Boss Rove by Craig Unger

Author:Craig Unger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

THIRTEEN

The Vanishing

In the spring of 2007, Josh Bolten, who had replaced Andrew Card as White House chief of staff, told White House staffers that they should either leave shortly or be prepared to stay through to the end of George Bush’s second term. Bolten’s directive gave Rove an excuse to assess how long he should remain at the White House. The Plame Wilson investigation had exhausted him emotionally and burned through his financial reserves.

“More important than money, however, was the toll that my life had taken on my wife and son,” he wrote. “I could see more clearly how the press attention, the protesters surrounding our house, the ugly anonymous letters, and the snarky Internet postings had weighed on them. . . . There are downsides to having 70 percent of the American people recognize your name and face, especially when some of them hate your guts and consider you the epitome of evil or Beelzebub himself.”

Rove’s teenage son, Andrew, had started to position himself ahead of his father when they went through airports, acting as a security agent of sorts. Karl thought it was funny, but Darby wasn’t amused. “Don’t you understand he’s worried about your safety?” she explained.

Bush’s ratings were lousy, and Rove didn’t want to seem like he was deserting a sinking ship. But in June Ed Gillespie came in to run the White House communications shop, and Rove felt that a strong team was in place. He met Bush for lunch in the president’s private dining room, with John Quincy Adams’s portrait hanging above their heads. Bush ate a low-fat hot dog; Rove, a peanut butter and honey sandwich. Finally, Rove told the president that he thought it was time for him to go. He was angry “that financial circumstances were forcing me to leave. But I felt grateful the president had supported my complicated decision.”

The two men hugged good-bye and Bush gave Rove a pat on the cheek. “That was enough. I didn’t need or want to say any more.” Then, Rove told Bolten he would go during the August break. He was leaving the White House.

* * *

But Rove’s ordeal wasn’t over yet. At roughly the same time, the House Judiciary Committee uncovered a potentially serious criminal violation regarding Rove. In March 2007, in the course of investigating the U.S. attorneys scandal, the Committee had subpoenaed emails from a number of White House staffers and learned that Rove aide Scott Jennings had used a non–White House email account to communicate with Justice Department officials concerning the appointment of Tim Griffin, another Rove aide, as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The use of an outside email account was a problem, because the Presidential Records Act requires the president to ensure that all his duties and those of his office “are adequately documented . . . and maintained as Presidential records.” As a result, White House staff had been instructed to use only the official White House email system for official communications and to retain any official emails they received on a nongovernmental account.

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