DAmn. That was a nice read.

Armitage comes across as a rough but loyal soldier to me on TV anyway so I am not sure if he is the one.

My bet is Mr x-CIA himself. Bush found out he was feeding info to Fitzgerald thus he was fired.

very interesting... thanks for reaching back to that wapo article... my hope is that fitzgerald does indeed have an inside source, someone with principles, who knows what's what... i also hope that fitzgerald continues to be as thorough, methodical, totally professional, and shoe-leather honest as he has been so far and is able to pull all the threads together in such a way that there will be no doubt whatsoever about who did what to whom...

http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/2005/11/white-house-deep-throat-insider-as.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1880016,00.html

Courtesy of http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

I suspect Mr. Fitzgerald has dozens of people feeding him. I've wondered if the massive neutering at Langley (remember the 'rogue agency' bit ) wasn't related to this.

Does RA have a history with Woodward the extends beyond PoAttack and B@War? Does he have a history with Bob Novak (he seems to fit the bill of the non-partisan gunslinger)?

Could RA (I'm assuming he's a white ninja, but really have no idea) have been talking to journos to counter the leaks of the black ninjas or trying to pre-leak them in the sense of 'listen, these guys are going to try to get you to write this, don't.' ? Now the black ninjas figure they can turn the WHOLE thing back on RA by fingering him as source #1? Maybe Woodward was actually caught in the middle of it and didn't want to see RA get nailed? Or maybe Woodward is assisting the black ninjas by keeping the 'mid-June' date murky (same way he kept his conversation with Pincus murky) trying to set up a he-said-she-said?

If RA gets caught up in this and is actually a white ninja, General Powell will be forced to make the decision that the fate of this nation hangs on in many ways. Who believes in Redemption?

Steve:

You would be going after Mike Allen, not Dana Priest, as he is the journalist common to the two SAO articles (there was another one about a week later).

And for further clues about who this might be, look at Novak's Oct. 1 column, which is in many ways written as a response to the WaPo article (read them in sequence--it is fairly obvious). In fact, I've argued repeatedly that when Novak issued his, "not a partisan gunslinger" comment, he was actually trying to frame the WaPo's source.

I've always leaned toward Powell as this person (although Armitage would likely be party to more of the inside scoop). After all, Powell is reported to not have a lawyer representing him in this affair,but he has been interviewed. Sounds like someone who is not worried about getting caught up with this investigation.

I suspect its one of Powell's people. Maybe even Lawrence Wilkerson. He's taken care to mention that he didn't come out with his criticism for a while, citing variour reasons. Perhaps that part of his statement was meant to cover up his past leaking.

He sounded pretty upset about the Rumsfeld-Cheney cabal. And it was Powell who first disclosed Plame's identity to Bush and Cheney on Air Force One.

Armitage is a good bet too though.

Two suggestions on who this counter-leaker might be:

1) Ari Fleischer: He quit the administration around the time Plame was outed. Was he upset at the leaking of Plame's identity and/or scared at being caught up in an eventual prosecution of same?

2) John Ashcroft: Yeah, yeah, I know...but look, Ashcroft is in no way a hard-core neocon and he is, after all, the one who put "Bulldog" Fitzgerald on this case.

Anybody think Andy Card could be the guy?

The famous 1 x 2 x 6 topology.

Andy Card seemed a likely "1" around that time, since there were mumblings then about Rove's excessive ways and some motion to elevate Karen Hughs.

Whereas a week ago I would have felt super-confident that Fitzgerald already knew all possible angles and plays re: the "1", after Woodward now I'm maybe confident but, sadly, no longer super-confident. They lie and deceive for a reason, and sometimes that works for a while.
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Ashcroft did not pick Fitzgerald, he recused himself. Fitzgerald was named by James Comey, the career head of the DOJ criminal division. The heavy duty paper work is on the Special Counsel's web site.

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/

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i'm with anonymous.

when the wapo article was first published i assumed it was card. not from specific knowledge, but simply because i had a sense from observing the bush white house that card was trying to bring a little balance and good judgemnt to a careening carriage in oprder to protect the president to whom i fancy he is genuinely loyal-- something i suspect rove and cheney are not.

then,too, card was probably in competition with rove and cheny for bush's attention and may have been happy to put one or both of these power sources in a bad light.

anyway, the remark sounds like a scolding remark by a person looking at matters from a higher elevation.

on another matter, i have twice seen a reference to the "moralistic" tone of the unkown source's comments. the comments don't seem particularly moralistic to me; just a description of behaviors, which description seems to have been roundly validated over time.

I've always thought that it was very, very interesting that Fitzgerald got the job. I would think the administration would want someone with the enthusiasm and integrity of Pat Roberts.

Instead, they get someone competent and very difficult to get at politically. It makes you wonder if someone expressly picked him to meet out a bit of justice

I think we can be pretty sure it's not Mark Felt. Otherwise, the field is wide open ... this administration has made enemies on a scale that dwarfs Nixon's.

