This is right on, obviously. But I would just add two minor points:

in fact, even Bob Novak doesn’t claim Richard Armitage gave him â€then name–that that remains one of the items in Novak’s column that had a virgin birth.

Novak actually claimed that Armitage gave him Wilson’s wife’s first name, but not her last name. Armitage claims that he did not mention her first name at all to Novak. It’s a puzzling discrepancy, and I am inclined to believe Armitage because 1)he didn’t give Woodward her name when he blew Plame’s cover to him back in June; 2)it is mighty convenient that Novak would say he didn’t get her last name from Armitage because, assuming the basis of Armitage’s knowledge was the INR memo, he would have identified her as Valerie Wilson, not Plame – and Novak would probably know in any case that Armitage would be unlikely to have used Plame; and 3)Novak might have been worried about explaining why he gave either or both Wilson’s friend on the street and Rove her first name – if he knew he had done that, he’d need to account for where he got her name, since he says he didn’t look in Who’s Who until after all his interviews (although why he couldn’t just say he looked up Who’s Who before he ever talked to any of them is a good question – maybe one of his assistants was involved?).

This, I believe, is a case of Rove believing his own (or Libby and Cheney’s) propaganda).

Basically agree, but worth remembering that Libby and Cheney probably got that information from the CIA, which put it that – apparently mistaken – way in their April 2003 congressional notification which both Cheney and Libby read in early June 2003, after CIA faxed it to OVP.

One other thing. There were all kinds of news stories, obviously sourced to Luskin, published back in 2005 about where Rove learned about Wilson’s wife before he talked with Novak. I don’t see why that shouldn’t be part of what Fitzgerald unredacted in his recently released 2004 affidavits.

Reading what Cooper had to say later on in the show made me realize something about the utter goofiness of Rove’s story, which has been sort of noted somewhere (in Hubris, I think): whatever happened with respect to Rove’s acknowledgment of the conversation with Cooper, Rove basically had to tell a story where, when he confirmed for Novak on the 8th or 9th, he was just passing along what he had heard about Wilson’s wife and he didn’t know if it was true, but then, having talked with Novak and Libby, he became confident enough to pass information about Wilson’s wife along to Cooper as fact on the 11th. The story that was published back in 2005 was that Rove was uncertain where he first heard about Wilson’s wife, but he thought it was in a social setting, and from a reporter or two, though Libby was involved in there somewhere (before or after was often left ambiguous), and there was the conversation with Libby. So on that basis, he felt he had learned enough to pass it along to Cooper volunteered as fact.

This is weird enough to begin with. But two further features. First, there remains the question of what Rove testified he learned from Libby, and when – did he testify that Libby was passing on information from journalists? or simply as fact? And second, this may be part of why it was significant about Novak’s column going up on the 11th. Even though the timing doesn’t really work, Rove may have said he learned from Novak or from Hohlt on the 11th or before that he had a column coming stating that WIlson’s wife was involved in his trip and so forth, so that Rove took it as fact. The trouble with that is that then Rove couldn’t claim he didn’t know it could be traced back to official government sources.

One last thing (for now): It’s worth underlining, several times, just how extraordinary it is that Rove denies that he was Novak’s confirming source, when the simple fact of the matter is he was.

One of the fascinating things about this is that in denying that he was, Rove is essentially compelled to be making the claim that Novak performed bad and irresponsible journalism.

But how much confidence should we put in Gregory’s claim that Novak had contemporaneous notes? It sounds plausible, but as far as I know neither Novak nor anyone else has ever publicly stated as much, unless I missed it.

Just to add:

…according to some dedicated investigative reporters at the respected Italian newspaper La Repubblica, they [forged Niger documents] resurfaced [after they had already been discredited] before long at a very suspicious meeting. This meeting occurred in December 2001 in Rome, and included Michael Ledeen, an associate of Defense Department Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith and a key figure in the White House’s war-propaganda program, Larry Franklin, a top Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East analyst who later pleaded guilty to passing classified information to two employees of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), convicted Iraqi bank swindler Ahmed Chalabi, then head of the CIA-created Iraqi National Congress, and Harold Rhode of the sinister Defense Department Office of Special Plans, that office set up by the White House and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld….

