[continued from previous message] 
  
 Mr Fitzgerald was not to be deterred, and turned up the pressure on the 
 reporters involved in the case to divulge their sources. Some made 
 deals, among them, apparently, Mr Novak. By contrast, Judith Miller of 
 The New York Times held out. She is now an inmate at the federal 
 detention centre in Alexandria, Virginia. 
  
 But Mr Cooper - or rather his employers at Time magazine - folded. It 
 quickly transpired that he had talked to Mr Rove and Mr Libby. The 
 former, it seems, did not identify Mr Wilson's wife by name, but 
 confirmed that she was a CIA employee "working in WMD". Suddenly, Scott 
 McClellan, the hapless White House spokesman, started to sound like Ron 
 Ziegler, his counterpart of three decades ago who had to explain away 
 the "third-rate burglary" that would bring down President Richard Nixon. 
  
 No one is suggesting Mr Bush is involved, but the previous assertions of 
 Mr Rove's innocence are clearly "inoperative", to borrow an old 
 Zieglerism. And would the Bush crowd go the "limited, moderated hangout 
 route" taken by their Nixonian forbears, admitting small errors to 
 deflect attention from genuinely criminal behaviour? 
 As Democrats bayed for Mr Rove's head, and Mr McClellan went into 
 hedgehog mode, Mr Bush subtly shifted his defence. A year ago he was 
 promising to "take care of" individuals involved with the leak. On 
 Monday, anxious to protect the aide whose skills helped win him the 
 White House, the President declared that only a person who had committed 
 a criminal offence would be dismissed. 
  
 The difference is crucial. On the basis of what has thus far been 
 established, no crime may have been committed under the 1982 Act, passed 
 to deter a would-be imitator of Philip Agee, the renegade CIA agent who 
 deliberately blew the cover of hundreds of his colleagues in a book in 
 1975. Love or loathe Karl Rove or Scooter Libby, they are no Philip 
 Agees. As matters stand, Mr Wilson's fantasy of Mr Rove being 
 "frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs" will remain just that. 
  
 In short, this "scandal" is more Alice in Wonderland than Watergate. For 
 all the kerfuffle, no crime may have been committed. And Ms Plame had 
 been a less-than-secret agent, working in Washington for the past few 
 years, her identity known to many. The journalist in prison is not the 
 one who divulged her name. And The New York Times, among the loudest of 
 all in its demands for a prosecutor, has learnt the age-old lesson of 
 "be careful what you wish for". 
  
 Many believe Mr Fitzgerald is no longer investigating a leak, but 
 whether any witnesses perjured themselves in testimony to the grand 
 jury. Is that really worth a journalist's act of conscience? It is not 
 clear whether other sources are involved beyond Mr Libby and Mr Rove. 
 Might a journalist even have been a source, as he (or she) traded 
 information with his contact in time-honoured Washington fashion? Mr 
 Rove is believed to have told the grand jury he learnt Ms Plame's 
 identity from Mr Novak. Only Mr Fitzgerald's final report, expected in 
 October, can answer these questions with certainty. 
  
 A key element in the investigation is a confidential State Department 
 memo, dated 10 June 2003, sent only to Colin Powell, then Secretary of 
 State, the day after Mr Wilson's article appeared, as General Powell was 
 travelling with President Bush in Africa. The memo deals with State 
 Department doubts about the uranium-from-Niger story, and identifies Ms 
 Plame (named as Valerie Wilson) in a paragraph marked "secret". The 
 question is, who at the White House saw this memo, and thus could be a 
 source of the leak? The Plame affair is a classic example of how this 
 White House, backed by a battle-hardened Republican attack machine, 
 operates. It has shown again that the Bush team cannot tolerate 
 dissenting opinion. As Mr Bush put it after 9/11: "Either you are with 
 us or against us." And Mr Rove appears to have lost none of his 
 well-documented talents as master of the smear. 
  
 All of this spells trouble, sapping the administration's moral authority 
 and resurrecting accusations of misuse of pre-war intelligence. Its 
 carefully cultivated reputation for straight dealing is at risk. And 
 this President's equivocations over how he would punish anyone involved 
 sounds rather like that of his predecessor Bill Clinton, of "it depends 
 what the meaning of 'is' is" fame. 
  
 And the Rove controversy is just one problem for Mr Bush. Iraq becomes 
 more of a mess by the day. The Senate still refuses to confirm his 
 nominee, John Bolton, as ambassador to the UN. At home, his hopes of 
 reforming social security are foundering. Most indicative of all perhaps 
 are acts of defiance by various Congressional Republicans, for whom 
 re-election in 2006 - in some cases a possible White House run in 2008 - 
 is more important than loyalty to Mr Bush. All are signs of the 
 "second-termitis" that seems to afflict every re-elected president. 
  
 Despite Ms Miller's imprisonment, the Plame affair is unlikely to be a 
 landmark in the struggle for press freedom. In laying bare the Watergate 
 scandal, the use of secret sources rendered a service to the nation. In 
 this case, the confidentiality issue involves sources who may have 
 committed a crime. Today, Ms Miller is a heroine. But not long ago, she 
 was prominent in publishing the WMD misinformation provided by an 
 unidentified source named Ahmad Chalabi. 
  
 And so the wheel comes full circle. This tacky, third-rate leak that is 
 starting to scar the President's second term springs from the great 
 deception executed in his first term, luring the US into a war that 60 
 per cent of Americans now believe was misconceived. 
  
 That is the true scandal, which has yet to be properly explained. 
  
 The outing of Valerie Plame 
  
 2002 
  
 MARCH: Joseph Wilson returns from a mission to Africa and reports to the 
 CIA that he believes allegations Iraq tried to buy uranium are "bogus". 
 The agency sends a memo to the White House on 9 March summarising his 
 findings. 
  
 SEPTEMBER: A British intelligence dossier, used to justify war on Iraq, 
 says Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Africa. 
  
 2003 
  
 28 JANUARY: George Bush, in his State of the Union address, includes the 
 statement: "The British Government has learnt that Saddam Hussein 
 recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." He does 
 not mention that US agencies questioned the validity of the British 
 intelligence. 
  
 7 MARCH: International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei tells 
 the UN Security Council the uranium claim is based on fake documents. 
  
 6 JULY: In an article in The New York Times, Mr Wilson reveals that he 
 is the retired diplomat who visited Niger. He claims the administration 
 "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate" the Iraqi threat. 
  
 8 JULY: Karl Rove discusses Mr Wilson's trip and the role that Mr 
 Wilson's wife may have played in initiating that trip with the 
 journalist Robert Novak, who in the course of the conversation 
 identifies Mr Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, by her maiden name. 
  
 14 JULY: In his column, Mr Novak names Mr Wilson's wife as an "agency 
 operative on weapons of mass destruction" in a piece about the fallout 
 from Mr Wilson's article. 
  
 2004 
  
 10 JUNE: President Bush answers "Yes" when asked by a journalist, "Do 
 you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found" to have leaked CIA 
 operative Ms Plame's name? 
  
 2005 
  
 6 JULY: The New York Times reporter Judith Miller is jailed for refusing 
  
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 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)