Rove Leaker...!

One quick post before I crash for several hours picking up a thread touched on over the past week by Jigga-

Newsweek is to publish the outing of Karl Rove as the leaker of the identity of the CIA agent Plame for political purposes:

The newsmagazine has obtained documentary evidence that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was indeed a key source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper and that Rove--prior to the publication of the Bob Novak column that first publicly disclosed Valerie Wilson/Plame as a CIA official--told Cooper that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife apparently worked at the CIA and was involved in Joseph Wilson's now-controversial trip to Niger.

Oh this could really get interesting, eh?

Nice picture, to boot!

-----
UPDATE!
The Washington Post brings this story to light in a piece that The Administration clearly would have tried to push out there last Friday, if it hadn't been for that damned unamerican Hurricaine Dennis:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove spoke with at least one reporter about Valerie Plame's role at the CIA before she was identified as a covert agent in a newspaper column two years ago, but Rove's lawyer said yesterday that his client did not identify her by name.

Rove had a short conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper on July 11, 2003, three days before Robert D. Novak publicly exposed Plame in a column about her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson had come under attack from the White House for his assertions that he found no evidence Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger and that he reported those findings to top administration officials. Wilson publicly accused the administration of leaking his wife's identity as a means of retaliation.

...
Rove's conversation with Cooper could be significant because it indicates a White House official was discussing Plame prior to her being publicly named and could lead to evidence of how Novak learned her name.

Although the information is revelatory, it is still unknown whether Rove is a focus of the investigation. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, has said that Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has told him that Rove is not a target of the probe. Luskin said yesterday that Rove did not know Plame's name and was not actively trying to push the information into the public realm.

Instead, Luskin said, Rove discussed the matter -- under the cloak of secrecy -- with Cooper at the tail end of a conversation about a different issue. Cooper had called Rove to discuss other matters on a Friday before deadline, and the topic of Wilson came up briefly. Luskin said Cooper raised the question.

"Rove did not mention her name to Cooper," Luskin said. "This was not an effort to encourage Time to disclose her identity. What he was doing was discouraging Time from perpetuating some statements that had been made publicly and weren't true."

Whoa! Extra, extra! Rove's the Leaker, in this special Monday Morning edition!

Also note the official line here: "Well, he told Cooper, but he didn't tell him, uh... heh heh." Of course the important information that Rove provided was not Wilson's wife's name; anybody can get that. What was important was that Rove told Cooper that Wilson's wife was an operative of the CIA. Vital. Any even mediocre investigator with a simple curiousity could pull up Ambassador Joseph Wilson and figure out the name of his wife.

The way this story unfolds this week will be a fascinating issue. Keep those flames stoked, kids...



Keep up the flames, folks. Time to roast us some Rove.