When you're trying to give yourself a little time to dispose of evidence, it's always nice if you're cozy with the people in charge of the impending investigation. In the case of the investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft generously granted then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez 12 hours before he had to inform the WH staff that they needed to preserve all documents relevant to the impending investigation. Gonzalez told Bob Schieffer yesterday that he told one person about the investigation: White House Chief of Staff Andrew "America Is Under Attack" Card, who was on Air Force One with the secret memo identifying Plame.
Now we're sure that, given this administration's plain talk and good-old-boy honesty, Andrew probably said, "Thanks for the heads-up, Al. Best get a good night's sleep and tackle this in the morning." To which Al probably replied, "Yeah, we've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, with all that preserving we've got to do. Just keep it under your hat till then. We don't want anybody destroying documents or anything."
We're sure that it wasn't till the next morning that Andrew Card informed Karl Rove of the need to preserve all documentation pertaining to the investigation. After all, Karl Rove probably didn't have anything to do with the original leak to one or more reporters, and as a man with the "highest standards of conduct," he would never influence the one "in charge of the investigation," namely, Attorney General Ashcroft, whose campaigns he'd worked on and whose present job he helped to get.
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