Operation get Rove: a misguided--and bungling--lynch mob.

KARL ROVE certainly doesn't act like a guilty man. Caught in the middle of the "Plamegate" leak investigation, accused of "smearing" Bush critic Joseph Wilson and "outing" Wilson's CIA-agent wife, Valerie Plame, Rove has been going about his normal duties at the White House; people close to him say his daily schedule is packed, as always, with matters like judicial nominations, Social Security, and general White House stuff. His lawyer tells NATIONAL REVIEW that Rove has been assured by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he is not a target of the investigation. Rove has testified before the grand jury three times. And he has released any reporter who talked to him about the Plame/Wilson affair from any pledge of confidentiality.

It's not exactly the profile of a man with something to hide. Yet in spite of it all, Rove has emerged as Target A of the coalition of Democratic lawmakers, liberal pundits, and left-wing activists who have decided that Plamegate is their best shot--for now, at least-at the Bush administration. And they've been taking that shot, over and over and over. Harry Reid, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry, Paul Krugman, MoveOn.org--they're all in the fight.

At times, the rhetoric has become slightly surreal. "The bottom line is, there's a traitor in the White House who betrayed America and the war on terror right under George Bush's nose," former Al Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway said on CNN recently. He was referring to Rove. Executives at the liberal radio network Air America liked the phrase "traitor in the White House" so much that they created an anti-Rove fundraising campaign around it. And one of the network's hosts recently asked New Jersey Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg, "Karl Rove is guilty of treason, isn't he?" Lautenberg said, "Yes, I think so."

The Republican National Committee has fought back, not only defending Rove--there is no evidence that anybody knows of to suggest he broke the law--but also pointing out that some of the things that Wilson has said in the past did not turn out to be, uh, true. For example, they pointed to something Wilson wrote in his book, The Politics of Truth, about the way he was chosen for the Niger factfinding mission that is at the center of the scandal. "Valerie had had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." But Republicans cited the Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan report, which detailed how Wilson's wife "suggested his name for the trip" and also wrote a memo highlighting his qualifications for the mission. "This is not somebody who has got a good record of being the source of accurate information," said RNC chairman Ken Mehlman.

Then there was the question of whether Wilson was motivated, at least in part, by partisanship. On July 14, Wilson appeared in the Mansfield Room in the Capitol for a joint news conference with New York Democratic senator Charles Schumer, a man not known for his embrace of nonpartisanship. But even in such a setting, Wilson seemed offended at the very idea that anyone might attribute a political motive to his actions.

"This is not a partisan issue," Wilson told reporters as Schumer looked on, "and for the RNC to try and turn this into a partisan fight, I think, is unfortunate." Wilson also thanked Schumer for treating Plamegate "as a matter of principle, not as a matter of partisanship." Schumer, too, agreed that Wilson was not acting out of partisanship.

Despite those assurances--and who wouldn't believe Schumer on such a matter?--Wilson gave his critics even more ammunition when he agreed to appear at "Rovegate/DSM" house parties organized by the Bush-bashing Michigan Democratic representative John Conyers. ("DSM" refers to the Downing Street Memo, which has become a sacred text to Conyers and his anti-war allies.) Scheduled to appear along with Wilson was Randi Rhodes, the Air America personality who has used her program to express her wish that George W. Bush be killed.

All in all, Wilson's behavior--and that of some of his supporters--is the gift that keeps on giving for administration allies. But the White House has made mistakes of its own in handling the Plamegate matter, and those mistakes have greatly complicated its ability to fight back. Foremost among them has been the administration's failure to get its story straight on what Rove did and did not do. At various times, White House spokesman Scott McClellan has veered between saying that Rove has not committed any crime--an assertion that appears to be true--and claiming that Rove had nothing to do with the original leak at all. "If anyone in this administration was involved in it," McClellan said in a now-famous 2003 briefing, "they would no longer be in this administration."

But in early July it became publicly known that Rove had been involved in it, at least in the broadest sense--back in July 2003 he talked to the journalists Robert Novak and Matthew Cooper about Wilson. That allowed White House critics to pivot away from the issue of whether Rove broke any laws to the question of whether the White House has told the truth.

What makes the situation frustrating for White House defenders is that in addition to his Rove-had-nothing-to-do-with-it statements, McClellan has also made a number of carefully worded statements that, had they been repeated faithfully by the White House, would have avoided some of today's problems. For example, during a contentious briefing--there have been a lot of those--back in October 2003, McClellan was asked, "Did Karl Rove or others have conversations with reporters about Mrs. Wilson?"

"In what way?" McClellan asked.

"And her CIA status," the reporter said.

"There's been no information brought to our attention to suggest that anyone leaked classified information ...," McClellan said.

"You seem to be suggesting that perhaps they had conversations, but weren't leaking classified information," the reporter said.

"Well, there's an investigation going on to pull together all the information," McClellan said. "But the issue is, did someone leak classified information?"

It doesn't take too much Washington parsing to figure out that McClellan was saying that Rove had talked to reporters but that he had not done anything illegal, which appears to be precisely what happened. The White House would have been better off sticking to that story.

Despite the administration's missteps, it still appears entirely possible that the whole thing will come to nothing. First of all, Rove (along with top Cheney aide Lewis Libby) has reportedly testified that he did not know Valerie Plame was a covert agent when he responded to questions from Novak and Cooper. Second, it is not clear whether Plame's name and occupation were classified. And third, it is not at all clear whether anything done by anyone at the White House violated the law at the heart of the matter, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it exceedingly difficult to prosecute anyone for revealing the identity of CIA agents.

But the White House still finds itself playing defense. And now, in the ultimate insult for Republicans, the president's adversaries are trying to press the point that the Bush White House is no more truthful than the Clinton White House was (not that they ever conceded that the Clinton White House was untruthful). There have been lots of "it all depends on what the meaning of is is" jokes and lots of flat-out statements calling virtually everyone in the White House a liar. But a more fair-minded look at the situation suggests that it is the differences, and not the similarities, between the Bush and Clinton administrations that are striking in this case. When faced with an independent-counsel investigation, figures in and around the Clinton White House formed a joint defense agreement, asserted novel legal privileges, and spent much of their time publicly attacking the prosecutor in the case. This White House, by comparison, has done nothing of the sort. Even their enemies should give them credit for that.