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Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) was Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush until his resignation on August 31, 2007. He has headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Since leaving the White House, Rove has worked as a political analyst and contributor for Fox News, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal.
For most of his career prior to his employment at the White House, Rove was a political consultant almost exclusively for Republican candidates.
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Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.
Encyclopedia
Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) was Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush until his resignation on August 31, 2007. He has headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Since leaving the White House, Rove has worked as a political analyst and contributor for Fox News, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal.
For most of his career prior to his employment at the White House, Rove was a political consultant almost exclusively for Republican candidates. Rove's campaign clients have included Bush (2000 and 2004 presidential elections, 1994 and 1998 Texas gubernatorial elections), Senator John Ashcroft (1994 U.S. Senate election), Bill Clements (1986 Texas gubernatorial election), Senator John Cornyn (2002 U.S. Senate election), Governor Rick Perry (1990 Texas Agriculture Commission election), and Phil Gramm (1982 U.S. House and 1984 U.S. Senate elections).
Personal life and early political experiences
Family, upbringing, and entry into politics
Rove was born the second of five children in Denver, Colorado, and later raised in Sparks, Nevada. His stepfather was of Norwegian ancestry. His biological father left the family when Rove and his older brother were children. His mother's second husband, Louis Claude Rove Jr., whom Rove knew as his father, was a geologist, and his mother, Reba Wood, was a gift shop manager. His older brother is Eric P. Rove, and his younger sister is Reba A. Rove-Hammond. He also has a brother Olaf, and a sister, Alma Monroe.
His family moved to Salt Lake City in 1965 when Rove was entering high school. He became a skilled debator. Rove described his high school years as "I was the complete nerd. I had the briefcase. I had the pocket protector. I wore Hush Puppies when they were not cool. I was the thin, scrawny little guy. I was definitely uncool." Put up by a teacher to run for class senate, he beat his opponent by riding in the back of a convertible sandwiched between two attractive girls inside the school gymnasium, right before his election speech. While at Olympus High School, he was elected student council president his junior and senior years.
Rove began his involvement in American politics in 1968. In a 2002 Deseret News interview, Rove explained, "I was the Olympus High chairman for (former United States Senator) Wallace F. Bennett's re-election campaign, where he was opposed by the dynamic, young, aggressive political science professor at the University of Utah, J.D. Williams." Bennett was reelected to a third six-year term. Through Rove's campaign involvement, Bennett's son, Bob Bennett — a future United States Senator from Utah — would become a friend. Williams would later become a mentor to Rove.
In December 1969, the man Rove had known as his father left the family, and divorced Rove's mother soon afterward; it later became known he was homosexual. After his parents' divorce, Rove learned from his aunt and uncle that the man who had raised him was not his biological father; both he and his older brother Eric were the children of another man. Rove has expressed great love and admiration for his adoptive father and for "how selfless" his love had been. In 1981 Rove's mother committed suicide in Reno, Nevada.
College, Vietnam War draft, and the Dixon campaign incident
In the fall of 1969, Rove entered the University of Utah, on a $1,000 scholarship, as a political science major and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. Through the University's Hinckley Institute of Politics, he got an internship with the Utah Republican Party. That position, and contacts from the 1968 Bennett campaign, helped him land a job in 1970 on Ralph Tyler Smith's unsuccessful re-election campaign for Senate from Illinois. Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson III won.
In December 1969, the Selective Service System held its first lottery drawing. Those born on December 25, like Rove, received number 84. That number placed him in the middle of those (with numbers 1 [first priority] through 195) who would eventually be drafted. On February 17, 1970, Rove was reclassified as 2-S, a deferment from the draft because of his enrollment at the University of Utah in the fall of 1969. He maintained this deferment until December 14, 1971, despite being only a part-time student in the autumn and spring quarters of 1971 (registered for between six and 12 credit hours) and dropping out of the university in June 1971. Rove was a student at the University of Maryland, College Park in the fall of 1971; as such, he would have been eligible for 2-S status, but registrar's records show that he withdrew from classes during the first half of the semester. In December 1971 he was reclassified as 1-A. On April 27, 1972, he was reclassified as 1-H, or "not currently subject to processing for induction". The draft ended on June 30, 1973.
In the fall of 1970, Rove used a false identity to enter the campaign office of Democrat Alan J. Dixon, who was running for Treasurer of Illinois. He stole 1000 sheets of paper with campaign letterhead, printed fake campaign rally fliers promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing", and distributed them at rock concerts and homeless shelters, with the effect of disrupting Dixon's rally. (Dixon eventually won the election). Rove's role would not become publicly known until August 1973. Rove told the Dallas Morning News in 1999, "It was a youthful prank at the age of 19 and I regret it."
College Republicans, Watergate, and the Bushes
In June 1971, Rove dropped out of college to take a paid position as the Executive Director of the College Republican National Committee. Joe Abate, who was National Chairman of the College Republicans at the time, became a mentor to Rove.
Rove traveled extensively, participating as an instructor at weekend seminars for campus conservatives across the country. He was an active participant in Richard Nixon's 1972 Presidential campaign. As a protégé of Donald Segretti (later convicted as a Watergate conspirator), Rove painted the Nixon opponent George McGovern as a "left-wing peacenik", in spite of McGovern's World War II stint piloting a B-24.
Rove held the position of executive director of the College Republicans until early 1973. He left the job to spend five months, without pay, campaigning full time for the position of national chairman of the organization, for the 1973-1975 term in the same years he attended George Mason University. Lee Atwater, the group's Southern regional coordinator, who was two months younger than Rove, managed Rove's campaign. The two spent the spring of 1973 crisscrossing the country in a Ford Pinto, lining up the support of Republican state chairs.
