http://www.time.com/time/quote…..39,00.html

That’s an understatement. Believe me, when I worked for DIA, I never saw *anybody*, male or female, that good looking. Must have hung in the wrong spy circles.

See Christopher Hitchen’s piece on it.

“I am not a Plame expert so forgive me if I get some of the details wrong but I wanted to point out this from swopa on April 28 about the Rove Hadley email:

“Note what’s missing there? That’s right, any mention of Joseph Wilson’s wife, the former Valerie Plame.â€

Cooper says he talked to Rove about Plame and in consequence Rove suddenly finds an email. Yet the email doesn’t mention her.”
***************************

You asked a great question because that is exactly what they talked they about and its absence is damning evidence that shows (1) Rove knew that leaking her name was a crime, but decided to do it anyway, (2) he knew that email never is tuly private, (3) and he knew that he had to give his boss an update on the caper: Mission Accomplished, as the presdent likes to say. Otherwise, you have to believe that Matt Cooper committed perjury when he testified that Rove revealed that information to him, confirmed its veracity, and authorized him to print it, so long as he did not identify him by name as his source. Particularly with this administration that so covets control and secrecy, I find it difficult to imagine that an experienced, but newly assigned reporter to cover the White House for TIME, would write his first story regarding a matter of considerable national and international attention and mis-attribute his sources. That would have been the last story that he wrote while working for TIME, if Rove believed that he had misrepresented him, or published classified information. No way Cooper lied, or misunderstood what Rove told him.

I believe that people of this country are like a shadow grand jury and we have probable cause to believe to that (1) Rove knew about Plame’s covert status because he had reviewed the State Department Memo for President Bush (to review with Powell on his trip to Africa) and the memo revealed her status (or someone along on the trip like Ari Fleischer called and tipped him off), (2) Rove and others knew that they would be committing a crime if they outed her, (3) they decided to do it anyway for reasons that remain uncertain since the White House was in the process of “admitting” that there was no basis to support the infamous sixteen words in the SOTU address, and (4) by prior agreement with Hadley, Rove’s loose description referencing Wilson was intended to convey the following message: I passed on what you and I agreed that I should say, but not memorialize in an email. Rove’s message could only have been coded to assure local privacy. If I’m right, Hadley has some explaining to do.

Of course, we should not discount the possibility that Rove created the Hadley email at a much later time, but Fitzgerald certainly will have that possibility checked out.

Isn’t this the sort of decision that members of this administration would defer to the Decider, particularly given his rather keen interest in syping and national security? If I were Rove, I would want to know that my president had authorized me to commit a serious felony involving national security. Did Rove desire such assurance?

Orange jumpsuits for the lot of them and may they all go bird-hunting with Dick daily.

Having seen Ms. Plame for the first time in this post, I only have four words — well, maybe eight:

HBO movie.
Jeri Ryan.
During the Gore Administration.