Plamegate: Interesting theory that ViNovak got Corleone'd by Bushies.

[KoKo]

from "SWOPA" via "FireDogLake":

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2407

But as it turns out, just for the sake of stalling Rove's indictment for a month or two, Luskin has torched Novak's career with Time (which notes as the end of her article that she is on a mutually agreed "leave of absence"). It seems that Viveca didn't tell her bosses about her chats with Luskin to begin with, nor even when she first was interviewed by Fitzgerald -- and when she did admit her involvement after being asked to testify under oath, they weren't happy.

There should be an object lesson there for Washington, D.C. reporters playing the "access journalism" game ... the sources who you're covering up for even as they give you lies and personal smears will burn you in the blink of an eye if it helps them in the slightest.

Then again, that seems to be a larger message that the Bushites are all too happy to send to the media. What the latter thought was merely an occasionally distasteful exchange of information was really a blackmail ring. In the Corleone administration, reporters aren't expected to keep quiet out of duty to the First Amendment -- they're expected to do so because they'll be destroyed by any means possible if they don't.

Update: Speaking of loose lips and tainted journalists, V. Novak is almost certainly lying when she says that her admission to Luskin ("That's not what I hear around TIME") was just a spur-of-the-moment ploy to draw more information out of him. Note her explanation for not telling her bosses right away about her role in the investigation:
Unrealistically, I hoped this would turn out to be an insignificant twist in the investigation and also figured that if people at TIME knew about it, it would be difficult to contain the information, and reporters would pounce on it -- as I would have.
Isn't Viveca admitting there that what a Time reporter tells his or her editors -- like, say, Matt Cooper saying he'd talked to Karl Rove about Joe Wilson's wife -- gets spread around the building (and beyond) pretty fast? And let's not forget Lawrence O'Donnell writing last July that he had "known ... for months" about Rove being Cooper's source.


http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2407

[lovuian]

1. Ya this puts the Luskin and Rove in a bad spot

obviously somebody is squeeling in Time to Fitz!!!

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[H2O Man]

3. Karl Rove did? Naw!

You've gotta be joking!

Anyhow, Ms. Novak's role deserves closer examination in two areas: first, she is among a group of "top journalists" who the public is finding out do not answer to their editors. That leads us to the second issue: who do they answer to? Identify that, and you'll know who wanted her to tell Luskins the information she had no business sharing.

Bob Novak; Judith Miller; Bob Woodward; and Ms. Novak. Odd that in this one case, we find this many reporters who answer to someone other than their editor.

[Cooley Hurd]

4. Just as the Abramoff affair will lay bare the sordid underbelly of...

...lobbyists, graft and influence peddling, the Plame affair will expose the media whoredom machine of today's Republican party. Here's hoping the inside-the-beltway cocktail parties of the famous and powerful will start to resemble gatherings at the Fisher & Sons funeral home...:thumbsup: