KING KARL
Saudis thrive in the heat, but not the Washington kind. In July 2003, they were looking for protective cover. A congressional panel had issued a report on the roots of the 9/11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 perpetrators were Saudis. The report contained 28 superclassified pages that described evidence of possible Saudi funding for two of the hijackers. In reaction, the Saudis descended on the capital, eager to dispute the charges and reassure George W. Bush and his administration. Prince Saud al-Faisal sat down with the president, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Later that same day, the prince met with national-security adviser Condi Rice.
But there was a third White House base to touch--up a narrow flight of stairs on the second floor of the West Wing. On July 29, according to lobbying records reviewed by NEWSWEEK, the Saudis' leading Washington fixer, Adel Al-Jubeir, met with Karl Rove to, among other things, "give a status briefing on the Kingdom's reform efforts and war against terrorism." The sit-down was arranged by former Texas congressman Tom Loeffler, an elite fund-raiser for Bush's campaigns who had been hired as a lobbyist for the Saudis. The meeting was Al-Jubeir's second with Rove; the first was three months after 9/11. A source close to the Saudis insisted that the sessions were a mere "courtesy." But since Rove's domain was politics--not foreign policy--why arrange them at all? "Isn't it obvious?" the source replied.
Now it is--more than ever. For much of Bush's first term, not to mention the 2004 campaign, the administration denied what everyone in the capital knew to be the case: that, on policy, Rove was a man to see. Last week the White House made it official, announcing that The Architect of the 2004 victory--indeed, of Bush's entire political career--would become a deputy chief of staff, while keeping his existing titles of senior adviser and assistant to the president. White House aides were intent on downplaying the importance of the move, even leaking names of obscure functionaries who supposedly had been considered for the job. Andy Card--known to fear the gravitational pull of Rove's close relationship with the president--will remain as the chief of staff, they insisted; a source close to him said that Card will stay at least through 2006. Rove, insiders said, wouldn't want Card's job anyway, at least in its current configuration, which is more paper flow than policy.
But the spin spun back onto itself. Rove has always had a major role in formulating policy, officials now suddenly were eager to concede. A bit too strenuously, they insisted that Rove would be excluded from hard-core matters such as the Pentagon, intelligence and counterterrorism--and that he would not be in the Oval Office when the president gets his ultrasecret morning intel briefing. And yet, officials said publicly, Rove will "coordinate policy within the various councils" of the White House--including national security and homeland security--while he "continues to oversee the strategy to advance" Bush's agenda. As usual in bureaucratic Washington, the real story lay not in the nomenclature but in the real estate: Rove is moving from upstairs to down, just around the corner from the Oval Office. "In a way, the appointment just confirms reality," said GOP consultant Charlie Black. But, in a city in which the biggest secrets are the open ones, "this is still a big deal."
In the first term, Rove focused his laser-like attention to detail on the fine points of domestic policy, the better to woo and win voting (or contributing) constituencies. He was up to his spectacles on issues ranging from legislation to limit steel imports to energy-efficiency standards to tax policy. Behind closed doors, Rove was a leading advocate for abolishing federal taxation of stock dividends. The president put forward just that proposal in late 2002; Congress went along halfway.
Nor has Rove been afraid to venture offshore when the matters at hand have special resonance for certain voting blocs. He brokered a deal in 2001 to end the U.S. Navy's use of a training ground in Puerto Rico--a sensitive issue with Hispanics--and Rove has steeped himself in the Arab-Israeli dispute. Rove helped to draft Bush's pivotal speech on the issue in 2002--in which the president declared Yasir Arafat persona non grata. He traveled with the president to Egypt in 2003. Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, Rove has privately expressed interest in traveling to the region on his own this year.
Rove was a player on Iraq, too. In the run-up to the war, Rove was a full--and, colleagues say, impressive--participant in the colorfully named WHIG (White House Iraq Group). The panel members shed their cell phones and BlackBerrys to meet in a secure National Security Council conference room, sifting through classified evidence (much of it now discredited) for data that might win public support for Bush's hard line against Saddam Hussein. Rove seemed to come into the room knowing more than his political brief, said a fellow WHIG. "He'd say, 'I've got a feeling' about something, and he was usually right."
Democrats last week were crying foul. As he handed the baton to Dr. Howard Dean, outgoing party chairman Terry McAuliffe declared that Rove's new role proved that "Bush cares more about political positioning than honest policy discussion." But, in a way, the Democrats were missing the point. Rove constructed Bush's career as a marriage of policy and politics, playing down Bush's manor-born bio in favor of "game-changing" ideological agendas designed to bring breakthrough electoral success. It's worked so far.
But why the Rove move now? Bush is a loyalist, but also a former baseball exec who values new blood in the lineup. He can satisfy both impulses by shifting trusted players into different roles. Rove has his own reasons. A brilliant autodidact who lacks a college degree, he has always been eager to prove publicly that he is more than a political consultant. More important, Rove has to know that his most crucial "campaign" still lies ahead in his 32-year partnership with Bush. Rove has to help him avoid the usual second-term presidential morass--not to mention another attack on the homeland. He has to help him build a lasting legacy--and retire to Texas before the heat sets in.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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