Excellent, thought-provoking post. I like the reasoning leading to speculation that Priest/Allen source is already known to Fitzgerald and very much want to believe that. However, maybe someone can help refute what seems a reasonable counter-argument:

If Fitzgerald has had an open pipeline to what we here are assuming is a quite knowledgeable and cooperative inside source, how is it that the Woodward news came out of the blue?

Perhaps there was an unknown motive for Fitz to play dumb on that at time of Libby indictment?

Other possible explanations?

I'd presume the counter-leaker to be Tenet, based on the idea that the CIA (in prep. for the referral to DOJ) conducted its own investigation in to what happened and how.

Assuming the 1 by 2 by 6 story is correct, that would take a fair amount of research/discussion to put together. What other SAO would have access to that kind of information?

I think the referral to Fitzgerald from CIA may have laid some of this story out and that it was got leaked to Allen/Priest.

Recall that Armitage also was detailed personally to keep a tight rein on Bolton. It sure sounded like there was no love lost between him and the loose-cannon neocons. And it certainly would have been consistent with other things I've heard him say for him to have been appalled at the deliberate outing of an undercover agent for purely political purposes.

Good reporting.

One important piece of information you neglect to mention, however, is that Fitzgerald did subpoena the White House for records of all contacts with both reporters.

What this means isn't clear. But it could mean that Fitzgerald knows who the source is, but that the source has been uncooperative, or only minimally cooperative.

(I explored some of this terrain in a post back on July 16.)

I would love nothing more to believe that there is a "white knight" in D.C. but they've done such a snow job on...well, everything...that I suspect even these statements you quote: "clearly it was meant pure and simply for revenge" and the leaks were "a huge miscalculation because they were irrelevant". Taken together, they seem to me rather to be a whole lot of spin, designed to trivialize the consequences of the leak (it was political tit for tat that accomplished nothing) while perhaps obfuscating the truth. Regardless of what Plame's status was at the time of the leak, we know that the leak led to the rollup of a CIA front company that had been operating for something like 20 years. We know from news reports that Plame was involved in WMD in the near-east. Am I the only one that finds it rather absurdly coincidental that a CIA front with experience (and presumably assets) in the middle east gets compromised at just the exact time we are in a run-up to a war of choice in the Middle East? I mean, what are the odds?

I'd tend to think that the senior official would have arranged to be called publically, just as other witnesses were called, to keep suspicion away from any "hidden source." What better way to conceal something than in plain view?

Whoever made these statements is a man of fundamental righteousness. Like one of those folks who can't but help tell the truth. Like it's genetic. Who thinks he can sleep with the devil and make him right again. A bad liar, whoever told this. A person who would take it personally if trust was ever broken....

Someone like Colin Powell.....

Glad to hear a few folks also think it might be Andy Card. As for Powell, I just can't believe that he was close enough in proximity to the players directly involved in the leak to know exactly what was going on. Thanks to the excellent report of the 2003 WaPo article, we know that "Deep Throat" knew what was going down.

From the beginning of the administration, Andy Card was one of the grown-ups brought in to make sure the trains ran on time inside the White House. He's not old Texas, he's not an oil connection, he's a New England Republican with (I think) no blood-oath loyalty pledge to the Bush dynasty.

I'm thinking it was Card.

Steve:

Here's a post I did on the later, October 12 SAO article.

I don't pretend to know who SAO is (I think it much more likely to be Ari than I have for the past two years). But I will say that Grossman (or Armitage or Wilkerson in his stead) appears to have been an early source on this.

I've been wondering about the timing of Ari's exit stage right, too. His departure just didn't make sense. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was moving geraniums and being all cloak and dagger somewhere behind the scenes.

You know, Ari never stuck me as a loser. A fierce partisan, a stonewaller and a hack, yeah. But a loser? I don't see it.

I originally favored Tenet as the outraged leader of the CIA, then Powell as the independent voice in the Administration, but the details (1-2-6) do suggest someone very near the conspiracy - unless these things were widely discussed within the Administration.

I'll go with Card now, as his job is to protect the President and manage the Administration... but he'd still need to get pretty close to those 2 who contacted the 6.

Then again maybe those numbers are just fakes and a distraction.

Steve, I agree with your general analysis -- this is ground that I covered four months ago at Needlenose (see especially the second half of the post).

There's a very strong case to be made that Powell is the SAO and has in fact been cooperating since before Fitzgerald was appointed. A case also can be made that it was Card -- the important thing being that both were on Air Force One in Africa that week, which is where I think the calls were made to the six reporters (see this recent post for a more detailed scenario).

This is so obvious to me by now that I'm genuinely stunned no one else has even discussed the possibility these past four months. I'll try to have a post later tonight adding some more support to the Powell-as-SAO theory.

(Thanks to emptywheel for linking to this thread.)

First...I'm a fan of needlenose.

Second, considering the timing of the disclosure to Miller, why isn't it possible that some of the 1 by 2 by 6 calls pre-date the air force one flight?

I think presence on AF1 is a stretch. Did Powell derive his 1 by 2 by 6 knowledge by overhearing telephone conversation?

Second, considering the timing of the disclosure to Miller, why isn't it possible that some of the 1 by 2 by 6 calls pre-date the air force one flight?

