Reporter Viveca Novak is coming to the rescue of the White House to provide
"testimony", at the urging of Karl Rove's defense attorney, to Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that will clear Rove of any
"wrongdoing" in the Valerie Plame leak case.
[ It was Rove's attorney who, in fact, used this same Novak information to fool Fitzgerald into originally backing off completely from indiciting Rove earlier. ]
In similar fashion, Reporter Bob Woodward came to the rescue of I. Lewis Libby to lay the groundwork for the collapse of his case.
Clearly, there is little mystery about the big picture here. Cheney, Libby, & Rove all advanced & prodded specific Bush-friendly Media assets to run a hit-piece on Joe Wilson's undercover wife, Valerie Plame (and on the Brewster Jennings WMD co.). Now, some of those same Media assets are circling the wagons here to help protect the Bush White House (via lies, obfruscation, misdirection, story-telling, etc., from any "wrongdoing".
Judith Miller was the most transparent illustration of this.
Matt Cooper & Tim Russert temporarily broke the mold and created a window of opportunity for Fitzgerald -- but now that opportunity is rapidly closing with Bob Woodward & Viveca Novak doing the bidding of the White House.
One of Two things will happen here:
- Either Fitzgerald is going to have to get very, very tough on the Reporters themselves and there will be more Judith-Miller type of jailing incidences, or
- The Investigation will just fizzle-out into a mere heresay he-said-she-said jigsaw puzzle with virtually nothing left that can be proven in a Court of Law and Rove & Libby and Cheney will all get off (with a possible minor perjury rap sticking to Libby) and, of course, the Media will interpret this all as a total vindication of the Bush administration.
What we have here is an elaborate
"look-this-way ... no, look-this-way ..." game being played by both the White House and certain Reporters.
Bottom line: Fitzgerald is going to have to hold Bob Woodward, Viveca Novak, Karl Rove, Stephan Hadley, and Dick Cheney all to the same standard that he did with Judith Miller for any breakthroughs on this case to occur.
They will all just walk without this ....