The College Republicans summer 1973 convention at the Lake of the Ozarks resort in Missouri was quite contentious. Rove's opponent was Robert Edgeworth of Michigan (the other major candidate, Terry Dolan of California, dropped out, supporting Edgeworth). A number of states had sent two competing delegates, because Rove and his supporters had made credentials challenges at state and regional conventions. For example, after the Midwest regional convention, Rove forces had produced a version of the Midwestern College Republicans constitution which differed significantly from the constitution that the Edgeworth forces were using, in order to justify the unseating of the Edgeworth delegates on procedural grounds. including delegations, such as Ohio and Missouri, which had been certified earlier by Rove himself. In the end, there were two votes, conducted by two convention chairs, and two winners — Rove and Edgeworth, each of whom delivered an acceptance speech. After the convention, both Edgeworth and Rove appealed to Republican National Committee Chairman George H. W. Bush, each contending that he was the new College Republican chairman.
While resolution was pending, Dolan went (anonymously) to the Washington Post with recordings of several training seminars for young Republicans where Rove discussed campaign techniques that included rooting through opponents' garbage cans. On August 10, 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, the Post broke the story in an article titled "Republican Party Probes Official as Teacher of Tricks."
At Nixon's request, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent questioned Rove. As part of the investigation, Atwater signed an affidavit, dated August 13, 1973, stating that he had heard a "20 minute anecdote similar to the one described in the Washington Post" in July 1972, but that "it was a funny story during a coffee break." Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, who was implicated in the Watergate break-in and became the star witness for the prosecution, has been quoted as saying that "Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him."
On September 6, 1973, three weeks after announcing his intent to investigate the allegations against Rove, Bush chose Rove to be chairman of the College Republicans. Bush then wrote Edgeworth a letter saying that he had concluded that Rove had fairly won the vote at the convention. Edgeworth wrote back, asking about the basis of that conclusion. Not long after that, Edgeworth has said, "Bush sent me back the angriest letter I have ever received in my life. I had leaked to the Washington Post, and now I was out of the Party forever."
As National Chairman, Rove introduced Bush to Atwater, who had taken Rove's job as the College Republican's executive director, and who would become Bush's main campaign strategist in future years. Bush hired Rove as a special assistant in the Republican National Committee, a job Rove left in 1974 to become executive assistant to the co-chair of the RNC, Richard D. Obenshain.
As special assistant, Rove also performed small personal tasks for Bush. In November 1973, Bush asked Rove to take a set of car keys to his son George W. Bush, who was visiting home during a break from Harvard Business School. It was the first time the two met.
"Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma - you know, wow", Rove recalled years later.
Residences and voting registration
In 1976, Rove became the Finance Director for the Republican Party of Virginia, which did not have a single fundraising event on its schedule at the time. He moved to Richmond, Virginia. Within a year, he had pulled in more than $400,000 through direct mail fundraising.
Rove married Houston socialite Valerie Mather Wainwright, on 10 July 1976. He moved to Texas in January 1977. His sister and father still remembered "the wedding [that] was so extravagant that [we] … still recall it with awe. But the marriage of the society daughter and the hardworking political hack didn't last long." Wainwright divorced Rove in early 1980; she was 26 and he 29. He attended the University of Texas at Austin in 1977; he still lacked a degree. In July 1999 he told the Washington Post that he did not have a degree because "I lack at this point one math class, which I can take by exam, and my foreign language requirement." In January 1986, the now divorced Rove married Darby Tara Hickson. She is a breast cancer survivor, a graphic designer, and former employee of Karl Rove & Co. Their son, Andrew Madison Rove, born in 1989, is an undergraduate at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Rove left Texas after Bush was elected President in late 2000.
Now owning a house in the District of Columbia that is valued at $1.1 million, Rove sold his longtime home in Austin in 2003. The Washington Post reported that Rove had agreed to reimburse the District for an estimated $3,400 in back taxes in September 2005. The taxes were owed because since 2002, when the law changed, Rove was not entitled to a homestead exemption for his DC house because he was voting elsewhere (in Texas). Rove was registered to vote in Kerr County, Texas, located about 80 miles west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country, on 26 May, 2004. The residence that Rove claims on Texas voter registration rolls consists of two small rental cottages, the largest of which is 814 square feet. The cottages were part of the that Rove and his wife, Darby, once owned on the Guadalupe River near Ingram. The Roves sold the lodge in 2003, after renovating it, but kept the two cottages, which the lodge rents to guests. (Darby T. Rove is listed as a director of the new owner of the lodge, Estadio Partners, LLC.) In early October 2005, a resident of Kerr County filed a complaint with the District Attorney of the county to request an investigation into whether Rove and his wife violated Texas state law by illegally registering as voters in Kerr County, since neither had ever lived there. Texas law defines a residence, for voting purposes, as "one's home and fixed place of habitation to which one intends to return after any temporary absence." On 3 November, 2005, Rex Emerson, the District Attorney, announced that he had determined there was insufficient evidence to prosecute either Rove or his wife, and that his office would close the case without further action.
In addition to the $1.1 million home he owned in the District in 2005, Rove and his wife built a home in Florida worth more than $1 million, according to Rove's 2005 financial disclosure form.
