Mr. X

Fitzgerald keeps digging.

Woodward's testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official -- not Libby -- the first government employee to disclose Plame's CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source.

Why am I not surprised that in TV appearance after TV appearance in which Bob Woodward whined about the unfairness of Judy Mller going to jail and Fitzgerald stomping all over reporter/client privilege (Atrios has been doing the forensics), no one thought to ask him about his role in all of this.

But this also sheds more light on the role of the "celebrity" journalist and how the Cheney administration has used the promise of proximity, the invitation to be in on how the wheels of government turn, to both stroke their egos and to make sure they don't stray too far from the story Cheney wants told. Woodward acts as a mouthpiece for Cheney in attacking Fitzgerald repeatedly, and doesn't bother to disclose -- to his own editors, for godsakes, let alone readers of the newspaper he works for -- that he already knew all about this? He goes around saying that Fitzgerald is investigating typical Washington "gossip," without mentioning that he was in on the gossip long before Judy Miller or Matt Cooper? That's really amazing.

And this also sheds further light on the role of the "celebrity" journalist at the Post and the New York Times, where Woodward and Miller are (or, in the case of Miller, were) given extraordinary leeway to pursue stories they find interesting and to decide what, if anything to write. Meanwhile, it becomes clear how much the the other reporters and editors -- who are actually doing the hard work of putting facts into a newspaper each morning -- really resent it.

Woodward's statement said he testified: "I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst."

Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview, Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.

"Are you kidding?" Pincus said. "I certainly would have remembered that."