Holy cow. The NY Times, after months of playing catch-up on Novak-Plame-Rove-Libby-gate, has vaulted into first place with a truly blockbuster story: Scooter Libby’s own notes show that his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, was the one who told Libby that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA.
What does this mean? For one thing, that Libby was lying his ass off when he told the grand jury that journalists first told him about Plame, so perjury looks more and more like a real possibility. For another, Cheney himself is hip deep in this whole thing, and even if he didn’t personally break any laws (obviously Cheney is authorized to receive classified information, and it seems highly unlikely that Cheney himself leaked information to journalists), the ongoing revelations in this case will continue to implicate him. It also seems possible that, if Fitzgerald concludes that leaking Plame’s identity as a CIA agent to the press was a crime (perhaps a violation of the Espionage Act), then Cheney could well be named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the events that led to that leak.
Wow. And again, I say, wow. Nice to see the Times back in the game.
Hope Cheney didn’t leave that tiny little factoid out of his statement to Fitz!