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07/30/2005: "Stranger in a Strange Land: Baby Belly Buttons and Karl Rove"

Stranger in a Strange Land, a science-fiction book by Robert Heinlein, tells the story of a man orphaned on Mars and raised by Martians, who is brought back to Earth. Although in his twenties, he looks at everything through the ignorant eyes of a baby – and finds much of what he sees very strange. I feel like that man sometimes. Like when I saw the headline on the internet, "Couple cleared of sex charges," and I read the article.

Here is the awful truth: a father kissed his new-born son on the belly button. And then the parents took a roll of film recording this apparently-heinous deed into a photo lab to be developed. The result? The couple were arrested. Their new-born son was put into protective custody. Temporary custody of the wife's daughter by a former husband was given to the birth father. The husband spent six months in prison. I am guessing the parents spent tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys fees and expert witness costs.

The husband was released from prison and charges were dropped only when an expert submitted a report saying there was no criminal intent in the photographs.

While I am not a parent (although my wife and I would like to have been), I have seen many parents play with their children in just that way, to the delight of their children. Turns out, you can be risking your freedom by normal play with your child.

So one could assume that this is a society that takes violations of the law seriously. I mean, if one risks prison by kissing your newborn son on the belly button, then surely if you knowing violate a law that forbids identifying covert intelligence agents, the punishment would be swift, sure and severe.

Well, no. Turns out that if you happen to be Karl Rove, President Bush's advisor, who revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent to reporters Matt Cooper of TIME and columnist Robert Novak, there is no penalty at all. You don't even get fired from your job.

For those of you who don't know the facts, Ambassador Joe Wilson had refuted bogus claims by the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The lies that Wilson exposed were central to the rationale for war the Bush administration sold the American people. Shortly thereafter, Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was outed by columnist Novak as a covert CIA agent.

Ambassador Wilson has alleged that Karl Rove revealed the undercover identity of Wilson's CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame, in an attempt to discredit Ambassador Wilson and silence critics of the Iraq war. And the timing makes that claim credible. Valerie Plame was named as a CIA agent in a memo delivered to Secretary of State Colin Powell on July 7, 2003, as Powell headed to Africa for a trip with President Bush aboard Air Force One. The paragraph identifying Plame as a covert CIA agent was clearly marked to show it contained classified information at the "secret" level. Plame was unmasked in Novak's syndicated column as a covert CIA agent seven days later.

What makes the outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame more outrageous is that Karl Rove's agenda (and the agenda of the Administration of which he is a part) was apparently political, not patriotic: to discredit a critic of the Bush Iraq policy.

And we all know the end of the story. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And because of the Administration's insistence that there were, we are now mired in a war from which there is no good escape, and we've created a breeding ground and a training ground for terrorists that leaves our nation less safe than it was before the war.

It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret. Karl Rove either broke the law or was grossly negligent with national secrets. Outing a CIA agent hurts our national security.

Rove has denied leaking Ms. Plame's name. Interestingly, Rove's explanation to the grand jury of how he learned of Plame's identity as a CIA agent differs sharply from explanations journalists have given.

Rove's outing of Valerie Plame put not only her life in danger, but also the lives of all those in Plame's network of contacts.

And Karl Rove's penalty? Nothing, so far. Not even any Congressional hearings (which sadly should not be a surprise, since the Congressional hearings process is controlled by the Republican party, the political agenda of which Rove supported by outing Plame). Lucky for Rove that, instead of outing a CIA agent, he didn't kiss a baby.

Now, I don't know about you, but this news makes me feel like I've been poked with a sharp stick. It sizzles my gizzard. It torques my wrench. If it makes you feel the same way, you might want to tell that to your elected representatives. And to the press. Tell them that the Administration needs to account fully to the American people about what happened in this CIA leak case. And President Bush promised in June of 2004 that he would fire anyone in his administration shown to have leaked information that exposed Plame's identity as a CIA agent. President Bush needs to keep his promise, and fire Karl Rove. Or else we need to recognize that for our President, his word is not his bond, but his BondoTM, a bland putty used to cover over and disguise damage to the integrity of a vehicle -- or of an Administration.


About the author: William Weissinger was graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1982, with honors. Since 1990 he has had a general law practice in the San Juan Islands, focusing on real estate and real-estate litigation, general business law, and estate planning. For more about the author, see sanjuanlaw.com.