In an interview published this afternoon with Byron York of NRO, Karl Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin says that Cooper “burned” Rove on the Plame story.

As I pointed out yesterday, the Cooper memo actually clears Rove of the political aspect of the scandal by proving that the White House was not seeking revenge for Joe Wilson perfidy but rather Rove was trying to warn Cooper off on Wilson’s main thesis – that Saddam never attempted to buy yellow cake uranium from Nigeria.

Luskin expands on that theme to show that rather than the White House calling reporters all over town trying to sabotage his wife’s career, it was Cooper himself who initiated the dialog on Plame:

“By any definition, he burned Karl Rove,” Luskin said of Cooper. “If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame.”

Luskin told NRO that the circumstances of Rove’s conversation with Cooper undercut Time’s suggestion of a White House “war on Wilson.” According to Luskin, Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling. According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are “indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out.”

“Look at the Cooper e-mail,” Luskin continues. “Karl speaks to him on double super secret background…I don’t think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the name of Wilson’s wife.”

Nor, says Luskin, was Rove trying to “out” a covert CIA agent or “smear” her husband. “What Karl was trying to do, in a very short conversation initiated by Cooper on another subject, was to warn Time away from publishing things that were going to be established as false.” Luskin points out that on the evening of July 11, 2003, just hours after the Rove-Cooper conversation, then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement that undermined some of Wilson’s public assertions about his report. “Karl knew that that [Tenet] statement was in gestation,” says Luskin. “I think a fair reading of the e-mail was that he was trying to warn Cooper off from going out on a limb on [Wilson’s] allegations.”

Luskin also sheds some light on the waiver signed by Rove back in 2003 in which he gave permission for any journalist with which he had spoken to talk to the both Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald and the grand jury investigating the leak. For some reason, both Cooper and the jailed Times reporter Judith Miller didn’t think the waiver was broad enough – even though Fitzgerald had signed off on it:

Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller have expressed concerns that such waivers (top Cheney aide Lewis Libby also signed one) might have been coerced and thus might not have represented Rove’s true feelings. Yet from the end of 2003 or beginning of 2004, until last Wednesday, Luskin says, Rove had no idea that there might be any problem with the waiver.

It was not until that Wednesday, the day Cooper was to appear in court, that that changed. “Cooper’s lawyer called us and said, “Can you confirm that the waiver encompasses Cooper?” Luskin recalls. “I was amazed. He’s a lawyer. It’s not rocket science. [The waiver] says ‘any person.’ It’s that broad. So I said, ‘Look, I understand that you want reassurances. If Fitzgerald would like Karl to provide you with some other assurances, we will.’” Luskin says he got in touch with the prosecutor — “Rule number one is cooperate with Fitzgerald, and there is no rule number two,” Luskin says — and asked what to do. According to Luskin, Fitzgerald said to go ahead, and Luskin called Cooper’s lawyer back. “I said that I can reaffirm that the waiver that Karl signed applied to any conversations that Karl and Cooper had,” Luskin says. After that — which represented no change from the situation that had existed for 18 months — Cooper made a dramatic public announcement and agreed to testify.

Finally, Luskin says that Rove is not hiding behind the legalistic defense that he didn’t mention PLame by name. When asked if Rove was the target of Fitzgerald’s investigation, here’s what he said.

Luskin also addressed the question of whether Rove is a “subject” of the investigation. Luskin says Fitzgerald has told Rove he is not a “target” of the investigation, but, according to Luskin, Fitzgerald has also made it clear that virtually anyone whose conduct falls within the scope of the investigation, including Rove, is considered a “subject” of the probe. “’Target’ is something we all understand, a very alarming term,” Luskin says. On the other hand, Fitzgerald “has indicated to us that he takes a very broad view of what a subject is.”

Finally, Luskin conceded that Rove is legally free to publicly discuss his actions, including his grand-jury testimony. Rove has not spoken publicly, Luskin says, because Fitzgerald specifically asked him not to.

What all this adds up to is something truly bizarre. It appears that someone is giving Judith Miller some of the worst legal advice in history. My guess would be that her attorney (or Miller herself) is a raving leftist who believes that Rove is going to do some kind of double back flip and land behind Miller pointing his finger at her as Plame’s outer. After all, everyone knows that Rove, the mastermind, is capable of anything.

If what Luskin says is true, Miller should be able to walk out of that jail free and clear. That is, unless she’s protecting someone else. And given the fact that Plame’s job at CIA was common knowledge in Washington, it could very well be that Miller’s main source is another reporter.