Karl Rove, top strategist and right-hand man to U.S. President Bush, resigns - Haaretz

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Mon., August 13, 2007 Av 29, 5767

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		Karl Rove (L) and U.S. President George Bush. (Reuters)

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Last update - 17:18 13/08/2007

Karl Rove, top strategist and right-hand man to U.S. President Bush, resigns

By The Associated Press

Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's close friend and chief political strategist, plans to leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final year of the administration.

On board with Bush since the beginning of his political career in Texas, Rove was nicknamed the architect and boy genius by the president for designing the strategy that twice won him the White House. Critics call Rove Bush's brain.

Rove was under scrutiny for months during a criminal investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name, but he was never charged with any crime. In a more recent controversy, Rove, citing executive privilege, has refused to testify before Congress about the firing of U.S. attorneys.

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Bush was expected to make a statement Monday with Rove.

Since Democrats won control of Congress in November, some top administration officials have announced their resignations. Among those who have left are White House counselor Dan Bartlett, budget director Rob Portman, chief White House attorney Harriet Miers, political director Sara Taylor, deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan, another deputy national security adviser who worked on Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced out immediately after the election as the unpopular war in Iraq dragged on.

Rove became one of Washington's most influential figures during Bush's presidency. He is known as a ruthless political warrior who has an encyclopedic command of political minutiae and a wonkish love of policy. Rove met Bush in the early 1970s, when both men were in their 20s.

Once inside the White House, Rove grew into a right-hand man.
Rove is expected to write a book after he leaves. He disclosed his departure in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president's term in January 2009.

"I just think it's time", Rove said in an interview at this home on Saturday. He first floated the idea of leaving to Bush a year ago, the newspaper said, and friends confirmed he'd been talking about it even earlier. However, he said he didn't want to depart right after the Democrats regained control of Congress and then got drawn into policy battles over the Iraq war and immigration. Rove has been in the White House since Bush took office in 2001.

Even as he discussed his departure, Rove remained characteristically sunny. This quality of unrelenting optimism about the president, which matches Bush's own upbeat, never-admit-disappointment nature, has at times gotten Rove into trouble. Up to the end of the 2006 midterm elections, the political guru predicted a Republican win. That of course was not to be, and there was grumbling that Rove was not on his game during those elections as much as he had been before.

In the interview, Rove predicted Bush will regain his popularity, which has sunk to record lows because of the war in Iraq.

Rove also predicted conditions in Iraq would improve and that the Democrats would nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, calling her a tough, tenacious, fatally flawed candidate.

Rove testified before a federal grand jury in the investigation into the leak of the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer whose husband was a critic of the war in Iraq. That investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis Scooter Libby on charges of lying and obstructing justice. Plame contends the White House was trying to discredit her husband.

Attorneys for Libby told jurors at the onset of his trial that Libby was the victim of a conspiracy to protect Rove. Details of any save-Rove conspiracy were promised but never materialized.

The most explicit testimony on Rove came from columnist Robert Novak, who outed Plame in a July 2003 column. He testified that Rove, a frequent source, was one of two officials who told him about Plame. Libby, with whom he seldom spoke, was not a source.

Rove, though, was not indicted after testifying five times before the grand jury, occasionally correcting misstatements he made in his earlier testimony.

The jury in Libby's trial did not hear that testimony, nor did it hear that Rove is credited as an architect of Republican political victories and has been accused by opponents of playing dirty tricks.

All that jurors heard is that Rove leaked Plame's identity and, from the outset, got political cover from the White House. He was never charged with a crime.

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1.	THE CROOK TO GO	15:44	\|	indrajaya	13/08/07

2.	Better the devil you know than the one you don`t	16:17	\|	Tess	13/08/07

3.	It`s Plame Not Flame	17:17	\|	Jane	13/08/07

4.	Little by little...	17:23	\|	Michael Steiner	13/08/07

5.	Rove and Bush are nothing but a disaster for America	18:01	\|	El-Birawi	13/08/07

6.	Michael Steiner, it`s difficult to rejoice when...	19:17	\|	Akiva Patysh	13/08/07

7.	He never comprehended in the least how McKinley operated	19:40	\|	Mark Lincoln	13/08/07

8.	Michael Steiner, check out Randy Newman...	20:11	\|	Akiva Patysh	13/08/07

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