• Former CIA Agent Larry Johnson, guest posting at TPM Cafe explains again just how Valerie Plame was an undercover agent and the damage from leaking her identity. I say again because I've mentioned his and fellow former Agent Larry Marcinkowski's testimony to the Senate Democractic Policy Committee so many times. (Hearing Transcript here(pdf))

• Armando at Daily Kos on Valerie Plame's covert status. He finds this Knights-Ridder article:

The CIA declined to discuss Plame's intelligence work, but an agency official disputed suggestions that she was a mere analyst whose public exposure would have little consequence. "If she was not undercover, we would have no reason to file a criminal referral," the CIA official said, insisting on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

• Arianna on why Karl Rove should be fired.

• Atrios brings Judith Miller back into the equation.

• David Corn brings Ken Mehlman into the stonewalling mix.

• Digby wonders why Richard Luskin, Karl Rove's lawyer, would criticize Matt Cooper the day before his grand jury testimony.

Back to connecting the dots.

WaPo Reporter Walter Pincus also blogs. Here's what he wrote on July 6, 2005 about his source for the Valerie Plame Leak. Doesn't it sound awfully familiar?

On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.....I didn’t write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip.

I wrote my October story because I did not think the person who spoke to me was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about Wilson. Because of that article, The Washington Post and I received subpoenas last summer from Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor looking into the Plame leak. Fitzgerald wanted to find out the identity of my source. (my emphasis)

Today, Karl Rove's lawyer said to Byron York:

The intrepid reporter Murray Waas has an exclusive: Bob Novak has cooperated with Valerie Plame investigators and they may not believe him:

Also of interest to investigators have been a series of telephone contacts between Novak and Rove, and other White House officials, in the days just after press reports first disclosed the existence of a federal criminal investigation as to who leaked Plame's identity. Investigators have been concerned that Novak and his sources might have conceived or co-ordinated a cover story to disguise the nature of their conversations. That concern was a reason-- although only one of many-- that led prosecutors to press for the testimony of Cooper and Miller, sources said.

Lending credence to those suspicions was that a U.S. government official questioned by investigators said Novak specifically asked him whether Plame had some covert status with the CIA. The official told investigators that Novak appeared uncertain whether she was undercover or not. That account, on one hand, might lend credence to the claims by Rove and other Bush administration officials that they did not know Plame was a covert CIA officer. Conversely, however, the fact that Novak asked the question in the first place appeared to indicate that he might have indeed been told Plame was a covert operative, and was seeking confirmation of that fact.

Byron York at NRO interviewed Robert Luskin, lawyer for Karl Rove today. He says Matthew Cooper "burned" Rove.

"By any definition, he burned Karl Rove," Luskin said of Cooper. "If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame."

Here's more:

According to Luskin, Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling. According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are "indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out."

Now that we know Matt Cooper's sources were Lewis Libby and Karl Rove, the question that needs answering is: Where did Karl Rove get the information. The AP reports today,

[Rove lawyer Robert] Luskin declined to say how Rove found out that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and refused to say how Rove came across the information that it was Wilson's wife who authorized his trip to Africa.

Was it through attending meetings of the White House Iraq Group with Lewis Libby? I hate to sound like a broken record, but I keep returning to these four articles:

Scott McClellan in today's press conference finally addressed Karl Rove and the leak controversy:

"Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they didn't have the president's confidence," McClellan said.

Say hello to the new blog, Fire Him Now. Let the frog march begin.

Update: Check out Rove's Pink Slip - also a welcome advertiser on TalkLeft.

Rep. Louise Slaughter writes:

It is time to hold the President accountable. He made a promise to the American people that he'd fire whoever leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent. Now that we know the leaker was, at least in part, Karl Rove; it is time for the President to keep his word.

Putting the life of an undercover CIA agent and our national security in jeopardy cannot be tolerated. Karl Rove clearly deserves his pink slip, and we¹re going to give it to him.

Thanks to an astute reader who found these quotes on how the Government learned Judith Miller had information on Valerie Plame:

• "Fitzgerald determined which reporters were talking to government officials during that period by reviewing government phone logs."
  Source: The Washington Post, July 7, 2005, p. A13. This sentence appears in the print edition but not the online version.
  

