Cross your fingers: Rove may have flipped!

Report: White House Official May Have Flipped

talkleft Oct 18, 2005 –

Raw Story reports that the New York Daiy News will report in Tuesday’s edition that a high level White House official has flipped and is now helping Fitzgerald.

We’ll know in a few hours what the Daily News has to say, but I predict if it’s true, it’s Karl Rove who flipped on Friday and gave up Cheney. Karl Rove attended most of the meetings of the White House Iraq Group and according to Raw Story’s report, the flip has something to do with a source now advising that Cheney personally attended two of the meetings where Kristof’s May, 2003 New York Times article and Pincus’s June 2003 WaPo article on Joe Wilson were discussed. Cheney has said he didn’t know about Wilson until after Wilson’s July 6 op-ed appeared.

Why would Rove’s latest grand jury appearance have taken 4 1/2 hours if all he was talking about was his conversation with Matthew Cooper and e-mail to Stephen Hadley?

UPDATE:
From the Washington Post:
As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent’s name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney’s office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney’s long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

In grand jury sessions, including with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Fitzgerald has pressed witnesses on what Cheney may have known about the effort to push back against ex-diplomat and Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, including the leak of his wife’s position at the CIA, Miller and others said. But Fitzgerald has focused more on the role of Cheney’s top aides, including Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, lawyers involved in the case said.

One former CIA official told prosecutors early in the probe about efforts by Cheney’s office and his allies at the National Security Council to obtain information about Wilson’s trip as long as two months before Plame was unmasked in July 2003, according to a person familiar with the account.

It is not clear whether Fitzgerald plans to charge anyone inside the Bush administration with a crime. But with the case reaching a climax — administration officials are braced for possible indictments as early as this week– it is increasingly clear that Cheney and his aides have been deeply enmeshed in events surrounding the Plame affair from the outset.

It was a request by Cheney for more CIA information that, unknown to him, started a chain of events that led to Wilson’s mission three years ago. His staff pressed the CIA for information about it one year later. And it was Libby who talked about Wilson’s wife with at least two reporters before her identity became public, according to evidence Fitzgerald has amassed and which parties close to the case have acknowledged.

Lawyers in the case said Fitzgerald has focused extensively on whether behind-the-scenes efforts by the vice president’s aides and other senior Bush aides were part of a criminal campaign to punish Wilson in part by unmasking his wife.

In a move people involved in the case read as a sign that the end is near, Fitzgerald’s spokesman yesterday told the Associated Press that the prosecutor planned to announce his conclusions in Washington, where the grand jury has been meeting, instead of Chicago, where the prosecutor is based. Some lawyers close to the case cited courthouse talk that Fitzgerald might announce his findings as early as tomorrow, though hard evidence about his intentions and timing remained elusive.