(Cross-posted from Needlenose.)
If you're not following emptywheel's live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial at Firedoglake, you're missing bombshells being dropped. This is former White House spokesliar Ari Fleischer, being asked about his lunch with Libby on July 7, 2003 (I've clarified EW's lack of punctuation):
Prosecutor: Had you ever had lunch with Mr. Libby?
Fleischer: No, sir.
[. . .]
P: What word did Libby use when he described Wilson's wife?
F: I remember him saying she works at the CIA, at the Counterproliferation Division.
P: Did you know what it meant?
F: Not in specific, I don't know enough about CIA inner structure to know what it means.
P: Her name -- how did he describe her name?
F: I believe he said Valerie Plame.
This is the first time any Bushite official has been publicly identified as knowing Valerie Wilson's maiden name -- the name under which she worked as a covert agent. The name that was used when columnist Robert Novak exposed her CIA employment on July 14, 2003.
As her husband, Joseph Wilson, said a week later about the outing:
... it would be damaging not just to her career since she's been married to me, but since they mentioned her by her maiden name, to her entire career. So it would be her entire network that she may have established, any operations, any programs or projects she was working on.
It's the use of "Valerie Plame," in short, that suggests a conscious effort to out a covert CIA employee. I have to imagine that will be the topic of a few news articles between now and tomorrow morning.
I suggest getting your electronic butt over to Firedoglake if you don't want to miss any more soon-to-be-breaking news. I'll see you there.