HERE'S WHAT JOE WILSON FINDS MOST GALLING...:

Why Novak Called Rove (Murray Waas, Dec. 16, 2005, National Journal)

On July 9, 2003, senior presidential adviser Karl Rove was well prepared as he returned a telephone call from columnist Robert Novak. On his desk were talking points and other briefing materials that then-White House Political Director Matt Schlapp and other staffers had compiled for Rove in anticipation of the conversation. [...]

Ironically, the materials prepared for Rove in advance of the conversation had nothing to do with Valerie Plame, the CIA officer whom Novak would identify -- using Rove as one of his sources -- as an "agency operative" in a July 14, 2003, column.

Instead, the voluminous material on Rove's desk -- including talking points, related briefing materials, and information culled from confidential government personnel files -- involved a different woman: Frances Fragos Townsend, a former senior attorney in the Clinton administration's Justice Department whom President Bush had recently named to be his deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism.

Bush had personally assigned Rove to help counter what the president believed to be a "rearguard" effort within his own administration, by persons unknown, to discredit Townsend and derail her appointment, according to White House documents and accounts given by former and current officials.

Just before his July 9 conversation with Rove, Novak had been relentlessly calling around the White House asking questions about Townsend. [...]

According to the accounts of their conversations that Rove and Novak gave to federal investigators, the subject of Valerie Plame came up only after they had finished talking about Townsend. [...]

Both Novak and Rove have told federal prosecutors that it was Novak who raised Plame's name, with the columnist saying he had heard that "Wilson's wife" had worked for the CIA and had been responsible for having her husband sent on the Niger mission.

"I heard that too," Rove responded, according to published accounts of what Rove told federal investigators of the conversations.

...the Plames were merely an afterthought.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 16, 2005 10:52 AM