Ex-senator doubts tale of Rove role
'Karl's far too smart' to try to remove U.S. attorney
As everybody knows, Peter Fitzgerald is the guy who had the foresight to pick a then-unfamiliar New York prosecutor named Patrick Fitzgerald for the job of U.S. attorney in Chicago.
Less well known is that Peter Fitzgerald also is the guy who had the foresight several years earlier to pick a then-unfamiliar Texas political consultant named Karl Rove as a key strategist in his upset win over U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun.
Who better then to assess Wednesday's news that a newly cooperative prosecution witness is prepared to testify that Democratic insider Tony Rezko had informed him that a top Illinois Republican friend was working through then-White House political director Rove to have Patrick Fitzgerald removed?
"Everybody's calling me," Fitzgerald said when I reached him at the offices of the new bank he has opened in McLean, Va., the Washington suburb where the former senator chose to remain after opting out of a re-election bid in 2004.
Not that he minds the calls. Peter Fitzgerald always is abreast of Illinois news, particularly when it pertains to his favorite subject: cleaning up our corrupt government.
Peter Fitzgerald's take is that it should come as no surprise that Rezko would have liked to have seen Patrick Fitzgerald ousted. Many politicians in Illinois share a similar desire, he noted.
Neither would it surprise him for Rezko to have approached his friend, GOP power broker Robert Kjellander, on whether something could be done to stop the investigation.
"It wouldn't surprise me either if Kjellander actually did talk to Rove," the former senator said.
But knowing Rove, Peter Fitzgerald said, he doesn't believe the adviser to President Bush would have gotten involved in trying to replace the U.S. attorney under those circumstances.
"Karl's far too smart for that. I think he understood the sensitivity," said Peter Fitzgerald, who previously has been on record that Rove warned him in 2001 that the Bush administration would oppose him if he recommended a U.S. attorney candidate from outside Illinois.
Peter Fitzgerald went ahead and picked his namesake from New York, and the White House eventually went along, but not without interference first from Kjellander and others in Illinois, the former senator believes.
"At the end of the day," though, "Rove must not have posed an objection" to Patrick Fitzgerald's appointment, Fitzgerald concluded.
After we reviewed the timeline of the alleged attempt to later get rid of the hard-charging prosecutor, Peter Fitzgerald was even more convinced Rove would have stayed out of it.
Prosecutors said in court Wednesday that Ali D. Ata, who pleaded guilty this week and admitted bribing Rezko for a top state job, is prepared to testify that Rezko told him in 2004 of the effort to thwart the investigation by replacing prosecutor Fitzgerald.
But in late December 2003, the Justice Department picked Patrick Fitzgerald to head up the Valerie Plame-CIA leak investigation, a probe that would later focus on Rove's own role.
Given the situation, "it's not plausible" Rove would have intervened, Peter Fitzgerald said.
Perhaps Rezko was just bragging to Ata, or maybe it was wishful thinking on somebody's part, he theorized. Kjellander and Rove both issued denials.
Arguably, Peter Fitzgerald's assessment isn't quite as objective as usual given his own relationship with Rove, who handled the direct mail for the 1998 campaign that vaulted him past Moseley Braun and into the Senate.
The former senator said he was always well aware of Rove's close relationship with Kjellander, buddies from their days in the Young Republicans, and that it "troubled me greatly."
Before he could face Moseley Braun, Fitzgerald had to beat Illinois Comptroller Loleta Didrickson in a Republican primary in which she had the backing of most of the state's GOP political establishment, including Kjellander and his Springfield tag-team partner, Bill Cellini.
Peter Fitzgerald said he warned Rove many times not to leak any of their campaign strategy to Kjellander.
"As far as I know, Karl was loyal to my campaign," said Fitzgerald, describing his work as "really good . . . really brilliant."
But the former senator recalls that Rove advised against the campaign theme Fitzgerald had devised for himself: running as a reformer who would clean up the "cesspool in Springfield."
Looking back, Rove was probably right, he said. Back then, Illinois voters weren't ready to believe how bad it really is here.
