More Questions

Tim Grieve over at Salon's War Room takes a look at this weekend's revelation by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and The Nation's David Corn that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was Bob Novak's primary source for the Valerie Plame outing (aka, the "non-partisan gunslinger" -- see previous post), and comes up with some more questions:

We're inclined to believe that Armitage wasn't part of the Cheney-Libby-Rove conspiracy. We're also inclined to believe that Armitage didn't commit any crime. Corn and Isikoff say that Patrick Fitzgerald has decided not to prosecute Armitage, possibly because he accepts Armitage's claim that he didn't know Plame was a covert operative. And as far as we know, there's no evidence that Armitage -- unlike, say, Libby or Rove -- misled the federal investigators or Fitzgerald's grand jury.

But there are still parts of the Armitage story that don't add up entirely, at least not yet. Why didn't Armitage come forward a long time ago? Why didn't he tell Powell of his role until Oct. 1, 2003? Isikoff and Corn say Amitage figured out that he was Novak's source after reading a follow-up piece from the columnist the day before. But something else happened the day before, too: As the Booman Tribune notes, that was also the day that George W. Bush said he'd "take the appropriate action" against anyone who leaked Plame's identity. Is it possible that Bush's threat, as hollow as it turned out to be, focused Armitage's mind on the fact that he was the leaker? And if Armitage's disclosure to Novak was just a "slip," then how is it that he made the same disclosure to Bob Woodward earlier? [ed note: see WaPo story for more on this]