Official A, Mr. X
The Fall Out

A reminder from Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog:

Just a quick reminder in case anyone has forgotten the sequence of events that led to Robert Novak's original column outing Valerie Plame.

Novak had two sources for his column. The first one, who he described as "no partisan gunslinger," provided him with Plame's name. This is the person I referred to as "Mr. X" in the previous post. We don't know who Mr. X is, and so far he hasn't been indicted for anything, but the best guesses about his identity seem to be either Fred Fleitz, David Wurmser, or John Hannah.

Novak's second source confirmed Plame's identity, reportedly saying, "Oh, you know about it." This source was Karl Rove, who is referred to in the Libby indictment as "Official A."

Which then brings up this post by Ryan Lizza at The New Republic's new Plank blog:

Yesterday, I asked Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn if there were any guilty pleas in the case. He told me there was no "public record" of such pleas. That sounded less than fully responsive, so I asked Preston Burton, a white collar criminal defense attorney, if there could be guilty pleas outside of the public record. Here's what he said:

Guilty pleas can be taken under seal--and often are--when the person entering the plea is cooperating with the government and they do not want to tip off the other targets or there is a safety concern. Also, plea agreements could have already been reached but not formally entered in court.

Considering Samborn's cagey answer and the fact that we know Fitzgerald received high-level cooperation from several current and former administration officials, it is entirely possible that Libby is not the only Bushie who's been busted.