Wotan, I respect your perspicacity, truly. But...
The original order from Comey to Fitzgerald was very, very narrow and limited to investigating only 2 things-
whether there was a violation of Title 50, US Code, Section 421 (Disclosure of the id of covert intel personnel) and Title 18, US Code, Section 793 (improper, "unauthorized" disclosure).
I admit that, yes, Fitz DID have the auth, from Comey, to expand his investigation into the 5 resulting counts of indictment (restricted to "Obstruction of Justice", "False Statements", and "Perjury") but SOMEONE should look into WHY and on what grounds could he go fishing any further, after he found that no underlying crime (the 2 Codes specified, above) occurred. It would be sorta like investigating Fitz' motives, even though he perhaps committed no crime,sorta like he did to Libby. If this had happened in a state GJ proceeding, the supervising judge would've (unless he was a crypto-Dem) stopped it, b/c it would've been challenged as "bad faith" on the part of the prosecutor. But this was a Federal GJ, and so we see this batch of perjury traps- highly indicative of Fitz' motives? This is why so many ham sandwiches are indictable-no supervision of Federal prosecutors. Pretty scary in a democracy.
Further, according to Andrew C. McCarthy (NRO), Bill Girtz (WashP), and the amici curiae (NBC, CBS, NYT, WashP, et al): there was no standing for the GJ b/c Plame was no covert agent within the 5-year period, b/c she had been outed twice before that! So, the press did know who she was?!
What I'd really like to know is: why do you say Plame was a covert agent in the 5 years preceeding (July 14, 2003)? Doesn't the fact of her having been outed (by the Ruskies and then, "inadvertantly"? by the CIA, in Cuba) nullify any later "covert" status? And let's not forget that Libby may yet claim he was, indeed, authorized.
Is there some other original order from Comey to Fitzgerald than the one posted on Fitzgerald's website? The Dec. 30th 2003 letter does not mention any specific laws.
The reason for prosecuting someone for perjury in this case without a finding that a law has been violated is that perjuries make it difficult to get to the truth about whether the law has been violated. This was the point that Fitzgerald was making with his lengthy, clumsy baseball example, if I remember correctly. To excuse perjuries is to allow the perjurer to tailor his testimony to fit the knowledge of the prosecutor rather than make him fear that he must tell the truth even when it is to his disadvantage. If Libby lies about one thing, he may have lied about others, but for which the prosecutor lacks the evidence to nail him.
I don't believe Fitzgerald "found no underlying crime had occurred". He failed to find that one had occurred (which is different) perhaps due to perjuries by one or more witnesses. Fitzgerald doesn't know whether a crime occurred. What he believes is that in investigating whether one had occurred, Mr. Libby lied repeatedly to him. And, so, Mr. Libby has been indicted.
Technically, Plame had covert status because she had been out of the country in the previous five years on assignment for the CIA to gather intelligence under cover with Brewster-Jennings, a CIA front company. I take this to be generally acknowledged, because, googling around, it seems that the riposte is to claim the cover wasn't very effective, the CIA didn't seem to take care about concealing her identity, the Russians knew about Valerie Wilson, etc., in short, a lot of hazy stuff that I imagine others would dispute, but would surely not interest Fitzgerald as much as the technical definition.
Here is an article about not how the Russians outed her, but about how the CIA suspected the Russians knew that Valerie Wilson was covert (not Valerie Plame).
Thank you for your comments. I am always pleased to find someone on FR who doesn't simply make menacing noises when a belief is questioned.