[Alia]

I agree with you on each of your points. When the subpoenas were issued for Judith Miller and Matt Cooper, I wondered long and hard about Mr. Safire's objections in citing "freedom of the press" as a check/balance issue to possible governmental abuse. And I have long agreed that Mr. Gannon's relationship to the Plame matter was a red-herring. I have my own suspicions as to how he got "access" to the material, and I most certainly didn't in any way suspect it coming from the WH -- the roar from the libs and dems was too loud; the initial silence from "pressies" was far too quiet.

Furthermore, I did a check of headlines at the time the Plame biz was in the news. The focus at that point, via headlines, was predominantly upon "Africa harboring terrorists" -- not necessarily Africa being a harborer or conduit for uranium. The latter focus had already begun earlier, and I suspected an attention redirect away from countries more obviously in suspicion of harboring/conduiting Uranium - Syria, Iran, etc.

The whole of it struck me as a DC, foggybottom, redirect of national attention via "rumor".

[cyncooper]

And I have long agreed that Mr. Gannon's relationship to the Plame matter was a red-herring. I have my own suspicions as to how he got "access" to the material, and I most certainly didn't in any way suspect it coming from the WH -

I can tell you how he knew about the memo and was able to ask Wilson about it. About ten days before Gannon interviewed Wilson the WSJ had published an article describing...the memo. I therefore deduce Gannon read the paper.