Neither Miller, Novak, nor Woodward was part of the 1x2x6. The SAO wasn't saying, "Here are all the reporters who were leaked to" -- he's just describing the calls he saw/heard.

Did Powell derive his 1 by 2 by 6 knowledge by overhearing telephone conversation?

As far as I can tell, yes. Again, see this post (linked above as well) for a scenario of how he could hear six consecutive calls leaking the dirt about Wilson's wife.

I'm taking Armitage to cover.

Very interesting read,,,,,very informative and im getting my Sherlock Holmes hat out and lighting up my pipe.

I tend to think it could be Armitage or Tenet..Both have reasons to bring this Admin down,
Armstage because of the way Powell and the State Dept has been treated by this Admin. The strong statements from Wilkerson tells me that Powell has given the OK for his underlings to speak out now.

It could be Powell directing the whole thing through Armitage and we've already seen that Wilkerson has come out with the stinging charge of the "Cabal".

Tenet's reasons could be alittle more cloudy. The CIA has taken a Very Hard hit from this Admin. the Morale is low,,,,People at the CIA hate Porter Goss and the carry overs from the Tenet era could figure they have nothing to lose then to take this Admin down.

Both Cheney and Rummy stepped on alot of toes,,,there are people inside the beltway who have reasons to take this Admin down who are Republicans or Career Civil Servants who feel betrayed by this Admin.

So,,, my 1st choice is Armitage (through Powell) or 2nd Tenet because of the way the CIA has been treated and because it would take some of the Blame the CIA has had to live with since the Run UP to the War Debacle.

Richard L. Armitage having a conscience about the best interests of our nation? He who was of those responsible for illegal transfers of weapons to Iran and the Contras?

I spit on his shadow!

Swopa, I followed your links and read thru a month of archives, o my poor red eyes, and let me say good on ya, what a lot of good work.
So now I get a picture that there was an initial not well thought out leak, a little hubricious for the handlers maybe, and after Judy Miller balked- fear, seeing a book deal, whatever, and Novak didn't pop with it right away, and Woodward ambled off to write a new chapter in his book, some impatience develops. Isn't this around the time the NYT ? was going to publish Wilson's op-ed? Maybe also someone more cautious in Cheney's ring started to think of the risk and that 1. they needed a wider plausible cover and 2. Wilson was still coming on and was soon going to publish, and by name so they had to bust a move soon.
The memo and the 1x2x6 leak from Ari on AF1 worked as Novak then popped-to make sure others didn't-too many now were onto it, and Wilson's op-ed made it a hotter topic. The tactic of making the leak appear as common gossip seems that Rove may have come into it about now as well, but that may be a standard trick...
This is where I get the picture of Powell doing the hokey pokey on AF 1 with the memo. And the memo was supplied/ requested by Grossman right? Still can go either whichaway : Card, Powell or Grossman. Ari- don't think so. My pick is Card: protect the poutus/straightlaced/neocon not. Put your money down.
I'm still waiting for abunch of you to get onto the bigger aspect of this, bigger than the VP in the bighouse even : the real motivation for the leak and the damage to our safety, re: the WMD work Mrs.Wilson and Brewster-Jennings were doing.
We'll get out of Iraq, sooner than later, we'll have a new and better preznit, somebody's going to the bighouse,we'll all party,but will we ever be safer after this episode? Man, I'd like to know.
Thanks y'all.

I don't buy Card. He's too obsequious & ambitious, and he had to know that getting his own "cover" blown would be political death.

Armitage has the requisite qualities of having lived in the real world and not really giving a damn whether he's cast into the political wilderness or not.

I would hope that if there is a counter leaker that his name would be Colin Powell. Merrie

Was Richard Clarke still in the WH at that point?

I'll try to have a post later tonight adding some more support to the Powell-as-SAO theory.

This post is now up.

Steve - Do you see any tie-in with Conrad Black and Hollenger?

I disagree with the idea that Fizt may not have talked with Priest or Allen. If Woodward did not tell Fitz about his early 'casual' revelation, Woodward may have to "clarify" his memory, if it can be shown that it was not casual.

Two days before QB Fitz started Fitzball season (a nickname I think beats Fitzmas), I posted this:

On First Looking Into Fitzgerald's Indictment

A Pre-Emptive Poem (10-26-05)
From A Keats Ghost To Gothamimage:

Much have I witnessed the Scandal of Bush
And many awful lies and outrages seen;
Round many breaches have I been
Which bards in fealty to Republic hold.
Oft of one great Injury had I been told
That worried the Founders in repose;
Yet did I never see it so clear
Till I heard Fitzgerald speak out loud and bold:
Then I felt like some Justice on High
When a pure Truth comes into his view:
Or like Honest Abe when with wise eyes
He saved the Union - and all his men
Look'd at each other with great relief -
Silent, upon a stillness at Appomattox.

I'd endorse the person who said Wilkerson. He would know and he has clearly developed some unhappiness with the 'cabal' in the White House.

Of course, the real leaker might not want to be so visible right now.