Plame Game Update I'm not making a guess on the Valerie Plame thing, which will almost certainly announce whether there will be indictments or not before the Summer is over, other than to say, I don't see anyway it will help Bush while at the same time it could utterly politically destroy him. If no one is indicted, it isn't like the GOP is going to crow about it now is it? After all the original story is embarrasing enough. But if Scooter Libby or Karl Rove are indicted, well that's bad. Libby and its a real hit, Rove or higher and its massive and we might as well swear in Kerry early. The only card they could play is the never particularly effective "whiner card". This from today's the WaPo's Daniel Froomkin brings more teasing on the subject to light.

Investigative reporter Murray S. Waas, writing on the American Prospect online, has some slightly dated but still intriguing scuttlebutt about the Justice Department's investigation into who leaked the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame's identity was leaked to journalists in an attempt to counter allegations by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the White House had exaggerated the potential nuclear threat posed by Iraq. Waas writes that before a special counsel was appointed to lead the investigation in December, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was getting frequent, detailed updates "relating to the potential culpability of several close political associates in the Bush administration." Waas's sources tell him that, for instance, "Ashcroft was provided extensive details of an FBI interview of Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's chief political advisor." "In addition, sources said, Ashcroft received a briefing regarding copious notes maintained by I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney." Waas writes that some of Libby's notes describe efforts to discredit Wilson by the mysterious cabal known as the White House Iraq Group. Little is known about that group beyond what Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus wrote in The Washington Post last August. But it included Rove, Libby, adviser Karen Hughes and other top White House players. Anyway, once Ashcroft bowed to political pressure and appointed U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald as a special counsel, the briefings ended. And as Waas writes, "Fitzgerald's intentions currently remain one of the most tightly held secrets in Washington."

Wow, could MANHANDS be in on it too? All I know is that most political junkies, I'm really wanting to know what the hell is going on.