Does Karl Rove have Nazi family ties...? (And more on the current scandal.)

You probably already know today's big Rovegate news: A Bloomberg story claims that Rove lied to a Grand Jury about the way he came to know Valerie Wilson's "secret identity." Rove's version of events -- that he learned about Wilson/Plame from reporters -- has been staunchly denied by the reporters themselves.

Murray Waas made much the same point the day before Bloomberg ran the story:

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

Goodness. Does this mean Karl Rove (or -- horrible thought! -- his lawyer) might have lied to us via that recent leak to the New York Times?

If you want to place the current scandal in an interesting historical light, you may want to check out this older (2003) story from Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. They discuss the Nazi family ties of several key Republicans -- including Karl Rove:

...Rove's grandfather was Karl Heinz Roverer, the Gauleiter of Oldenburg. Roverer was Reich-Statthalter -- Nazi State Party Chairman -- for his region. He was also a partner and senior engineer in the Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurburo A. G. engineering firm, which built the Birkenau death camp, at which tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, dissidents and other were slaughtered en masse

An unfortunate coincidence? Arguably.

But note that Governor Schwarzenegger has a similar "coincidence" in his family history -- as does our president himself. The Bush family fortune derives, in no small measure, from Prescott Bush's business dealings with Nazis, which continued even after Pearl Harbor.

Rove...Schwarzenegger...Bush. What was it Ian Fleming used to say? I think it was something along the lines of Three times is enemy action...