Time Reporter: Rove Was First Source On CIA Agent

[Mark E. Smith]

Reuters 7/17 10:42 AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House political aide Karl Rove was the first person to tell a Time magazine reporter that the wife of a prominent critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy was a CIA agent, the reporter said in an article on Sunday.

Time correspondent Matthew Cooper said he told a grand jury last week that Rove told him the woman worked at the "agency," or CIA, on weapons of mass destruction issues, and ended the call by saying, "I've already said too much."

He said Rove did not disclose the woman's name, Valerie Plame, but told him information would be declassified that would cast doubt on the credibility of her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, who had charged the Bush administration with exaggerating the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs in its case for war.

"So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say she worked at the "agency" on "WMD? Yes," Cooper wrote in Time's current edition.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2005-07-17T144214Z_01_N17201882_RTRIDST_0_USREPORT-BUSH-LEAK-DC.XML

Kind of pokes a hole in Rove's little "I was only confirming a story that was already out there" canard ...