The Liberal on Karl Rove's Case

For those who've managed to lose the plot since all this began two years ago, we offer some boilerplate: Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is probing whether White House officials disclosed the identity of CIA operative Plame to reporters as a way to discredit her husband, Iraq war foe Joseph Wilson. In October, a grand jury indicted Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, for allegedly lying and obstructing justice. Rove, who is known to have talked to Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and syndicated columnist Robert Novak about Plame, was not indicted. But he remains under investigation.

The otherwise voluble Luskin clams up when the topic shifts to the latest development in the case: Time reporter Viveca Novak has agreed to provide sworn testimony about a conversation she had with . . . yes . . . Luskin. As reported last week by this newspaper, Novak -- a longtime friend of Luskin's -- is "central to White House senior adviser Karl Rove's effort to fend off an indictment in the two-year-old investigation, according to two people familiar with the situation."

Hmmm. As if this case weren't absurdly convoluted enough, now we've got two Novaks in the mix, along with all manner of attribution-cloaking devices. (Time's Novak is no relation to Robert Novak, whose 2003 column identified Plame as a CIA operative.)

Might this development be possibly favorable to Rove?

"I can't talk about it on any basis," Luskin says. "Not at all, in any way, shape or form. I'm really sorry."

But otherwise his spin is direct: Fitzgerald will ultimately conclude that "Karl didn't do anything wrong" because Rove has "the virtue of being innocent," says Luskin. Rove did not push disclosure of Plame's identity to reporters, the attorney says, or attempt to cover up his conversations with them.

To the Bush administration's foes, Rove's alleged complicity presents the possibility of divine payback. For some, the notion of the Machiavellian Rove plotting reprisals against Wilson is "the story too good not to be true," Luskin says.

"It is a much better story if he is playing a central role in this, and it is a much less interesting story if it turns out that there is no evidence to suggest, as was initially argued, that this was a White House plot to disclose the identity of a covert agent in order to punish a critic. . . .

"If folks believe they can gain political advantage by climbing up his back, they will do so."

Karl Rove, victim of attack politics? Perish the thought! At this point, the room itself is practically spinning.

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Robert D. Luskin grew up in what he calls a "fairly conservative Jewish family" in Chicago, his mother a public school teacher and his father an attorney who did private labor arbitration. As a youth at the dinner table he acquired a respect for "the dignity of the working man and woman," Luskin says, and friends say he never came off as a snob, despite his intellect and accomplishments (Harvard undergrad, Rhodes scholar, Harvard Law Review).