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Anatomy of a Rove Dirty Trick

by Mary
Sunday :: Sep 19, 2004

Karl Rove is the man behind George W Bush's Presidency. According to William Slater, co-author of Bush's Brain, Rove realized back in 1990 that he could make Bush President, first by getting him elected governor. And so he has. Karl Rove would make his mentor, Lee Atwater, proud. Figuring out how to destroy your enemy while neutralizing his charge without leaving any traces is a Rove speciality. Yet, as all good detectives know, sometimes you find the criminal by matching the MO (modus operandi) of the crime.

Rove's MO is all over the Killian memo controversy that threatens to take down Dan Rather.

During Bush's first run against Ann Richards, Rove knew that he needed to immunize Bush against the charge of being too aggressive and unfair when going after Ann Richards. So what he did was to create an ad where Bush declared, "My opponent attacked me personally." But get this, the ad was made and distributed to TV stations around Texas before any such accusation was made. Then the campaign used numerous taunts, including a whispering campaign that asserted Ann Richards was gay or too gay friendly to encourage her to pop off against Bush. As soon as she did, the previously prepared ad was shown all over Texas and Bush was seen as the innocent victim of an unfair attack by his opponent.

Then in the 2000 election, Rove was behind the destruction of J.H. Hatfield, the author of the book, Fortunate Son, which reported about Bush's use of cocaine when he was younger. As Mike Burke reports, the method was to provide damaging information about Bush's past to someone who could be then discredited.

In 1999, St. Martin's Press published a critical biography of Bush titled "Fortunate Son". The book quoted an unnamed "high-ranking advisor to Bush," who revealed Bush's 1972 drug bust. The source told author J.H. Hatfield, Bush "was ordered by a Texas judge to perform community service in exchange for expunging his record showing illicit drug use."

Hatfield later revealed that his source was none other than Karl Rove. That might seem ridiculous, considering Rove's lifelong loyalty to the Bushes and the fact that he now has an office adjacent to Bush's in the White House. But leaking the story to Hatfield essentially discredited the story and sent it into the annals of conspiracy theory. Soon after the book was published and just as St. Martin's was preparing a high profile launching of the book, the "Dallas Morning News" ran a story revealing that Hatfield was a felon who had served time in jail. In response, St. Martin's pulled the book.

"When the media stumbled upon a story regarding George W. Bush's 1972 cocaine possession arrest, Rove had to find a way to kill the story. He did so by destroying the messenger," says Sander Hicks, the former publisher of Soft Skull, which re-published "Fortunate Son." "They knew the stories of Dubya's cocaine and drink busts would come out, so they made certain that it would come out of the mouth of a guy they could smear," said journalist Greg Palast, who wrote the forward to the final edition of the book.

If Rove was Hatfield's source, he certainly wasn't trying to expose Bush's drug use. Instead he was trying to discredit and ultimately kill the story. And it worked. Few reporters since have dared to touch the story.

So let's look at the latest controversy surrounding Dan Rather. Rather has been a thorn in Bush's side for a long time. Remember, it was Dan Rather who was provided the initial Abu Ghraib photos back in April. Even though they got the documents first, CBS Sixty Minutes II held off for two weeks because of a request from the Pentagon. After Seymour Hersh was given the photos and the Taguba report, his decision to report this story pushed CBS to report on it two days before the New Yorker published the Hersh story. Rather, the reporter that broke this story on TV was now a legitimate target in Rove's war to destroy any who hurt his man. If he succeeds in bringing down Rather, think of the object lesson for other powerful mainstream journalists of what could happen if they were to try to betray Bush.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002695.php

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