Think Rove ever saw the State Dept. Memo?

So much of the Rove story doesn't add up yet, but the NY Times piece about the State Department memo on Wilson and Plame does add a whole new dimension. Think about it. The memo was written on June 10, 2003:

The memorandum was dated June 10, 2003, nearly four weeks before Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article for The New York Times in which he recounted his mission and accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq. The memorandum was written for Marc Grossman, then the under secretary of state for political affairs, and it referred explicitly to Valerie Wilson as Mr. Wilson's wife, according to a government official who reread the document on Friday.

It was apparently being circulated by Colin Powell on July 7, 2003 -- which is "coincidentally" one day after Joseph Wilson's op-ed about Niger ran in the New York Times:

The memorandum was sent to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, just before or as he traveled with President Bush and other senior officials to Africa starting on July 7, 2003, when the White House was scrambling to defend itself from a blast of criticism a few days earlier from the former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, current and former government officials said.

Mr. Powell was seen walking around Air Force One during the trip with the memorandum in hand, said a person involved in the case who also requested anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about talking about the investigation.

What are the chances that Karl Rove didn't know about it? What are the chances it wasn't discussed by the White House political operation and the National Security Team?

The level of intensity at the White House surrounding the Wilson op-ed was exposed yesterday by AP which reported:

Prosecutors investigating a CIA officer's blown cover gathered e-mail evidence that a top White House intelligence official knew Bush confidant Karl Rove had spoken to a reporter just days before the journalist identified the covert operative.

Rove told then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley in the July 11, 2003, e-mail that he had spoken with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and tried to caution him away from some allegations that CIA operative Valerie Plame's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.

"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in the message, disclosed to The Associated Press. In the memo, Rove recounted how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had been making.

So, again, what are the chances the Rove did not know about the State Department memo which explicitly named Valerie Wilson? That just is not remotely credible.

Clearly, that week, the White House staff was obsessed with the Wilson op-ed. And when Rove is in full defense mode, it's full smear mode. The White House wanted this e-mail leaked because they think it makes Karl look good. It doesn't....what is does show is that the whole White House team, including the supposedly non-political National Security Adviser's office, were in full spin mode. To think that they would be spinning without the benefit of the State Department memo is just not credible...and in that WH, not feasible.

The White House is leaking and leaking these days...trying to save Rove's butt. When you start piecing together the leaks, they make the case against Rove even stronger.