Plame wars

Patrick Fitzgerald will wrap up his investigation of the Valerie Plame leak by October 28th, when his grand jury expires. Unlike Kenneth Starr, who leaked like a firehose, Fitzgerald and his crew have kept very quiet — he has said only that he won't issue a report. (For background on the scandal, see the excellent Wikipedia article; for info on why it's not just politics as usual, Steve Gilliard excerpts a Stratfor piece on why it's really, really bad to uncover secret agents.)

No report means one of two things. Either Fitzgerald will finish up next week and say nothing, or much more likely, he'll issue indictments. His near-silence has just fueled speculation. It looks like Fitzgerald is hunting some big game: Karl Rove, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, aka "Bush's Brain" (was there ever a more left-handed compliment?); and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff.

The fun part is speculatin' on who else is a target. There will almost certainly be some henchpersons, whom I should care about. But I'm more interested in how high up it goes. My money is on Cheney, but ...

My hope is for Monkeyboy. Bush knew about the leak two years ago, and rebuked Rove — not for essentially committing treason (since Rove uncovered a spy in wartime), but for doing it sloppily. (If W were better edumacated, he might recall Talleyrand's quip "It's worse than a crime, it's a blunder." But I suspect the only Talleyrand quotation he knows is "Come Mr. Talleyrand, tally me banana.")

I can't help but feel sweet, sweet joy at the prospect of a little justice. But at the same time, my fear is: how will the Bushites react? They respond to ordinary political setbacks by crying wolf by issuing terror alerts. But this is a lot bigger. So what will they do?

• Jack Balkin says Bush could just pardon everybody. It kinda runs in the family — that's what Bush I did about Iran/Contra.
• At Wampum, MB Williams recalled out that yesterday was the anniversary of the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon axed his attorney general — and kept chopping top Justice Department officials until he found a hack willing to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox (BTW, Wampum is holding a pledge drive to pay for their sponsorship of the Koufax Awards. A worthy cause!). Ray McGovern says, "Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was."
• Devon at TPM cafe wonders "What's the worst case?" I suspect it's pretty bad, especially since ...
• As Brad DeLong is fond of pointing out, "The Bush administration is worse than we imagine — even after taking account of the fact that the Bush administration is worse than we imagine."