Friday New York Times: Rove confirmed Plame as CIA to Novak too

The NYT is reporting in Friday's paper that Rove also confirmed to Novak that he'd heard Plame was CIA. This conversation occured, reportedly, 3 days before Rove then told TIME's Matt Cooper that Plame was CIA.

Why does this matter?

1. A senior Bush administration official with access to the most classified information confirms to a journalist who a CIA agent is. Is he nuts? Again, anyone who's worked with the CIA and their agents (and I have) knows how careful they are - you do NOT confirm who works there, and EVERYONE in town KNOWS that. Why in God's name would Rove do this? It's inexcusable. And he confirmed it to a journalist, no less.

2. It confirms that Scottie McClellan REALLY misled the media when he said that it was "ridiculous" to suggest that Rove had anything to do with the Plame leak. In fact, Rove not only told TIME about Plame, he also confirmed the story for Novak. So, again, why did the White House mislead the media and the American public for two years by denying Rove's involvement?

3. Three days after he confirms the story for Novak, Rove tells TIME magazine about Plame. Rove can try to claim that it was Novak who brought Plame's status as CIA up in the conversation first (which still doesn't excuse Rove confirming it, good God), but Rove can't explain why HE decided to be the guy to offer Plame's CIA status on a silver platter to TIME magazine. That's a pattern of disclosure, rather than a one-time slip-up.

4. So now we have Rove leaking to Novak AND Matt Cooper, and Bush still hasn't fired him,, no one has revoked his security clearance, and in fact Rove was walking side by side with Bush today. Could we have a bigger threat to our national security that a walking sieve attached at the hip of our president?