Plamegate

Raw Story's headline reads "CIA Leaker Revealed." But that's a tad misleading. The actual story on Truthout reveals that Fitzgerald has known for quite some time the identity of the person who spoke to Novak. Fitz has a name, it seems -- but we still don't.

Or do we...? Alas, this notoriously complex story has now become even more convoluted.

Truthout's Jason Leopold says that Fitz was able to finger the leaker with help from John Hannah, a key Cheney aide who (unknown to BushCo) was "turned" back in 2004. Leopold identifies Hannah as a John Bolton aide "on loan" to the Cheney-run White House Iraq Group. But that description doesn't tell the full story.

According to a Newsweek story from last December, Hannah played a direct role in stovepiping (mis-)information from the Achmed Chalabi's notorious Iraqi National Congress:

For months, Cheney’s office has denied that the veep bypassed U.S. intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two “U.S. governmental recipients” for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, “defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed”; the info was then reported to, among others, “appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.” The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a “principal point of contact” for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney’s staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans.

So we come back to one of the foundation questions underlying this mess. Who was behind Chalabi?

It wasn't CIA -- they didn't trust him. Chalabi is thisclose with Micahel Ledeen, who also looms heavily in many analyses of the Niger forgeries, although he staunchly denies any involvement.

Ledeen is a strange individual. He has been connected with both the (more-or-less) fascist Italian secret society P2 -- and with Israeli politicians. He increased Cold War tensions by pushing the bogus "Bulgarians shot the Pope" story. He now screams for regime change in Iran. Although he claims that he does not want this change to be brought about through force of arms, most would agree that nothing short of war will do the trick -- and most would agree that war is likely.

Back to Plame. Back to basics. Who is the leaker?

Although Jason Leopold claims that the name remains undisclosed, he (confusingly enough -- at least I'm confused) goes on to finger everyone's first choice, Karl Rove:

Rove told FBI investigators on five occasions and testified twice before a grand jury that he distributed damaging information about Plame to the Republican National Committee, outside political consultants and the media after Novak had disclosed her identity, according to the attorneys who are familiar with Rove's testimony.

However, Rove was actually a source for Novak and another reporter who wrote about Plame Wilson but failed to disclose that fact in nearly a dozen times he was questioned about his role in the leak.

Calling Rove a "source" implies something that went beyond the "Oh, so you heard that too" comment which KR allegedly made to RN on July 8, 2003. So Rove either is or is not the leaker, depending upon how you interpret which part of the Truthout story.

Meanwhile, a new story in the Moon-owned Insight on the News claims that Libby's lawyers have narrowed the field down to three names: "Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman." All three names previously appeared on a list of potential witnesses offered by the defense team.

Make of that what you will. As disappointed as we all are with Colin Powell, I can't believe that he was the one who spoke to Novak.

Novak himself remains surprisingly under-discussed by Plame-aholics. He has claimed that he would never divulge the name of his source -- but perhaps he has done just that. Or perhaps Fitzgerald learned the truth from Hannah, and Novak merely offered a confirmation. That arrangement would have aided both Novak and Fitzgerald: The former would save face, while the latter could avoid the potentially embarrassing spectacle of putting an older man in jail.

Don't put anything past Armitage. Still, I say bet on Rove. I never bought into that crappy "Oh, so you heard that too" story.