The Texas years and notable political campaigns
1977–1991
Rove's initial job in Texas was as a legislative aide for Fred Agnich, a Texas state representative, in Agnich's Dallas office. Later in 1977, Rove got a job as executive director of the Fund for Limited Government, a political action committee (PAC) in Houston headed by James A. Baker, a Houston lawyer (later President George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State). The PAC eventually became the genesis of the Bush-for-President campaign of 1979–1980.
His work for Bill Clements during the Texas gubernatorial election of 1978 helped Clements become the first Republican Governor of Texas in over 100 years. Clements was elected to a four-year term, succeeding scandal-plagued Democrat Dolph Briscoe. Rove was deputy director of the Governor William P. Clements Junior Committee in 1979 and 1980, and deputy executive assistant to the governor of Texas (roughly, Deputy Chief of Staff) in 1980 and 1981.
In 1981, Rove founded a direct mail consulting firm, Karl Rove & Co., in Austin. The firm's first clients included Texas Governor Bill Clements and Democratic congressman Phil Gramm, who later became a Republican congressman and United States Senator. Rove operated his consulting business until 1999, when he sold the firm to take a full-time position in George W. Bush's presidential campaign.
Between 1981 and 1999, Rove worked on hundreds of races. Most were in a supporting role, doing direct mail fundraising. A November 2004 Atlantic Monthly article estimated that he was the primary strategist for 41 statewide, congressional, and national races, and Rove's candidates won 34 races.
Rove also did work during those years for non-political clients. From 1991 to 1996, Rove advised tobacco giant Philip Morris, and ultimately earned $3,000 a month via a consulting contract. In a deposition, Rove testified that he severed the tie in 1996 because he felt awkward "about balancing that responsibility with his role as Bush's top political advisor" while Bush was governor of Texas and Texas was suing the tobacco industry.
1978 George W. Bush congressional campaign
Rove advised the younger Bush during his unsuccessful Texas congressional campaign in 1978.
1980 George H. W. Bush presidential campaign
In 1977, Rove was the first person hired by George H. W. Bush for his unsuccessful 1980 presidential campaign, which ended with Bush as the vice-presidential nominee. Ronald Reagan won the election, but Rove was fired in the middle of the campaign for leaking information to the press.
1982 William Clements, Jr. gubernatorial campaign
In 1982, Bill Clements ran for reelection, but was defeated by Democrat Mark White.
1982 Phil Gramm congressional campaign
In 1982, Phil Gramm was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a conservative Texas Democrat.
1984 Phil Gramm senatorial campaign
In 1984, Rove helped Gramm, who had become a Republican in 1983, defeat Republican Ron Paul in the primary and Democrat Lloyd Doggett in the race for U.S. Senate.
1984 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign
Rove handled direct-mail for the Reagan-Bush campaign.
1986 William Clements, Jr. gubernatorial campaign
In 1986, Rove helped Clements become governor a second time. In a strategy memo Rove wrote for his client prior to the race, now among Clements's papers in the Texas A&M University library, Rove quoted Napoleon: "The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack."
In 1986, just before a crucial debate in campaign, Rove claimed that his office had been bugged by Democrats. The police and FBI investigated and discovered that the bug's battery was so small that it needed to be changed every few hours, and the investigation was dropped. Critics, including other Republican operatives, suspected Rove had bugged his own office to garner sympathy votes in the close governor's race.
1988 Texas Supreme Court races
In 1988, Rove helped Thomas R. Phillips become the first Republican elected as Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. Phillips had been appointed to the position in November 1987 by Clements. Phillips was re-elected in 1990, 1996 and 2002.
Phillips' election in 1988 was part of an aggressive grassroots campaign called "Clean Slate '88", a conservative effort that was successful in getting five of its six candidates elected. (Ordinarily there were three justices on the ballot each year, on a nine-justice court, but, because of resignations, there were six races for the Supreme Court on the ballot in November 1988.) By 1998, Republicans held all nine seats on the Court.
1990 Texas gubernatorial campaign
In 1989, Rove encouraged George W. Bush to run for Texas governor, brought in experts to tutor him on policy, and introduced him to local reporters. Eventually, Bush decided not to run, and Rove backed another Republican for governor who lost in the primary.
Other 1990 Texas statewide races
In 1990, two other Rove candidates won: Rick Perry, the future governor of the state, became agricultural commissioner, and Kay Bailey Hutchison became state treasurer. The 1990 election was notable because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), earlier that year, had investigated every Democratic officeholder in the state.
1991 Richard L. Thornburgh senatorial campaign and lawsuit
In 1991, United States Attorney General Dick Thornburgh resigned to run for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, one made vacant by John Heinz's untimely death in a helicopter crash. Rove's company worked for the campaign, but it ended with an upset loss to Democrat Harris Wofford. Rove subsequently sued Thornburgh alleging non-payment for services rendered. The Republican National Committee, worried that the suit would make it hard to recruit good candidates, urged Rove to back off. When Rove refused, the RNC hired Kenneth Starr to write an amicus brief on Thornburgh's behalf. After a trial in Austin, Rove prevailed. Karl Rove & Co. v. Thornburgh was heard by U.S. Federal Judge Sam Sparks (who had been appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1991).
1992 George H. W. Bush presidential campaign
Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief Robert Mosbacher Jr. (Esquire Magazine, January 2003). Novak provided some evidence of motive in his column describing the firing of Mosbacher by former Senator Phil Gramm: "Also attending the session was political consultant Karl Rove, who had been shoved aside by Mosbacher." Novak and Rove deny that Rove was the leaker, but Mosbacher maintains, "Rove is the only one with a motive to leak this. We let him go. I still believe he did it."
