Is Karl Rove the one who exposed a CIA agent's identity?

I'm long since over the idea that even this administration would consider any behavior unacceptable if it suited their goals. There's plenty of blog attention being payed to a story that suggests Rove was the one who 'outed' Valerie Plame, thereby committing an act that is pretty much treasonous. It endangered a government operative, it's obviously contrary to the interests of the nation, and it was done intentionally. At the very least, it's a criminal act that merits prosecution. Even Bush, Sr., has said that revealing an agent's identity is treasonous. Never thought I'd miss the guy, but at least he had some scruples.

I haven't seen evidence, so I almost didn't report on this. But it's getting a ton of attention, and Lawrence O'Donnell is willing to stake his credibility and career on his assertion that Karl Rove is the guilty party. He wrote this just today on the Huffington Post:

On Friday, I broke the story that the e-mails that Time turned over to the prosecutor that day reveal that Karl Rove is the source Matt Cooper is protecting. That provoked Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, to interrupt his holiday weekend to do a little defense work with Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times. On Saturday, Luskin decided to reveal that Rove did have at least one conversation with Cooper, but Luskin told the Times he would not “characterize the substance of the conversation.”

Luskin claimed that the prosecutor “asked us not to talk about what Karl has had to say.” This is highly unlikely. Prosecutors have absolutely no control over what witnesses say when they leave the grand jury room. Rove can tell us word-for-word what he said to the grand jury and would if he thought it would help him. And notice that Luskin just did reveal part of Rove’s grand jury testimony, the fact that he had a conversation with Cooper. Rove would not let me get one day of traction on this story if he could stop me. If what I have reported is not true, if Karl Rove is not Matt Cooper’s source, Rove could prove that instantly by telling us what he told the grand jury. Nothing prevents him from doing that, except a good lawyer who is trying to keep him out of jail.

OD1 deserves a shout-out for prompting me to look more closely into this.