Reply #6: Read this: "Anatomy of a Rove Dirty Trick"

[JHB]

From the blog The Left Coaster, entitled "Anatomy of a Rove Dirty Trick"

Karl Rove is the man behind George W Bush's Presidency. According to William Slater, co-author of Bush's Brain, Rove realized back in 1990 that he could make Bush President, first by getting him elected governor. And so he has. Karl Rove would make his mentor, Lee Atwater, proud. Figuring out how to destroy your enemy while neutralizing his charge without leaving any traces is a Rove speciality. Yet, as all good detectives know, sometimes you find the criminal by matching the MO (modus operandi) of the crime.

Rove's MO is all over the Killian memo controversy that threatens to take down Dan Rather.

During Bush's first run against Ann Richards, Rove knew that he needed to immunize Bush against the charge of being too aggressive and unfair when going after Ann Richards. So what he did was to create an ad where Bush declared, "My opponent attacked me personally." But get this, the ad was made and distributed to TV stations around Texas before any such accusation was made. Then the campaign used numerous taunts, including a whispering campaign that asserted Ann Richards was gay or too gay friendly to encourage her to pop off against Bush. As soon as she did, the previously prepared ad was shown all over Texas and Bush was seen as the innocent victim of an unfair attack by his opponent.

Then in the 2000 election, Rove was behind the destruction of J.H. Hatfield, the author of the book, Fortunate Son, which reported about Bush's use of cocaine when he was younger. As Mike Burke reports, the method was to provide damaging information about Bush's past to someone who could be then discredited.

In 1999, St. Martin's Press published a critical biography of Bush titled "Fortunate Son". The book quoted an unnamed "high-ranking advisor to Bush," who revealed Bush's 1972 drug bust. The source told author J.H. Hatfield, Bush "was ordered by a Texas judge to perform community service in exchange for expunging his record showing illicit drug use."

Hatfield later revealed that his source was none other than Karl Rove. That might seem ridiculous, considering Rove's lifelong loyalty to the Bushes and the fact that he now has an office adjacent to Bush's in the White House. But leaking the story to Hatfield essentially discredited the story and sent it into the annals of conspiracy theory. Soon after the book was published and just as St. Martin's was preparing a high profile launching of the book, the "Dallas Morning News" ran a story revealing that Hatfield was a felon who had served time in jail. In response, St. Martin's pulled the book."
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http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002815.html#more