More Leakgate Ramblings

Now that I've had some time to reflect upon Murray Waas' latest opus on the CIA leak investigation, I'm left with one nagging question: who was Waas' source? The article begins with this paragraph:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove
personally assured President Bush in the
early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed
to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame,
the wife of an administration critic, was a
CIA employee, according to legal sources
with firsthand knowledge of the
accounts that both Rove and Bush
independently provided to federal
prosecutors.

There are now two other stories that are substantially similar to Waas' (though far less detailed), one by Peter Yost and the other by John Solomon, both from the AP. If I only read the AP stories, I would guess that the source of the information is Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney. But Luskin does not seem to fit Waas' description of someone with firsthand knowledge of the president's interview with investigators. Taking Waas' description at face value, it seems to me that there are really only two possibilities. Either Waas has a source inside the Justice Department (or formerly inside the Justice Department) or he spoke directly with an attorney closely connected to the president. If the latter, Waas' source is presumably someone in the White House counsel's office or Bush's private attorney, James E. Sharp.

Given how tight-lipped Fitzgerald's office has been so far, it's tempting to assume that Waas' source isn't a Justice Department official. But then again, Waas does seem to be the one reporter in town with sources on the law enforcement side of the investigation. For example, in his August 13th article in the Village Voice, Waas cites an anonymous "former senior Justice Department official" familiar with the investigation as well as anonymous "senior law enforcement officials familiar with the matter." Waas' sources for that particular article clearly knew an awful lot about the early stages of the investigation, the period just prior to Fitzgerald's appointment as Special Prosecutor. Given that Rove's conversations with the president and with the FBI took place during this same time period, it's entirely possible that Waas is relying on the same source(s) he used in his Village Voice piece.

But given the similarity of Waas' information to that reported by Yost and Solomon, it seems likely that they share a common source, and that the source is someone close to the president. In his story, Waas makes a seemingly gratuitous reference to James Sharp, the president's personal lawyer. He writes:

James E. Sharp, Bush's private attorney, who
was present at the president's interview with
prosecutors, declined to comment for this story.

Did Waas include this line to steer attention away from Sharp or toward him? Could this just mean that Sharp declined to comment on the record? Sharp would certainly fit the description of a "legal source with firsthand knowledge" of Bush's testimony.

And there are plenty of reasons, after all, to think that Bush's advisors would want this information leaked now, prior to any indictments being handed down. If Rove were to be indicted, which is looking increasingly possible, the first question on every reporter's lips would be 'what did Rove tell the President?' It's far better for the president to have an answer to that question already out in the public domain. This trio of stories, therefore, may represent an attempt on the part of the President's advisors to limit the potential fallout to the president should Rove be indicted.

But of all the potential journalists to leak such important information to, why would Sharp (or someone else acting on the president's behalf) choose Waas? After all, Waas has been putting consistent pressure on the administration though his reporting on this issue. For instance, in his August 8th article in the American Prospect, Waas reported that Scooter Libby was Judith Miller's source and that Libby had not yet given her a personal waiver. The article ended with the following not-so-subtle dig aimed directly at the president:

And the president of the United States -- at
whose pleasure Libby serves and who has
vowed to do everything possible to get to the
truth of the matter -- does not appear to be
likely to direct Libby to grant such a waiver
any time soon.

Indeed, that particular article may well have set in motion the chain of events that ended in Judith Miller testifying before the grand jury last week. Fitzgerald specifically cited the article in his letter to Libby pressuring him to provide Miller with a waiver. Why would the administration want to reward Waas with such a big scoop when there are any number of other reporters who have been less critical of the president? I don't know. Maybe they chose Waas because he had been so critical in the past. They may have figured that leaking this information to an administration-friendly reporter would have been too transparent; it would have looked too obviously like a White House damage control effort. Moreover, because Waas is the one reporter known to have sources inside the investigation, using him as a conduit would further obscure the source of the leak.

Now that I've written all this, I'm not sure if any of it really matters. But there you have it anyway. If you want to read further speculation on this topic (and who doesn't?) this post at FireDogLake is worth a look.