Plame Gossip - The Libby extortion.

Alot has been made of Libby's attempts at greymail (gaining an acquittal by requesting classified documents,) but this is a really new twist. Judge Reggie Walton greatly reduced Libby's request for the classified PDB's from everything for a year, to summaries on three days surrounding a few key events.

Just in case the Bush administration was inclined to declassify this much smaller redacted collection of documents, Libby's lawyers thought they'd throw out a little threat.

Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide are signaling they may delve deeply at his criminal trial into infighting among the White House, the CIA and the State Department over pre-Iraq war intelligence failures.

So, the threat from Libby's lawyers is, if you(the administration) allow Libby to go to trial we will embarrass the hell out of you. But, if you were to prevent that by not declassifying documents, there would be no reason for Mr. Libby to talk.

You can't call it blackmail, but that's pretty much what it is.