PostWatch

So Say You

But not the judge, and when the prosecutor slipped it during closing arguments in he was admonished. Carol Leonnig and Amy Goldstein in Juror Is Dismissed From Libby Trial:

Libby, 56, is charged with making false statements, perjury and obstructing a probe into who may have criminally leaked information about undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media in 2003.

Leonnig and Goldstein seem to know what Judge Walton says he does not--whether Plame was "undercover." Patrick Fitzgerald gave up trying to prove it.

If Leonnig and Goldstein have some new information they should email him with the details or maybe even write a story about it.

Update: NRO Media Blog's Stephen Spruiell notes the most interesting item in last Sunday's Deborah Howell column: A friend-of-the-court brief (pdf) signed by Victoria Toensing and news organizations including the Washington Post arguing against forcing Matt Cooper and Judy Miller to reveal sources because it had not been shown that Plame was covert. It still hasn't been--not by Fitzpatrick, not by the CIA, not by any public proceeding other than the conventional non-wisdom repeated by reporters whose internet connections are at least as good as mine.

We'll Have Priest's People Call Toensing's People

Update on Tuesday, Feb. 27: Blood pressure too low? Surfers coming here from Stephen Spruiell's latest post are invited to read this item about today's Libby file by Amy Goldstein and Carol Leonnig.

- - - -

As we await a verdict in the Libby Trial, Washington Post reporter Dana Priest solves a mystery. From today's live chat:

Pauling, N.Y.: Is it possible that Valerie Plame was covert but would not be covered by the IIPA? Why is it that no government official will comment about Ms. Wilson's employment and covered status?

Dana Priest: Because she was covert! No, she's covered. If she were not, you could not have this trial in the first place.

And they say people have lost their faith in the justice system.

Let's see. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald never proved Plame was covert, though it ever so slightly might have strengthened his case against Libby if he did. Trial Judge Walton said he doesn't know. In his closing argument, Fitzgerald snuck in a suggestion that Plame was covert, whereupon Walton instructed the jurors that sometimes lawyers say things they don't intend to say. And better than not knowing, Victoria Toensing is confident Plame wasn't covert under the terms of the law cited by Priest. Which Toensing helped write. Dana Priest Live Chat, Meet Victoria Toensing Live Chat:

New York: Ms. Toensing, if no government official is willing to discuss Plame's job or covert/classified status how can you state with certainty that she wasn't covert? Has any government official told you what her status was? What position would you take if you were shown, by someone you trust, that she was covert?

Victoria Toensing: Well, if I had evidence that she was covert I certainly would respect that, but she did not have a foreign assignment within five years of publication. Wilson stated that in his book -- he states that they returned to the United States sometime in 1997, so six years. The definition of "covert agent," a person whose identity is to be protected, is someone who has been overseas in the past five years. The five years were added to protect sources the person would have worked with.

And Toensing spelled this out in her Op-Ed:

On Dec. 30, 2003, the day Fitzgerald was appointed special counsel, he should have known (all he had to do was ask the CIA) that Plame was not covert, knowledge that should have stopped the investigation right there. The law prohibiting disclosure of a covert agent's identity requires that the person have a foreign assignment at the time or have had one within five years of the disclosure, that the government be taking affirmative steps to conceal the government relationship, and for the discloser to have actual knowledge of the covert status.

But hey, there never would have been a trial if Victoria Plame wasn't covert. Just ask Dana Priest.

Thanks to jerry in the Just One Minute comboxes for making today's entertainment possible.

Update: Greetings to Stephen Spruiell and the surfers coming in. The Post's Carol Leonnig has another story today (Friday) that I haven't had the time to properly blog, though it has an interesting premise in its headline, A Nonpartisan Reputation At Stake. The story does a decent job in the first half or more, quoting people who think prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is just peachy and others, like Fred Thompson, not so much. But the last third lapses into cheerleading for Fitzgerald, which is no surprise for anyone who has read either PostWatch's reports on Leonning and Amy Goldstein or even, heaven forbid, the coverage itself. And of course we have the obligatory misrepresentation that has become the Post's calling card for the entire affair:

Fitzgerald alleged that Libby lied about sharing information about Plame with reporters and had been part of a campaign to discredit Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The CIA sent Wilson to Niger in 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq was attempting to obtain nuclear material there. Wilson found the reports groundless and in 2003 publicly accused President Bush of twisting his report's conclusions to help justify the war.

