Problem is in order to attack the prosecutor you need to attack early on in the process, but to do so means you know you're guilty (just like Clinton did to Starr).
It's just bad news if Rove gets indicted by a Federal "Independent" Prosector. Two things that are different from Earle...Federal and Independent.
the white house didn't need to attack the prosecutor.
what they needed to do all along was point how how this Plame/Wilson thing was a setup - the Niger story about Iraq was true - that's the case they needed to be making all along. The administration needed to ask DOJ to launch criminal investigations of what was going on at CIA to cook this up. That was the counter assault we should have been mounting since this whole thing started.