Gannon/Guckert - Rove: Connecting the dots?

I was just looking over this opinion column by CBS political editor Dotty Lynch. I really haven't done very much coverage of the Gannon/Guckert story, mostly because I think the story is pretty well played out and over by now. Lynch, however, asks a question which I'm sure has occurred to many observers of this sad tale. Was Gannon tied to Karl Rove?

She talks a great deal about some of Guckert's earlier "work" in the South Dakota political scene, and his relationship to the GOP in the highly contested Thune v. Daschel campaign. The ties were so close that, as Lynch reports, one Daschle aide called Guckert "the dumping ground for opposition research."

The one thing she fails to do, however, is to close the deal with any sort of hard evidence of a direct connection between Rove and Guckert. There seem to be no photos, no documents, nor even any eye witnesses that ever place Guckert and Rove in the same room together except for one White House Christmas party. Guckert was clearly in cahoots with the GOP on many levels, but does that automatically put him in Rove's pocket?

This doesn't mean that I'm disputing Lynch's allegation by any means. Karl Rove is a hands on kind of manager, and I think that there is very little, if anything, that goes on behind the scenes in the handling of Bush and Cheney that he's not personally in charge of. He is also legendary, by most accounts, for his ability to "keep his fingerprints off" any dirt work that gets done by the politicos for the Republicans at that level. My only point is to say that you'd think CBS might have learned their lesson from Dan Rather. It's obvious that there is very likely a relationship between Rove and Guckert, but before you go reporting on it in CBS air space, you should probably come up with some sort of solid documentation to back it up.

There is a much longer analysis of this over at Ezra Klein. Also, skippy the bush kangaroo has more.