Stephen Hadley's role in the leak [View All]

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Rove e-mailed White House security official about reporter conversation


By John Solomon / Associated Press

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WASHINGTON -- After mentioning a CIA operative to a reporter, Bush confidant Karl Rove alerted the president's No. 2 security adviser about the interview and said he tried to steer the journalist away from allegations the operative's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.

The July 11, 2003, e-mail between Rove and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is the first showing an intelligence official knew Rove had talked to Matthew Cooper just days before the Time magazine reporter wrote an article identifying Valerie Plame as a CIA officer.

"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press, recounting how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations.

more:http://www.detnews.com/2005/politics/0507/18/polit-249694.htm

Rove-Bush Conspiracy Noose Tightens

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The second new fact is what Rove did after his conversation with Cooper.

Although supposedly in a rush to leave on vacation, Rove e-mailed Stephen J. Hadley, then Bush’s deputy national security adviser (and now national security adviser). According to the Associated Press, Rove’s e-mail said he “didn’t take the bait” when Cooper suggested that Wilson’s criticisms had hurt the administration.

While it’s not entirely clear what Rove meant in the e-mail, the significance is that Rove immediately reported to Hadley, an official who was in a position to know classified details about Plame’s job. In other words, the e-mail is evidence that the assault on Wilson was being coordinated at senior White House levels.

Cooper also told the grand jury that his second source on the allegations about the Niger trip and Wilson’s wife was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a leading neoconservative advocate for invading Iraq. According to Cooper, Libby said on a not-for-attribution basis about Plame, “Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.”

more:http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/071805.html