The Matt Cooper documents

It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.

  MSNBC article

Double super secret.

Christ.

Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.

That's interesting, because earlier reports had indicated that Rove had signed a waiver to permit people to talk when the shit first hit the fan. Maybe it was a more vague waiver at that time.

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms.

[...]

Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."

[...]

The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

[...]

Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published.

Are they afraid, or are they just shameless WH whores?

For the fourth straight time since his lawyer admitted that Rove was one of Matt Cooper’s sources, no member of the White House press corps asked a question about Rove’s role.

  Think Progress post

There's a comment to this TP post that I think is interesting:

It has long been rumored that Miller is CIA or with some intelligence group within the pentagon. It was rumored, during the invasion of Iraq, that her activities when she was embedded went far beyond reporting. She was identified as actually calling the shots at certain points so that some military within her group wondered who she really was.

This rumor would dovetail with the notion that her source is someone other than Karl Rove. That her source is someone actually in intelligence. The rumor is that Fitzgerald is pursuing a crime far more serious than just revealing the identity of a CIA covert operative.

  full comment

I don't know where this information comes from, because I have not been paying much attention to Judith Miller. It does make sense, however, in light of the fact that she was the "reporter" who got all the exclusive (false) material from Ahmad Chalabi. CIA plants at major newspapers? No doubt. So why not Miller? Or maybe it's not CIA. Maybe it's Rumsfiend's Office of Special Plans or another of the Pentagon's secret intel ops.

Or, maybe she's just another press whore. One of the top tier.

Now, as far as the question that seems to be on many people's minds about why Miller and Cooper were threatened with jail, but Novak was not....

David Corn has an answer.

While other reporters have resolved to be imprisoned to protect their sources—whether these sources deserve protection or not—what has Novak done? The obvious answer: He has squealed.

Yeah, that'd be the obvious one.

Novak either burned his sources, or he named them with their permission. (White House aides, such as Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, have signed waivers allowing reporters to testify about their conversations with them.)

So who was Cooper's recent "source" that gave him permission to talk to the grand jury so he didn't have to go to jail?

Corn thinks that the whole thing will go away with the technicality that Rove and whoever else spilled the beans will claim that they didn't know Valerie Plame was undercover, thereby relieving them of anything illegal in telling Novak about her.

I'm doing a lot of "wondering out loud" here. And I further wonder when Fitzgerald will be ready to bring his case - whatever it's going to be - to court.

It's all going to be a surprise to me.

Except the part about Karl Rove being a lying, mean son-of-a-bitch dirtbag trying to nail Joseph Wilson to the wall.

And I'm still waiting to find out whether White House Press Whore-for-real James Guckert (or whatever his name is) was spending nights at the White House with Buttie or Karl - or maybe both. That story sure suffered sudden death syndrome.

Rove addendum

Let me first repost from an early offering:

"from The Huffington Post

Rove's "I did Not Inhale" Defense

[...]

In a huge admission to Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, Luskin confessed that, well, yes, Rove did talk to Cooper. It is a huge admission in a case where Rove and Luskin have never, before Friday, felt compelled to say a word about Rove's contact with Cooper or anyone else involved in the case.

[...]

So, Rove's defense now hangs on one word—he "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Does that mean Rove simply didn't know Valerie Plame was a covert agent? Or does it just mean that Rove did not know that the CIA was "taking affirmative measures" to hide her identity?

In Luskin's next damage control session with the press, let's see if any reporter can get him to drop the word 'knowingly' from the never-disclosed-classified-information bit.

Let's see if any reporter tries."

And now, I think we're going to see...

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan took questions from the press today aboard Air Force One. No one asked him about Karl Rove’s role in outing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Yesterday, McClellan held a press conference and no one asked him about Karl Rove’s role in outing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame.

In fact, no member of the White House press corps has asked McClellan about Rove’s role in the Plame outing since his lawyer admitted on Saturday that Rove was one of Matt Cooper’s sources. (And there are plenty of good questions to ask.)

Why is the White House press corps ignoring this story?

   article

Yeah. Why?

Plame twist

Matt Cooper will testify. Judith Miller chooses jail time. And....just who told what to whom?

In unusually blunt language, Fitzgerald told Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan that Cooper and Miller pretend that journalists have a broader right to protect confidential sources than lawyers, presidents and law enforcement officers.

"Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality -- no one in America is," he wrote.

[...]

Fitzgerald has repeatedly said he already knows the identity of Miller's source and that person has relieved Miller of her duty to protect the source's anonymity. Yesterday, he suggested Miller will likely spend time in jail thinking about "whether the interests of journalism at large, and even more broadly, the proper conduct of government, are truly served" by her continued refusal to discuss her sources.

[...]

