Time Magazine:

But whether or not he’s in trouble with the law, friends say, [Karl Rove is] certainly in trouble with Bush. Rove will continue managing the intersection of politics and policy in the White House but will have to regain the unfettered powers he once held. “The President’s relationship with Karl has been damaged over the scandal,” a Bush friend says. A source close to Rove says when Bush asked Rove whether he was responsible for leaking Plame’s CIA identity to columnist Robert Novak, Rove told him “absolutely not.” While that may have been strictly true, Fitzgerald’s indictment suggests that Rove did at least discuss Wilson’s wife with Novak, as he did with TIME’s Matthew Cooper.

Until Now, We Thought Lying Was One of the Few Things They Did Well

The starkest – perhaps dumbest – lie that Scooter Libby told investigators into the CIA Leak case involved a conversation he had with NBC’s Tim Russert. On or around July 10, 2003. Libby placed the call to complain about something a reporter had said on MSNBC. According to Russert’s later recollection, Libby’s complaint was the only subject they discussed that day.

When Libby was questioned by investigators about his phone call with Russert, he told the story differently. In his fictional version, it was during this call that Libby first learned that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA.

We can assume (can’t we?) that Libby was not speaking on background when he called Russert to complain about a reporter. The contents of a conversation like that can’t possibly be confidential, can they?

Libby had to know that the investigators would compare his account with Russert’s. What an amazingly stupid lie.

So here’s one for the trivia books of the future: The reporter in question was probably MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Matt Crowley at the National Review Online did a Nexis search and came up with a likely bit of analysis in which Matthews accuses Scooter Libby of rigging the president’s State of the Union speech with disinformation about Saddam’s nuclear program. From “Hardball,” on July 8, 2003:

MATTHEWS: Just to recap, here’s what we know. Joe Wilson, a former ambassador in the United States government, was sent to Niger to establish there whether there was in fact an arms deal for nuclear materials between Saddam Hussein and the government of Niger. He came back and reported back to the CIA at the behest of the vice president’s office, that there was no such deal. That office of the vice president, whoever is in there, Scooter Libby on down, or the vice president himself, never told the president that there was nothing to that, that that was a dry hole story. And yet, the president went on television, telling the American people it was true. Somebody’s to blame here, and it’s a very high level and it’s not speculation.

We now know that Chris’s guesswork was wrong. The vice president did not send Joe Wilson to Africa. The CIA sent Wilson in response to an inquiry from Mr. Cheney about a report that Sadddam was known to be in the market for uranium from Niger. When Matthews gets going – such as anytime he’s discussing either of the Clintons – he goes over the top. Crowley suggests that Libby didn’t like being on the receiving end of it – especially when parts of his “not speculation” were not true:

Libby apparently didn’t take kindly to Matthews’s analysis. So he decided to play some hardball of his own by calling Russert to carp about Matthews. Little did Libby know what a self-destructive act it would be. According to Fitzgerald’s indictment, Libby would later tell the grand jury that Russert had asked him if he knew him Joe Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA, and that Russert said that “all the reporters know it.” Libby also told the grand jury this was all news to him at the time. According to Fitzgerald, those three statements were all lies.

Taking its toll: The new Washington Post/ABC Poll finds President continue to scrape along with a 39 percent approval rating. While that may be bad news for Bush, it remains a remarkably high approval rate for America’s Worst President Ever:

In the aftermath of the latest crisis to confront the White House, Bush’s overall job approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC polls. Barely a third of Americans — 34 percent — think Bush is doing a good job ensuring high ethics in government, which is slightly lower than President Bill Clinton’s standing on this issue when he left office.

The survey also found that nearly seven in 10 Americans consider the charges against Libby to be serious. A majority — 55 percent — said the decision of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald to bring charges against Libby was based on the facts of the case, while 30 percent said he was motivated by partisan politics.

Who are the Americans in the 30 percent who think the indictment of Libby was pure politics? We know who.

Two secret agents? In his news conference yesterday, CIA Leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald stated that he could have wrapped up his investigation one year ago, in October 2004, had Judith Miller chosen to cooperate:

QUESTION: In the end, was it worth keeping Judy Miller in jail for 85 days in this case? And can you say how important her testimony was in producing this indictment?

FITZGERALD: Let me just say this: No one wanted to have a dispute with the New York Times or anyone else. We can’t talk generally about witnesses. There’s much said in the public record…. I would have wished nothing better that, when the subpoenas were issued in August 2004, witnesses testified then, and we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005. No one would have went [sic] to jail.

