The Political Chase

Jim Vandehei’s Statements on Hardball

Previously, I noted that Jim Vandehei, of The Washington Post, stated on last night’s Hardball show, that Stephen Hadley told Karl Rove about Valerie Plame Wilson. Hadley is the Deputy National Security Advisor and was (is?) a member of the White House Iraq Group.

MSNBC has finally published the show’s transcript, from which the following is taken:

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you one thing. One thing watching this thing from a bit of a second-degree look, it seems to me there’s interesting in the dates. The very day, July 12, I believe, that Scooter Libby is accused of telling two reporters about this. That is Matt Cooper and his favorite reporter, Judy Miller.

The day before that, Karl Rove now apparently told Matt Cooper. So, it looks like these two guys were working together to put this story out, right, Jim?

VANDEHEI: That’s always been — it’s always –

MATTHEWS: I mean, just from the looks of it.

VANDEHEI: That’s what it looks like and we do know from the indictment of Scooter Libby that there certainly was a conversation between Libby and Rove where it was mentioned that Bob Novak, no relation to Viveca, was making phone calls and asking about Valerie Plame. And that they discussed it.

We still don’t know exactly where Karl Rove originally learned about Valerie Plame. That’s still one of the mysteries. We know one of them he had heard it from Hadley as just sort of chatter inside the office, but he had learned it earlier from some other place. And we still don’t know where that is.

MATTHEWS: We’ll be right back with Norah O’Donnell and Jim VandeHei.

Jeralyn Merritt and Firedoglake were right.

I have not read the entire transcript; I just confirmed what was quoted in Jeralyn’s post.

More later…

Update: Handehei made a mistake last night. See this post for correction.