It's just bad reporting. I wish I could remember the comboxer who said this somewhere on the internet tubes: Mainstream media has become a barrier to understanding.

This Time, I Turn In Early

In blogging, you want to seize one or two key points as quickly as possible, to give your post some zing. Reporters Carol Leonnig and Amy Goldstein make my life easier with the lede in Wednesday's Libby Told A 'Dumb Lie,' Prosecutor Says on A4:

Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff lied to investigators about his role in leaking a CIA officer's identity in order to keep his job and protect the White House from political embarrassment, prosecutors told jurors yesterday in the closing arguments of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's perjury trial.

Pointing to a courtroom screen showing eight witnesses who contradicted Libby, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said it was no coincidence that Bush administration colleagues and reporters recalled Libby as intensely focused on undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame early in the summer of 2003, as her husband was publicly challenging the White House's rationale for going to war in Iraq.

But Fitzgerald never presented evidence that Plame was undercover by then. He did paint an odd portrait in his closing argument about how any normal person would remember revealing the identify of someone whose outing could lead to someone else being killed. This is either a mistake or a "mistake" that prompted Judge Walton to explain to jurors that "sometimes lawyers say things they didn't mean to say," a charitable gesture in a trial where he's repeatedly instructed jurors that the status of Valerie Plame was not something they should even speculate about.

This may be fodder for an appeal. In closing arguments, you're not supposed to enter new evidence unsupported by the trial that just took place. Oops. And double-oops, the Post is not supposed to present the prosecution's insinuation as a fact.

The Posties continue:

In impassioned, and at times disjointed arguments, the defense lawyers drew attention to numerous witnesses who had faulty or questionable memories and conflicting recollections. They said it was unfair to assume that the witnesses had made honest mistakes but that Libby's untruths were deliberate.

Part of that tracks with liveblogging by lefty but diligent Jeralyn Merritt, who suggests that Libby attorney Ted Wells was occasionally all over the place. Leonnig and Goldstein, however, leave out some value-added entertainment from Fitzgerald. Here, Merritt describes the opening of Fitzgerald's rebuttal:

Fitz starts off yelling "Madness," referring to the defense closing arguments.

Okay, so he didn't like the defense! Relax! And now, for our regularly scheduled misrepresentation of Joe Wilson's Excellent Adventure. Leonnig and Goldstein write:

Wilson turned out to be a potent critic. He had been sent to Niger by the CIA a year earlier to check on reports that Iraq had tried to obtain material for nuclear weapons there, and concluded that the reports were false. Within days of Wilson going public about his findings in July 2003 , the White House acknowledged that President Bush's State of the Union address should not have included the assertion that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium.

Yes, the White House lost nerve and failed to stand by intelligence the Brits have never renounced, and which Joe Wilson himself found evidence to support in the form of a former Niger prime minister telling him he believed Iraq had sought uranium. Wilson can conclude whatever he wants, and did, but this thumbnail, which has turned up in at least the last three stories, is indefensibly misleading.

But there is some truth here, you just have to know where to look. For example, Wilson did turn out to be a potent critic. Critics are potent when reporters and editors and entire newsrooms are are non-motivated to fact-check them.

Moving on:

Zeidenberg also said Libby had several motives to lie. The president had said he would fire whoever had disclosed Plame's identity, a criminal investigation had begun, and, at Libby's urging, Cheney had personally vouched for Libby, getting the White House to say publicly that Libby was not the leaker.

I think that's wrong. Parsing President Bush can be hazardous to your dangling participles, but I believe he mainly said he'd fire anyone who broke the law. Still, even I don't buy that Libby had no motive to lie.

And tell me if I'm wrong, but now that the trial is about over, Leonnig and Goldstein for the first time have revealed a key piece of evidence in favor of the defense:

Wells said that Libby honestly believed he learned about Plame for the first time from Russert in a July 10, 2003, conversation -- a month after he was actually told about her by the vice president, Libby later acknowledged. Wells emphasized to the jury that Russert first told the FBI that he couldn't completely rule out discussing the subject with Libby because he talks to so many people.

"That's reasonable doubt right there," Wells said of an FBI agent's notes. "If you say, 'I believe Mr. Russert beyond a reasonable doubt,' my client's life would be destroyed. His reputation would be destroyed."

The Washington Post--last week's news today!

