I did not know the name of that woman...

Thanks to Newsweek we finally get a glimpse as to what Karl Rove said as Matt Cooper's Source

Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife.

This is probably due to the fantastic legal advice one finds in DC on how to parse one's word. Like, it is technically accurate to say you did not sleep with someone if you never, you know, actually fell asleep. But let's continue.

NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... "
Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published.(my emphasis)

I doubt the "Mr.s Joe Wilson works on WMDs at the CIA but I didn't know her name was Valerie" defense is gonna' allow Rove to keep his job or go over well with the public. Although I'm sure a lot of Right Wing cerebral contortionists will argue otherwise.

Maybe this latest revelation will re-animate the White House Press Corpse and they'll begin to ask Scottie McClellan some difficult questions.