corrente

Now the quibbling has started, with a defense of Rove on that last refuge of the guilty: a technicality. Rove's attorney, evidently not the brightest bulb on the string in this regard, blatantly assures America that Rove may have referred to Plame, but not by name. Further, to quote this morning's WaPo article by Josh White:

"To be considered a violation of the law, a disclosure by a government official must have been deliberate, the person doing it must have known that the CIA officer was a covert agent, and he or she must have known that the government was actively concealing the covert agent's identity."

Ah what a tangled web. But don't rush for the smelling salts yet---the wheels of justice and the special prosecutor's office grind exceeding slow:

"Although the information is revelatory, it is still unknown whether Rove is a focus of the investigation. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, has said that Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has told him that Rove is not a target of the probe. Luskin said yesterday that Rove did not know Plame's name and was not actively trying to push the information into the public realm."

Never named her, eh? But then there's this: Think Progress does such a great job of a side-by-side comparison here that I just ripped off the entire post (see the Newsweek article for further details):

"July 3, 2005: Rove’s Lawyer Lies To Bloomberg

Here’s what Karl Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin told Bloomberg News on July 3, 2005:

[Karl Rove] did nothing wrong, did not disclose Plame’s identity, and did not reveal any confidential information.

According to TIME reporter Matt Cooper’s e-mail, here is what Karl Rove told him sometime before July 11, 2003:

[I]t was, KR [Karl Rove] said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip.

This was before the Novak column appeared on July 14. At that time, the fact that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA was confidential information.

(On other occasions, Luskin has said Rove never “knowingly” disclosed classified information. But he did not use that qualifier with Bloomberg News.)"

Via Buzzflash. Let's have his head now, thank you.