Bonus freebie coverage from Maid Marion at Just One Minute: Hey, it's blogs, we can use whatever names we like. Commenter Maid Marion has attended many court sessions and has a long wrapup today, including observations about the jury. A brief excerpt:

4) #3 juror (white female w/long blonde hair) was nodding her head in agreement when Wells said that “every witness had memory problems.” Throughout most of the trial proceedings I’ve viewed these last two weeks, the jury has been virtually expressionless. Today was different, as I’ve noted above.

What she notes is that several jurors are reacting to Wells:

Because Wells comes across as so likeable, sincere, and wanting to relate directly to the jurors, they immediately open up their ears. When he said “I’ve got a homework assignment for you” they were ready to oblige! Pencils were readied. It was great! They dutifully jotted down the cite.

But who knows if this will translate into an acquittal or a hung jury. I have no idea which way the jury will go. Nobody really does. But thanks to the blogs, in this case the true definition of multilevel fact-checking editors, at least I know what happened at the trial--when it was happening.

Update: Greetings to surfers from Soccer Dad, one of the blogosphere's most generous linkers and a great encouragement to PostWatch. And it doesn't hurt that he has a magnificent blog.

Kurtz on Malkin

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Libby Trial coverage for a brief message on A Hard Right Punch, Howard Kurtz's profile of Michelle Malkin.

It's not a bad portrait--Kurtz has done a decent job overall. But it's one of those pieces that looks better the farther away you are from it. Hot Air's See-Dubya captures some of this in his post, WaPo's Kurtz Profiles Lonely Outspoken Conservative Who Brings It All On Herself.

It's not that bad, but here are some problems:

1. Kurtz vastly downplays the extent of the AP's collapse in standards in the Jamil Hussein/multiple exploding mosques story. AP reported six people had been burned alive and four mosques had been blown up. Um, no. AP international editor John Daniszewski's retort--"It was a moving story"--is amusingly self-excusing only if you know that AP just plain misrepresented what happened--but there's no way to tell that from Kurtz, or to know that the story typifies the AP's questionably sourced and exaggerated tales of carnage.  "We quoted people saying [the victims] had been bombed and burned" says Mr. multilevel fact-checking AP editor.

And to say the Iraqi government "confirmed Hussein was a police official" doesn't do justice to Hussein's evasive and cagey identity and still unanswered questions about his reliability as a source.

2. Kurtz leaves the impression that there's something exceptional about You Tube pulling down an anti-Islamist video that Malkin posted. But You Tube routinely removes anti-Islamist videos. Kurtz's brief anecdote hypes the story line that Malkin is a bomb-thrower. (Oddly enough they have no problem permitting anti-Western and specifically anti-Christian videos. Just ask Nick Gisburne, an atheist who posted a series of subdued anti-Christian features and was astonished when his very first criticism of Islam was spiked.)

3. Kurtz drops the ball in his account of the bikini photoshop incident. Wonkette didn't just post that image, he/she (I forget who was running it at the time) strongly implied it was a genuine photo, supposedly showing Malkin to be a hypocrite about decent public standards. When Kurtz quotes Ken Layne as saying "people send us dumb stuff all the time and if it makes us laugh we post it," it doesn't clarify what Wonkette had really done.

And on the nitpicky side when Kurtz suggests "no slight can go unanswered," if that were true Malkin would have to launch several new blogs devoted exclusively to rebutting attacks. One for racist slights, one for sexual innuendo, one for being the remote-controlled robot of her husband, etc.

Other than that, great job, Howie!

No, seriously, taken as a whole, it's not an unreasonable portrait. But like I say, stand on the other side of the room and you'll think better of it.

Update: I question the timing! Former Edwards Campaign Implosion Consultant Melissa McEwan back home at Shakespeare's Sister:

..the WaPo features a huge piece by Howard Kurtz on Michelle Malkin and how unfair it is that she's subjected to attacks from lefties.

Obviously, I absolutely 100% believe that anyone who does things like send threats or publish addresses is a scumbag, no matter to whom they're doing it. But considering Malkin herself has published people's addresses, and considering she was just part of the rightwing smear machine that accused me of anti-Catholic bigotry with no bloody evidence, not just on her blog but on The O'Reilly Factor, you'll have to forgive my incredulity at the tone and timing of this story.

You know, some things never go out of style. Classic Coke, the '65 Mustang, and I Question The Timing.

A Libby Juror Speaks

The post below explains. Kind of. Not an exact  quote. No Yodas were harmed in this dramatic reenactment.

