I'm Glad It's Not Just Me
Just one minute blog
The NY Times pries into the Valerie Plame leak investigation and baffles us. But we are not alone!
From Mark Kleiman, who has been following this forever:
Clear as mud
Adam Liptak has a blow-by-blow of the Cooper/Rove negotations and related matters that leaves me more confused than I was before.
And Kevin Drum:
This story is so weird that I'm not even going to try to summarize it, but apparently the answer is murkier than we've been led to believe.
The WaPo adds little to the fray, although I would exhort Mr. Luskin, Karl Rove's attorney, to end the drip, drip, drip and just tell us whatever he is trying to tell us - a disclosure a day keeps the story in play.
The WSJ also tackles this, chats with Luskin, and summarizes the "personal waiver" saga thuly:
Yesterday, Mr. Luskin explained that Mr. Rove, like other White House officials, had signed a document provided by Mr. Fitzgerald in December 2003, allowing reporters to testify about conversations with him. On Wednesday, before Mr. Cooper was headed to court and a possible jail term, his attorney, Richard Sauber, called Mr. Luskin and asked for reassurance that the earlier waiver encompassed Mr. Rove's discussions with Mr. Cooper. If so, Mr. Sauber sought more express consent. Mr. Luskin checked with Mr. Fitzgerald as to whether more specific consent was necessary, and then gave that consent to Mr. Cooper, who said last week that he received the permission in "somewhat dramatic fashion."
It does appear that Mr. Cooper eventually accepted the same general waiver that Ms. Miller is rejecting. The Times also fails to confirm the WaPo reporting from last fall in which they suggested that she had been subpoenaed to testify about Lewis Libby.
Flashing back to the Times, they provide an interesting snippet on Matt Cooper:
Mr. Cooper was not an obvious vehicle for a sensitive leak. He had become one of the magazine's White House correspondents only the month before the conversation and is married to a prominent Democratic strategist, Mandy Grunwald.
Getting closer! What the Times left out is that Ms. Grunwald is a daughter of Henry Grunwald, one of Time magazine's most distinguished editors. One might have thought that a son-in-law could have exerted a bit more clout if he had really wanted to cling to his notes.
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