During testimony before the CIA leak grand jury, Rove apparently confirmed his prior involvement with Novak in the 1992 campaign leak, according to National Journal reporter Murray Waas.
1993–2000
1993 Kay Bailey Hutchison senatorial campaign
Rove helped Hutchison win a special Senate election in June 1993. Hutchison defeated Democrat Bob Krueger to fill the last two years of Lloyd Bentsen's term. Bentsen resigned to become Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration.
1994 Alabama Supreme Court races
In 1994, a group called the Business Council of Alabama hired Rove to help run a slate of Republican candidates for the state supreme court. No Republican had been elected to that court in more than a century. The campaign by the Republicans was unprecedented in the state, which had previously only seen low-key contests. After the election, a court battle over absentee and other ballots followed that lasted more than 11 months. It ended when a federal appeals court judge ruled that disputed absentee ballots could not be counted, and ordered the Alabama Secretary of State to certify the Republican candidate for Chief Justice, Perry Hooper, as the winner. An appeal to the Supreme Court by the Democratic candidate was turned down within a few days, making the ruling final. Hooper won by 262 votes.
Another candidate, Harold See, ran against Mark Kennedy, an incumbent Democratic justice and the son-in-law of George Wallace. The race included charges that Kennedy was mingling campaign funds with those of a non-profit children's foundation he was involved with. A former Rove staffer reported that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. Kennedy won by less than one percentage point.
1994 John Ashcroft senatorial campaign
In 1993, according to the New York Times, Karl Rove & Company was paid $300,000 in consulting fees by Ashcroft's successful 1994 Senate campaign. Ashcroft paid Rove's company more than $700,000 over the course of three campaigns.
1994 George W. Bush gubernatorial campaign
In 1993, Rove began advising George W. Bush in his successful campaign to become governor of Texas. Bush announced his candidacy in November 1993. By January 1994, Bush had spent more than $600,000 on the race against incumbent Democrat Ann Richards, with $340,000 of that paid to Rove's firm.
Rove has been accused of using the push poll technique to call voters to ask such things as whether people would be "more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if [they] knew her staff is dominated by lesbians." Rove has denied having been involved in circulating these rumors about Richards during the campaign, although many critics nonetheless identify this technique, particularly as utilized in this instance against Richards, as a hallmark of his career.
1996 Harold See's campaign for Associate Justice, Alabama Supreme Court
A former campaign worker charged that, at Rove's behest, he distributed flyers that anonymously attacked Harold See, their own candidate. This put the opponent's campaign in an awkward position; public denials of responsibility for the scurrilous flyers would be implausible. See, the challenger and Rove's client, was elected.
1998 George W. Bush gubernatorial campaign
Rove was an adviser for Bush's 1998 reelection campaign. From July through December 1998, Bush’s reelection committee paid Rove & Co. nearly $2.5 million, and also paid the Rove-owned Praxis List Company $267,000 for use of mailing lists. Rove says his work for the Bush campaign included direct mail, voter contact, phone banks, computer services, and travel expenses. Of the $2.5 million, Rove said, "About 30 percent of that is postage". In all, Bush (primarily through Rove's efforts) raised $17.7 million, with $3.4 million unspent as of March 1999.
2000 Harold See campaign for Chief Justice
For the race to succeed Perry Hooper, who was retiring as Alabama's chief justice, Rove lined up support for See from a majority of the state's important Republicans.
2000 George W. Bush presidential campaign and the sale of Karl Rove & Co.
In early 1999, Rove sold his 20-year-old direct-mail business,
Karl Rove & Co., which provided campaign services to candidates, along with Praxis List Company (in whole or part) to Ted Delisi and Todd Olsen, two young political operatives who had worked on campaigns of some other Rove candidates. Rove helped finance the sale of the company, which had 11 employees. Selling Karl Rove & Co. was a condition that George W. Bush had insisted on before Rove took the job of chief strategist for Bush's presidential bid.
During the 2000 Republican primary, a South Carolina push poll used racist innuendo intended to undermine the support of then-Bush rival John McCain: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"
The authors of the 2003 book and subsequent film Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,
allege that Rove was involved. In the movie, John Weaver, political director for McCain's 2000 campaign bid, says "I believe I know where that decision was made; it was at the top of the [Bush] campaign". McCain campaign manager Richard Davis said he "had no idea who had made those calls, who paid for them, or how many were made", and Rove has denied any such involvement.
After the presidential elections in November 2000, Rove organized an emergency response of Republican politicians and supporters to go to Florida to assist the Bush campaign's position during the recount.
George W. Bush Administration
George W. Bush was first inaugurated in January 2001, and Rove accepted a position in the Bush administration as Senior Advisor to the President. The President's confidence in Rove has been so strong that during a meeting with South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun on May 14, 2003, he brought only Rove and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Rove has played a significant role in shaping policy at the White House. One oft-cited example is that terror warnings were regularly made at times when John Kerry's ratings rose during the 2004 presidential election. Another is the 2006 announcement that planned terrorist attacks had been thwarted, which was made soon after the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program was discovered. Rove was reassigned from his policy development role to one focusing on strategic and tactical planning in April 2006, the same month that Joshua Bolten replaced Andrew Card as White House Chief of Staff.
Tells Jack Abramoff about invasion of Iraq
On March 18, 2002, lobbyist Jack Abramoff told a friend, that "I was sitting with Karl Rove, Bush's top advisor, at the NCAA basketball game, discussing Israel when [your] email came in. I showed it to him. It seems that the President was very sad to have to come out negatively regarding Israel but that they needed to mollify the Arabs for the upcoming war on Iraq. That did not seem to work anyway. Bush seems to love Sharon and Israel, and thinks Arabfat [sic] is nothing but a liar. I thought I'd pass that on." The White House Iraq Group, which is mentioned below, was formed in August of that year.
