OK, maybe Mark Kleiman has never worked in an office with a busy professional or executive. But for those of you who have: what are the odds that the person who keeps Karl Rove’s phone log is Karl Rove?
(Of course, if Rove instructed someone not to log the call, we’re in Betty Currie territory, and Rove could be in a heap of trouble. But my point here is, it’s much more likely that Rove’s secretary, not Rove, was the person deciding what calls to log, and how).
11 thoughts on “Just One Question”
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Maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t the question of whether the call was listed in the phone logs be a lot more important/interesting if Rove was denying the call? What’s the point of making sure the call isn’t logged, and then freely admitting the call/conversation took place? I think your explanation makes a lot more sense than the guy you linked to.
Yeah, Rove’s secretary is the mastermind behind this all. Please. Rove is a liar. He is a bad guy. If there was dirty work being done he either did it or told someone to do it. Why do you protect this guy like he is some innocent princess? Everyone knows he is THE henchman in an admin full of them. Why not just own up to it rather than blaming the help?
It’s not a matter of “blaming” – if someone other than Rove did the logging, that makes it much less likely that what was or was not logged is probative of anything at all.
Like I said: maybe Rove ordered it not logged. But absent any proof of that, I suspect this is a lot of nothing.
Of course, if you start with the assumption that Rove is guilty and work your way backwards through the facts, you will come to sinister conclusions as to everything he has said and done.
Of course Rove doesn’t log his own calls. My point was that the explanation offered — that the call wasn’t logged because it was transferred from the WH switchboard — doesn’t actually explain anything. If the Cooper call was an exception to the general rule, then the question arises why that exception was made in this case.
If Karl wanted the call to disappear, then why did he e-mail Hadley moments after it ended…and how do we completely ignore Cooper’s own word:
�After my grand jury appearance, I did go back and review my e-mails from that week, and it seems as if I was, at the beginning of the week, hoping to publish an article in TIME on lessons of the 1996 welfare-reform law, but the article got put aside, as often happens when news overtakes story plans.”
I’m not a pro, and don’t have my own blog, but if this is what passes for critical thought, I’m over qualified…
“This reads to me like strong evidence that Rove and his crew knew at the time they were doing something they didn’t want to get caught doing.”
“In prosecutorese, that’s called “evidence of consciousness of guilt,” and it’s extremely helpful in proving intent.”
So Karl Rove, conscious of his guilt, decides to “forget” to log the call AND document the call, in writing, to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley?!?!
If this Kleiman guy gets paid a nickel for these thoughts, there’s your crime!
When I see some folks (like jim above and the Kleiman guy) who start with a preconcieved conclusion and then accepts or rejects information based on whether it supports their original theory I have to wonder if they made it through 5th grade. My 6th grade daughter was taught a long time ago how an hypothesis is proven or disproven. If you start from the viewpoint he is evil and controls the world then your conclusion is likely to be flawed.
There are hypothoses, LargeBill, and then there is looking at the world as it exists. People like Rove operate in a world in which they control the rules, information and the rules about information. There will be, as I have mentioned many times on this site, practically no way to concretely tab anything to Rove. It is not as if he is doing drive by shootings on the Vegas Strip after a Tyson fight. There are no real witnesses to his endeavors save for people who support him (or whom he could simply crush if they did not). If you presume he is innocent 100% of the time and that his secretary is more likely to blame than him then you are naive. That is what this administration counts on. You can’t catch us, you can’t prove it so clearly we have done nothing wrong. This administration produces tons of smoke but is incredibly adept at hiding or denying the existance of the fire. This is not a geometrical proof we are talking about. Just because Rove plays for your team does not mean he is not sinister. Hell, if he played for mine I would be more than happy to admit he played dirty and was able to get away with it. I just can’t understand why you all make him out to be Mother Teresa.
I think you nailed it, Crank, in your, “…never worked in an office with a busy professional or executive before” line. Most journalists and academics have little experience outside their fields and have little idea how a hectic business or administrative office works. If Rove was so focused on this matter and deliberative in his actions as to ensure the call record was erased, he would never have been so careless as to mention it in his e-mail. If, as it seems, the call was transferred internally, there is no way to know how it got to Rove, as anyone who has transferred or received a transferred call in a busy office knows.
jim,
I’m not going to bother responding to your ascertion that I’m naive. However, I will say no one I know of have ever referred to Rove as being equivelent to Mother Teresa. However, most of us on the right are confused by the left insisting he is sinister on par with Satan. If you drop your assumptions of what you think happened and actually look at the facts you’d see that Cooper called him. Cooper initiated the call saying he wanted to discuss welfare and then switched to Wilson. Rove tried to let the reporter know he shouldn’t put too much stock in Wilson’s lies. One of Wilson’s lies was that the administration sent him on a fact finding mission to Niger. All Rove said to the reporter about that lie was apparently his wife recommended him for the job with the intent of disproving the British claim.
Separately, you ignored my comment about how if you intentionally ignore facts which don’t support your preconceived notion then your conclusion will automatically be flawed.
LB,
Apparently you like dishing it out “…I have to wonder if they made it through 5th or th grade.” but you can’t take the inference that if you believe everything you hear on Fox that you might be naive. Sorry.
It is also convenient for you to reiterate the White House/Fox side of this story. My point was and is that the facts of this (and other like and/or related situations) will never be known (hence my belief that any investigation/presecution is futile) and that ultimately it is a bunch of he said/she said stuff. I don’t operate with any pre-conceived notion however I do know Rove has a long and storied history of lying and misrepresenting many, many things so when he tells his side of things I am inclined to believe it is not the truth.