Bush Knew?

According to a story in the New York Daily News, President Bush knew in 2003 that Karl Rove was involved in outing CIA covert operative Valerie Plame, and was angry because Rove botched the job.

The story says:
A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.

"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

According to Reuters, Senator Charles Schumer of New York today asked for details about the president's conversations with Rove after The New York Daily News reported that the president was initially furious with when Rove conceded in 2003 that he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

The Reuters story also quotes White House spokesperson Scott McClellan: McClellan on Wednesday broke with his usual practice of refusing to comment on the leak case, saying of the Daily News report: "I would challenge the overall accuracy of that news account." He didn't answer questions about what exactly in the story was inaccurate.

Kos points out that this alleged meeting between Bush and Rove predates Bush's public statements that he didn't know who was responsible for the leak but he would find out, and his statement that anyone in his administration guilty of the leak would be fired.

So if the story is correct, Bush not only knew, he lied to the world about a specific breach in U.S. national security.

UPDATE: Raw Story is reporting that two White House aides in v.p. Cheney's office are cooperating with prosecutor Fitzgerald, and have implicated senior officials, possibly including Cheney, in the outing of Valerie Plame: (Wilson is Joseph Wilson, her husband, whose mission to Niger finding that Bush administration claims of an Iraqi nuclear bomb program were false, and his subsequent going public with this, may have preciptated his wife's outing.)

The sources say that Hannah and Wurmser were given orders by senior officials in Cheney’s office in June 2003 to leak Plame’s covert status and identity in an attempt to muzzle Wilson.

UPDATE 2: According to an AP story:

Top White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby discussed their contacts with reporters about an undercover CIA officer in the days before her identity was published, the first known intersection between two central figures in the criminal leak investigation.

Rove told grand jurors it was possible he first heard in the White House that Valerie Plame, wife of Bush administration Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA from Libby's recounting of a conversation with a journalist, according to people familiar with his testimony.