(This was first pointed out by John Aravosis, and I mentioned it briefly yesterday, but I believe it bears more discussion.)

Fitzgerald says that if Miller had testified when she was first called in or about August 2004, he could have announced his indictment of Scooter Libby one year ago – which would have been about two weeks before the presidential election in November.

The indictment would have brought the simmering scandal to a boil, energizing the Left and depressing turnout on the Right which would have undoubtedly tilted the election to the Democrats.

Did Miller know that Libby had lied to the FBI or the grand jury during the leak investigation? Possibly. She could have heard via mutual friends, or she could have parsed it out based on questions investigators were asking her. Her subsequent actions appear almost erratic: She went to jail to protect the secret – and then, after 85 days in the hoosegow, she abruptly changed her mind and spilled the beans.

Was it simply that she got tired of being in jail, or did she abrogate her stated principal of protecting a secret source for some other reason? She has played a significant role in the fortunes of Team Bush: In 2002, she served as a mouthpiece at the New York Times for the White House Iraq Group’s disinformation campaign to market the war. In 2003, when the wheels are coming of the war, she remained silent about a WHIG smear campaign to discredit a critic, knowing that her silence could aid the re-election of the incompetent liars she had abetted.

On the face of it, you could make the case that there were two secret agents involved this case – a CIA agent who nominally worked for the Brewster Jennings oil firm and a Bush operative who nominally worked for the New York Times.

Aravosis:

I just got a call from a friend whose wife came up with a very interesting point. Fitzgerald today said that he could have been having this press conference last October, if Judith Miller had been more forthcoming. And last October would have been right before the presidential election.

With the 2004 presidential election as close as it was, this could have easily – would have easily – swung the election to Kerry’s favor. But Judith Miller didn’t come forward, and Bush wasn’t damaged BEFORE his re-election.

Scooter Libby has resigned from the White House because he has been charged with:

• 1 count obstruction of justice
• 2 counts of perjury
• 2 counts of making false statements

He allegedly lied to the FBI and then the grand jury about the content of conversations he had with NBC’s Tim Russert and Time Mag’s Matt Cooper.

Libby was not indicted for revealing a covert agent’s identity, which the Republicans will claim as a major victory.

From Eurosurveillance weekly report (edited):

Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus in poultry and wild birds in the World Health Organization (WHO) European region have caused widespread public concern due to fears that human cases may ensue, as has happened in South East Asia.

Part of the concern is the mistaken assumption that the geographical spread of the H5N1 virus in bird populations signals the start of an influenza pandemic, even though it does increase the size of the human/animal interface and the chances of adaptation of an avian virus to a human host.
However, efforts should continue to clarify that the spread of avian influenza in birds does not constitute an influenza pandemic in humans.

So far no human cases have been detected in the WHO European region. Close collaboration between veterinarian and human surveillance is of utmost importance to ensure early detection of possible human cases. For these reasons, the WHO Regional Office for Europe (WHO EURO) is undertaking a number of actions to monitor the situation.

Outbreaks of avian influenza H5N1 have now been confirmed in five countries, either by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) or national government agencies in the WHO European region: Croatia, Kazakhstan, Romania, the Russian Federation and Turkey. In addition to this, avian influenza H5N1 has been confirmed in an imported parrot in the United
Kingdom. There are now numerous further outbreaks of disease in birds under investigation in several European countries.

Since the occurrence of outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus in migratory birds, the risk of transmission to domestic birds has increased. Surveillance in wild birds has thus become a priority and the European Union has made guidelines available. It is likely that migratory birds are responsible for the introduction of H5N1 in the European region, as the viruses from outbreaks in Kazakhstan, Romania and Turkey are phylogenetically almost identical to the virus that caused the wild bird die-off at Lake Qinghai in China in May 2005.

Migratory bird flyways are complex, but indicate that additional introduction of the H5N1 virus by wild birds into domestic poultry in the European region may continue.

Between Oct. 17 and 20, 2005, a joint WHO/ECDC mission performed a risk assessment and response evaluation in Romania at the request of the Romanian authorities. The situation was assessed to be under proper control following a timely and joint response by the national veterinarian and
public health authorities. The H5N1 virus has been introduced in an area limited to the Danube delta, and the complete evaluation of this new animal reservoir requires additional investigations by veterinary and wildlife services. Measures to control the interface between wild bird and domestic poultry would have to be long-term and involve a regional approach,
particularly with the countries sharing the Danube delta.