By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t
In January 2002, at a retreat in West Virginia, Karl Rove gave a PowerPoint presentation to at least 50 managers at the Department of the Interior to discuss polling data, and emphasized the importance of getting Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican, reelected that year.
The way to get Smith reelected to another term, Rove reportedly told the Interior Department officials, would come via the agency’s support of a highly controversial measure: diverting water from the Klamath River Basin to farms in the area that were experiencing unusually dry conditions, thereby supporting the GOP’s agricultural base.
Details of Rove’s involvement in influencing the Interior Department to reverse its policies with regard to the Klamath River basin have been previously reported. But questions about why a political operative like Rove was influencing agricultural and environmental policy decisions, possibly in violation of the law, and whether he pressured cabinet officials to reverse policy to get Republicans reelected were raised again last month during a sworn deposition Rove’s former executive assistant, Susan Ralston, gave to Congressional investigators probing Rove’s role in the US attorney scandal and his and other White House officials connections with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.