Rove FrogMarch Watch: Day 2
Scottie McC was in a "bad spot" again today with cascades of questions about Rove... that, once again, received no answers. Here are some of the questions via Think Progress

QUESTION: Scott, some Democrats are calling for the revocation of Karl Rove’s security clearance. Does the president see any need for that? QUESTION: But the issues of security clearance and criminal investigations are often on very separate tracks. So does the president see any reason or any necessity at least in the interim to revoke Karl Rove’s security clearance? QUESTION: But, Scott, are you suggesting — I think it’s pretty clear to everybody at this point you don’t want to comment on the investigation, but the president has also spoken about this when asked. So does the president… QUESTION: But isn’t the difficulty that you have said to the public, dating back to 2003, affirmatively Karl Rove was not involved, and now we have evidence to the contrary? So how do you reconcile those two things? How does the president reconcile those two facts? QUESTION: We know what the facts are. We know that Karl Rove spoke about Joseph Wilson’s wife, referring to the fact that she worked at the agency. You’ve heard Democrats to say today that alone was inappropriate conduct. What was Karl Rove trying to accomplish by having the conversation he did? And does the president think that it was fair of him to do that? Was it fair game? QUESTION: You say you won’t discuss it, but the Republican National Committee and others working obviously on behalf of the White House, they put out this Wilson-Rove research and talking points, distributed to Republican surrogates, which include things like: Karl Rove discouraged a reporter from writing a false story. QUESTION: And then other Republican surrogates are getting information such as: Cooper, the Time reporter, called Rove on the pretense of discussing welfare reform. Bill Kristol on Fox News, a friendly news channel to you, said that the conversation lasted for two minutes and it was just at the end that Rove discussed this. So someone is providing this information. Are you, behind the scenes, directing a response to this story?

Way to go, guys and gals of the Press Gaggle--for once you're doing your jobs as investigative reporters, not just stenographers.

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo also reminds us that the outing of CIA undercover asset Valerie Plame didn't just blow her cover--it blew the cover of an entire front organization. Here's an article from the Washington Post back from October, 2003:

The leak of a CIA operative's name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday. The company's identity, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, became public because it appeared in Federal Election Commission records on a form filled out in 1999 by Valerie Plame, the case officer at the center of the controversy, when she contributed $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign. After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front. They said the obscure and possibly defunct firm was listed as Plame's employer on her W-2 tax forms in 1999 when she was working undercover for the CIA. Plame's name was first published July 14 in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that quoted two senior administration officials. They were critical of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for his handling of a CIA mission that undercut President Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from the African nation of Niger for possible use in developing nuclear weapons. The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered. A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities. "That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name," the former diplomat said.

By the by, here's the definition of "frogmarch," which was a new one to me:

Definition of frogmarch (v.) 1. to march a person against his will by any method. 2. to carry someone against his will upside down such that each limb is held by one person.