Reply #1: They're interpreting it as confirming their spin.

[joemurphy]

One of the Republican talking points has been that -- when Rove spoke with Cooper and told him "not to get too far out" on the July 6, 2003 Wilson NYT op-ed piece about the lack of evidence of Iraqi uranium purchases in Niger -- Rove was just trying to do Cooper a "favor" by making sure that Cooper got the "real" story on Wilson's trip to Niger. He was telling Cooper not put too much stock in what Wilson had to say. Under this spin-scenario, Rove, in talking to Cooper, was not intentionally trying to out Wilson. Rather, he was merely trying to see to it that Cooper wrote the "truth" when a story Cooper was planning to write was published. It was for this reason that Rove told Cooper that "Wilson's wife" was a CIA agent and she authorized Wilson's trip to Niger without Cheney or Tenet's prior knowledge or approval.

The new bit of leaked information -- that Rove told the grand jury that he first got the name of Wilson's wife --Valerie Plame -- from Bob Novak when Novak called Rove and asked Rove to confirm that Plame sent Wilson to Niger, tends to butress the Republican spin that Rove, in talking to Cooper, was only trying to set the record straight. Under this scenario Rove, in confirming to Novak what he had previously heard from another journalist (whose name Rove told the grand jury he couldn't remember), shows that he wasn't the originator of the leak about Wilson's wife being a CIA agent. Rove was merely passing on to Cooper information that was already known to Novak and at least one other journalist. Also, it's somewhat consistent with the Republican claim that Rove was only trying to do Cooper a "favor" by telling him "not to get too far out" with Wilson because Rove knew that Novak was already in the process of writing a story impugning the genesis of Wilson's trip. Cooper and Time would look bad if they backed Wilson under such circumstances.