Sleight of Mind
I read several full news reports tonight on the topic of this much-discussed classified 2003 State Department memo ---and not one of them makes any connection to Karl Rove except tangentially and by the merest sort of implication. The chickenshittedness of this is almost appalling, but it just goes on and on.

Look at this CNN report, featuring the photo you see here of the President and Rove from the other day. Start reading it and you won't even come to a mention of Rove's name until the nineteenth paragraph:

Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper said Sunday that Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told him Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and that Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, confirmed that piece of information.

What does this have to do with the State Department memo?

The implication is that Karl Rove must have seen that memo. Really? Why do the craphounds in Big Media think that? Because this is a memo that was not only marked with a big "S" ---for SECRET--- but includes the name of Valerie Wilson.

Are you homing in on the logic yet? Don't be fooled by the non sequiturs here. Just keep focused.

CBS News declares that

[...] it turns out a key portion of a two-year-old State Department memo that is now at the center of the controversy was classified — and that could mean leaking it was a crime.

At the time the State Department wrote its memo, the administration's key rationale for war in Iraq was crumbling. No weapons of mass destruction had been found and some key intelligence used to make the administration's case had proven false. An internal war raged inside the administration over who was to blame.

No, no: this is a news report, see. There's no editorializing here at all. And how did this memo make it all the way to "the center of the controversy"? Because CBS News and the other subsidiaries of al-Jazeera say so. Beeyotch. But don't miss the non sequitur that comes in at the second-to-last paragraph:

Karl Rove has admitted to discussing Wilson's wife with at least one reporter. But Rove's attorney says that the first time Rove saw — or even heard about the state department memo — was when investigators showed it to him.

But what does Karl Rove have to do with anything else in the story? So far, the only person we know for sure that this classified State Department memo was delivered to was the fucking Secretary of State himself ---the great, untouchable Colin Powell. I mean, why would Rove be walking around with a secret State Department memo? That was what Powell was doing! Go look it up in the Los Angeles Times:

The memo was sent by State Department officials to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who according to news reports has testified before the grand jury. Powell had the memo with him on Air Force One when President Bush traveled to Africa on July 7, 2003, the day after Wilson's piece was published, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.

What happened on Air Force One has been of interest to prosecutors, who want to know whether anyone who saw the memo learned Plame's identity and told it to journalists.

Hmmm. I dunno. Maybe it was Colin Fucking Powell who leaked Plame's name. Is anybody thinking of that possibility? Maybe. They're thinking of lots of things (my emphasis added):

A State Department analyst who had attended the meeting at which the CIA decided to dispatch Wilson to Africa to check out the story kept the notes from that session, the former official said. The notes mentioned that Wilson's wife had suggested sending Wilson.

After getting [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage's request, the State Department's then-intelligence chief, Carl Ford, ordered the original memo — along with the analyst's notes about that meeting — to be sent to Powell, the former official said. Ordinarily, the memo would have been transmitted directly to Powell over the State Department's secure communications lines. But because Powell was traveling with Bush, the memo was transmitted via the White House operations center.

See? You knew that this had to somehow be tied back to the White House and, of course, the Architect. Powell may not be responsible for any leaks because the White House handled the memos at some point. The custodians of the chain are stirring now!

Because both documents were classified, it would have been necessary for someone on the plane to sign for having received them from the White House operations center, the former official said. But once someone signed for them, the document could have been passed around freely on the plane among senior officials who had security clearances.

Yeah, that's true. So wouldn't it be neat to know whether Karl Rove was on Air Force One that day and actually saw the memo? Let's find out.