On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, The New York Sun was quoted as saying:
> Mr. Cooper, who wrote that the July 11, 2003, chat took place "on double
> super secret background," said Mr. Rove denied reports that Vice President
> Cheney or the then-director of central intelligence, George Tenet, authorized
> Mr. Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Africa in 2002 to investigate Iraq's
> alleged attempts to acquire nuclear materials. According to the e-mail, Mr.
> Rove said Mr. Wilson's wife arranged the trip.
This is quintessential Rove: the master of plausible deniability. On this account, he never named Plame, and he never said she was an agent. But because he confirmed that it was a CIA sponsored trip; and because he said the director of central intelligence didn't authorize it; and because the conversation was introduced as being on super-duper background -- the impossible to avoid inference is that Wilson's wife was in the CIA. For how else could she have arranged a CIA-sponsored trip? Why else would anyone in the CIA have defered to her wishes?
It's so inescapable a conclusion it's as if he said it. But he didn't. That plausible deniability in a nutshell: the reporter heard it, but he didn't say it. Nor did he name her.
That looks like evil brilliantly done. And it seems like he has manipulated the investigation perfectly too. He seems to have given Novak conditional permission immediately so as to immediately close the story there. He seems to have told Novak that he could tell all on the condition that he not discuss any of it with the press. And then advised him that it would probably go more smoothly for him if he attributed this taciturnity to his legal strategy. Then no further explanation would be needed.
And then he didn't give permission to Cooper and Miller, knowing they would drag it out through the appeals process until after the election, completely decentering the story.
And now that the election is safely over, and it is years before the next one, we can move into stage III, where he is outed, but technically, he never broke any law, since he never named an agent. And then people forget, just like all the other unbelievably outrageous episodes in his career.
Michael