L'il Russ' access

I wonder if, when the Libby trial is over and done with, that exposing the White House's heavy-handed attempt to smear critics while at the same time exposing the high poobahs of "informed opinion" who protect those smearers in the name of "access" -- in other words, how elite Washington works these days -- isn't what Fitzpatrick had in mind all along.

Ruttan: Well, I think it plays out in a very interesting way because if you stand back from what occurred during those months, you have the picture of a number of high level Washington correspondents, very fine news organizations, who were essentially missing the story in the interests of preserving their access. I don't think that one person in 50,000 really cared what the identiy of Ambassador Wilson's wife might or might not have been. I do think that a large number of people might have been interested in the story of how the white house, especially the office of the vice president, had set out in a systematic way to discredit a prominent critic of the administration's rationale for going into the war in Iraq. That's a real story, but that wasn't the story that was being told because these reporters were willing parts of that effort to discredit Ambassador Wilson.