Time for That Watergate Question Again

What did the President know and when did he know it? According to the New York Daily News, the answer in regards to the leak of Valerie Plame's name to the press is pretty much everything awfully damn quickly. Following up yesterday's story about Fitzgerald's "secret snitch," today's report states: "An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair." But what specifically set him off? Was it Rove's treasonous act of betraying a CIA agent during a time of war? Was he concerned about those whose work and lives were at risk due to the revelation? Maybe not.

The President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

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"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

Bush-league, indeed.

The story further informs us that recent reports of Rove having lied to the President about his involvement in the affair are not correct but were leaked by the White House to distant the President from his beleaguered deputy chief of staff. Not exactly the vote of confidence Rove would like to hear as Fitzgerald prepares possible indictments.