White House Iraq Group
In 2002 and 2003 Rove chaired meetings of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a secretive internal White House working group established by August 2002, eight months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to CNN and Newsweek, WHIG was charged with developing a strategy for publicizing the White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States. WHIG's existence and membership was first identified in a Washington Post article by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus on August 10, 2003; members of WHIG included Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Rice, her deputy Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio, and communication strategists Mary Matalin, Karen Hughes, and James R. Wilkinson.
Quoting one of WHIG's members without identifying him or her by name, the Washington Post explained that the task force's mission was to “educate the public” about the threat posed by Saddam and (in the reporters' words) “to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad.” Rove's "strategic communications" task force within WHIG helped write and coordinate speeches by senior Bush administration officials, emphasizing in September 2002 the theme of Iraq's purported nuclear threat.
The White House Iraq Group was “little known” until a subpoena for its notes, email, and attendance records was issued by CIA leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald in January 2004, a legal move first reported in the press and acknowledged by the White House on March 5, 2004.
Allegations of conflict of interest
In March 2001, Rove met with executives from Intel and successfully advocated a merger between a Dutch company and an Intel company supplier. Rove owned $100,000 in Intel stock at the time but had been advised by Fred Fielding, the White House's transition counsel, to defer selling the stock in January to obtain ethics panel approval. Rove offered no advice on the merger which needed to be approved by a joint Pentagon-Treasury Department panel since it would give a foreign company access to sensitive military technology. In June 2001, Rove met with two pharmaceutical industry lobbyists. At the time, Rove held almost $250,000 in drug industry stocks. On June 30, 2001, Rove divested his stocks in 23 companies, which included more than $100,000 in each of Enron, Boeing, General Electric, and Pfizer. The same day, the White House confirmed reports that Rove had been involved in administration energy policy meetings while at the same time holding stock in energy companies, including Enron.
Criticized "liberal response" to 9/11
At a fund-raiser in New York City for the Conservative Party of New York State in June 2005, Rove said, "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Democrats demanded Rove's resignation or an apology, and pointed out that every Democrat in the Senate voted for military force against Al-Qaeda in retaliation for the September 11 attacks. Rove offered no apology and retained his position.
Families of September 11, an organization founded in October 2001 by families of some of those who died in the terrorist attack, requested that Rove "stop trying to reap political gain in the tragic misfortune of others". In contrast, the Bush administration characterized Rove's comments as "very accurate" and stated that the calls for an apology were "somewhat puzzling", since he was "simply pointing out the different philosophies when it comes to winning the War on Terrorism."
2004 George W. Bush presidential campaign
Bush publicly thanked Rove and called him "the architect" in his 2004 victory speech, after defeating John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
During the campaign, critics alleged that Rove had professional ties to the producers of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth television ads that criticized Kerry's Vietnam-era military service and public testimony against American soldiers, although no evidence of Rove's direct involvement was ever produced.
A few months after the election, Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) publicly alleged that Rove engineered the Killian documents controversy during the 2004 campaign, by planting fake anti-Bush documents with CBS News to deflect attention from Bush's service record during the Vietnam War. Other than Rove's supposed motive, however, no evidence supporting this speculation has ever been publicized. Rove himself has denied any involvement, and Hinchey himself admitted he had no evidence to support this claim.
Plame affair
On August 29, 2003, retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV claimed that Rove leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, in retaliation for Wilson's op-ed in The New York Times in which he criticized the Bush administration's citation of the yellowcake documents among the justifications for the War in Iraq enumerated in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address.
On June 13, 2006, prosecutors determined there was no reason to charge Rove with any wrongdoing. Fitzgerald stated previously that "very rarely do you bring a charge in a case that's going to be tried in which you ever end a grand jury investigation. I can tell you that the substantial bulk of the work of this investigation is concluded." In late August 2006 it became known that Richard L. Armitage was responsible for the leak. The investigation led to felony charges being filed against Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. Eventually, Libby was found guilty by a jury. One juror announced that she felt that Libby was being used as a scapegoat and wondered why Rove himself wasn't charged. Washington Post columnist David Broder called on the more vocal members of the media who were publicizing Rove's involvement to apologize to him.
Rove's email to Hadley
In an email sent by Rove to top White House security official Stephen Hadley immediately after his July 11, 2003 discussion with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, Rove claimed that he tried to steer Cooper away from allegations Wilson was making about faulty Iraq intelligence. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming", Rove wrote to Hadley. "When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this." Rove made no mention to Hadley in the e-mail of having leaked Plame's CIA identity, nor of having revealed classified information to a reporter, nor of having told the reporter that certain sensitive information would soon be declassified. Although Rove wrote to Hadley (and perhaps testified) that the initial subject of his conversation with Cooper was welfare reform and that Cooper turned the conversation to Wilson and the Niger mission, Cooper disputed this suggestion in his grand jury testimony and subsequent statements: "I can't find any record of talking about [welfare reform] with him on July 11 [2003], and I don't recall doing so", Cooper said.
