Newsweek publishes an e-mail from Matt Cooper to his editor, Michael Duffy, regarding Karl Rove. It begins: “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation …”

This story only gets more confusing, and the disclosure that Time reporters use “double super secret background” doesn’t help.

According to the Newsweek piece, Rove told Cooper to be skeptical about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s claim that his trip to Niger was authorized by CIA director George Tenet. In reality, Rove said, the trip had been authorized by Wilson’s wife, who worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction.

So Rove apparently did not use Valerie Plame’s name or indicate that her work was classified. Whether he knew these facts or not is unclear.

To make the story even more confusing, the circumstances under which Cooper decided to testify before a grand jury now turn out to have been murky at best. Cooper announced that he had decided to testify rather than go to jail because he had received “an express personal release from my source.”

Well, now that “personal release” turns out to be a quote from Karl Rove’s lawyer in the Wall Street Journal….

This story gets harder and harder to follow, and I’m sure that the vast majority of American’t aren’t following it.

But I think the main point is this: The drive to start a war in Iraq was based on deceit and dishonesty by the Bush administration, and the consequences of that deceit and dishonesty are still raining down around us like embers from a burning building. The Matt Cooper-Judith Miller-Karl Rove matter is one such ember, and it may fizzle out or re-ignite elsewhere….

But still…”double super secret background”? An unfortunate choice of words. It makes relations between the press and the White House sound like a game, and I guess all too often, that’s exactly what they are…..