Now that we know that Karl Rove was involved in leaking Valerie Plame’s identity and her role at CIA before the information had appeared in Robert Novak’s column, attention will now inevitably turn to whether Rove (and whoever else was leaking) knew Plame was covert.
If they can plausibly claim that they thought she was simply a paper-pusher, then the statute would not apply to them.
But I think any enterprising reporter will be able to see why this is almost certainly not true. A close look at the wording Novak used in his column and a careful review of previous Novak columns over the years shows he only ever uses the word ‘operative’ to refer to covert agents. And that’s the word he used to refer to Plame.
So Novak knew she was covert. And that pretty clearly means his sources knew too. How else would he have found out?