""Karl didn't disclose Valerie Plame's identification to anyone. That's not a technical statement. That's as practical and direct as I can make it.""
Either he means Rove didn't give the "wife" a name, or...
Cooper already knew about the wife.
What it means is that he did not tell Cooper or anyone else that Plame was a covert operative.
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." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division.
The clips in quotes are quotes Isikoff has selected from Cooper's email to his bureau chief. Are these direct paraphrases of what Rove said or a mixture of what Rove said with Cooper's explanatory notes?--in other words, is the modifying phrase "who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues" a paraphrase of what Rove said or something Cooper learned independently of Rove and is adding as an explanatory note to his bureau chief? The first reading is more natural, but the phrase could reasonably be interpreted either way, and there's no way to prove which interpretation is correct without additional information. The problem here is that we have Cooper's summary of what Rove said, not a recording or transcript of Rove's actual comments. It would be helpful if we had Rove and Cooper's best reconstructions of their actual statements and Cooper's commentary on his own email rather than Isikoff's selective quotations and interpretation. As far as Plame's name, Isikoff's quotations from Cooper's email end before Plame's name is introduced, so this sentence is Isikoff's own commentary: "Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division." This strongly implies Rove did not give Cooper Plame's name. It is certainly not proof that Rove was Novak's source, which was the original issue at stake, supposedly. After this hyped-up article we still have no new information about Novak's source.
There is another interesting item in Cooper's email that is getting buried in the who-outed-Plame controversy:
"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..."
Has the "E-mail" been published yet???
Wilson claimed in the beginning that there were 6 reporters who were given a call, when he named Rove, how did Wilson know what he knew? Could we call this a "VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY yet?