VPW - One x Two x Six

Both the NY Times and the Washington Post front-page the Valerie Plame Wilson investigation, alerting us that the story is shaking but not breaking. Let us start with Mike Allen and Susan Schmidt at the WaPo:

A federal grand jury has questioned one current and two former aides to President Bush, and investigators have interviewed several others, in an effort to discover who revealed the name of an undercover CIA officer to a newspaper columnist, sources involved in the case said yesterday.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that he talked to the grand jury on Friday. Mary Matalin, former counselor to Vice President Cheney, testified Jan. 23, the sources said. Adam Levine, a former White House press official, also testified Friday, the sources said.

None is suspected by prosecutors of having exposed undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, but they were questioned about White House public relations strategy, the sources said.

Names emphasized for the benefit of those scoring at home. Investigators have also interviewed (but not taken grand jury testimony from) more folks:

Officials interviewed by the FBI include Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser; McClellan; Matalin; Levine; White House communications director Dan Bartlett; former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff; and Cathie Martin, a Cheney aide, according to the sources.

McClellan said at a briefing on Oct. 10 that Rove and Libby, the only interview subjects about whom he had been publicly questioned, "assured me they were not involved in this."

Segue. Last September 28, Mike Allen himself wrote that "a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." However, "The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists." OK, did the administration official name the sources off the record? If I recall correctly, the blogoshperic consensus was that he had, but I need a refresher in why we thought that. Subject to revision, let's work with the assumption that Mike Allen was tipped last September to the identity of the leakers.

In that scenario, shouldn't Mr. Allen, in his latest story, provide the subtlest of hints if any of these denials contradict his original source? For example, suppose that Mr. Allen has been told that Karl Rove was involved. After repeating McClellan's denial of Rove's involvement, shouldn't Mr. Allen continue with some red flag - "other sources, however, point to the gaping holes in Rove's carefully hedged denial"? The fact that he does not strikes me as suggestive, in a tea-leafy kind of way.

The WaPo also informs us that "News organizations typically resist subpoenas or other methods of obtaining information about confidential sources. In the Plame case, prosecutors have tried to overcome that obstacle by asking several White House officials to sign waivers requesting "that no member of the news media assert any privilege or refuse to answer any questions from federal law enforcement authorities on my behalf or for my benefit."

The sources said most officials declined to sign the form on the advice of their attorneys. "It would just be helping the government to put more pressure on journalists to reveal sources," one of the lawyers said. "

The White House will no doubt be criticized for not pressuring their staff to waive their confidentiality agreements. However, if I were giving advice to the staffers in question, I would say, sure, sign the waiver - IF you think reporters never make mistakes, misquote people, conflate sources, or confuse dates. Otherwise, don't sign. I am reasonably certain that, at various times, both Mark Kleiman and Brad DeLong have noted their personal experiences with the inability of the press to get a story right, but we will wait to see how they handle this.

Now, perhaps the White House should make these waivers a standard condition of continued employment? Please. Leaks are good. The press likes leaks; we the people need leaks. If these waivers were taken seriously, Washington would freeze over (Hell would freeze first, however).

The NY Times covers the same ground, but with a colorful tidbit that our bashful friends at the WaPo could not unearth, or would not reveal:

At first, the investigation seemed narrowly focused on trying to identify who at the White House provided the information about Ms. Plame to Mr. Novak. But more recently, prosecutors have focused on a Sept. 28, 2003, article in The Washington Post, which said the newspaper had been told that "yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife."

Prosecutors, referring to the story as "one by two by six," have sought to learn the identity of the senior administration official or the two top White House officials, believing that whoever provided the information to the Post knew who spoke with Mr. Novak.

Interesting - Mike Allen, ace reporter, is also Mike Allen, man of mystery in the eye of the Federal storm. How did he fail to note that?

Last free advice to WH staffers and anyone else- don't lie to the investigators. As Martha Stewart is discovering, sometimes it is not that the cover-up is worse than the crime; sometimes the cover-up is the crime.

MORE: This paragraph from the WaPo story emerges as a seemingly stray fact:

A parallel FBI investigation into the apparent forgery of documents suggesting that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger is "at a critical stage," according to a senior law enforcement official who declined to elaborate. That probe, conducted by FBI counterintelligence agents, was launched last spring after U.N. officials pronounced the documents crude forgeries.

There are wild scenarios in which the two are directly connected - basically, disgruntled CIA types both planted the forgeries and fed leaks to Amb. Wilson. What if?

Comments

[rlm2003]

How about the Vice-President's office also created the forgeries to bolster their case about the Iraqi nuclear threat?

It has been noted that the forgeries were crudely made, not the work of true professional spooks.

[TM]

The disgruntled CIA theory comes from Seymour Hersh's "Stovepipe". I had consecutive posts on it.