Posted on 07/10/2005 12:12:27 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
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.
Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute "personal consent" from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court. Another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, refused to identify her source and chose to go to jail instead.
For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
"Beyond the fact that all operations are confidential there was nothing any more cloak and dagger about her life than the journalists who are keeping this BS alive."
One has to wonder if Joe Wilson had a valid security clearance at the time he was sent on the unauthorized mission. He hadn't work for the Government in 4 years making it quite possible that he did not have a current background investigation. Also, since all missions are "confidential", did he break the law by publishing his story?
I have a feeling this investigation is taking a 90 degree turn...Joe may be the one getting frogmarched..
My thought is that this gives at least a small glimpse of what the prosecutor was going for. It looks like Cooper may have found out that Wilson's wife recommended him, but not the name of Wilson's wife. But Cooper recommended that some other reporter talk to a CIA contact and confirm it. It looks like Miller may have done just that. It is probably the CIA agent that the prosecutor is going after.
Bubba and the far left were forced to refine it to cover a guilty president. Fortunately, his ego and all-encompassing arrogance managed to blow him out of the water. [feh!]
Yes.
Then he shouldn't be writing about politics. She's a political consultant. (And yes, I know that sounds naive)
According to her husband...and we just learned she had been put on one year's unpaid leave.
That was precisely the point Wilson and his enablers sought to obfuscate and distract from with their cries of "The WH is seeking to retaliate" nonsense.
BTW, just why did Plame want her husband to make the trip? That's what I'd like to know.
Remember when the press called Bubba the "Teflon Prez"? Well I think we have another one now.
Uh huh
What I remember is they called Reagan the Teflon President because (like now with GWB) despite their efforts to bring him down, he hadn't done anything wrong (nor has GWB or his aides), and none of their trumped up charges would stick.
They did not call Clinton that and they reluctantly reported his many (real) wrong-doings and always with mitigating words and polls to show nobody cared.
The wrongdoers in the current story are those in the Wilson camp.
Got that?
Good.
[wrinkled up grimaced face]
Apologizes don't work like that for republicans. Either they lose their job, get jailed or take the president down with them. The democrats and the MSM would have it no other way.
It is so funny seeing a DU'er talking about perjury after all where they upset about X42's meaning of the word is.
They called Slick "The Comeback Kid."
Exactly.
And I would add that before Wilson's op-ed, he was giving his story out to reporters anonymously. The story was written (see New York Times and the WaPo starting in May into June) referring to a "former diplomat" traveling to Niger. You just know that Wilson sought to bolster what he was telling reporters by pointing to his CIA wife...by way of giving himself credibility. Then when he decided to go public and out himself with his op-ed in the NY Times, the rest followed, complete with the "they're out to get me" spin a complicit media helped him foment.
Or "double secret probation" from the movie, "Animal House."
What? You lay out the sensible point that no law was broken with the disclosure of Plame's "name" (role in the matter, really), and then you wrap yourself back around to it's "GWB's people" that need to have explained that and apologize?!
You have it exactly backwards.
BTW, Justice passed it over to the Special Prosecutor.
(don't look now but several people made the same "reporters make jokes" point long before the post you praise as being "the first")
>>The e-mail did not suggest that Rove used Plame's name or that he knew she was a covert agent, the article said.<<
So if this wasn't Rove it would be a non-story. But it's Rove so we'll get endless speculation.
well, we knew the "evidence" was going to be an email from Cooper to someone else - and not an email from Rove to Cooper. Not sure how this is evidence, suppose Cooper sends me an email saying Rove was on the grassy knoll in 1963 - does that mean he was there? Its all here-say.
I agree. Upon further reflection, the phrase "double super secret background" is very likely a joke. The odd thing about this email is this: it seems unlikely that Rove would say "I didn't leak her name" if he had acually told Cooper that Wilson's trip was approved by "Wilson's wife." Rove's statement of denial appears to be inconsistent with Cooper's email, and I'm more inclined to believe Rove. I'm very interested in whether Rove will verify this entire email story from Newsweek.
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