Linking Rove to Novak

Finally. With the right-wing frantically trying to show Rove's outing of an undercover agent as an example of what a great guy he is, some reporters continue to do their jobs, thankfully. And it looks like we finally have a direct link between Rove and Bob Novak. From Salon:

After several days marked with a lot of White House stonewalling and partisan sniping but little in the way of news, the New York Times' David Johnston and Richard Stevenson have just broken significant new ground on the Karl Rove story.

Based on information from a confidential source who has been "officially briefed" on the matter, the Times says that Rove has told federal investigators that he received a telephone call from columnist Bob Novak on July 8, 2003. In that call, the source tells the Times, Rove "learned from the columnist the name of . . . Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq." The source says that, upon hearing that information from Novak, Rove said: "I heard that, too."

Six days after that call, on July 14, 2003, Novak published a column in which he identified Wilson's wife as "Valerie Plame . . . an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."