The Case of the Bizarro T-Shirts

Federal prosecution or clown parade, you make the call:

When the jurors came in 45 minutes ago for the final evidence presented in this case, 13 of the 14 juros (12 jurors and 2 alternates) were wearing bright red t-shirts with a large white heart on the front.  The shirts appeared to be new…   The one juror not wearing a red shirt was an elderly woman who works as an art curator.  A man on the jury, who is a retired school teacher originally from north carolina, then read a statement to the court.  The man said the jury wanted to "thank the clerks, marshalls, and judge for all of the accomodations made" for the jury during this trial.  The juror then said the entire jury understands their responsibilities in this case and that their "unanimity may now go no further."  "But on behalf of the jury," said this man, "we want to wish everybody a Happy Valentine's day."

To say this moment was awkward would be an understatement.  All of the attorneys, and the judge, appeared on the edge of their seats.  At the conclusion of the juror's statement, the attorneys nervously and politely clapped…and the judge sheepishly thanked the panel for being "a very attentive jury."  Then, the judge moved on…

This from David Shuster of MSNBC via Firedoglake. The shirts and the Yoda-like the unanimity may now go no further created the one moment of perplexed unity among judge, prosecution, defense, and warring blogger factions. Again, too fascinating for reporters Amy Goldstein and Carol Leonnig and their editors, who are still recovering from the shock of no testimony from Cheney and Libby.

But wait, there's more. Brian of Another Rovian Conspiracy posted this comment yesterday at Just One Minute:

Trial story from my wife. Big civil case, more money than god has is involved. Trial has been going on for a month. I'm in town to watch the last day of testimony, and closing arguments and to sit with her and her colleagues during deliberations...

Jury comes out. And all of them are wearing black. Identical t-shirts. Someone on the jury had printed up tshirts. The judge, the clerk, the gallery are all stifling giggles. They had never seen anything like this before.

My wife's side ended up losing.

If the jury in this trial all comes out wearing identical "I invaded Iraq and all I got was this stupid t-shirt" clothing, then Libby should just make a run for it.

Close, but Libby did not run.

Much speculation now about whether the non-unanimity manifesto means there will be a hung jury (the verdict must be unanimous, one holdout can cause a mistrial).

Five or Six Strikes And You're Out

Here is my favorite line from Thursday's Defense Attorneys Rest Libby's Case by Amy Goldstein and Carol Leonnig. Favorite in the same way the Hindenburg is my favorite aviation disaster:

A third defense attorney read parts of a report on an interview with Tim Russert, NBC News's Washington bureau chief, conducted by the FBI agent who once headed the leak investigation. The report contained nuances that differed from the testimony last week of Russert, the prosecution's most pivotal witness.

The nuance, faithfully non-reported by the Post at any time, is that the FBI report on the interview said Russert couldn't rule out that Valerie Plame came up during a conversation with Libby.  Said nuance contradicts Russert's testimony that it was "impossible" that he told Libby about Plame. Which is the basis of an indictment saying Libby lied.

Why do I have to use the convoluted expression "the FBI report on the interview?" Because the FBI lost the original notes to the interview, making it that much harder to decisively undermine Russert's denial that he said that. They don't call prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald "Mr. Lucky Prosecutor Man" for nothing! Well, they don't, but they should.

Goldstein and Leonnig also relate the following:

Instead of putting the briefers on the stand, defense attorney John Cline read jurors a lengthy list, approved by both sides, of the issues that CIA briefer Craig Schmall shared with Libby on the morning of June 14, 2003. Schmall testified earlier in the trial that his notes indicate that was the day Libby mentioned Wilson to him.

In the interest of adding nuance, here's the list, as blogged by Firedoglake and cited by John Podhoretz at NRO:

"Bomb diffused...explosions...E African extremist network...Info on possible AQ attack in US...conncern about specific vulnerability to terrorist attack...Proposed ME plan, Israeli military action...Country's security affecting AQ...International org's position concerning country's nuke program...Iraq's porous borders present security threat...Demonstrations in Iran turn violent...Israeli offer of cease fire to Palestineans...Memorandum assessing Iranian' pres' view on terrorism...Problems in leadership in PLO...Foreign media analysis concerning Egyptian treatment on Paletinian conflict...Media, opposition of Israeli public to attacks...Info on Egypt process ME peace process ...Palestinian groups and Israel...Constraints on Israeli military...Saddam Hussein published on website...Memo in Iraqi WMD...Housing shortage in Iraq...Info on 1920 Mesopotamia and insurgency on moden-day Iraq...Potential effect of improved governance in Iraq..."

