Matt Cooper Writes That Rove Was His Primary Source
Matt Cooper writes in the latest Time Magazine that presidential advisor Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV wife was a C.I.A. officer although he did not name her. Cooper’s account of the CIA leak was one of the few direct accounts in a story that is advancing primarily by new leaks. The New York Times reported that ‘someone who has been officially briefed” said columnist Robert Novak and Rove talked by phone on July 8, 2003 and that Rove responded, “I heard that, too” when the columnist said he’d learned that Wilson’s wife, Valierie Plame, had recommended her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, be assigned to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq. Novak’s column naming Plame appeared several days later, touching off a political storm and then the formal investigation that resulted in the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to disclose her source. (7/18/05)