Karl Rove is a senior level policy advisor to President Bush who has been White House Deputy Chief of Staff.
Rove has been President George W. Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff, placing him in charge of the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the Office of Strategic Initiatives at the White House. He stepped down in April, ostensibly to manage Fall 2006 campaign strategy for the Republicans. However, insiders expect him to be indicted in the Plame Affair. He has apeared five times before the grand jury.
Rove has many nicknames. Bush calls him "Turd Blossom," an expression for a flower that grows in manure. Others call him "Bush's Brain" and "The Architect" of campaign policy.
From June 1971 until early 1973, Rove was (the paid) Executive Director of the College Republicans. He resigned to run for the 1973-75 term for National Chair; his campaign manager was Lee Atwater. In a convoluted tie-vote, then Republican National Committee Chair George H.W. Bush selected Rove as the winner, over his opponent Robert Edgeworth. Atwater would go on to become Bush's key campaign advisor.
During Bush the Elder's run for the Presidency in 1980, Rove was fired for leaking information to Robert Novak. Novak was the media source who reported that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and implied that she had arranged his trip to Niger as a junket.
Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald filed court documents on 12 May 2006 that included a copy of Wilson's article with hand-written notes by Vice President Cheney.
Cheney questioned the rationale for sending Wilson to Niger and noted his wife might have sent him on a "junket." This immplies that Cheney knew that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.
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