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0306-38.htm

That there’s not a laugh track playing any time one of these smarmy hair-oil salesmen opens his mouth is an indictment of TV â€journalism.â€

el Kabong

Please let’s not get started with that again. Those very reporters have said there is absolutely no evidence tying Ledeen to the forgeries; Laura Rozen has reported the same. The passage you cite also contains some errors. So please let’s not.

Rove also had some really rather remarkable things to say on Fox News today. Interestingly, Rove does not seem to understand why he got off the hook on charges for the underlying conduct:

WALLACE: But do you think that you should even have been discussing a CIA operative?

ROVE: Look. There are 30-some-odd thousand people who work at the CIA. I did not know that — and I’m not even certain to this day whether she fit the definition of a CIA operative.

WALLACE: I want to take you back…

ROVE: I would remind you also if she were, I suspect that the special prosecutor would have done something different about both Mr. Richard Armitage, who was the person who had an extensive conversation with Mr. Novak about this, and would have done something different about me.

Two other things of particular note. Despite the fact that Rove says everything he said today was already in the public record, there is some news on what it was he told McClellan, and the President:

WALLACE: Question: Did you mislead the present and Scott McClellan?

ROVE: No, I didn’t. In fact, the president said classified information. I was very clear right from the beginning on this with both the counsel’s office and with the FBI.And look. If I had leaked classified information, Peter (sic) Fitzgerald would have done something different. And what I told Scott McClellan was I didn’t know her name, didn’t know her status at the CIA.

It’s not news that Rove hung his job defense on a legalism about classified information, just as Libby tried to do publicly. But it is news that he told McClellan only that he didn’t know her name, as distinct from her identity as a CIA employee, however identified (whether as Valerie Plame, Valerie Wilson, or Wilson’s wife or whatever); and that he didn’t know her status at the CIA, as distinct from the fact of her CIA employment. I can’t wait until Maguire gets a load of that – he has spent years and years complaining about NBC’s public statement about Russert’s knowledge or non-knowledge about Plame, which played exactly the same games. (I know, I know, Maguire will claim the point is that the stakes whether each was being casuistic and legalistic are different in each case.)

Finally, there is this gem:

WALLACE: Matt Cooper, the second reporter you’re talking about, who then worked for Time, says you told him that Joe Wilson’s wife, who worked for the CIA, authorized the trip.

ROVE: Which I had been told by a reporter.

Now, either Rove is saying he had been told that by Novak, in which case something doesn’t make sense: how could he have told Novak he’d heard that too and serve as Novak’s confirming source if Novak was the basis for his telling that to Cooper? or alternately, Rove is claiming that he was told that originally before talking with Novak by another reporter. Who? Again, what was reported in 2005 was that Rove thought he had heard it from one or two reporters, but couldn’t recall whom. We know it’s not Woodward. The only other reporter we know had knowledge of Plame’s CIA identity by that point (that is, before Rove talks with Novak) is Judith Miller, and she strikes me as an unlikely source for Rove. I suppose there’s always Cliff May, but he strikes me as an unlikely candidate. So who?

Swopa

Sorry, the italics are my fault. That’s a good connection on the Fineman column and Lippert – I’d always wondered where Fineman got that. Interestingly, recall that Fineman too confirmed hearing the same thing as 1×2×6 on Hardball on September 29, 2003 (I believe that’s the date). Though he sources it to someone int he White House, which is significant, whom he considers reliable, he may have been encouraged to believe the story by what he seems to have known from Lippert. And i think I agree with your point here, though it seems that Cooper testified that he thought he had a source indirectly via another reporter – though he too may have been confused and then may have been deliberately ambiguous in testifying at trial in order not to give the defense an opening it didn’t want anyway. So in other words, it served everybody’s purposes for Cooper to be maddeningly ambiguous at trial about whether he was told about Wilson’s wife by Dickerson.

