Plame Gossip

Amidst all the Cheney, this potentially explosive article by Jason Leopold yesterday got completely lost.

Sources close to the investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson have revealed this week that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not turned over emails to the special prosecutor's office that may incriminate Vice President Dick Cheney, his aides, and other White House officials who allegedly played an active role in unmasking Plame Wilson's identity to reporters.......

The emails Gonzales is said to be withholding contained references to Valerie Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status and developments related to the inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Moreover, according to sources, the emails contained suggestions by the officials on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Joseph Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

These emails are separate from the allusions to the "non-archived" (disappeared) emails in the Fitzgerald letter two weeks ago.

At this point, this is just a source telling Jason, in true Deepthroat style, where to dig next. But this article doesn't make it quite clear whether Gonzales was asked for these documents specifically and refused on some grounds, or whether they were withheld from a broader discovery effort.

Either there is a previously unknown battle behind the scenes between Fitzgerald and the White House over "classified" emails being protected under some legal argument, OR, we have some pretty damning evidence of an administration wide conspiracy to shield Cheney from any legal exposure.

At this point, I cannot tell.