The Washington Post continues to own Wilsongate, though Monday’s article by Mike Allen has smaller morsels rather than another one of Sunday’s bombshells. Let me try to quickly note the ones that jumped out at me.
1. The descriptions of sources is now vaguer. Top White House officials have become White House officials. Senior administration officials are now administration officials. There are several possible explanations for the change.
2. The White House has no intention of taking 
any action to deal with this unless and until they are compelled to by a criminal investigation. The key quotes: “But the aides said Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in revealing the name of an undercover officer … Asked about the possibility of an internal White House investigation, McClellan said, “I’m not aware of any information that has come to our attention beyond the anonymous media sources to suggest there’s anything to White House involvement.”
In other words, their public line is that they have no reason to believe anybody at the White House was involved — evidence to the contrary turned up by the CIA apparently notwithstanding. They want to see if they can brazen it out.
3. “CIA officials approached the Justice Department about a possible investigation within a week of the column’s publication. Tenet’s letter was delivered more recently. The department is determining whether a formal investigation is warranted, officials said. The officials said they did not know how long that would take.” One has to be pretty careful about the meaning of words in such cases. What’s an ‘approach’? Maybe just an informal heads-up that they were looking into something. But maybe the CIA has been pushing on this for more than two months. Perhaps the CIA has thought there should be an investigation for some time and — after getting no satisfaction — finally decided to throw it in Justice’s lap officially. And perhaps ring up the Washington Post.