Karl Rove revealed as one source of TIME article
On July 10, 2005, Newsweek posted a story from its July 18 print edition which quoted one of the e-mails written by Cooper in the days following the publication of Wilson's op-ed piece. Writing to TIME bureau chief Michael Duffy on July 11, 2003, three days before Novak's column was published, Cooper recounted a two-minute conversation with Karl Rove "on double super secret background" in which Rove said that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee: "it was, KR [Karl Rove] said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized the trip". In a TIME article released July 17, 2005, Cooper says Rove ended his conversation by saying "I've already said too much."
In addition, Rove told Cooper that CIA Director George Tenet did not authorize Wilson's trip to Niger, and that "not only the genesis of the trip [to Niger] is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report" which Wilson made upon his return from Africa. Rove "implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger", gave Cooper a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Cooper recommended that his bureau chief assign a reporter to contact the CIA for further confirmation, and indicated that the tip should not be sourced to Rove or even to the White House.
Cooper testified before a grand jury on July 13, 2005, confirming that Rove was the source who told him Wilson's wife was an employee of the CIA. In the July 17, 2005 TIME article detailing his grand jury testimony, Cooper wrote that Rove never used Plame's name nor indicated that she had covert status, although Rove did apparently convey that certain information relating to her was classified: "As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak's column or Googled her, I can't recall which,... [but] was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me."
On August 13, 2005, journalist Murray Waas reported that Justice Department and FBI officials had recommended appointing a special prosecutor to the case because they felt that Rove had not been truthful in early interviews, withholding from FBI investigators his conversation with Cooper about Plame and maintaining that he had first learned of Plame's CIA identity from a journalist whose name Rove could not recall.
Following the revelations in the Libby indictment, 16 former CIA and military intelligence officials urged Bush to suspend Rove's security clearance for his part in outing Plame.
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, told reporters on June 13, 2006 that he had received notification from Fitzgerald indicating that Rove would not be charged with any crimes in the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity, effectively ending the matter for Rove.
On July 11, 2005, Novak said that Rove had discussed Plame with him. On July 15, Rove's lawyers said that Rove told Novak he had "heard that, too", in reference to Plame's status as a CIA employee, but was unaware at the time of the name "Valerie Plame". Rove claims to have learned of her name from his conversation with Novak.
On July 13, 2006, Plame unsuccessfully sued Cheney, Rove, Libby, and others, accusing them of conspiring to destroy her career.
2006 Congressional elections and beyond
On October 24, 2006, two weeks before the Congressional election, in an interview with National Public Radio's Robert Siegel, Rove insisted that his insider polling data forecast Republican retention of both houses:
- SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.
- ROVE: No, you are not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the US House and US Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally.
- SIEGEL: I don't want to have you to call races...
- ROVE: I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to the math.
In the election the Democrats won both houses of Congress. The White House Bulletin, published by Bulletin News, cited rumors of Rove's impending departure from the White House staff: "'Karl represents the old style and he’s got to go if the Democrats are going to believe Bush’s talk of getting along,' said a key Bush advisor." However, while allowing that many Republican members of Congress are "resentful of the way he and the White House conducted the losing campaign", the New York Times also stated that, "White House officials say President Bush has every intention of keeping Mr. Rove on through the rest of his term."
Prior to the election, Rove voiced impatience with the notion that his own reputation is on the ballot. He told the Washington Post, "I understand some will see the election as a judgment on me, but the fact of the matter is that, look what has been set in motion: a broader, deeper, strengthened Republican Party, and with an emphasis on grass-roots neighbor-to-neighbor politics, is going to continue." After the election, Rove continued to express optimism, telling the Post, "The Republican philosophy is alive and well and likely to reemerge in the majority in 2008." Rove also told the Post that the GOP election strategy was working until the Mark Foley scandal put the Republican campaign "back on its heels." Rove added "We were on a roll, and [the Foley scandal] stopped it.... It revived all the stuff about Jack Abramoff and added to it."
In Rove's analysis, 10 of the 28 House seats Republicans lost were sacrificed because of various scandals. Another six, he said, were lost because incumbents did not recognize and react quickly enough to the threat. Rove argued that, without corruption and complacency, Republicans could have kept narrow control of the House regardless of Bush's troubles and the war.
In analyzing the results of the 2006 midterm election, Rove told
Time, "The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected ... Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass... Iraq mattered, but it was more frustration than it was an explicit call for withdrawal. If this was a get-out-now call for withdrawal, then Lamont would not have been beaten by Lieberman. Iraq does play a role, but not the critical, central role." Again, Rove expressed optimism for the future of the Republican Party (GOP), and defended the role of the Republican get-out-the-vote program he helped invent. He told Time,
"I see this as much more of a transient, passing thing.... [T]he Republican Party remains at its core a small-government, low-tax, limit-spending, traditional-values, strong-defense party. I see the power of the ideas, even in a tough year.... People were talking 35, 40 or more and it didn't happen. There were a number of elections which were supposed to be close and ended up not being close." He added that he has "fundamental confidence in the power of the underlying agenda of this President", and cited fighting the war on terror, tax cuts, immigration, welfare, and legal reform, reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, reducing trade barriers, restrained spending.
In the January 29, 2007 issue of Newsweek, GOP activist Grover Norquist described how Rove showed up at a weekly meeting of influential D.C. conservatives early in the month, surprising attendees with his bubbly demeanor after weeks of rumors that he might be headed out. Norquist was quoted as saying "I think some people had given him up for dead, but he was good old Karl, upbeat and enthusiastic." At the meeting Rove previewed Bush's final two years in office, saying Social Security reform was likely off the table and that Iraq and the economy would be the biggest issues for 2008. "I don't know anyone who holds him personally responsible for what happened to us in the election", said a GOP national committee member, who declined to be named talking about the inner circle. "But his stature isn't quite the same." According to Newsweek, "behind the scenes, according to administration officials (anonymous in order to discuss White House matters), Rove has been laying the groundwork for Bush's State of the Union address and mulling how the GOP can regain momentum in 2008.... Rove has been busy trying to find common ground with Dems, organizing two meetings between Bush and the Blue Dog Democrats, a coalition of conservative lawmakers who offer the White House its best chance at compromise with the new Congress. Rove also sat in on many of Bush's meetings with members of Congress in recent weeks about Iraq."