However, this puzzles me:

As Russert testified at the trial, NBC didn’t have any such discussions before the Novak column, because no one there knew about Wilson’s wife working for the CIA.

Given your famous 1×2×6 theory, shouldn’t you be committed to the notion that someone at NBC *did* hear on July 12, since Fleischer and Bartlett divided up the calls where Fleischer was going to call the papers (apaprently meaning the Times and the Post) and Bartlett was going to call the Sunday talk shows, so they could see what they were all working on in this regard? Or will you save the theory with the notion that between them they made 6 miscellaneous calls and we don’t need Bartlett’s presumed call to MTP to get to 1×2×6?

But emptywheel, that doesn’t make sense in the case of Ari, he was completely untouchable except for perjury, why take the risk? I’m not saying Fleischer wasn’t lying, but it can’t be explained by drawing attention away from the leaks that matter unless he was doing it purely and simply for the sake of others. And why would the Pincus leak be one that mattered, anyway, more than the others, that is? In Libby’s case, it’s clear, he pushed everything as late as possible, and drew a blank over Miller. But Fleischer claimed to have leaked earlier than he actually did (assuming he did not leak to Gregory-Lippert-Dickerson). Among other things, Libby’s story meant that he was leaking only after Novak’s column had already gone on the wires – and even though he testified that he did not know about Novak’s column actually being out, still he may have calculated that no prosecutor is going to go after him (or the VP) for passing around information that is already sitting in hundreds of newsrooms around the country. (And he couldn’t admit to knowing about the Novak column either because then he would have to admit he was aware that there were official sources for the information about Wilson’s wife, not just journalistic gossip.)

Given your famous 1×2×6 theory, shouldn’t you be committed to the notion that someone at NBC *did* hear on July 12, since Fleischer and Bartlett divided up the calls where Fleischer was going to call the papers (apparently meaning the Times and the Post) and Bartlett was going to call the Sunday talk shows…

I don’t think Russert/NBC covered up — or would try to cover up — knowing about Plame before Novak’s column, nor would Fitzgerald (who had Bartlett’s testimony, and the AF1 phone records) build a case around Russert’s lack of knowledge when there was evidence to the contrary. Thus I presume that whoever Bartlett called, he failed to talk to anyone at NBC.

I posted a video on YouTube regarding just how deplorable of forgeries those documents were:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NCH4CB5w3c

Turk–

You nailed it.

Even if Joe Wilson lied about everything, it does not making outing a CIA agent not treason.

The Rep’s continued return to the story of how they were â€victims†of Wilson shows how blind they are to what that story demonstrates about their petty vindictive personalities.

Why does Novak keep claiming that it was on July 8 that Rove confirmed? All you have to do is go on the internet and you will find scores of references that Novak testified the Rove confirmed on July 9. Why isn’t he being investigated for perjury?

i like 1st repub 14th star’s
comment.

who was â€first†is just a defense lawyer’s game and a p.r. person’s distraction.

the whig’s who leaked plame’s name would have violated the law if they leaked her identity to their spouse, let alone discussed it with anyone who MIGHT put that name in the public domain.

Karl Rove is wrong about the British Butler Commission, too.

Over on this side of the Atlantic, the uranium allegation started life as a simple deduction, based on incomplete and speculative reporting following Wissam al-Zahawie’s visit to Niger.

The British solicited and subsequently obtained fresh intelligence of questionable legitimacy in 2002 (early drafts of the British WMD dossier explicitly state that Iraq â€purchased†large quantities of uranium, not that they had merely â€sought†it).

MI6 did not immediately and completely discount this evidence, despite repeated warnings from their colleagues at CIA, but they agreed to tone down the language (it was all brokered with some difficulty). [2]

When the IAEA exposed the fraud at the United Nations in early 2003, the British government ran away from the fake stuff as fast as possible and the Tony Blair appointed Butler Review panel sought to lessen its significance, but it’s clear enough from early drafts of the dossier and the Taylor ISC Report that the British partially based their judgment on unauthentic documents.

