So much for plausible deniability

President Bush looks to be in big trouble.

Yesterday I linked to Steve Clemons' piece on "constructing presidential deniability." Seems today that someone didn't have their thinking cap on -- given a White House source reveals Bush pretty much knew about Rove all along in some hammed attempt to protect the president from political blowback. So let's compare the Thomas DeFrank column with other tidbits from the record.

On September 29, 2003, Scott McClellan said:

Q All right. Let me just follow up. You said this morning, "The President knows" that Karl Rove wasn't involved. How does he know that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. I saw some comments this morning from the person who made that suggestion, backing away from that. And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it's public knowledge. I've said that it's not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove....

And further on:

Q You continue to talk about the severity of this and if anyone has any information they should go forward to the Justice Department. But can you tell us, since it's so severe, would someone or a group of persons, lose their job in the White House --

MR. McCLELLAN: At a minimum.

Q At a minimum?

MR. McCLELLAN: At a minimum.

That's just a taste from a juicy script. McClellan really got worked over that day.

On September 30, 2003, President Bush said:

And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

And so I welcome the investigation. I -- I'm absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job. There's a special division of career Justice Department officials who are tasked with doing this kind of work; they have done this kind of work before in Washington this year. I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative.

I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business.

Let's remember such compliments when the GOP talking points accusing Fitzgerald of partisanship, zealotry and whatnot begin churning through the media. And a second later:

Q Yesterday we were told that Karl Rove had no role in it --

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q -- have you talked to Karl and do you have confidence in him --

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.

Of course, this summer it subsequently came out that Karl Rove was indeed one of the anonymous sources trying to plant media stories attacking Joe Wilson. (See the Isikoff piece from July on the Time's Matt Cooper, for whom Rove was a "source.")

Josh Marshall points to President Bush's October 7, 2003 remarks:

Q Mr. President, beyond the actual leak of classified information, there are reports that someone in the administration was trying to -- after it was already out -- actively spread the story, even calling Ambassador Wilson's wife "fair game." Are you asking your staff is anyone did that? And would it be wrong or even a fire-able offense if that happened?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the investigators will ask our staff about what people did or did not do. This is a town of -- where a lot of people leak. And I've constantly expressed my displeasure with leaks, particularly leaks of classified information. And I want to know, I want to know the truth. I want to see to it that the truth prevail.

On June 10, 2004, Bush was still pleading ignorance:

Q And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.

On July 18, 2005, President Bush shifted the burden of dismissal:

I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.

And as the Washington Post reported the next day:

This is a small, but potentially very significant, distinction, because details that have emerged from the leak investigation over the past week show that Karl Rove, Bush's top political aide, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, discussed Plame with reporters before her name was revealed to the public.

The Cunning Realist:

Yes, what he said to the prosecutors is legally crucial---and as reported in this piece by Murray Waas, Bush stated to prosecutors in June 2004 that Rove had assured him he was not involved with the Plame leak.

From the October 7 Wass piece:

In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson according to sources familiar with the president's interview.

But the Thomas DeFrank column reveals that in 2003, Bush was well aware of the who-what-and-when, and was definitely more annoyed at Rove's bungling than with the public outing of a CIA agent's classified identity:

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.

But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

Makes you proud, doesn't it? After reading the Waas and DeFrank works side-by-side, Anonymous Liberal writes:

Anyway, it's clear that the "Rove misled the President" talking point is no longer operative. That may have just been a trial balloon. The new story is that Rove came clean and was privately admonished by the President in 2003.

Reporters need to extract from the White House whether this occurred prior to September 29, 2003 -- something that McClellan's contemporaneous claims imply. But it is now impossible for the president to maintain that he was misled, or omissively lied to, or any of the other ways plausible deniability is constructed. From this it follows from his September 30, 2003 press conference that he was most likely lying, and in June 2004 was most definitely lying; furthermore that President Bush possibly misled Justice Department investigators, and all simply because they didn't think they would get caught.

[Edited for flow and amplification at 9:25 -- Styg.]

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