On Saturday, Rove's attorney said that Rove spoke with Cooper during the critical period in July 2003, just after Wilson's piece appeared, when reporters were calling the White House to ask questions about Wilson's assertions. But he said that Rove did not reveal Plame's identity and that Fitzgerald has assured him Rove is not a target of the investigation.

Fitzgerald may learn more details from Cooper's notes. Sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials -- not the other way around -- that Wilson was married to Plame, a CIA employee.

  WaPo article

Miller goes to jail; Slimebucket Rove still free

Judith Miller, of The New York Times, was going to prison for refusing to reveal who gave her the name of former CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Fellow reporter Matt Cooper, of Time magazine, is a free man after abruptly changing his mind and agreeing to testify about the source of Plame's identity. As recently as last week, Cooper refused to hand over his e-mails to and notes on his source. Over his objections, Time magazine gave them to the prosecutor anyway.

"Even though the prosecutor has all that information, I was prepared to go and remain in civil contempt because I had given my word to my source for two years, which I have kept," Cooper said after the hearing.

"This morning, in what can only be described as a stunning set of developments, that source agreed to give me a specific, personal and unambiguous waiver to speak before the grand jury," Cooper told reporters outside the Washington, D.C., courthouse.

Miller was taken into federal custody, where she will remain until October or until she agrees to tell a grand jury her source, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said. She had faced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify.

  KHON2 article

Slimey Bottom's defense plans

Lawrence O'Donnell, the MSNBC analyst who first broke the Rove/Cooper link on Friday, wrote on the Huffington Post blog today, that Rove's lawyer had "launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client 'never knowingly disclosed classified information.' Knowingly.

"Not coincidentally, the word 'knowing' is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent 'knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States.'"

  Editor & Publisher article

I did not inhale

from The Huffington Post

Rove's "I did Not Inhale" Defense

[...]

In a huge admission to Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, Luskin confessed that, well, yes, Rove did talk to Cooper. It is a huge admission in a case where Rove and Luskin have never, before Friday, felt compelled to say a word about Rove's contact with Cooper or anyone else involved in the case.

[...]

So, Rove's defense now hangs on one word—he "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Does that mean Rove simply didn't know Valerie Plame was a covert agent? Or does it just mean that Rove did not know that the CIA was "taking affirmative measures" to hide her identity?

In Luskin's next damage control session with the press, let's see if any reporter can get him to drop the word 'knowingly' from the never-disclosed-classified-information bit.

Let's see if any reporter tries.

Karl and Karma

[...]

Since the late 1970s, we have watched Karl Rove push so hard on ethical boundaries that he has turned lying into a conventional political tactic. Instead of being prosecuted or humiliated, he has risen in the Republican Party. And there are already signs he is a few steps ahead of the federal investigators trying to resolve the mysteries of the Valerie Plame affair.

[...]

Positioning is Rove's favorite political sport and that's the purpose of this admission. It's a metaphorical "so what" shrug of the shoulders. But the sub text of Rove's words shows another strategy. The presidential advisor undoubtedly knows he is guilty of a federal crime but, for obvious political reasons, he needs it to be something less than treason. Perjury will be his default position. The political harm to be done to his president and his party for a conviction of treason is incalcuable.

And the federal investigators appear to be making a case for perjury. The American Prospect has already reported that, in his 2003 appearances before the federal grand jury, Rove said he had not spoken to reporters about Valerie Plame's identity until after her name was published in Robert Novak's column. Unfortunately for Rove, early reports indicate that the e-mails being turned over to the federal prosecutor by Time magazine apparently show Rove was in communication with reporter Matt Cooper well in advance of Novak's piece.

[...]

The simple, unavoidable truth is that Karl Rove orchestrated the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. No one who knows this man and has watched him work has any doubt that Rove came up with the idea of the leak and then set the plan in motion. Having watched him as he leaked, lied, obfuscated, and denied for political goals over the past 25 years, my own conviction of Rove's involvement is unwavering. He has a history of seeking revenge and the Texas landscape is cluttered with political cadavers he left behind before departing for the big show. In every campaign Rove has managed, there have been questionable tactics and unethical attacks. None of them has happened by accident because nothing that happens in Rove's world is accidental. And neither was the eposure of Ms. Plame.

Karl Rove was fired from the 1992 re-election campaign of Bush Sr. for allegedly leaking a negative story about Bush loyalist/fundraiser Robert Mosbacher to Novak.

[...]

The motive in question? Mosbacher had given Rove only a quarter of the $1 million spent on direct mail contracts for the 92 campaign; Rove, who in 1988 had the entire direct mail contract, therefore had an axe to grind with Mosbacher.

[...]

Although Novak and Rove continue to deny Rove was the source of the leak, Mosbacher recently stated "I still believe he did it."

  Bust Bob.com

Exposing Karl Rove

Karl Rove aka Karl Roverer