  

• "Investigators studied government telephone records to learn which reporters had spoken to officials in the Bush administration. Among them were Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper."
  Source (interestingly): Voice of America

Atrios picks up on a question over at Romanesko: If Judith Miller never wrote about the Valerie Plame leak, how did the Government know she had information about it?

According to her lawyer Floyd Abrams, they've assumed it's because one of the white house officials told the grand jury he had talked to her about it.

Asked why prosecutors sought Miller's testimony when she never wrote a story about Plame, Times attorney Floyd Abrams said, "We don't know, but most likely somebody testified to the grand jury that he or she had spoken to Judy."

Who would it be? Most likely, in my opinion, Lewis Libby. Miller has said that even though her source gave a general waiver, she can't be sure it was not coerced and therefore wouldn't credit it. Also, the subpoenas she received only concerned communications with a single, identified person. From the DC Court of Appeals decision (pdf):

In the meantime, on August 12 and August 14, grand jury subpoenas were issued to Judith Miller, seeking documents and testimony related to conversations between her and a specified government official “occurring from on or about July 6, 2003, to on or about July 13, 2003, . . . concerning Valerie Plame Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description as the wife of Ambassador Wilson) or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.”

See also, here and here.

The New York Times succinctly recaps the Administration's prior statements on Karl Rove and the Valerie Plame leak:

In September 2003, Mr. McClellan said flatly that Mr. Rove had not been involved in disclosing Ms. Plame's name. Asked about the issue on Sept. 29, 2003, Mr. McClellan said he had "spoken with Karl Rove," and that it was "simply not true" that Mr. Rove had a role in the disclosure of her identity. Two weeks earlier, he had called suggestions that Mr. Rove had been involved "totally ridiculous." On Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department opened its investigation, Mr. McClellan told reporters that Mr. Rove, Mr. Abrams and Mr. Libby had nothing to do with the leak.

Mr. McClellan and Mr. Bush have both made clear that leaking Ms. Plame's identity would be considered a firing offense by the White House. Mr. Bush was asked about that position most recently a little over a year ago, when he was asked whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked the officer's name. "Yes," he replied, on June 10, 2004.

I don't expect President Bush to fire Rove. So, will Rove spare the President the embarassment and resign? And where is Fitgerald headed now?

If Rove gets indicted, I still think it won't be for outing Valerie Plame. I think it's more likely it will be for either perjury to the grand jury, making false statements to investigators or conspiracy to obstruct justice or violate the law against outing operatives.

Meanwhile, Judith Miller sits in jail protecting someone, probably Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis Libby.

Salon has a new primer on the confusing case. The New York Times recaps prior White House briefings about the leaks. (So does Billmon.)

Will Karl Rove resign? Or continue to confidently maintain he's done nothing wrong and bank on escaping Fitzgerald's clutches? And if Rove goes down, who's going to go down with him? My bet is it will be Cheney's staff.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Listening to audio of Scott McClellan's dissembling and stonewalling on Morning Sedition on Air America Radio gave me flashbacks to Ron Ziegler's performances during Watergate in 1972-73.

For once, somebody in the Fourth Estate actually had the spine to cross-examine him and "call him out on his lies" about "Rove, Abrams, and Libby," and, smelling blood, others joined in. McClellan was reminded of his denials and was running for cover, and you could hear fear in his voice. McClellan, however, continued to stonewall and hid behind the fact of a "criminal investigation" to not comment. He was more than freely denying everything about Rove's involvement when the criminal investigation started.

While the Republican press in the audience must have been devastated, Fox News did, at least, report it from an AP story: CIA Leak Denials on Rove's Behalf Crumble.

President Bush gave a press conference on October 6, 2003. In it he was asked about the Valerie Plame leak. He called it a "criminal action." Here were his comments (from CNN, available on Lexis.com.)

QUESTION: Mr. President, on another issue, the CIA Leakgate, what is your confidence level in the results of the DOJ investigation about any of your staffers not being found guilty or being found guilty? And what do you say to critics of the administration who say that this administration retaliates against naysayers?

BUSH: Now, well, first of all, I'm glad you brought that question up. This is a very serious matter. And our administration takes it seriously. As members of the press corps here know, I have, at times, complained about leaks of security information, whether the leaks be in the legislative branch or in the executive branch, and I take those leaks very seriously. And therefore, we will cooperate fully with the Justice Department.