Time for Some Blood-Letting?

The hunker-down strategy doesn't seem to be working very well for President Bush right now.

So faced with an increasingly festering problem, there are signs that some blood-letting may be in the cards.

Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig write in The Washington Post: "Top White House aides are privately discussing the future of Karl Rove, with some expressing doubt that President Bush can move beyond the damaging CIA leak case as long as his closest political strategist remains in the administration.

"If Rove stays, which colleagues say remains his intention, he may at a minimum have to issue a formal apology for misleading colleagues and the public about his role in conversations that led to the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to senior Republican sources familiar with White House deliberations. . . .

"Bush's top advisers are considering whether it is tenable for Rove to remain on the staff, given that Fitzgerald has already documented something that Rove and White House official spokesmen once emphatically denied -- that he played a central role in discussions with journalists about Plame's role at the CIA and her marriage to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war.

" 'Karl does not have any real enemies in the White House, but there are a lot of people in the White House wondering how they can put this behind them if the cloud remains over Karl,' said a GOP strategist who has discussed the issue with top White House officials. 'You can not have that [fresh] start as long as Karl is there.' "

At the same time, VandeHei and Leonnig write, "there are new indications that he remains in legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's criminal investigation of the Plame leak."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi yesterday called on Bush in a letter to fire Rove and support congressional investigations into the leak.

"With three years remaining in your term, we believe it is imperative that you move quickly to remove the cloud that hangs over your presidency," they wrote.

"It is totally unacceptable that anyone involved in the unauthorized disclosure of the identity of a CIA officer, including your Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, should remain employed at the White House with a security clearance."

Jonathan Alter writes in Newsweek that a Rove indictment is unlikely -- but that "he may be in danger of losing his security clearance.

"According to last week's indictment of Scooter Libby, a person identified as 'Official A' held conversations with reporters about Plame's identity as an undercover CIA operative, information that was classified. News accounts subsequently confirmed that that official was Rove. Under Executive Order 12958, signed by President Clinton in 1995, such a disclosure is grounds for, at a minimum, losing access to classified information."