For the better part of two years, we’ve known a few things with some confidence about the Plame Game scandal. White House sources told Bob Novak that Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. Newsday quoted Novak in July 2003 saying, “I didn’t dig it out. It was given to me. They thought it was significant. They gave me the name, and I used it.”
Shortly thereafter we learned that this wasn’t an isolated leak. Before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called “at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife.” Given what we know about Time’s Matt Cooper, one of those two was Karl Rove.
Today, however, there are three big stories — from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the AP — that claim that this narrative has pertinent facts backwards. If the latest spin is right, Rove didn’t leak Plame’s name, Robert Novak did.
Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.
After hearing Mr. Novak’s account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: “I heard that, too.”
The previously undisclosed telephone conversation, which took place on July 8, 2003, was initiated by Mr. Novak, the person who has been briefed on the matter said.
Reading all three of the main stories today, aside from giving the reader a mind-numbing headache, paints a bizarre picture, most of which doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s not the stories aren’t reported well; it’s that the entire tack is such an obvious example of the White House’s desperation spin that it’s hard to take it too seriously.
For example, for a year, Rove’s been insisting that he not only didn’t leak Plame’s name; he didn’t even know her name. Now the line is, Rove did know her name after Novak gave it to him. Right off the bat, this sounds pretty silly in light of Rove’s denials.
What’s worse, Rove reportedly confirmed what Novak had told him by realizing that he had already heard about Plame from someone else. Who? Rove doesn’t remember, but he thinks it may have been a different reporter.
If this sounds to you like a vaguely incoherent yarn intended to shift attention away from Rove and onto Novak, then we’re on the same page.
Rove & Co. are still trying to figure out a narrative that offers some cover for his culpability, and this sounds like their latest invention.