And the terror-threat list Libby was weighing "for that day" is 13 terror-threats long.

And how would you life your coffee, Mr. Libby--with cream, or hemlock?

Update: Slate's John Dickerson goes where Goldstein/Leonnig dare not tread:

Instead, the defense was allowed to read into the record an affidavit from the FBI agent who first interviewed Russert. The agent's account of his conversation with Russert contradicted Russert's two days of testimony. Talking to the agent, Russert could not rule out the possibility that he had an exchange with Libby about Wilson's wife (In court, Russert testified firmly that he hadn't.) The agent also reported that "Russert acknowledged that he speaks to many people," and that it was "difficult to reconstruct conversations several months later."

You are not crazy to think that what you've just read sounds like it was written by the defense; it nicely mirrors Libby's testimony about his own fuzzy recollections. On Tuesday, Fitzgerald even suggested that Russert had a lot on his plate and couldn't be expected to remember everything. This caused members of the defense team to almost bark out loud, since that is the exact argument they are making about Libby.

The Trial Isn't That Mysterious

In Libby Defense To Rest Without Testimony by Him or Cheney running Wednesday on page 1, Amy Goldstein and Carol Leonnig report on the apparently startling news that Lewis Libby will not testify:

Attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said yesterday that he and Vice President Cheney, his former boss, will not testify in Libby's perjury trial, leaving the defense preparing to rest its case today after barely more than two days of testimony.

The defense's announcement in court, partway through the fifth week of the celebrated trial of the vice president's former chief of staff, represented an abrupt shift from the witness strategy that Libby's lawyers laid out in hearings and court papers during the months leading up to the trial.

There have been changes, but there was never any guarantee the defendant would testify--always a risky venture--and describing this move as "abrupt" makes sense mainly if you haven't been focusing on the actual tactics of Team Libby. The big shift was almost immediately abandoning the defense's out-of-left-field contention that Libby was being scapegoated by figures in the Administration, especially Rove. Strange, and scarcely pursued. What has been pursued is Witness Memory Loss Syndrome and significant damage done to star witness Tim Russert. But Goldstein/Leonnig have consistently ignored these Rosetta stones scattered generously across the courtroom, and remain true to their school on Wednesday:

"It's a pretty tepid defense that's been mounted, and I wouldn't even say mounted," [professor Carl] Tobias said. "There was all this information to suggest the defense was going to put on more of a defense than we saw."

Libby's attorneys did not publicly explain why they decided that the two men should not testify.

Attention all lawerly PostWatchers: Is it common practice for attorneys to explain in the middle of a trial why the defendant or anyone else won't testify?

They continue:

For the past several days, however, they had been laying groundwork for a possible change in course, filing court papers and repeatedly asking U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to permit them to preserve the faulty-memory defense even if they chose not to call Libby as a witness.

Lo, many papers have indeed been filed. But the last few days have exposed one cratered memory after another. The main defeat for Libby there was not convincing the judge to permit a memory expert to testify. But who needs that!--what we got is some fieldwork, none of this theoretical crap. Here's a sample from commenter nittypig (don't ask) at Just One Minute:

Fleischer says he didn't tell Pincus [about Plame]. Pincus says he heard from Fleischer. Both under oath. Fleischer says he told Gregory (under oath). Gregory denies this (sadly we didn't hear from him under oath). Woodward says he told Pincus. Pincus says he didn't hear from Woodward. Both under oath. And that's just off the top of my head.

I'll add one more: Ari Fleischer saying he told Slate's John Dickerson--which Dickerson denies. And yet only people named Libby have been indicted.

And there still hasn't been any coverage, at all, of discrepancies in Tim Russert's recollection of his conversation with Libby. Russert testified it was "impossible" he told Libby about Valerie Plame because she never came up, but the FBI reported that Russert couldn't rule that out, in a previously secret interview that Russert refutes. Though that still may be a secret to the Post's readers, it's a significant non-secret for the jury, since Libby specifically is being charged with lying when he said  Russert told Libby about her. (Commenter and Kesher Talk blogger Alcibiades drills down into Russert  at her own site.)

Will the jury therefore acquit? I have no idea. But at least I'm not reduced to the impenetrable dense fogbank of mystery faced by this story's experts: Eliason and Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, said that Libby's defense team is experienced and must be confident that it has established reasonable doubt in cross-examination of prosecution witnesses.

I guess!

