Needlenose : insight on Plame/Rove

Needlenose points out what will likely be the defense for Rove/Libby/Miller/Cooper in the event FItzgerald is able to charge any of them with the felony of outing Plame: we couldn't expose her; she was already exposed.

From a Washington Times article last year:

The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.

Mrs. Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

How effective that tack will be depends on the wording of the statute and judical interpretation of that wording. I'm not going to spend time parsing them until Fitzgerald shows a few more cards.

Needlenose also ties John "Got Milk?" Bolton to the story, and wonders whether Plame's indentity was passed not from Rove to Miller, but the the other way 'round. Much as I would like to see Miller go down, I suspect that if that scenario is true, we are not going to be pleased with how it gets spun.