And contrary to what Karl Rove asserted in the interview, the Butler Committee did not say the intelligence was well-founded – they said the British government’s assessment and immediate statements were well-founded, at that time.

â€We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded.â€

Is there a difference? Yes, a big one. Why? Because we now know that the British government received written summaries of the unauthentic documentary evidence in 2002, but the British did not get to examine the source documents upon which they were based until 2003.

Therefore, somewhat cryptically, the Butler Report concludes:

â€d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.â€

The committee’s reasoning goes something like this: Even though a major plank of the British Government’s case was riddled with woodworm, because British officials were not aware of the infestation at the time their assessment was made, the fact of the rot is irrelevant. Ministers acted in â€good faithâ€.

One final note. The Butler Committee was appointed by, and reported to, Tony Blair. Only one political party supported their work. Tony Blair’s.

[1] http://tinyurl.com/hgj8j
[2] http://tinyurl.com/34ewjg

No matter how you slice it, â€I heard that too†from a senior White House adviser is confirmation. Period. It is a separate disclosure of classified information. I suspect that any reporter or intelligence analyst would confirm that the confirmation is as valuable as the initial lead.

Rove goes to great lengths to imply that whatever it is he heard, he heard it from someone outside government, irrespective of whether they were authorized to be in possession of that information. That’s a possible interpretation of his intentionally vague language. It is, of course, not the only meaning. Rove could have heard it from any number of people in or outside governmemt. The language, almost passive in form and certainly in intent, suggests Rove played no active part in the discovering or releasing the information. EW’s timelines alone suggests that patently false.

Mr. Rove should be concerned about more than the Wilson’s appeal. He should still be concerned about Fitzgerald following any leads that come to his attention, including any from Rove himself.

Funny, isn’t it, how all this doesn’t matter.

It wasn’t Karl Rove or even Scooter Libby whose loose lips produced the 2003 Bob Novak story that first mentioned Valerie Plame as a CIA employee. It was the State Department’s Richard Armitage, who was no friend of Rove or Libby or Bush.

Why did Armitage blow the whistle on Plame? Because everyone in Washington was wondering why in God’s name the CIA sent that Democratic political hack Joe Wilson to Niger in 2002.

A year later, with Wilson distorting his Niger findings on Saddam seeking uranium, of course we needed to know that Wilson’s wife’s CIA job had at least a little to do with the CIA choosing him for that mission.

â€Sowing†confusion, Jeff?

Thanks for those annotations, Marcy, and for this follow-up discussion.

Here is what I wish Gregory had asked: If Wilson’s op ed was so far off, why didn’t someone in the Administration write an op ed in reply?

No one ever asks that.

Jeff, I think I would have left it at â€Frank Warner is really out of itâ€. Jeebus, even a casual Libby post attracts the loons like crazed ants to a picnic.

