Could Someone Please Explain...

Karl Rove's reported behavior in the Plame/Cooper/Miller case? The New York Times strongly suggests that Matthew Cooper was protecting a single source in the grand jury investigation, and that the source was Rove, and that it was Rove who personally released Cooper from his pledge of confidentiality yesterday. In addition, Rove long ago signed a general waiver releasing Cooper and other reporters from any confidentiality promises -- a waiver that Cooper did not accept on the (entirely theoretical) grounds that it might have been coerced and not represent Rove's true wishes. So Rove reportedly did it explicitly and personally -- his second waiver in this matter. (Top Cheney aide Lewis Libby has also reportedly released journalists from confidentiality pledges.)

So the question is: If the reports are accurate, and if Rove is the guilty one in this case, as many posters and readers of The Huffington Post seem to believe, why is he behaving so self-destructively? If Cooper can indeed identify Rove as the criminal, why would Rove give his explicit OK for Cooper to talk? It seems doubtful that Time's decision to release Cooper's notes and emails was the reason, because Rove had long before given his original waiver for Cooper and other reporters to talk. In any event, if Rove is guilty, these actions seem decidedly against his own interests in this case, and represent a marked change from the Clinton years, when figures in and around the administration formed a joint defense agreement, asserted novel and eventually discredited legal privileges, and sufferred terrible cases of memory loss before the grand jury. What is going on here?

Finally, my question for Lawrence O'Donnell remains: How did you learn the contents of Time's internal emails long before they were handed over to the grand jury?