More Thoughts on The President's Man
Truth Coming Out of the Woodward

Juan Cole over at Informed Comment has some good summary thoughts on yesterday's whirlwind announcement/trough-feeding of Bob Woodward being essentially the first journalist (that we know of) to receive information about Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent. It's a good, long read, but here are a few highlights:

Woodward made a deposition to this effect before Fitzgerald on Monday, having been released from his vow of confidentiality by the source for that purpose, even though he was not given permission to discuss the source publicly. Fitzgerald sought the deposition after the high official him- or herself told the special prosecutor of the conversation.

The source was not Irving Lewis Libby, who has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the case, or Karl Rove, who leaked to other reporters. Woodward says he did not disclose the conversation to his employer because he was afraid of compromising the confidentiality of his source.

But it is at least plausible that for a high White House official to tell Woodward that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA operative was a crime. It does not matter if Woodward knew she was undercover. It matters whether the leaker knew it, or could reasonably be expected to have inferred it from her employment in the directorate of operations. For Woodward to cover this leak up is no different from a reporter witnessing a burglary and covering that up. ("Burglary": get it?)
[...]
The defense lawyers for Libby immediately claimed that the new information helped their client. In order to grasp this absurdity, you have to understand that for some attorneys, any proposition may be put forward as long as it has not been explicitly rejected by the relevant court. That is, some lawyers would be perfectly happy to argue that water is dry, and has not been ruled wet by any court of law, and that moreover anyone who criticizes them for so alleging is guilty of copyright infringement and very possibly also of sodomy, until those allegations are ruled on in court.
[...]
Libby has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice among other charges. He lied to the grand jury on more than one occasion. He said that a journalist told him that Plame Wilson worked for the CIA. This allegation was not true, and nothing Woodward said on Wednesday changes its falsity. Fitzgerald did not charge Libby with speaking to Woodward, or with being the first to leak Plame Wilson's name, or anything else affected by Woodward's minor revelation.

Arianna Huffington over at the HuffPo has some questions for Bob; here are a few:

1. If you didn't tell your editor, Len Downie, about the CIA leak because you were so afraid of being subpoenaed, why did you supposedly tell Walter Pincus? Did you trust Pincus but not Downie?

2. Why were you afraid of being subpoenaed in 2003? Subpoenas of reporters didn't begin until 2004. And how would telling Downie lead to your being subpoenaed?

6. Why did you criticize Fitzgerald and his investigation without revealing that you had something to hide from him?

15. Is there any chance your source was Bill Casey being channeled from the dead?