It's TIME To Go...

TIME magazine is all over the Rove-Plame case today, including a useful chonology of events: How The Tale Unfolds.

The magazine's big scoop is Matthew Cooper's story, "What I Told the Grand Jury". This is backed up by the cover story, The Rove Problem.



Not exactly the way you would want to get your picture on the cover of Time magazine, is it?

Cooper reveals that Rove was his original source for the information on Valerie Plame, and that Bush's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was also a source for his original article.

This coincides pretty well with what Novak has previously said:

"I didn't dig it out, it was given to me...

They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it...

Two senior Administration officials told me that his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate."

The NY Times recently cited "someone who has been officially briefed on the matter... a lawyer involved in the case" confirming that Rove also informed Novak, although both this article and a WP one claim that Novak already knew the information.

So the question is, where did Rove (and Libby, and Novak and even Miller) get their information? Seems there was a memo in the hands of Colin Powell aboard an Air Force One flight...

The memorandum was sent to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, just before or as he traveled with President Bush and other senior officials to Africa starting on July 7, 2003, when the White House was scrambling to defend itself from a blast of criticism a few days earlier from the former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, current and former government officials said.

Mr. Powell was seen walking around Air Force One during the trip with the memorandum in hand, said a person involved in the case who also requested anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about talking about the investigation...

But there you go. I've already said too much.

UPDATE: Powell hits back by leaking the news that Ari Fleischer had the memo in his hands:

On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip.

Tip to Billmon.