Adapted from The Next Hurrah.
Over at the Next Hurrah, Jeff alerted me to a new Fitzgerald filing that provides serious clues as to the identity of Mr. X.
The filing is very heavily redacted, but at two points, Fitzgerald refers to Woodward's and Novak's source(s). The spacing allows us to rule out some people, and leaves three possible candidates. Armitage fits perfectly; Rumsfeld and Fleischer appear to fit. But Cheney, Hadley, Bush, Rice, Bolton--all those other possibilities--do not fit.
Let me explain about Mr. X right away. Using one inch margins and Times New Roman, I recreated the passages at paragraph 43 and paragraph 52 that name Woodward's (and Rove's) source. Richard Armitage fits at paragraph 53, and Armitage fits in both spaces at paragraph 43. Cheney, Bush, Hadley, Rice, Joseph, Bolton ... none of those alternatives fit. There are two other possibilities I can think of that seem to fit: Ari Fleischer and Donald Rumsfeld. They are slightly different sizes than Armitage, but with the non-justified pages, I don't think they can be ruled out.
Though it may be that Woodward's source is different from Novak's. Note that the passage at 43:
Moreover, Libby has been given a transcript of the conversation between Woodward and [redacted] and Novak has published an account briefly describing the conversation with his
first confidential source ([redacted]).
This passage would still allow two different sources for Novak and Woodward--and might even favor it, otherwise Fitzgerald might have referred to Mr. X just once.
There are a few other items of interest in this filing. The footnote on page 9 indicates which reporters Libby claimed to have learned of Plame's identity from:
Indeed, Libby stated that when he talked to reporters about Wilson's wife's employment he understood that "reporters" in the plural -- namely Russert and Novak -- were saying that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.
This is interesting because it means Libby was specifically excluding Judy as one of those reporters, even though he had spoken with her on June 23 and July 8 of Plame's identity (or perhaps for precisely that reason). Libby was trying to distract attention away from the people he had leaked to. And, at least when Libby testified, they weren't trying to claim Judy was the one who told everyone in DC about Plame's identity.
The part of paragraph 22 that appears on page 10 has some spatial funkiness to it. Using the same Word trick and spelling Libby with three "bs" as the document has it, I tried the text, "further provided Libbby's defense team with a copy of Rove's email to Hadley referencing the conversation with" and it was too short. Mr. Hadley fit, Armitage did not. Which alerts you to one of the problems with this whole game of filling in redactions. In some cases, the document refers to Mr. someone, at others, it refers to people by last name alone. I'm going to assume this passage refers to the Rove-Hadley email.
At paragraph 46, Fitzgerald lists the reporters whose testimony he has released to Libby. At least two names--and possibly more--are redacted. (Kessler, Pincus, and Woodward are named.) This suggests Fitzgerald handed over testimony from other reporters (my guesses are Andrea Mitchell and Clifford May, and possibly Nicholas Kristof).
Note, in that passage, Fitzgerald says the following about the Woodward testimony he has handed over:
Robert Woodward (that part of his deposition where he discusses his conversation with Mr. Libby and that part describing the substance of his conversation with his other source, [redacted], with [redacted] name redacted).
Notice how he calls this person Woodward's "other" source. Does that mean Libby shared some details about Plame or Wilson in their June 25 conversation?
Finally, at paragraph 52, Fitzgerald says,
In addition, in the February 2 letter we took the added step of setting forth the nature of our understandings with counsel for Ms. Miller and the New York Times, though much of that information had not been reduced to writing previously.
This information would presumably reveal details of how Fitzgerald got Judy to admit to her June 23 meeting with Libby, as well as any details about limitations on her publication at the time. And it might include any legal jeopardy she was in when she testified.
Well, I'm going to go try to recreate my post describing under what circumstances Armitage would have shared Plame's identity, since (rather inconveniently) it gotten eaten by Typepad.