Things Are Getting Mighty Curious...

...in the PlameGate department. First, Think Progress has the summary of a Bloomberg story claiming that Libby Lewis told Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald that he was told of Plame's identity by Tim Russert of Meet the Press fame, a claim that Russert denies. In a serendipitous coincidence(?), our good friend Tom Maguire has just recently posted on what he increasingly believes is a press coverup.

Clearly, somebody has perjured themselves (well, fairly clearly - nothing's too clear in this thing), but who? And Tom, are you planning on coming out with a book on this? Because I'm ready to place my order now...

UPDATE 10:32 p.m. central: Either I'm completely missing something, or this is a huge deal...I don't believe we have known, up to this point, that Russert testified before a grand jury...as the MinuteMan says, that might be considered, in some quarters, news...(UPDATE WITHIN AN UPDATE 11:58 p.m. central: to make up for my laughable memory lapse in forgetting entirely Tim Russert's already-well-established ties to the case, here's the actual Bloomberg link)...(UPDATE 2 WITHIN AN UPDATE 07/22/05 1:20 p.m. central: maybe I should have trusted my initial instincts - this National Review story says that Russert testified before Fitzgerald, not the grand jury, and that Bloomberg has made the correction - say, does anyone else have a headache?)...

UPDATE 10:38 p.m. central: This is why I always defer to the great Tom Maguire (and thanks for the link back, Tom!). Correction: we have known Russert had testified, but the significance of the story is that it is at odds with what we have been previously told by Russert's lawyer...and Libby and Russert, quite obviously, cannot both be right...Stay tuned...

UPDATE 10:50 p.m. central: Tom had previously suspected Russert's lawyer of playing the weasel, with a carefully worded statement; read the details here...it may be that no one commited perjury, by dancing around the meaning of 'analyst' and 'his wife' vs. her name...I'm so confused!...

UPDATE 11:42 p.m. central: Thanks also to Leon H at Red State for the link; Leon has a great post up summarizing some of the recent developments. It seems increasingly clear that Fitzgerald is looking at perjury, rather than the much-harder-to-prove leaking of a covert agent's identity...

UPDATE 07/22/05 6:31 a.m. central: Many thanks to Lorie Byrd for the link...