How Patriotic

Intl Herald Trib/AP

Agent's name leaked by Rove, magazine says

E-mails surrendered by Time magazine to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity show that a top White House aide, Karl Rove, was one of the sources, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday.

Rove, who is President George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff, was named as a source by two lawyers involved in the case who asked not to be identified, Newsweek said.

However, an attorney for Rove told Newsweek that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."

Time agreed on Thursday to hand over the internal e-mails, which were largely correspondence between their editors and a reporter, Matt Cooper, along with his notes on reporting related to the case.

"never knowingly disclosed..." Next they'll try the "'it was an honest mistake" stratagem. Puhleeez. PERHAPS, he didn't realize he was breaching a handful of national security directives and compromising National Security itself. But it's all so confusing, this politics and bickering, isn't it? Oh, yeah, almost forgot: HE BLEW A SPY's COVER! Was it payback for her husband's report that the only yelowcake in Iraq from Africa was the Duncan Hines kind? Was it because she was one of the many career (read: non-political) national security pros who were saying this administration was making shit up, wholesale? As a bonus, her front company, Brewster Jennings, and all it's current and past Non-Official Cover (translation: "you get caught, we don't 'know' who you are") operatives over the past 20 years were blown out too.

Why does that matter? It's a small community. Anybody who ever worked at Brewster Jennings and is now, say, wandering the oil fields of Iran, Kazakhstan, Indonesia or Argentina looking for bad doings was laid bare as a narc. Game and career over, future prospects unknown and possibly very anxious.

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My only question is, what is the maximum threshold of mendacity and ineptitude that must be achieved for seemingly sane prior Bush voters to realize this group is a genuine threat to the things sincere Americans care about?