[Nick Danger]

even if Rove is not prosecuted under that law, it is not clear whether Fitzgerald is looking at other charges such as perjury or obstruction of justice. Questions remain as to who the other senior administration official was who spoke to Novak or who Miller's sources were.

There is an amazing hidden assumption in all this media coverage which no one seems to question. The assumption is that Fitzgerald is investigating who "outed" Valerie Plame.

What if it's not? What if other classified material was leaked? For example:

• Wilson's trip to Niger was at the behest of the CIA. That was not publicly available information.
• Whatever Wilson told the CIA when he got back, it is unlikely that the CIA expected to see it in the New York Times.
• "The dates were wrong and the signatures were wrong." Wilson said that, about a document proffered up by Italian Intelligence concerning a uranium purchase. But in theory, Wilson had never seen the document. The U.S. did not have it until months after Wilson got back.
  • How did Wilson find out the document even exists? This was a Big Secret being passed around by intelligence agencies.
  • How secret was the fact that we knew it was forged? The French were still trying to peddle it to us and the Brits as genuine. The fact that we knew it was fake was likely a highly classified piece of information.
• In discussing the "leak" of Plame's name, David Corn revealed even more Secret Stuff: that her job was to monitor the proliferation of WMDs. Nobody knew that. How did David Corn find that out? Novak didn't know that. Cooper didn't know that. Rove didn't know that. How did some blogger find out what Valerie Plame's secret job was?

And then there's this:

Wilson later went to work for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.

Not exactly. According the puff piece in Vanity Fair, Wilson started working for the Kerry campaign in May 2003. In other words, at the time he wrote his damning op-ed in the New York Times and appeared on Meet the Press, Wilson was a Kerry campaign operative. Do you remember the media telling us that? Did they know? Did Timmy Russert know that he was passing off a Kerry campaign operative as some sort of career civil servant "whistleblower"?

This is more and more starting to sound like Rathergate, with the media conspiring with Democrats to foist fake material (later shown to be all lies) on an unsuspecting public for the purpose of throwing spears at Bush.

[Quilla]

The CIA also raised objections, noting that federal law prohibited officials from intentionally disclosing the identity of a covert agent.

I'd like to know which incompetent, partisan spook at the CIA raised these objections considering Plane had not been a covert agent for six years. This stinks to high heaven.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Excellent analysis. Excellent!

[kabar]

Not exactly. According the puff piece in Vanity Fair, Wilson started working for the Kerry campaign in May 2003. In other words, at the time he wrote his damning op-ed in the New York Times and appeared on Meet the Press, Wilson was a Kerry campaign operative.

Good catch. I also read that somewhere else. Wilson was already in discussions with the Kerry campaign as an unpaid advisor. It would be instructive to look at Kerry's Iraq statements prior to Wilson's July 6th Op-Ed. I bet you would find similar verbiage.