BIGBROTHER says:
Hello;
There is no IRAQ anymore. Bush have divided it back to the pre 1920 British model. An article in the NYT by seven 82nd Airborne non coms gives the most realistic evaluation of the American occupation of Iraq, the dissolving of their government the tribal/religious fractionalization and the emergence of a possible Shite state aligned with Iran who were defined as the â€Axis of Evil†by the Bush administration. Bushco has caused the political demise of a nation, destroyed the infrastructure and caused 4 million people to be homeless, 600,000 Iraqis slaughtered not to mention the death of 3831 of our brave troops doing their duty. He has elevated nuclear tensions an armed the disarranyed factions. Worse even yet he has destabilized the whole region, caused Americas international and national reputation to be in the sewer with torture and disregard for the Geneva Convention, and wasted our national treasury creating a mountain of debt unparalleled in our history. He has politicized our Judiciary and all branches of government illegally and against the Constitution. In deregulating the economy by appointing industry corporate officials the foxes guarding the hen house, he has pushed the economy to the brink of recession (â€It’s the economy stupidâ€). He has brought our military to the breaking point while threatening to start another war with Iran. He has let escape Osama Bin Laden the chief of Jihad terrorism against USA and the instigator of 9/11. He has reduced our liberties and spying on us by satellite and our daily telecommunication which may be available to the RNC we do not know as he has thumbed his nose at Constitutional Congressional oversight by invoking â€Executive Privilege†to stonewall thc U.S. congress and has installed an Attorney General and the Justice department as a â€Firewall†against ’We the Peopleâ€. We are now more at peril of terrorism than ever and he has ignited the wrath of the 1.5 billion Muslims throughout the world. In doing this he has destroyed the reputation of the â€grand old partyâ€. Republicans of Barry Golwater ilk such as Jon Dean are schocked at their neocon right-wing extremists who show no restraint in stooping to political â€dirt tricksâ€. If this administration is not held accountable a signal will be sent to future administrations that â€the rule of law†is no restraint against immoral, unethical behavior and crimes against humanity. If extremism of the East is met with extremism from the West then the future of civilization is at the brink of annihilation.
This administration has shown no willingness to stop these actions. Impeachment by the US House of Representative, whether the Senate convicts or not, is now the only way for the American public and the US Congress to get to the bottom of who did what and what were criminal activities. This is an indictment of the far right who has united church and state against the wishes of the founding fathers who understood what devisiveness that has created. If we wish to continue to be controlled by a corporate oligarchy then Impeachment is off the table. If we wish to go back to democratic principals of transparent government by the people then we must Impeach this out of control administration who has abused their power and usurped even more power toward executive dictatorship.

Rove is trying to take attention away from him – while trying to keep his spin doctor intact.

Unless we truly believe the â€pig in the poke†description of how Fleischer received immunity, it doesn’t take much imagination to see that Fleischer would have had to hint at something worth giving immunity for. So perhaps he was pinned into his lunch with Libby story before he received immunity. Much of his story doesn’t conform with what other say. Why would he lie about his lunch with Libby? Why would he lie about Dickerson and Gregory? Why would he lie about not telling Pincus?

As to the headline of this post, I agree. How silly for Gregory to not explain his part in this at this time. His â€source†has confessed, so what is he hiding?
Anyway, it will be hard to convince me there aren’t other reporters (and other sources) out there sitting on more of the story. We only know Woodward was sitting on a source because he talked. We only know about Gregory because Fleischer talked. We don’t know who talked to Miller (or to whom Miller talked) and I doubt we’ll ever know who all Novak spoke with (I still suspect a CIA source). In a way, it’s like trying to do a paint by number without all the paint colors.

Just to be clear, then, Tom, you’re signing up for the White-House-v-OVP defense which, alas, never came to fruition from Team Libby. (I wonder why.) I want to make sure I’m clear about a couple of things about your theory:

1. Why, on this theory, did Fleischer acknowledge learning from Bartlett at all?
2. On this theory, Bartlett and Fleischer coordinated their stories before Bartlett testified, correct? As well as before Fleischer testified, of course.
3. On your theory, how did Fleischer learn not just that Libby knew about Plame, but that he specifically knew that she worked in CPD? One possible chain: Addington to Gonzales – they shared documentary evidence before turning it over, and we know the Libby note from June 2003 indicating Libby’s knowledge that Plame was CPD was turned over early on – to Bartlett to Fleischer. If this is the road you want to go down, you’re pretty soon going to implicate many senior members of the White House in some very serious obstruction of justice allegations.
4. On your theory, even with the qualification, you’re committed to some version – not impossible to believe – that Fleischer took his chances with his own personal incarceration in order to protect Bush, because in fact there was good reason to believe if not to know that Bush was involved. Hoo boy.

Here’s what Cooper said yesterday:
I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD.

