nearly two years ago, the White House maintained that anyone involved in identifying a covert CIA agent’s identity would no longer have a job at the White House.
That’s a sobering prospect for Karl Christian Rove, born on Dec. 25, 1950, and an instrumental force in Bush’s White House victories.
Rove’s talents were recognized decades ago by Bush’s father, who recruited Rove to run his political action committee in Texas. As Rove achieved growing success with congressional and statewide campaigns, he started fixing his sights on the first-born son of a former president who could also make Rove a national player.
A specialist in direct-mail appeals for fundraising, Rove helped George W. Bush win election as Texas governor in 1994 and set out to get him elected president in 2000 with the most aggressive fundraising campaign a presidential candidate had ever waged.
After Bush suffered a humiliating defeat in the New Hampshire primary against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Rove recast Bush as “a reformer with results.” Then he launched a take-no-prisoners attack on McCain.
“Everybody knows how bright Karl is,” said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos. “He is one of the sharpest political minds of this generation. But I think people don’t value his biggest asset, and that is he shares the same principles and focus of the president. He believes what the president believes.”
But Rove hasn’t always hewed to the purest principles in pursuit of his political goals.
Rove left college in Utah to work on political campaigns and moved to Illinois in 1970. Working alongside Robert Kjellander, then president of the College Republicans of Illinois and now a Republican national committeeman, Rove took quickly to the task of organizing college campuses.
Fake invitations
He also used an assumed name to gain access to the campaign headquarters of Democrat Alan Dixon, who was running for state treasurer. Once inside, Rove grabbed campaign stationery and later used it to print fake invitations to the grand opening of the Democrat’s Chicago office, which he distributed to homeless people on Lower Wacker Drive.
People showed up in droves, lured by the free liquor, food and women that Rove had promised on the invitations. Dixon won anyway, but Rove’s chicanery came to symbolize what would become a win-at-all-costs ethic that eventually permeated the state’s Republican culture.
That didn’t prevent Rove from moving to Washington and becoming executive director of the College Republicans, nor did it stop him from traveling the country and advising young Republicans on the art of campaigning. And it didn’t prevent George H.W. Bush from inviting Rove to Texas in 1977.
On one occasion, while working on Bill Clements’ gubernatorial campaign in Texas, Rove called a news conference to announce that he had found an eavesdropping device in his office. His deputy campaign manager dubbed it “Texas-gate.” Democrats have always suspected Rove planted the device himself.
As Texas–long a Democratic stronghold–started turning Republican, Rove recruited Democrats to switch parties. And after the first President George Bush lost re-election in 1992, Rove started focusing on the prospects of Bush’s son.
Rove, who regales fellow senior White House staffers with Sunday morning “eggies” at his home–an artery-choking blend of eggs, cheese and bacon grease–mostly has operated behind the scenes, serving as a relentless strategist for Bush’s agenda.
He also has served as a lightning rod for Democratic rivals, who howled when Rove addressed a conservative party meeting in New York recently with a speech saying that after Sept. 11, 2001, liberals wanted to offer terrorists “therapy and understanding.”
Keeping it simple
Jim Jordan, who initially managed Democrat John Kerry’s presidential campaign, said Rove always has succeeded at clearly defining Bush while Democrats struggled to define themselves.
“Maybe his greatest strength is he understands that politics really isn’t so complicated a business,” Jordan said. “Republicans, to their credit, tend to look at politics like checkers, not chess, and they understand that execution is everything. . . . They play mistake-free ball.”
But Rove may have dropped the ball this time.
Rove served as a source on “double super-secret background” for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, according to e-mail that Cooper sent his editor. Two years ago Cooper wrote that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who publicly questioned the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had tried to get uranium from Africa, was married to a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame.
Cooper’s notes reveal only that Rove told him that Wilson’s wife “worked” at the CIA. Rove’s attorney maintains that Rove did not identify Plame by name or say what sort of work she did there.
Cooper testified before the grand jury on Wednesday, carrying a letter from Rove’s lawyer authorizing Cooper to reveal his source.
“I do now hope that the prosecutor can get this done quickly,” said Cooper, declining to say what he had told the grand jury but promising to write about it. “I’m free to talk about it, and I fully plan to. I’m going to talk about it in the pages of Time magazine.”
The White House, too, maintains that while the grand jury investigation is under way, it cannot disclose what Rove did or what the president knew or didn’t know about it.
This has turned the Rove-honed White House political operation into an unusually quiet player in a high-volume saga.
“What’s surprising is how badly the White House has played this,” Jordan said. “People may not understand all of the details. But they can get it that the White House is refusing to comment and White House officials have clammed up. They can immediately feel the seriousness of this. . . . There is nothing worse than a cover-up.”
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mdsilva@tribune.com
