Or so say Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter in the London Times.
THE mysterious source who gave America’s foremost journalist, Bob Woodward, a tip-off about the CIA agent at the centre of one of Washington’s biggest political storms was Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, according to lawyers close to the investigation.
Are we sure?
A spokeswoman for the National Security Council (NSC) denied that Hadley was the journalist’s source. However, in South Korea on Friday during an official visit with President George W Bush, Hadley dodged the question.
“I’ve also seen press reports from White House officials saying that I am not one of his sources,†Hadley said with a smile. Asked if this was a yes or no he replied: “It is what it is.â€
A White House official said the national security adviser’s ambiguity was unintentional and repeated that Hadley was not Woodward’s source. But others close to the investigation insisted that he was.
This is the part that makes no sense to me:
Supporters of Cheney’s disgraced aide are jubilant that this casts doubt on special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s contention that Libby was the first to spread the word about Plame.
Fitzgerald only said that Libby was the first KNOWN administration official to spread the word about Plame, and I don’t see how Libby’s being first, sixth, or twenty-seventh makes a dadblamed difference to any of the charges against him.
If anything, seems to me it looks a lot worse for the Bushies if someone else was in on the word spreading, especially a whole month earlier. Can we say, conspiracy?
In the past few hours we’ve learned that the Source, whoever it was, kind of “forgot” about the conversation and didn’t go to Patrick Fitzgerald to ‘fess up until Bob Woodward “reminded” him about it. Has Hadley offered any testimony to Fitzgerald or other federal investigators before this? I don’t know. What about the email Karl Rove sent to Hadley after his July 2003 conversation with Matt Cooper? Why did Rove email Hadley?
If Hadley came forward to tell Fitzgerald that he was releasing Woodward from any pledge of confidentiality, what and who prompted Hadley to do this? Did Scooter or Cheney force Hadley’s hand, knowing that Libby wasn’t the first to talk with reporters about Plame’s identity? Remember that just before the Libby indictment, there were stories that Hadley assumed he would be indicted. …
… If Hadley was in fact the first administration official to talk to a member of the media about Plame’s identity, and knowingly revealing that she was a possible covert operative due to her assignment in the Directorate of Operations, how plausible is it that his boss at the time didn’t know about this either. You know, his boss, the current Secretary of State?
Why would Karl Rove have emailed Hadley, in particular? Hmm.