The "knowingly" part from Rove's attorney is as good as an acknowledgement that Rove was in the "chain of revelation" of the leak. So, if we assume that Rove's attorney is correct in saying that Rove did not tell a reporter that Plame was a CIA agent, then who did he tell to tell a reporter? Some of you who are in Washington and close to the action, help us flesh out the possibilities, please?

the "knowingly," of course, is the key word in legalese in this case.

that said, me? i think that fitzgerald is trying to figure out who first spilled the beans on plame. My guess is that he's already concluded that rove et al determined to smear wilson. My further guess is that he's already concluded that the word went out internally to figure out how to smear wilson. and my final guess is that someone internally didn't konw the full story of plame but knew she was cia, passed that word back, and the smear machine started passing it around on background.

well, no, my final guess is that there is, in fitzgerald's office, a big blackboard in which all known contacts are being charted, with the goal to find "patient zero."

PS. what i don't get is that isikoff claims that rove provided a waiver (like libby), so what exactly was cooper protecting?

How about this: "I can't tell you anything about Joe Wilson's wife, because it's classified, but you might want to give a call to that NYTimes reporter, you know, Judy Miller."

There is good reason to protect an annonymous source even after they've given you leave to use their name -- how do you know that they haven't been coerced or threatened into giving up their annonymity?  And, when somebody wants your annonymous source, they'll say all sorts of untrue things to get it, like... "We already know who it is... they already told us who they are... etc. etc."  Not saying that, or anything worse, is what's happening here, but, unless you're sure that your source is giving up annonymity of their own free will, you shouldn't reveal and you have to stick to the original agreement.  Ideally, it should never be on the journalist.  If an annonymous source wants to give up protection, they can make the announcement themselves.  It was Woodward who told us who Deep Throat was, it was Deep Throat.

Where does the Ari Fleischer resignation fit into this story? At the time of his resignation, reporters were speculating that his resignation was about protecting Bush. Or, was perhaps Fleischer being asked to do something he knew was illegal (out Plame) and opted out. Where does Scott McClellan fit into the picture? As a new press secretary (with no qualms about lying/spinning as we have seen repeatedly), would he be so eager to impress that he might be the leaker?

    It is possible that the statement is just a lawyerly covering butt.  Personally I think it was a perfectly "knowing" and coordinated operation, and it is quite possible Bush himself knew about it --- I am reminded of the "just remember to say 'I can't recall'", a lie that can't be proven, used successfully in Contragate.   The Bush Administration is not above indignantly persecuting the press for something they themselves did deliberately.  It's in their dna.

          &nbsp
; As for saying that TIME's actions were 'damnable', I think that's uncharitable.  I would have liked TIME to stand up, but they are an institution, that does need to survive.  People condemn Pope Pius XII for not standing up to Hitler when Rome was occupied by the Nazis.  When someone can and would readily reduce you to charred rubble with skeletons, a steward of an institution has reason to think twice.   We also have vastly different standards that we apply in theory and in practice for bravery.  One example:  on Saturday Night Live, oh maybe 10 or 12 years ago, there was a skit about a woman unwilling to go to Iran to try to rescue her daughter from the Ayatollah.  The mother was presented as hilarious for her cravenness.  In real life, family members and others are unwilling to risk standing up to the system in the US for concerns of similar magnitude, and such is at least tacitly accepted.  My personal values are somewhere in the middle, and suggest that we should preach the same values (SNL) as we practice (real life) or try to close the gap as much as possible.

      In the case of TIME, they are no match for the Courts.  The latter, as with unions, can impose huge fines that double every day to require compliance.  It is asking institutions to be willing to commit organizational suicide, with potential additional risks of suits from stockholders, in order to stand up for principle.  This is the same USA where not only did no one file a class action suit on behalf of all the disenfranchised black voters in Fla 2000, but a similarly malodorous class action was not dared on behalf of all those voters disenfranchised effectively by discouragement due to a deliberate pattern of denying adequate voting machines in scores of Democratic precincts across the state.  And no Supreme Court had ruled in a way to require fines.  TIME could have started down the road a little bit, but the point is was futile -- but these other things were not, and were politically important to raise, and were never legitimately forbidden, even by the procedure of forbidding them.  Americans are more craven in the face of underground repression, which has no procedural legitimacy, than in the face of actual decisions, which at least have the grace of a type of legitimacy.

