Sources: It's Rove

Editor and Publisher says an MSNBC analyst believes Karl Rove to be Matt Cooper's source. Here's a follow-up article.

Explain to me how this isn't plastered all over front pages and dominating political talk show agendas.

Oh, I know why. It's because all of a sudden, what Rove and Cooper discussed is "unclear."

They have the notes. They have the e-mails. Editors should know as a matter of procedure the identity of the unnamed source and what information is relayed. Something in those documents, between the notes and the correspondence between Cooper and his editors, should definitively identify the source and the information that was relayed. If not, some editors at Time, Inc. took Cooper at his word and probably broke all sorts of procedural rules over there.

When I wrote for my college paper, I did a big investigative piece on drug sources in the community. I spoke directly to a major drug supplier who was doing all sorts of other illegal things. In order to write the story, I had to ensure his anonymity. I wouldn't divulge the source, but I also had to ensure that at least one other editor at the paper knew who the anonymous source was, so she could back me in the case that someone accused me of simply making shit up. As I understood it at the time, having one's editor know the identity of an anonymous source is pretty much the status quo in newsrooms for this type of story.

So it's very, very likely that confidential correspondence exists between Cooper and at least one of his editors that discloses the identity of the anonymous source, and what information he was responsible for relaying.

If that correspondence exists, why don't we know the identity of the source with any degree of certainty?