Compare and contrast…

NY Times headline: Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer

AP headline: Source: Rove Got CIA Agent ID From Media

The NY Times clings to the Evil Genius narrative, despite what its own reporting and follow-ups from other press outlets shows…

NY Times lead graf:

WASHINGTON, July 14 - Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said Thursday.

AP lead graf:

Presidential confidant Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he learned the identity of a CIA operative originally from journalists, then informally discussed the information with a Time magazine reporter days before the story broke, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

WaPo fills in more details with the more properly headlined “Rove Confirmed Plame Indirectly, Lawyer Says,” including this:

Sources who have reviewed some of the testimony before the grand jury say there is significant evidence that reporters were in some cases alerting officials about Plame’s identity and relationship to Wilson — not the other way around.

Ok, now we’ll wait for the NY Times editorial expressing outrage, outrage over the leaker who supplied confidential info about the grand jury testimony to the Times, AP, and Washington Post. And we’re sure the NY Times will demand a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the leak.

Waiting. Waiting…

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Blogger reax:

Lorie Byrd at Polipundit sez, “Maybe Chuck Schumer should not be worried about Karl Rove’s security clearance, but instead should be working to revoke the press passes of these journalists who were endangering national security.”

Captain Ed:

[T]he ability of the New York Times to publish this story tonight demonstrates the irony of their stance on the entire R[o]ve story. In order to get this information, the Times has to have a source either on the grand jury or in the office of the Special Prosecutor. Either way, this leak violates the law; grand jury testimony in special investigations are supposed to remain secret. Given that the Gray Lady has led the charge against Rove and his supposedly illegal leak, doesn’t this seem a wee bit … hypocritical?

Orin Kerr on the infinite loop of leak investigations.

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Oh, and regarding the anti-Rove protest at the White House:

It looks like the MoveOn people got the memo and are following dress-code orders.

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Related:

John Podhoretz says even Joe Wilson now admits that his wife wasn’t undercover at the time that she was “outed.” Power Line has more.

David Limbaugh on Rove vs. Wilson.

Brit Hume on Chuck Schumer. Heh.

Tom Maguire clears a few things up, calls on lawyer-bloggers for help, and tries to save some hair.

And check out NRO’s editorial, with which I concur. It’s significant that NRO doesn’t let either Rove or McClellan completely off the hook:

Rove may have played a role in the disclosure of a covert operative’s name (although right now we do not even know that). Even if that disclosure ultimately had no great effect on national security and even if it was inadvertent, a White House official should know better. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, meanwhile, has made misleading statements about Rove’s involvement in this case. We do not know whether those statements were deliberately misleading or uninformed.

Update, 9:20 am: John Podhoretz calls Plamegate one of the “hey, big whoop” stories of all time:

So we learn, at last, from the New York Times, that Robert Novak called Karl Rove and said he heard Joseph Wilson’s wife, who was NOT a clandestine agent at the time, worked for the CIA. To which Rove replied — of the women who was NOT a clandestine agent at the time and who he almost surely had no reason to know had at some point in the previous years BEEN a clandestine agent — “I heard that too.”

This surely qualifies as one of the “hey, big whoop” stories of all time. And I am not saying this because I am some partisan gunslinger. Simple fairness says that an official called by a journalist who volunteers a piece of gossip and then responds, “I heard that too,” is not retailing a piece of incendiary information intended to destroy lives and place CIA assets in harm’s way.

And I’m going to be blunt here. Anybody who says different has an agenda that has nothing whatever to do with Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, or much of anything else besides doing damage to the Bush administration and character-assassinating Karl Rove.

Betsy Newmark: “I think we’re about at stage eight of the twelve-stage process of media scandals…”

Update II: I think Wilson’s remarks about his wife’s status were misinterpreted. Looks like what he was saying was that she was no longer a clandestine operative once her cover was blown. I think.

Tom Maguire breaks down the Times’ story.

Jon Henke on The Oops Theory and more.

Thomas Lifson takes on the Rove-is-a-traitor meme.

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