Time Magazine has more support for the theory that Karl Rove learned about Valerie Plame's identity from White House officials rather than reporters.

The previously undisclosed fact gathering began in the first week of June 2003 at the CIA, when its public-affairs office received an inquiry about Wilson's trip to Africa from veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus. That office then contacted Plame's unit, which had sent Wilson to Niger, but stopped short of drafting an internal report. The same week, Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman asked for and received a memo on the Wilson trip from Carl Ford, head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Sources familiar with the memo, which disclosed Plame's relationship to Wilson, say Secretary of State Colin Powell read it in mid-June. Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage may have received a copy then too.

Former National Security Council staffer (under Johnson and Nixon) Roger Morris has developed a timeline in the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, that puts Condoleezza Rice smack in the middle of the scandal.

She alone among senior officials was knowing and complicitous at every successive stage of the great half-baked yellow cake fraud. She alone was the White House peer—and in national security matters the superior—to Rove and Libby, who never could have acted without her collusion in peddling Plame’s identity. She as much as anyone had a stake in smearing Wilson by any and all means at hand. If Rove and Libby are to be held criminally or at least politically accountable for a breach of national security, our “mushroom cloud” secretary of state should certainly be in the dock with them

It's time to keep our eye on the ball - what is Fitzgerald after? The answer: information about Judith Miller's sources. Arianna writes yet another informative post about Miller, How Deep Do Her Connections Go? Many of Arianna's assertions are confirmed in this June, 2004 New York Magazine article. Arianna, graciously, left out the worst of the dirt.

Coincidentally, I've been working on the same question, trying to cull down the mass of information out there to points I think are significant, using some deductive reasoning and Lexis. I had hoped to avoid the WMD and national security issues, because I don't know that much about them, but I've now decided it's not possible to do that and get anywhere.

So here's my shortened list:

The Wall Street Journal has this free article today on how Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper decided his interests were not the same as those of New York Times reporter Judith Miller. It's true that Cooper cooperated about Libby early on, as did Russert, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler, and then balked at getting a second subpoena for other sources. I've reported Judith Miller's take on that several times, most recently here.

The Wall St. Journal article mostly focuses on Cooper's lawyer's point of view, but this quote from Floyd Abrams, who originally represented both Cooper and Miller, is key:

But the deposition, held in the Washington office of Mr. Abrams's law firm, only whetted Mr. Fitzgerald's appetite. "Matt's testimony about Libby led Pat Fitzgerald to decide he wanted more information about others," Mr. Abrams explains. Specifically, the prosecutor wanted Mr. Cooper to confirm that Mr. Rove was a source of information about Ms. Plame. Within weeks, Mr. Cooper had a second subpoena in hand.

So, Fitzgerald knew it was Rove. He wasn't fishing.

Tom Maguire of Just One Minute writes:

The NY Times finally discovers Walter Pincus of the WaPo, a mere three weeks after we were hollering
about him. And eventually, the Times will discover Google, or Lexis Nexis....

I feel the same way.

Arianna makes a persuasive case for the theory that Judith Miller obtained the info on Valerie Plame from one of her pals in the intelligence community and then passed it on to Libby who then passed it on to Rove:

Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

Raw Story reports that Karen Hughes refused to answer John Kerry's questions about the outing of Valerie Plame during her confirmation hearing.

Kerry's line of questioning focused on whether Hughes knew Wilson was a covert operative, and whether she had ever spoken with Bush adviser Karl Rove about the agent.

Hughes response was curt: "Because of my ongoing contact with the White House, I was interviewed as part of that investigation and was happy to cooperate, as I noted in my Senate Foreign Relations Committee questionnaire. As you know, these questions relate to an ongoing criminal investigation. I believe that I should honor the prosecutor's request not to discuss this matter until he has completed his investigation."

Too funny.

Famed editor Jason Epstein, husband of jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, has lately been making himself scarce at the federal facility in Virginia where his wife has been incarcerated for the past three weeks....In a frothy social column yesterday about a celeb-glutted Mediterranean cruise, featuring everyone from Isabella Rossellini to J.K. Rowling aboard the ocean liner Silver Shadow, the New York Sun's A.L. Gordon revealed:

"One passenger with his mind soberly on home is the literary icon Jason Epstein. ... Ms. Miller would have been on the cruise had she not gone to jail."

His wife's in the slammer and he cruises the Med?

[Via Huffington Post.]

Wayne Madsen reports:

Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, announced that his commitee will be "reviewing" the criminal probe by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of the White House leak of the identities of covert CIA agents. If Roberts is serious and not just grandstanding, this may indicate that the White House is looking to give Fitzgerald's targets (Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and others) congressional general immunity from prosecution in return for their testimony before Roberts' committee. This was the method by which John Poindexter and Oliver North were able to avoid jail time for their roles in Iran-contra, their convictions being overturned by a federal appeals court because of their previously granted congressional immunity.

Last Night in Little Rock warned about this weeks ago, in the context of a hearing being requested by Rep. Henry Waxman. So did Peter G in comments here.

John Dean wrote this column on the topic back in 2004.

Update: Joe Conasen writes in the New York Observer that the Right is getting ready to slime Fitzgerald:

From the House Judiciary Committee Website:

• Text of July 25, 2005 Letter from Rep.Conyers to the President Seeking Assurance on Non-Use of Presidential Pardon in CIA Leak Investigation

• Text of July 14, 2005 Letter Signed by Judiciary Ranking Member Conyers and 12 Other Democratic Committee
  Members to Chairman Sensenbrenner Requesting Hearing on Rove-Gate

• Text of July 14, 2005 Letter Signed by 91 Members of Congress to the President Seeking Rove Explanation or Resignation;

• Typed List of Signatures

The Washington Post reports some new dots in RoveGate:

In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he wrote last year. In the book, he said he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a "CIA source."

Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him, Wilson said.

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to the Inspector General requesting an investigation into Alberto Gonzales' 12 hour gap.

....it appears, that not only did DOJ personnel countenance a 12-hour delay in notifying White House staff to preserve all records (while the White House Chief of Staff was given a heads up of the existence of the investigation), but that the DOJ also appears to have ignored repeated entreaties from the CIA to initiate a law enforcement investigation into this matter several months before hand. We would therefore urge you to examine the extent that this course of conduct and other delays by the Department are consistent with standards of prosecutorial conduct and integrity.