It’s 3/1 against him being indicted before December 31st

Following tonight’s sensational news that Lewis Libby, chief-of-staff to Dick Cheney, has resigned after being charged with perjury the focus is now on Bush’s closest adviser and architect of last November’s victory, Karl Rove. He has not been charged but the case has not been closed.

The Dublin-based international betting exchange, Tradesports, has a market on whether Rove will be indicted before the end of the year.The price is about 3/1 against this happening.

The heart of the issue is Rove’s role in journalists being told that the wife of a prominent critic of the White House’s Iraq policy was a covert CIA agent.

The affair began in July 2003, two months after the “ending” of the war in Iraq, when the woman’s husband, Joseph Wilson, wrote an article in the New York Times in which he accused the White House of twisting intelligence.

This all happened at the same time as the David Kelly case exploded in the UK and has a number of similarities – the war, how intelligence was used and alleged secret briefings which revealed the identity of Government employees

This has come at the end of a very bad week for the President. A couple of days we were just about to publish a story about a betting market on whether Bush Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, would get the job. Alas the White House announcement came just as we were completing the piece.

Mike Smithson