One Big Happy Newsroom

Why don't I get emails like this? Powerline has a reader who emailed one of the Post reporters associated with The Mother of All Corrections:

One of our readers has now penetrated inside the Post through an email exchange with Jeff Smith, one of the Post reporters "credited" with the story. Smith is unhappy at being associated with the debacle. This is what Smith emailed to our reader:

I agree with you that this was an egregious error. I also had nothing to do with it. All I did was obtain a copy of the unclassified summary of the IG report and write a precisely correct account, which I turned over to the other reporters. I'm not happy my name was put on that story by the editors, and I was astonished by the mistake. I blew the whistle on it internally. So don't attribute the mistake to me.

Cheers,

Jeff Smith

That's R. Jeffrey Smith. The other reporter with a byline on that story is Walter Pincus.

Libby Mania: Save The Links!

In a no doubt intentional homage to the FBI's losing the original notes of their secret interview with Tim Russert, washingtonpost.com wiped clean an earlier file by Amy Goldstein and Carol Leonnig (blogged here), using that old link to point to Tuesday's page 3 story, Journalists Testify That Libby Never Mentioned CIA Officer, namely Valerie Plame aka Valerie Wilson. The story sums up some key points that track with the liveblogging I followed (if followed is the word for being confused for seven hours):

Six journalists testified yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, never mentioned an undercover CIA officer to them -- and some said they learned about her identity from other administration sources.

As Libby's attorneys opened their defense in his perjury trial, they argued for a second time that Libby need not take the stand for them to present elements of a defense that his misstatements to investigators were the product of a faulty memory. An irritated U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he felt misled and believed Libby would testify.

Testifying as the first defense witness, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus revealed that then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was the first person to tell him, on July 12, 2003, that war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV was married to undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. His remarks contradicted Fleischer's testimony as a prosecution witness last month.

Which is fun, but doesn't mean much except perhaps as another example of faulty memory syndrome, a common affliction in this trial although only one citizen is being prosecuted for it.

As they say, the point of much of that testimony was to show Libby wasn't obsessed with "discrediting" Wilson since he talked to plenty of reporters without mentioning him. There's still a suggestion in this story that it's illegal to discredit a political opponent, but never you mind. This is more interesting:

Bob Woodward, a best-selling author and an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, told jurors that he learned about Plame during a mid-June 2003 interview with then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage for a book Woodward was researching on the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. He said he interviewed Libby later that month, and his notes indicate that Libby said nothing to him about Plame but that Woodward might have mentioned her to Libby.

The reporters don't seize the significance of a conversation between Woodward and Armitage, taped by Woodward and played back for the jury. Now you must make allowance for the right side of the blogosphere that is my echo-chamber, but it points to Wilson outing Plame himself.

Here's what Leonnig/Goldstein write:

Armitage explains that "his wife works at the agency" on "WMD" issues.

"High enough that wife can say,  'Oh, yeah, hubby will go?' " Woodward asks.

And a bit more. But they leave out the best part. From  AJ Strat at Stratasphere:

2:15 WOODWARD: But it was Joe Wilson who was sent by
2:16 the agency. I mean that’s just —
2:17 ARMITAGE: His wife works in the agency.
2:18 WOODWARD: — Why doesn’t that come out? Why does —
2:19 ARMITAGE: Everyone knows it.
2:20 WOODWARD: —that have to be a big secret?
2:21 Everyone knows.
2:22 ARMITAGE: Yeah. And I know [ ] Joe Wilson’s
2:23 been calling everybody. He’s pissed off because he was
2:24 designated as a low-level guy, went out to look at it. So,
2:25 he’s all pissed off.

As AJ says:

I have maintained the reason Fitz could not charge anyone with exposing Plame was because Plame had exposed herself (or Wilson had) to back up Joe’s wild claims about forged evidence. Seems I was right. Clearly Armitage is saying everyone is finding out about Plame because of Joe’s calls. Now Mitchell and Russert must be sweating right along with Fitz-Magoo....

One scenario: Andrea Mitchell and Tim Russert might be sweating if there's any evidence Wilson called them. Since they deny any knowledge of Plame at that point. But there's something hysterical about the possibility this whole thing starting because Joe Wilson felt disrespected after being described as some low-level guy and started burning up the phone lines. And Armitage's "everybody knows" about Wilson's wife sure does echo Andrea Mitchell's recanted statement that yeah, everybody knew.

And if everybody knew, Libby shouldn't be under prosecution in the first place and could have easily confused exactly which reporter he heard it from. He says Russert, Russert says no, I say it's spinach and I say to hell with it.