Plame leak ID?

[sigma7]

Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source, and what might happen to him or her. Friday night, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name--and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

Far be it for me to doubt an MSNBC talking head and adviser to The West Wing (which sucks post-Sorkin, by the way), but if this is true, oh the unbelievable shitstorm to follow....

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like a complete idiot here...I DO follow the news, actually, but the name "Valerie Plame" is not ringing any bells. Who is she?

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Long story:

Ambassador Joseph Wilson went to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy nuclear material there, reported that the claims weren't true, and yet they showed up in the State of the Union address anyhow. So Wilson goes public later that year. A feek later, columnist Bob Novak announces that part of the reason Wilson got the Niger assignment was because his wife was a CIA agent, which theretofore was not common knowledge.

So there's been an investigation to find out who leaked that information. Novak has been tightlipped about the whole thing, but two journalists, Time's Matthew Cooper and the NY Times' Judith Miller (who did an abysmal job in her reporting of the WMD [not] in Iraq prior to the war) have been supoenaed and refused to reveal their anonymous sources and have been found in contempt, threatened with imprisonment, and recently had their appeals denied by SCOTUS, so Time has turned over some of its notes in an attempt to get Cooper free.

Plame Wiki entry here. Miller here.

[foenix.livejournal.com]

Am I just a cynic for thinking, if it is Rove, then it will be one more major cockup by the Bush administration that no one will get fired, or even reprimanded for? And in fact will somehow be now spun into making him a good guy for it?

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

His lawyer's already denying it, so I imagine he'll be able to slip free in the end. And if not, he'd be able to get a pardon in the late half of January 2009 anyway.

[motteditor.livejournal.com]

What I STILL can't figure out is why Novak wasn't subpoenaed, considering he actually published the damn name. All I can figure out is it's because he's a conservative and the administration aimed its search at supposedly more liberal targets.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I have to believe it's because he sang like a canary or has some other deal with Justice. I'd like to think even the department under Bush isn't so partisan and myopic as to persecute two journalists tangentically connected and leave Novak -- the one who published the name, after all -- untouched.

I can't believe the man still has a job, for that matter.