I would add that I have quite substantial personal experience in defying such illegitimate exercise of power, and facing the consequences, and in seeing others unwilling to raise a finger or even modestly inconvenience themselves.  There are many honorable exceptions, but they are exceptions

Also George Tenet resigned on June 3, and Pravitt, the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations resigned the following day.

The Tenet and Pravitt resignations were in 2004, a year later.

The thing I was getting at with this timeline is that it appears the revelation that the Niger documents used in Bush's SOTU were probably forged set in motion a scheme to discredit Joe Wilson that so freightened Ari Fleischer that he decided to leave the administration 10 days later. What meetings took place to plan the discrediting effort, and who was present at those meetings. It seems obvious that Fleischer was disturbed enough to resign abruptly. White House reporters had no inkling about Fleisher's resignation, which itself is a bit unusual.

Yeah you're right, Tenet's and Pavitt resignations,
and Bush and Cheney lawyered up due to the Plame case all at the same time.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/02/politics/main620810.sht
ml

As a practicing attorney - not a iitigator nor a criminal lawyer - I am pretty confident that the "knowingly" phrase attributed to Mr. Luskin can fairly be taken as a carefully worked out element of Mr. Rove's defense of anticipated criminal charges.  It is likely, given the pace of Fitzgerlad's investigation, that Rove and Luskin have been working on his defense for some time.  Most criminal offenses require proof of intent to violate the law.  The opposite of knowingly is unknowingly, or negligently or unintentionally which may well be the lynchpin of Rove's legal defense.
We know that Rove is smart, cynical and ruthless.  Just as Bush has "plausible deniability" so Rove probably positioned himself for this defense - saying enough to "out" Plame directly or indirectly but enough to cause someone else to do his wishes.

That's why we should not let ourselves get too fixated on Rove. By Rove's own admission, he engaged in trying to smear Wilson by spreading around his wife's name (he only claims he didn't start it) as a "fair game" retaliation for Wilson's pointing out that Bush and team were lying to make the case for war!
Rove has confirmed that the DSM was true!
That is the impeachable offense.
This isn't about Rove in particular.
This is about the DSM and how the Plame affair proves it true.
This is about the end of the Bush/PNAC empire builders.

The PNAC/DSM/Plame tutorial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_street_memo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/printrn20030714.sh
tml

1. The PNAC Clinton letter proves the admin had a hard-on to go to war before they ever took office.
2. The Plame affair, regardless of who was the initial leak, proves that the allegations made in the DSM were true. This admin was so pre-set for war, they wouldn't even hesitate to smear the name of a covert agent as revenge, Rove's idea of fair game, to keep the truth from getting in the way. All Wilson did was point out that the admin., specifically Bush in his 03 state of the union (his 12 words", was lying to make the case for war.

This should be the end of shrub!

Even if Rove was not 'Patient 0', he may have had the sensitive knowledge (of Plame's undercover status) provided to him under circumstances that do not equate to public disclosure. He is the (deputy) WH Chief of Staff after all, and as such presumably is cleared to receive sensitive information that the will be shown to the President.

The emphasis on "knowingly" also implies that Rove may be planning to rely for his defense on denying that he knew it was sensitive, rather than that he was the first to publicly disclose it.

Regardless, if this is the case, he <i>should</i> have known, or made sure, before tauntingly labelling her "fair game". I'm sure a Special Prosecutor could get to the bottom of this, with no need for the standard procedure of using the "persuasive" services available by rendering him to Egypt. 

I suspect if any charge comes forward, it will be one of perjury.

My question goes back to a baaic question from years ago:
" What did the President know, and when did he know it?"

