What's Up at Hardball?

Last night, I tuned into Hardball mid-way through the program. Matthews was discussing the CIA leak case with Jim VandeHei and Norah O'Donnell, and stuff just kept coming up as fact that heretofore had only been speculation. I figured I must have missed some news item about the case that been covered earlier in the program. This morning, I went on a search to see if there was new news on the Plame case. Here's what I found at Firedoglake:

Tonight's episode of Hardball was truly staggering. Jim VandeHei pipes up and announces that Stephen Hadley told Karl Rove about Valerie Plame's identity early in the game, prior to his conversation with Robert Novak: really had to pick myself up off the floor. Nobody batted an eyelash. Were Chris Matthews and Norah O'Donnell just so completely uninformed that they did not recognize what a bombshell this was? They just sat there nodding and blinking like this was no surprise that people inside the White House were casually gossiping about Valerie Plame's identity over the water cooler...

Did they not realize that up until now any knowledge of the mad gabbing and plotting had been limited to the Vice President's office? That other than the memo from Karl Rove following his conversation with Matt Cooper nobody had ever tied Hadley to the leak? I guess they did not want to appear stupid, but they wound up looking all the stupider for it.

...The whole Hardball episode was surreal. Norah O'Donnell started jabbering about how Robert Luskin is saying that his conversation with Viveka Novak took place in January, 2004 -- although up until now this had only been attributed to anonymous sources. Again, not an eyelash batted by anyone on the set. Then she went on about how Viveca told Luskin that Karl Rove being Matt Cooper's source was the talk of everyone throughout Time Magazine. Was it? That's not what Viveca Novak claims. Is Norah O'Donnell letting us in on a scoop, or is she just incredibly stupid and prone to overheated, fact-free exaggeration?

The incredible ignorance of the people covering this matter only clouds the waters of an already confusing situation. And if I were Jim VandeHei's editors I'd have his head on a plate for breaking a story like that on national TV and not in the pages of the WaPo where they're paying his salary.

I'm not sure whether to attribute this to "incredible ignorance" or to something else. We've all known that many reporters knew most of the Plame story long before it was actually reported as news. So, these guys may still be holding back the full story and just let it leak out by accident.

Update: VandeHei now says he misspoke.