Informed Speculation

In a story that raises serious credibility problems – but for Walter Pincus, not Bob Woodward, as the left is screaming today – Pincus has revealed that he is more than happy to give a free ride to co-workers:

Walter Pincus, the longtime Washington Post reporter and one of several journalists who testified in the Valerie Plame case, said he believed as far back as 2003 that Bob Woodward had some involvement in the case but he did not pursue the information because Woodward asked him not to.

“He asked me to keep him out of the reporting and I agreed to do that,” Pincus said today. His comments followed a Post story today about Woodward’s testimony on Monday before special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in which Woodward reportedly disclosed that a senior White House official told him about Plame’s identity as a CIA operative a month before her identity was disclosed publicly.

So much for seeking the truth wherever it may lead…

I’ll continue to follow this story closely with updated reactions to follow (and don’t miss my earlier roundup here)…

Ben Bradlee: “I don’t see anything wrong with that,” said Bradlee, who ran the Post during the turbulent Watergate coverage that made Woodward famous. “He doesn’t have to disclose every goddamn thing he knows.” – tell us what you really think, Ben!…

Woodward has apologized:

Bob Woodward apologized today to The Washington Post’s executive editor for failing to tell him for more than two years that a senior Bush administration official had told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame, even as an investigation of those leaks mushroomed into a national scandal.

Woodward, an assistant managing editor and best-selling author, said he told Leonard Downie Jr. that he held back the information because he was worried about being subpoenaed by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case.

“I apologized because I should have told him about this much sooner,” Woodward said in an interview. “I explained in detail that I was trying to protect my sources. That’s Job No. 1 in a case like this. . . .

“I hunkered down. I’m in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn’t want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed.”

Downie, who was informed by Woodward late last month, said in a separate interview that his most famous employee had “made a mistake.” Despite Woodward’s concerns about his confidential sources, Downie said, “he still should have come forward, which he now admits. We should have had that conversation . . . I’m concerned that people will get a misimpression about Bob’s value to the newspaper and our readers because of this one instance in which he should have told us sooner.”

Well, that was quick…

As many, including the great Tom Maguire, Christopher Hitchens, and Mickey Kaus, have noted from the start, PlameGate is more about the mutually-ethically-challenged environment that exists between reporters and leaking government officials than it is Valarie Plame, and Lewis Libby’s lawyers intend to make that perfectly clear:

Lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former White House official indicted on perjury charges, plan to seek testimony from journalists beyond those cited in the indictment and will probably challenge government agreements limiting their grand jury testimony, people involved in the case said Tuesday.

“That’s clearly going to be part of the strategy – to get access to all the relevant records and determine what did the media really know,” said a lawyer close to the defense who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At Mr. Libby’s arraignment this month, his lawyers alluded to using a First Amendment defense in fighting the charges, but they have declined to say what that strategy might entail.

In interviews, lawyers close to the case made clear that the defense team plans to pursue aggressively access to reporters’ notes beyond the material cited in the indictment and plans to go to the trial judge, Reggie B. Walton of United States District Court, to compel disclosure as one of their first steps.

Defense lawyers plan to seek notes not only from the three reporters cited in the indictment – Tim Russert of NBC News, Matt Cooper of Time Magazine and Judith Miller, formerly of The New York Times – but also from other journalists who have been tied to the case.

Chief among those is Robert D. Novak, who first disclosed in a column in July 2003 that Valerie Plame worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Here’s firedoglake on the implications for Libby:

Whatever Bob Woodward may or may not know about the case, and whichever other governmental officials talked with him about Valerie Plame Wilson, it simply does not change the facts on Libby as we currently know them via his indictment: he lied to investigators, he lied to the grand jury, and he tried to cover for himself (and likely others) as he was doing so.

And that’s true…as far as it goes. However, Libby’s lawyers are clearly going to makes this case about the press to the extent the judge allows them to, and Fitz’s job just got a hell of a lot harder…