Reply #6: When will Tweety come clean about HIS role, and what he knows?

[MADem]

He acts like he is an impartial observer, but he is in this up to his eyeballs...Tweety got a "Wilson's wife is FAIR GAME" phone call:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8445696/site/newsweek/ In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak's column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson's wife was "fair game." But White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was "totally ridiculous." On Oct. 10, McClellan was asked directly if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with any reporters. McClellan said he had spoken with all three, and "those individuals assured me they were not involved in this."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3129861/site/newsweek/page/3/
Wilson’s comments clearly implied that he knew that Rove was the leaker, but last week Wilson backtracked, saying only that he knew that Rove had “condoned” the leak. Whoever initially leaked Plame’s name, the White House clearly had a hand in fanning the flames. Wilson told NEWSWEEK that in the days after the Novak story appeared, he got calls from several well-connected Washington reporters. One was NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. She told NEWSWEEK that she said to Wilson: “I heard in the White House that people were touting the Novak column and that that was the real story.” The next day Wilson got a call from Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC show “Hardball.” According to a source close to Wilson, Matthews said, “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game.” (Matthews told NEWSWEEK: “I’m not going to talk about off-the-record conversations.”)

The White House spokesman dismissed as “ridiculous” the charge that Rove outed Plame. A source familiar with Rove’s conversation acknowledged that Rove spoke to Matthews a few days after Novak’s column appeared, but said that Rove never told Matthews that Wilson’s wife was “fair game”—rather, that it “was reasonable to discuss who sent Wilson to Niger.” Novak wrote last week that the leaker was “no partisan gunslinger.” That suggests that the original leak came from someone in the White House national-security apparatus, which holds itself above politics. Many White House staffers are potential suspects, but various press reports have suggested that the Feds will want to interview I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, an aggressive consumer of intelligence regarded by some CIA analysts as an intimidating figure.