In addition, the prosecution would likely argue that there's no real issue on the question of whether Rove "disclosed" information. Cooper says that Rove told him Wilson's wife was a CIA agent who worked on weapons of mass destruction and that it was she, not George Tenet or Dick Cheney who was responsible for sending Wilson on his mission to Niger. He also says that Rove told him the information about Wilson's wife was "going to be declassified soon." Affirmatively providing information obviously constitutes "disclosing" it, as the term is defined in the statute. So if the jury accepts Cooper's testimony, the issue of whether Rove "intentionally disclosed" information is settled. But it could also be settled even if the version provided by the "sources close to Rove" -- that he simply confirmed information Cooper provided -- was accepted as accurate. As Rove would certainly know, a confirmation by a senior administration official conveys information to a reporter and makes it available to him for use, even if under slightly limited circumstances. Both "conveying" and "making available" are terms used to define "disclose" in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Common sense precludes any serious argument that a reference to "Joseph Wilson's wife" does not constitute an identification, so the jury could reasonably infer Rove's knowledge from the nature of the information he disclosed. In other words, a jury could infer that Rove knew Wilson's wife's status was covert and that the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the government, because he said it was going to be declassified soon. Obviously, information does not need to be declassified if it is not currently classified. That the information is classified means that the government has been taking affirmative measures to conceal it.

Rove's revelations about Valerie Plame's specific work on weapons of mass destruction, as well as the claim that she was responsible for sending her husband to Niger, also give rise to the reasonable and necessary inference that he had access to detailed classified information about her work at the CIA. The only commonsense interpretation of the comment Cooper imputes to Rove -- "I've already said too much" -- is, finally, that he knew he was imparting classified information he was not supposed to impart.

Why believe Cooper? As a start, because most of what he says about the conversation is not in dispute. He is also clearly a man of principle who was willing to go to jail to protect his source. He has no motive to falsely incriminate anyone, least of all Karl Rove or Vice President Cheney's aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby. He has clearly been careful to include all the details he can recall regardless of their implications for either side -- and his account is corroborated by writings he made at the time. Perhaps most important, Cooper's version of the July 11, 2003 conversation with Rove makes sense when viewed against what we already know of the background of the entire case. That context not only supports Cooper's testimony, but also strengthens the case that Karl Rove had access to and knew that Valerie Wilson was a covert agent whose status was classified.

That is why the jury would likely hear, among other things, that Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in the New York Times, which contradicted the administration's story about Saddam Hussein's search for yellowcake uranium ore in Niger, catapulted the administration into a frenzy of activity which appeared to have two overlapping goals. The first was the preparation of a CIA response to Wilson's revelations; the second, the undermining of Wilson's credibility. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich has so aptly described it, the eight days between the July 6 op-ed and Robert Novak's July 14 column outing Valerie Plame were characterized by "mounting desperation" on the part of the administration.

It is likely that only a fraction of what happened during that time has been made public, but the credible evidence that has been reported indicates that senior administration officials Rove and Libby were in close contact with each other, as well as with the State Department and the CIA, in order to carry out their two-pronged attack. The jury would likely hear evidence about their e-mail communications. The jury would also probably hear that, within 24 hours of publication of the Wilson piece, Secretary of State Colin Powell and White House Press Spokesman Ari Fleischer were seen holding a State Department memo requested by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on the day the Wilson op-ed appeared; that, when seen with the memo, Powell and Fleischer were on Air Force One with President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on the way to Africa; that the State Department memo contained a paragraph about Valerie Wilson's work at the CIA marked "secret"; that on July 8th, Karl Rove talked about Valerie Wilson's work at the CIA with Robert Novak; that, at about the same time, another senior administration official told Robert Novak about Valerie Wilson's work at the CIA; that, on July 12, the day after Rove talked with Cooper, Lewis Libby, speaking "on background," told Cooper he "had heard" the information about Valerie Wilson's CIA status and possible involvement in sending Wilson to Niger; that, on the same day, a "senior administration official who was not Libby" told Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus that "Wilson's trip to Niger was set up as a boondoggle by his CIA-employed wife"; and that, just the day before on July 11, CIA Director George Tenet had taken the fall for the inclusion of the infamous 16 words that, inserted in the State of the Union Address, had started the whole ball rolling. So once Robert Novak published his story outing Valerie Plame and undermining Joseph Wilson on July 14, 2003, it would appear that the administration had achieved both of its goals. Hardly the work of "senior administration officials" who know not what they do.

If charges were brought, it would certainly be in light of this background evidence, and more (as they say on the infomercials) that a jury would be asked to decide whether a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act had been proved. That jury would, of course, be free to draw whatever reasonable inferences it found appropriate based on this chain of circumstances.