Dismissal of U.S. Attorneys
Allen Weh, chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House aide for Rove, asking that Iglesias be removed. In 2006, Rove personally told Weh that Iglesias had been dismissed. Weh was dissatisfied with Iglesias due in part to his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation. Weh followed up with, "There’s nothing we’ve done that’s wrong." White House spokeswoman Dana Perino has said that Rove "wasn’t involved in who was going to be fired or hired."
According to Newsweek, Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, developed the list of eight prosecutors to be fired last October, with input from the White House.
Timothy Griffin, a former Rove aide, was the proposed replacement for fired attorney Henry Cummins. Specifically, Sampson sent an email that stated "The vast majority of U.S. attorneys, 80-85 percent I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc." Later in the e-mail, Sampson wrote that home-state senators may resist replacing prosecutors "they recommended. That said, if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I."
On March 14, 2007 former U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald said he believes Rove was trying to influence the selection in reaction to pressure from Rep. Dennis Hastert, then Speaker of the House and a political ally of then-Gov. George Ryan, who knew Fitzgerald was seeking someone from outside Illinois to attack political corruption.
In emails released by Congress on March 15, 2007, Rove raised the idea of firing all 93 attorneys in early January 2005.
On July 26, 2007 Senator Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that the committee was issuing a subpoena for Rove to appear personally before the committee and testify, following Gonzales' testimony on the U.S. Attorney dismissal controversy and other matters.
On July 30, 2008, a U.S. Congressional panel voted 20-14 to hold Rove in Contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to testify in its probe into suspected political interference at the Justice Department.
E-mail scandal
Due to investigations into White House staffers' e-mail communication related to the controversy over the dismissal of United States Attorneys, it was discovered that many White House staff members, including Rove, had exchanged documents using Republican National Committee e-mail servers such as gwb43.com or personal e-mail accounts with third party providers such as BlackBerry, considered a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Over 500 of Rove's emails were mistakenly sent to a parody web site, who forwarded them to an investigative reporter.
Investigation by the Office of Special Counsel
On April 24, 2007, it was revealed that Rove was being investigated by the Office of Special Counsel for his involvement in the email scandal, the firing of US attorneys, and for "improper political influence over government decision-making." In response to this investigation and other pending complaints, 2004 Democratic candidate for U.S. Vice President and former 2008 presidential hopeful John Edwards initiated a petition drive calling for Bush to fire Rove. After Rove announced his resignation, Edwards' reply was "good riddance".
Don Siegelman's conviction controversies
Former Democratic Governor of Alabama Don Siegelman was convicted in 2006 of bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud. However, some people have suggested that he was a victim of politically-directed trial led by Karl Rove. Siegelman, who very narrowly lost re-election in 2002 to Republican Representative Bob Riley, was considered by Republicans as the most serious opponent for Riley in the 2006 election, because of his popularity and record as Governor (Siegelman was defeated in the Democratic primary by Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley, who went on to lose to Riley by a wide margin in November). Siegelman was convicted of accepting $500,000 from Richard M. Scrushy, then the chief executive of the HealthSouth Corporation, in return for appointing Scrushy to the state hospital licensing board. Siegelman is currently serving a seven-year sentence in a federal penitentiary.
There are rumors that the U. S. Department of Justice and Rove, as chief GOP political strategist, manipulated the court and the prosecution of Siegelman to destroy him politically.
On May 22, 2008, Rove was given a subpoena to testify before a House Committee about his role in the Siegelman conviction. Rove has refused to testify, citing executive privilege. A congressional subcommittee voted 7-1 to reject this claim. As of September 11, 2008 the situation is unresolved.
Resignation from the White House
In a Wall Street Journal interview published on August 13, 2007, Rove revealed that he would resign from the Administration effective August 31. Having originally floated the idea of resigning in mid-2006, Rove opted to stay with the White House through the 2006 mid-term elections and a number of policy debates in the first half of 2007. The resignation fell prior to the Labor Day deadline, set by White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, for any senior aides wishing to leave the administration prior to the end of Bush's second term. In a statement, he said, "There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family".
Activities since leaving the White House
Shortly after leaving the White House, Rove was hired to write about the 2008 Presidential Election for Newsweek. He was also later hired as a contributor for the Wall Street Journal and a political analyst for Fox News. Rove was an informal advisor to 2008 Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, and donated $2,300 to his campaign.
He is currently working on a book about his life in politics.
Rove has also spent significant time on the road giving speeches to schools and other groups. Rove was scheduled to give the commencement address at Choate Rosemary Hall, a New England boarding school, but canceled after protests from students and faculty. He instead made a private appearance at the school on February 11, 2008.
On March 9, 2008, Rove appeared at the University of Iowa as a paid speaker to a crowd of approximately 1000. He was met with hostility and two students were removed by police after attempting a citizen's arrest for alleged crimes committed during his time with the Bush administration. Near the end of the speech, a member of the crowd asked Rove if the school could have the $40,000 speaking fee refunded. Rove turned down this request.
