Calling off the frog march

Opinion Journal:

So much for having Karl Rove "frog-marched" out of the White House "in handcuffs." That's the fate Democratic partisan Joe Wilson once predicted for President Bush's political guru, and yesterday his hope and accusations vanished like fog on the Potomac.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald informed Mr. Rove's lawyers on Monday that he'll bring no charges as part of his investigation into who leaked the CIA identity of Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. Mr. Wilson's original claims that Mr. Bush lied about Iraq intelligence have been discredited many times over, including in a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. And now we know that even the relentless Mr. Fitzgerald has concluded that the charge that Mr. Rove criminally blew Ms. Plame's CIA cover is false.

The mystery is why Mr. Fitzgerald kept Mr. Rove twisting in the wind for so long. The prosecutor has been on the case for 2 1/2 years, and he long ago learned the source for the July 2003 Robert Novak column that "outed" Ms. Plame and was the reason he was appointed. Mr. Rove was forced to make no less than five grand jury appearances, the latest as recently as April.

In the end, it seems Mr. Fitzgerald was trying to trap Mr. Rove over the minor matter of his failure to remember a conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper. But Mr. Rove is the one who later volunteered information about the conversation to Mr. Fitzgerald, after a check of White House records reminded him of it. A perjury or obstruction accusation based on that inconsequential discrepancy would have been prosecutorial misconduct.

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Despite the disengeniousness of the partisan's of the left and their "concern" for the outing of a paper pusher at the CIA, this case has always been about depriving the President of his best political adviser. They have failed and their misery appears to be abject. If you believe this case was about political pay back you are right, but it was the left that was trying to use Wilson and the CIA to get at their political enemy's. A similar charge can be made in the Tom DeLay prosecution for doing things that the Democrats also did. In both cases it was about denying Republicans their most effective politicians. In the case of DeLay, even though the chances of his convictions remain remote, the attack has been more effective, at least in the short run.