So much for knocking Rove off the front page...

The US military may not be able to fight a two-front war currently, but Democrats sure can. Page A1 of Thursday's Washington Post:

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

And, as a side note, the whole "Wilson was pushing a bad story" thing, i.e. Saddam was not trying to buy uranium from Niger? Read on:

Almost all of the memo is devoted to describing why State Department intelligence experts did not believe claims that Saddam Hussein had in the recent past sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Only two sentences in the seven-sentence paragraph mention Wilson's wife.

Heck, even Ari Fleischer admitted that the information on yellowcake "turned out to be incorrect." The Butler Report's assertion that Iraq was looking for yellowcake from Niger is hogwash, as Josh Marshall will tell you. And plus, we now know that the whole thing doesn't matter.

Fact: information marked "secret" made its way from a classified State Department memo to Robert Novak's column in the space of 7 days. Fact: Everyone who signs SF 312, which is everyone working in the White House, cannot disclose or confirm classified information without asking an authorized official if the information has, in fact, been declassified. It's very clear Rove, Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby and potentially others did that:

Several other administration officials were on the trip to Africa (where the State Department memo was distributed), including senior adviser Dan Bartlett, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and others. Bartlett's attorney has refused to discuss the case, citing requests by the special counsel. Fleischer could not be reach for comment yesterday.

Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, have been identified as people who discussed Wilson's wife with Cooper. Prosecutors are trying to determine the origin of their knowledge of Plame, including whether it was from the INR memo or from conversations with reporters.

Here's rule #1 in Washington: the CIA knows shit, and they know how to get it out. It would be wise not to make them angry.

Who's that John Roberts guy again?