An Empty Seat and An Exotic Getaway
House Democrats were fuming recently when Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena and refused to show up at a House Judiciary Committee hearing into whether he meddled in Justice Department prosecutions. Instead of grilling the former White House political chief under oath, the members found themselves talking to an empty chair. What they didn't know is where Rove was that day: on a jet flying to a speaking engagement at Yalta, the historic Black Sea resort in Ukraine. Rove, who generally charges a reported $40,000 per talk, appeared on a premier panel (along with Democratic strategist Bob Shrum) on the upcoming U.S. election at the fifth annual conference of the YES Foundation, a confab of world luminaries bankrolled by billionaire Victor Pinchuk, the Ukrainian steel magnate and son-in-law of the country's former autocratic president, Leonid Kuchma.
Democrats on the judiciary panel were outraged when they heard about Rove's overseas jaunt on the day he'd been ordered to testify. "That's just extremely contemptuous—it shows the disdain that he has for Congress and which he has encouraged in the Bush White House," said Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee. But Robert Luskin, Rove's lawyer, said the criticism was "fatuous" because, before he took off, Rove had been directed by White House counsel Fred Fielding not to show up. The reason: as a former presidential adviser, the White House views anything he might say to the panel as covered by executive privilege. "What was he supposed to do, sit at home with his lights off?" said Luskin. "I understand that people are unhappy that he didn't show up." But the no-show "was not something we concocted so he could make money in Yalta." Rove himself did not respond to a request for comment. But last week in an appearance on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show, Rove dismissed the Democrats' demand for his testimony: "They want a circus," he said.
The dispute is far from over. Democratic members and aides said they expect judiciary chair Rep. John Conyers to push for a vote holding Rove in contempt of Congress—an act that would likely end up as part of an ongoing court battle over another executive privilege dispute involving White House chief of staff Josh Bolton and former chief counsel Harriet Miers, both of whom also ignored subpoenas involving the U.S. attorney firings. (The White House also last week invoked executive privilege in refusing to turn over to another House panel an FBI interview of Vice President Dick Cheney in the CIA leak case.) Democrats acknowledge they have few good options to enforce their subpoenas. But they hope to vent their frustrations at an upcoming hearing called by Conyers on "the imperial presidency," where they will give Rep. Dennis Kucinich an opportunity to argue his case for President Bush's impeachment. Republicans, for their part, derided the upcoming hearing as a waste of time. This is "merely political theater," said Rep. Lamar Smith, the judiciary panel's ranking Republican.
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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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