Sunday’s Washington Post coverage:

By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 2, 2005; Page A05

As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.

With New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president’s main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.

His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.

Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame’s CIA job became public.

In October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he personally asked Libby and Rove whether they were involved, “so I could come back to you and say they were not involved.” Asked if that was a categorical denial of their involvement, he said, “That is correct.”

Washington insiders speculate, according to the article, that the prosecutor is contemplating a sticky wicket for the Bush Administration: a charge of criminal conspiracy to “out” covert CIA employee Valerie Plame by a number of White House operatives, mostly centered in the office of the Vice President, the emotional and intellectual engine of the effort to drive the nation into war in Iraq and the originator of the idea that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

For those of you that read the papers, you will know that the top two suspects are Karl Rove, the president’s chief of staff, and L. “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff. The discussions between those two and reporters for the New York Times and Time Magazine (both of whom were jailed for refusing to disclose their sources) have been the focus of the grand jury for several months. The grand jury is over on October 28, and the prosecutor is expected to hand down indictments, if any, within the next few days.

Present and former intelligence officers decry the exposure of Ms. Plame, wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson’s refutation of a State of the Union assertion by President Bush that Iraq had sought to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger began the White House effort to discredit him via his connection by marriage to Ms. Plame. It is widely agreed by intelligence analysts that the failure of the Bush White House to punish the exposure of Ms. Plame would be a long-term problem for the nation. Bush, who originally said he would fire anyone involved, now has a “wait and see” attitude based on whether there are criminal charges that stick.

Clearly this administration is capable of anything, including treason, in service of their failed policies.