As we enter “Fitzmas” Season — yes, that’s the word mostly lefty bloggers are using to describe the early Christmas they expect once Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald announces his indictments — the blogosphere is a frenzy of accusations, rumors, finger-pointing, and more rumors. In other words, everything the Internet was invented for.
The gossip bubbling as of this morning can be divided into a few different categories: 1) Cheney is going down, 2) Rove has decided to pin it all on Libby, 3) Libby has decided to pin it all on Tim Russert, 4) There is still an unknown source lurking in the shadows, who could be anyone from Colin Powell to Margaret Spellings, and 5) The entire White House, including the president, is implicated and will soon implode.
Not to be out-rumored or out-speculated by blogs, even staid MSM outlets are turning their Web sites into gossip sheets. Cheney’s imminent resignation was predicted yesterday afternoon by no less than U.S. News & World Report, which also wrote that Condoleezza Rice would be taking his place. (It even, amazingly, included speculation about her future presidential bid.)
Speculators in and out of the blogosphere are noting that most of the attention of the investigatiors seems to be focused on Scooter Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff and a man known as “Cheney’s Cheney.” A source from inside the administration told the New York Daily News yesterday that “Scooter wouldn’t be freelancing on this without Cheney’s knowledge.”
Andrew Sullivan tries to connect the dots that lead to Cheney, and concludes that if “the prosecutor asks to interview Cheney again in the next few days, we’re into earthquake territory.” He points to a memo with information about Plame that was supposedly left in the front of Air Force One during a trip Bush took to Africa in July 2003. Sullivan asks: “Who has access to the front of Air Force One?” (Umm — the pilots?) “Here’s a plausible scenario. Very few people saw the memo. Cheney was one of them. Did Libby inform Miller and Cooper on his own initiative? Or was he part of a coordinated effort?”
After an AP report yesterday that had Rove fingering Libby as the source of his information on Plame, the frenzy accelerated. Joshua at The Water Glass quoted the article, writing the “plot thickens”: “Previously, ‘Rove testified that his discussions with Libby before Plame’s CIA cover was blown were limited to information reporters had passed to them.’ Now, it is reported that ‘Rove testified that it was possible he first heard in the White House that Valerie Plame … worked for the CIA from Libby’s recounting of a conversation with a journalist …'”
Tom Maguire at Just One Minute picks up another strand that emerged yesterday from the AP story: that Libby’s source was Tim Russert. Just to give a sense of how complicated — or perhaps how lunatic — this is getting, here is a taste of Maguire’s musings: “If Libby and Rove swapped notes just once, then Rove learned about Russert after he had spoken to Novak. But, as the AP story is phrased, and based on the earlier paragraph cited above, it may well be that Libby told Rove about Russert at an earlier time …”
Then there’s Suburban Guerilla, who says she has word from a Hill staffer that “Colin Powell told John McCain he showed the infamous memo with Plame’s identity on it two just two people: Dick Cheney and George Bush.”
Michael Weiss at Wonkette joins in the fun, speculating about who the secret source for the leak might be besides Libby and comes up with … the Education Secretary. “At this point, my money’s on Margaret Spellings. That affably hip homeroom demeanor has always struck me as a little too perfect.”
And everyone remains confused about the Daily News report the other day that the president himself chewed out Rove over the leak back in 2003. “He made his displeasure known to Karl,” a presidential counselor apparently told the News. “He made his life miserable about this.”
Josh Marshall wonders whether this new bit of information doesn’t contradict our previous knowledge of how much Bush knew. He asks the obvious question: “Now, don’t lose sight of the fact that we’re stacking a lot of ‘ifs’ on top of each other here. But we do have two articles from well-credentialed journalists pointing to two alleged facts — one, that President Bush knew in late 2003 that Rove was involved and that Rove had told him he was involved; two, that a year later President Bush denied Rove had told him he was involved in an interview with the special prosecutor. If both these ‘facts’ bear out, someone’s in a lot of trouble, no?”
And if all this speculation is making your head spin, just go ahead and print out your Indictment Bingo card (courtesy of Backup Brain), including a free space for the infamously indictable ham sandwich, and get ready to play.
–Gal Beckerman
Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.