Considering he and his partner were talking to Wilson at the time, and considering that Cooper had to get confirmation on this before he could print (per Time editors), wouldn’t he ask Wilson if he did have a wife? Why not try to get confirmation from Wilson himself?
I recall Pincus also has said he didn’t even know Wilson had a wife, but then he didn’t believe that the wife sent Wilson AND he didn’t try to go to print with that scoop.
I would have loved Gregory to ask Cooper if he told Wilson that Rove was talking about his wife. Wilson went right for Rove with the frogmarching comment.

Gregory obviously knew that TraitoRove was lying about Wilson’s op-ed but he let him lie. Gregory also obviously knew that even TraitoRove’s admission of what he told Novak amounted to confirmation of Plame’s CIA status. And, Gregory knows full well that the dismissal of the civil suit was based upon the Wilsons’ status as public figures, not the vindication of the traitors who leaked her undercover status.

After the way Gregory went after McClellan at the press conference about McClellan’s earlier false assurances that TraitoRove had nothing to do with this, Gregory’s failure to skewer that lying traitor was especially disappointing. Gregory could have at least forced Rove to admit he lied to McClellan.

Someone please slice and dice this scumbag Rove over his easily proven lies.

And, why no questions about TraitoRove’s boytoy Jeff Gannon?

Does anyone in the MSM have the balls to expose Rove?

MayBee

Keep trying somehow or other to blame it on Wilson and/or the media. This is just the latest effort, all unavailing, to find somehow that Wilson inappropriately discussed his wife with members of the media. And the obvious reason Cooper hasn’t received the same scrutiny as Novak and Miller is, well, obvious, which is that Cooper was not in sympathy with the senior administration officials who were disclosing PLame’s CIA identity the way Novak and Miller were. Why your purported curiosity is relevant to the discussion here is not entirely clear to me. It’s just idle curiosity, is that it? But I would add that you’re just wrong that Cooper’s interactions with the senior administration officials who blew PLame’s cover haven’t been examined closely.

And again, you want to talk how Wilson dealt with friendlier reporters, if his response to Novak isn’t enough evidence for you that he was not going to comment on his wife? He certainly didn’t disclose his wife’s CIA connections to Walter Pincus during their evidently ample discussion(s) before July 12, 2003, when Pincus learned about Wilson’s wife for the first time.

1. Why, on this theory, did Fleischer acknowledge learning from Bartlett at all?

Too many witnesses on AF1

But they didn’t witness the part where Bartlett directed Fleischer to leak?

Bartlett may have told a favorable tale, then told Ari and asked him to play ball.

So Bartlett just took his chances that his ex-colleague would agree to lie in order to protect not himself – on the contrary, to expose himself dramatically by committing a definite crime – but someone else, either Bush or Bartlett himself. So if Fleischer refused to play ball, Bartlett was up a creek. So that was Bartlett’s effort to protect himself and the President?

certainly by January 2004 it should have been obvious to a WH insider that Libby had been researching Wilson and heard about Plame (e.g., Cathie Martin knew), even if his leaking was not clear.

Non-responsive, since my question was how Fleischer would know precisely that Libby knew that she worked nowhere other than CPD. Did Cathie Martin know that by January 2004? I suppose Jenny Mayfield may have. Tell me how it got from her to Fleischer? I still like my Gonzales connection as your best bet.

And maybe Fleischer’s motive was to protect his own access for a book deal, lobbying, or some such.

And Fleischer decided to lie under oath for that, when if he told the truth he was off scotfree?

But yes – if Fleischer and Bartlett cooked up a story to get Libby, that is pretty serious. Maybe Fitzgerald investigated that.

Yeah, and maybe you seem to know a lot more about Fitzgerald’s investigation than anyone else does. There’s a lot about Bartlett we don’t know. Not to say he did investigate that. But if there were too many people around Fleischer and Bartlett for them to deny they talked about Plame on AF1, how did they get away with the lie about deciding together or one directing the other to blow Plame’s cover?

If Rove was the most trusted man in something or other and constantly told stories about the Catholic nuns who schooled him and his earnest, honest dad, I would be a bit more exercised by his duplicity here.

