I wanted to make a point of emphasizing this because a number of people I've spoken with lately who are only casually following the Plame investigation have tried to make the point that it's not that big of a deal because Plame wasn't covert. I'm looking at you, Dad, Bob, Stan. Don't believe the spin coming from the administration side. Fitzgerald believes that Plame was under cover and that's what matters.
Throughout the Libby pretrial motions, Fitzgerald has repeatedly implied that Valerie Plame's role at the CIA was classified and thus, in the conspiracy to destroy Joe Wilson, she was outed(the underlying crime.)
This WaPo story collects some of the references and states it more clearly than anywhere else I've seen.
This falls into my current overarching working theory on the Plame case, that all of this that we've seen so far is just a clearing of the evidentiary deck, as it were, before Fitzgerald goes after the underlying crime, the outing of Plame.
Before Fitzgerald could proceed on the outing of Plame, he has to/had to go through all the evidence available surrounding the Plame case and establish its truth or falsity. All of the charges thus far, Lying to Investigators, Perjury, and potentially in Rove's case, Obstruction of Justice, are merely outgrowths of this process of gaining a clear view of the evidence before proceeding towards the outing of Valerie Plame.
That's one of the reasons that I view the Leopold story the way that I do, because seeking a plea deal with Rove would be a very logical step in this interpretation. That doesn't mean that the Leopold story is true by any means, but it fits with my overall understanding of where we are in the case.
If I were forced to make a prediction, I would guess that the next investigative stage would surround the 250 "missing" emails. We don't actually know the details on these emails, all we have is the characterization by Fitzgerald that the emails were not "preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system," and that Plame was mentioned in some of them.
As we don't really have any further detail on the "missing" emails, there might be nothing there, but that does look a bit like somebody trying to destroy evidence.
So, after establishing in criminal detail the lies of Libby and Rove, I would guess that's the next evidentiary deck Fitzgerald must clear. And from there he could then gain the clearest possible view as to the circumstance of Plame's outing. My hunch would be that he is aiming for charges in this direction because this is an awful lot of investigative effort if Fitzgerald doesn't feel that the underlying crime probably will be charged.
A couple of notes. There's been circumstantial reporting that Fitzgerald is looking at potential conspiracy charges, whether that's regarding outing Plame or the coverup is not entirely clear.
Fitzgerald's final targets are also a little in question in my mind. It's clear that Cheney, for instance, had a very significant role coordinating the pushback against Wilson, although from the publicly available evidence, there's no proof as yet that he authorized the outing of Plame. (And we just have no idea on the emails.)
If the reports of a possible Rove deal, even an offered one, are true, it would certainly indicate to me that Fitzgerald is either after someone much more significant, like Cheney, or someone guilty of far more serious crimes.
Also, there's one more major complication in my theory. If the allegations of Armitage as the primary leaker of Plame's identity are true, that would make a Cheney led outing far less probable. Armitage was well outside the White House circle, and I would think that if he outed Plame, it is highly unlikely that he did so as a part of White House conspiracy. I can't at this point resolve this adequately unless he received the Grossman memo then accidentally let Plame's identity slip. (Armitage was Grossman's superior.) Sort of an accidental release from outside that then led to the discovery of a conspiracy. But, what's the conspiracy if Armitage was the outer?
And if Armitage was the outer, just what were Libby and Rove perjuring themselves to coverup? I don't see them risking jailtime to save an Armitage mistake. And then there's the report of Armitage being a key witness....
See, it just doesn't really work, unless either Armitage wasn't the first leaker or there's something far bigger out there that they are/were covering up. (Maybe an Nixonian "enemies' list" operation?)
I don't know, but if Armitage is the primary leaker, I think this investigation may be about something more than just Plame. But that's if Armitage was the primary leaker.
(Sorry for the lengthy post, but I thought it had been awhile since I had done one of these overarching looks at the Fitzgerald investigation. All of this represents my opinion of where we are, and could certainly be sorely misguided, but as there's been so much back and forth around Plame lately, I thought it might be useful to repost my interpretation so that you kind of know where I'm coming from in my analysis.)