You have to wonder what Rove told the President about the case in leading up to the recent revelations. Either he lied to Bush, or Bush was aware of his involvement. If he lied, even if not guilty of a crime, in a sane  world it would be "Hit the Road." If the President was clued in...I don't have a clue but I leave that for the legal begals on here.

Fortunately, if this story gains legs in the coming days, the
G-8 Summit is going to provide ample opportunity for the press to question the President...talk about having to go off message.
As they say, God can work in mischevious ways.

Petr, You summed it up perfectly. When a higher-up sabotages national security for any reason there's no "protection of sources" issue here.

I haven't seen the same exact claims in any two sources, but it seems Plame had charge of something big in Saudi Arabia, apparently keeping an eye on all the players in the Saudi oil fields--the place you'd reasonably expect to see those with the big bucks and terrorist plans.

If "everybody" knew she was CIA, as some Bush apologists say, there's a proof our entire intelligence arm is in deep trouble and completely mismanaged.

Jim P

I wonder if the information that Rove might be facing some further potentially criminal inquiry over the Plame case has anything to do with his decision to go nuclear in front of that crowd in Albany the other day?

Isn't Rove's best defense (in the court of public opinion) along the lines of "this is a charge trumped up by his political enemies, those who hate America etc?  The Liberals will stop at nothing to bring me down."  Sort of like what I'd imagine the French general staff would do at veterans gatherings and military academy graduations during the Dreyfuss Affair. 

Okay, as long as we are considering conspiracies and motives surrounding the Plame affair ...

It seems almost certain that Karl Rove has been identified as one of the two White House "top officials" who outed Plame. It seems likely that Robert Novak has been given immunity for his testimony (how else to explain his absence from facing jail time with Miller and Cooper), and there is a good chance that he named Rove and the other person, who may just be someone who implicates Bush as being in on the plot to out Plame. That may explain why the Fitzgerald investigation is going to such lengths to get what is probably corroborative testimony. If you are going to take down a presidency, you had better have irrefutable proof, and that may be what is causing all of the interest in the Miller and Cooper testimonies. Of course, if this leads to the downfall of the Bush presidency, this would leave Dick Cheney as president, which may have been the game plan all along. After all, it was Dick Cheney who put himself in the line of succession as Vice President.

"...witnesses sympathetic  to the White House..."

There's something frightening in that twist of words repeated a number of times in the article.

I remember reading a few days ago, the reason the prosectuor was hounding the two reporters is he needs two separate, distinct sources has something to do wih Congress requiring two sources to prove intent, or something of that nature. 

What concerns me is, imagine if Rove and the Bush Admin have a select cadre of  "...witnesses sympathetic to the White House..." that they can offer special tidbits of info. Being "...witnesses sympathetic to the White House..." implies that the person leaking the info has a high degree of confidence that  they "never knowingly disclosed classified information".

It's disturbing to realize there are people in the Government and public sympathizers who are willing to manipulate the Law to further their greed and ambitions.

Without a responsible governing body within the halls of Congress, Bush and his team will have the run of the field and no one will be able to call foul.

I'll bet the the wheel of deciet is turning furiously at the moment and this will all blow over within a few weeks. Nothing will happen and no one will get hurt, but Time, Inc. will have a tough row to hoe for the rest of the Bush tour

Something I just got out of rereading the Isikoff article:  Luskin says that Rove signed releases for several reporters.  That presumably would be someone like Matthews, who he spoke to after the Rove article.  Given that Cooper cooperated with the Grand Jury on Libby after Libby sent a release form to him, I can only surmise that Rove never signed off on a release for Cooper.  Obviously, that is because there were things he told Cooper he didn't want out. 

Perhaps Rove is protecting Bush. There is evidence Bush will gladly engage in petty personal attacks(no links).
(1)The open-mic "asshole" comment to Cheney about the reporter during the 2000 campaign.
(2)The professor from Yale commenting on his tendency to start rumor campaigns against anyone who embarrassed him in class.
(3)The story regarding his immersion into the details of the personal attacks on JK.

Probably wishful thinking, but this might help explain the time span of this investigation & the lack of information.