Ok, so it’s not the duplicity that bothers you, it’s the hypocrisy? So you don’t mind that Rove lied for years to the American people. You mind more that Russert is a sanctimonious prig? And anyway, isn’t – or wasn’t during the entire period of the investigation – Rove the most trusted man in Republican politics? Doesn’t that count for something?

Hmm, Wilson’s self-serving statements to David Corn are â€empirical evidenceâ€? Who knew?

Confirmed by Novak. Two sources, baby, two sources. Or alternately, 100% of the participants in the relevant colloquoy.

but Nick Kristof has not.

Ok, so you are staking out the position that you believe Plame or Wilson told Kristof that she was CIA?

As for the general point, I find this funny and nicely shaved:

to outward appearances Fitzgerald did steer clear of vigorously investigating State and Powell, as well as the Fleischer/Bartlett/Bush path.

I notice that Armitage has dropped out, and of course Rove is not on your list. The notion of the Get-Cheney cabal as far as Fitzgerald is concerned is ludicrous, unless you’re prepared to explain where Armitage and Rove fit. Also, I’m inclined to think Fitzgerald paid as much deference to Cheney as to Bush, everything we know considered.

Gregory not pressing Rove for the full story is as egregious as Gregory not pressing Cooper for the full story.

What a joke. Rove was the story, on Sunday and in 2003, in a way that Cooper was and is not – and that’s not an artifact of some liberal media bias or blindness. Furthermore, Rove in fact has to concede the story to Cooper, since Rove’s (non-credible but nevertheless) story is that he has no recollection of discussing Plame with Cooper, and he in fact concedes to Cooper’s documents explicitly. Furthermore, Cooper has no strong reason to slant his story against Rove. Gregory should be forthcoming about his own role about the case. But it is not equally egregious to Rove lying to the press and the American public for years on end about his own role in the case, for multiple reasons beginning with the fact that a reporter not being forthcoming is quite different from the President’s closest advisor lying publicly.

And oh yeah, I thought I remember this, and just checked. TIME did in fact ask Wilson about his wife:

In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president’s father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. â€That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case,†Wilson told TIME. â€I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job.â€

As I recall (though I don’t have my documents with me), it was Calabresi who talked with Wilson, though again I don’t recall whether it was before or after Novak’s column came out.

And if he had said otherwise you would accuse him of confirming what Rove had told Cooper and therefore outing his wife. heh.

Well, that Wilson denial followed the Novak outing.

Interesting. How do you know that? MayBee seemed to be suggested that she suspected TIME went to Wilson for confirmation about his wife before the Novak column.

it does not follow that Fleischer never had a quiet moment with his boss, Bartlett.

Right but why testify about talking with Bartlett about calling reporters on July 12 at all?

Remember, Fleischer had *use* immunity, bot full immunity – if Fitzgerald could make the case without his testimony, Fleischer could be charged.

Are you sure about that? I thought that Fleischer could only be charged with perjury; otherwise he was home free. Even if not, though, I think you’ve got the incentives exactly backward (see under, most recently, â€Monica Goodlingâ€): if you’ve got use immunity as you describe it, your incentive is to cop to the incriminating parts, to convince your potential accuser that he’s not going to be able to convincingly argue that he got you without your testimony.

Who knows? There are surely a variety of possibilities, so why choose?

Because you are making a completely unconvincing case, on multiple grounds, that Fleischer lied about Libby telling him that Wilson’s wife was CIA/CPD on July 7 2003.

Trusted to win elections and annoy Democrats.

I am warming to the Tom Maguire view of Republican politics: â€Sure, maybe our #1 party guy is a duplicitous liar, but hey that’s why he annoys Democrats! Plus, he wins elections! Now let’s get mad at the duplicitous liars in the MSM who proclaim their Catholic virtues of humility and so forth!â€

I’d love to hear from Kristof too, and Cliff May . . .

But Tom, you promised more later.