NY Times Blockbuster: Rove Spoke On Phone With Novak, Confirmed Details

Well, I gotta hand it to the Times, this is a pretty huge scoop...Drudge is giving it the siren...the burning question now is, if Karl confirmed what Novak already knew, and Novak says two senior administration officials told him Joe Wilson's wife had suggested him for the Niger trip, then who was leaker number one? Ari Fleischer, anyone?...

UPDATE 10:38 p.m. central: Well, after mulling it over for ten minutes, here are my thoughts:

• This leak is helpful to Rove; he didn't call Novak, Novak called him, and he didn't volunteer the information, he just told Novak he had heard that, too;
• Rove will not be indicted;
• Judith Miller is protecting whoever is behind door number one.

In light of the above, I hereby quit waffling (though I can't resist one caveat): if the currently available information is the worst of it, Rove will survive (and should not resign, unless specifically asked to by the President)...

AJStrata has much the same reaction as I did...

UPDATE 07/15/05 6:43 a.m. central: Tom Maguire, who owns this story, has his latest analysis up; Tom says there are an awful lot of media figures who have a lot of explaining to do, and groans as Karl Rove trots out the 'I forgot' line on the subject of what reporter first told him about Plame...also, Paul Krugman has an article up on 'Karl Rove's America', in case you've run out of toilet paper, and Atrios pretends he just doesn't understand - could it be because the article is largely favorable to Rove?...Just asking...