so the idea from the rove/cooper material that valerie plame sent her husband to check the niger rumors put a different inflection on the whole deal. perhaps plame was herself the primary target of the leak of her name. and perhaps she was running or was involved with a kind of underground cia movement to try to \actually check the incredibly superficial intelligence approach wherein the higher-ups were feeding the admin whatever would help them go to war. the idea that plame would independently or without high authorization start checking such things makes no sense otherwise. it leads you to speculate too that the publication of such information also (as in wilson's piece in the times) also originated in a rank-and-file rebellion against the distortions of intelligence and manipulation of intelligence agencies.

Cooper, according to an internal Time e-mail obtained by Newsweek magazine, spoke with Rove before Novak's column was published. In the conversation, Rove gave Cooper a "big warning" that Wilson's assertions might not be entirely accurate and that it was not the director of the CIA or the vice president who sent Wilson on his trip. Rove apparently told Cooper that it was "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip," according to a story in Newsweek's July 18 issue.