On May 22, 2008, Rove was subpoenaed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers to testify on the politization of the Department of Justice. However, on July 10, Rove refused to acknowledge his congressional subpoena. Instead, he left the country on an unannounced trip.
On June 24, 2008, Rove said of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone."
Rove agreed to debate one-time presidential candidate and former Senator John Edwards on September 26, 2008 at the University at Buffalo. However Edwards later dropped out and was replaced with General Wesley Clark.
Rove, who was hired by Fox News to provide analysis for the network's election coverage, defended his role on the news team to the Television Critics Association.
On July 30, 2008, a U.S. Congressional panel voted 20-14 to find Rove in Contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to testify in its probe into suspected political interference at the Justice Department.
On November 3, 2008, Rove spoke on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis on the eve of Election Day.
On February 23, 2009 Karl Rove was supposed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in accordance with a Congressional subpoena, but he didn't show up.
Religious views
In their book The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, James Moore and Wayne Slater identify Rove as an agnostic. Slater reaffirmed this claim in a National Public Radio interview. After this was mentioned by Bill Moyers on PBS, Rove was asked about it in an interview by Chris Wallace on Fox News and denied being an agnostic, saying "I'm a Christian. I go to church. I'm an Episcopalian."
When discussing his new book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens was asked by New York Magazine if "anyone in the Bush administration confided in [him] about being an atheist?", he replied, "Well, I don’t talk that much to them — maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”
Fictional portrayals
Rove has been portrayed, caricatured, and parodied in a number of films and television shows. On the comedic side, he was portrayed by Kurt Fuller in the sitcom That's My Bush!, and voiced by Kevin Federline in the animated series Lil' Bush. He has also been portrayed in an episode of Family Guy ("E. Peterbus Unum") and an episode of American Dad! ("Deacon Stan, Jesus Man").
On the dramatic side, he was portrayed by Toby Jones in Oliver Stone's 2008 film W., a biopic of George W. Bush.
External links
Biographical data
- - 'Karl Rove in a Corner: Karl Rove is at his most formidable when running close races, and his skills would be notable even if he used no extreme methods', Joshua Green, Atlantic Monthly (November, 2004)
- "Karl Rove - The Architect", Frontline Public Broadcasting System (PBS). April 12, 2005.
- Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush, Lou Dubose, Jan Reid and Carl Cannon, 2003, Paperback, 256 pages, ISBN 1-58648-192-4.
- Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, James C. Moore and Wayne Slater, John Wiley and Sons, 2003, hardcover, 416 pages, ISBN 0-471-42327-0, and the film of the same name
Editorials
- - 'Karl Rove, Whistleblower'
- - Paul Krugman - 'Karl Rove's America,' (July 15, 2005)
- - 'It's time for Karl Rove to go: The president needs to ask for a special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case', Congressman John Conyers Jr., Salon.com (October 15, 2003)
- - 'It Doesn't look good for Rove' contains a legal assessment by John Dean regarding the state of the Plame scandal.
- - Frank Rich - 'Follow the Uranium'
- - John Tierney - 'Where's the Newt?' where he christens the Plame scandal "Nadagate" due to his opinion that there is no scandal.
- , on the
- Dickerson, John (November 8, 2005). . Slate.
Media accounts
- - 'Reporter Says He First Learned of C.I.A. Operative From Rove,' Lorne Manly and David Johnston (July 18, 2005)
- - 'Drawing up Blueprints for Bush Victory', Rachel Clarke, BBC (November 6, 2004)
- - 'The Controller: Karl Rove is working to get George Bush reelected, but he has bigger plans' (profile), Nicholas Lemann The New Yorker (May 12, 2003)
- 'The brains' - Profile of Karl Rove - Special Report US Elections 2004, Julian Borger, (March 9, 2004)
- 'Karl Rove in a Corner', Joshua Green, The Atlantic (November 2004)
- - 'MSNBC Analyst and a Newsweek Reporter Say Karl Rove Named in Matt Cooper Documents', Greg Mitchell (July 2, 2005)
- - 'White House 'Puzzled' Over Rove Flap', Fox News (June 24, 2005)
- - 'Karl Rove The Architect' (documentary), PBS Frontline (April 12, 2005)
- - 'Rove rejects charges he was CBS source', Stephen Dinan, Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times (July 2, 2005)
- - 'Lawyer: Cooper "Burned" Karl Rove' - Byron York.
- interview with Joseph Wilson, where he states that "my wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity", causing much speculation about his intended meaning from both sides.
- - 'Rove Fight Escalates', includes quotes from a former CIA agent who claims that Plame's 'nonofficial cover' did not qualify her as 'a covert agent'. This claim is based on a gross misquote of USA Today.
- (July 13, 2005) (Real Audio)
- - 'The Plame blame: What do we know so far?' contains a recap of what is known to date (July 17, 2005)
- ; provides a link to an amicus brief and also details Plame's name having being outed by the CIA prior to Novak's article.
- - about Valerie Plame
- - Staff - 'Memo Underscored Issue of Shielding Plame's Identity' - CIA memo at the center of the leak scandal was marked 'sensitive'
- - "Role of Rove, Libby in CIA Leak Case Clearer: Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement"
-
- By John Solomon, ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 13, 2006
- MSNBC, June 13, 2006
- -Rove on the United States Constitution and the separation between church and state in schools, September 3, 2006
News compilations
- , summary from Los Angeles Times published August 25, 2005.
U.S. Government links
- - RealVideo of Karl Rove's tour of the White House Roosevelt Room
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