Karl Rove, the New J. Edgar Hoover.

Valerie Plame, a covert female CIA agent, who is married to long-time State Department foreign service officer, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, has had her career ruined because her husband had the temerity to contradict President Bush's claim that nuclear materials had been shipped from the African country, Niger, to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq. Wilson was actually sent by the Bush administration to Niger and determined it was not true. In his official capacity, he so advised the President. But when President Bush mentioned this known lie in his State of the Union address, Wilson was compelled to set the record straight publicly in an op-ed piece in the New York Times.

It has now been revealed that this infuriated Karl Rove so much that he began a vendetta against Wilson. In spite of the fact that Wilson gave Bush $1000 in 1999, Rove researched Wilson's election giving records and decided that Wilson was a Democrat. Although he claims he never used her actual name, at the very least, Rove has admitted outing Mrs. Joseph Wilson as a CIA agent. Any question about whether he outed a CIA agent by name or not is the height of Orwellian hair-splitting. Rove committed a crime against national security and should be prosecuted.

Judith Miller, a female reporter for the New York Times, has gone to jail because she refuses to testify about a source who allegedly gave her Valerie Plame's name as the undercover wife of Wilson's for a story that Judith Miller never wrote. Regardless of what one may think about Judith Miller's knee-jerk coverage of the buildup to the Iraq war, her almost cheerleader-style reporting of anything and everything Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld gave her, it is more than ironic that she is the one who is in jail in this whole mess.

Robert Novak, an insider good old boy if there ever was one, did publish a story in which he revealed Valerie Plame's name as a result of being fed her name by a White House source. He has "cooperated" with the special prosecutor. That's one way of saying that he rolled over and behaved like the sleazeball Bush mouthpiece that he is. He is, of course, still free to bloviate on behalf of the Bush administration and apologize for any of its lies and crimes.

But the man who remains untouched in all this, who must be the center of interest for any special prosecutor with half a brain, is Karl Rove. And yet, no one in the White House, or in the entire Republican Party, has spoken out against him. The White House continues its song and dance routine, answering all reporter's questions with the same mindlessly intoned mantra about its being an ongoing investigation and they don't comment on such things. Such selective non-commenting flies in the face of all their other very purposeful leaks and comments when it suits their partisan politicial interests.

The silence about Rove is telling. Just as J. Edgar Hoover was immune from criticism and attack, no one wants to take Rove on. No one wants to criticize him. No one wants the veil lifted from his secretive office, from what he knows, and from what he has done. The only exception I have seen is the recent testimony of Larry Johnson, a registered Republican and former CIA official.

If the veil is lifted, if Karl Rove goes down, it will be a huge embarrassment for the Republicans. But it will be appropriate that Karl Rove's animus, his roiling hatred of Democrats, his unrestrained, meanspirited tactics will be what brings him down.

Of course, these are all BIG ifs. I won't be surprised at all if they find a way to squirm out of this. Who will notice, anyway?