Someone
caved:
A Washington Post reporter's confidential source has revealed his or her identity to the special prosecutor conducting the CIA leak inquiry, a development that provides investigators with a fact they have been pursuing in the nearly year-long probe.
Post reporter Walter Pincus, who had been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury in the case, instead gave a deposition yesterday in which he recounted his conversation with the source, whom he has previously identified as an "administration official." Pincus said he did not name the source and agreed to be questioned only with the source's approval.
"I understand that my source has already spoken to the special prosecutor about our conversation on July 12 [2003], and that the special prosecutor has dropped his demand that I reveal my source. Even so, I will not testify about his or her identity," Pincus said in a prepared statement.
Meanwhile, several reporters have testified that the source of the leak was
not Scooter Libby.
But even as Fitzgerald appeared to have reached the end of one investigative thread, he unspooled yet another yesterday, sending new broadly worded subpoenas for documents and testimony to Time magazine and one of its reporters, Matthew Cooper. Under threat of jail for contempt of court, Cooper agreed to be questioned three weeks ago about conversations he had with I. Lewis Libby, a senior aide to Vice President Cheney.
Pincus answered questions about Libby as well. Both he and Cooper said they did so with Libby's approval, and both said that their conversations with Libby did not touch on the identity of Wilson's wife.
Fitzgerald had focused on Libby as the possible leaker of Plame's name and identity, but the new subpoenas to Time suggest he may be rethinking that theory. Four reporters have now testified at Libby's urging that he did not disclose Plame's name or identity to them.
Make of it what you will.