As far as Rove's useless, dirty cover comment that he "didn't know her name, didn't leak her name" is concerned, this is all a hammered together backstory that is somehow supposed to convince a jury that a just world would make him come before. He didn't have to use her name, for God's Sake! Joe Wilson wasn't some crazed hermit dropout living in a previously unmapped lava tube out here in Central Oregon; he was a former Ambassador living in a suburb with neighbors and had a history and a biography that my children could discover on the Internet with only a child's googling skills. Rove gave Cooper, prior to any public revelation of the truth of
Valerie Plame, everything that was necessary to destroy her cover and ruin her usefulness to the CIA and - just perhaps - put her live personally at risk. His revelation to Matthew Cooper was nothing more than part of an effort to put the lash to Joe Wilson and show just how rough things could get if he didn't shut up and get out of the way of the effort to launch George W. Bush's Grand Nation-Building Adventure in Iraq.
Let me put it another way. If I wrote:
I know for a fact that Jessica Gavora's husband, who writes for the National Review, has been convicted multiple times for child rape.
I don't think the fact that I didn't identify the name of Mr. Jessica Gavora would be much of a defense for a libel suit.