A leftwing ‘news’ site is claiming Woodward taped his source’s discussion of Plame and that Fitsgerald has the tape!

He is referred to as “official one” and he is the mysterious senior Bush administration official who unmasked the identity of an undercover CIA operative to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 and conservative columnist Robert Novak a month later.

The identity of this official is shrouded in secrecy. In fact, his name, government status, and the substance of his conversation with Woodward about the undercover officer are under a protective seal in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

But Woodward tape-recorded the interview he had with “official one.” Woodward gave a copy of the tape and a transcript to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Interesting if true – and ripe for a subpoena from the Libby defense team as well. One interesting tidbit from the tapes will make it a critical part of the Libby defense, given it predates the Novak leaks:

…the attorneys representing I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff …. have zeroed in on three words “official one” apparently uttered during his conversation with Woodward: “Everyone knows it.“

Emphasis mine. Yep, that would blow a major hole in the Fitzgerald indictment if ‘everyone knew’ but Libby! Supposedly Libby’s defense team let on about this artifact in a hearing (again calling into question who leaked this – was it someone from Fitzgerald’s office?):

But one of the attorneys on Libby’s defense team wasn’t supposed to mention the existence of the tape-recorded interview in open court because it may cause the unknown government official to come under intense media scrutiny.

“Your Honor, there is one thing that I neglected to mention and again this is subject to filings that have been made under seal but there is, in fact, a transcript of a tape recording that involves official one,” Libby’s attorney William Jeffress said during the two and a half hour hearing.

“In the particular transcript there is, and the government filed something else yesterday, there is a factual dispute as to what is said or what is meant by a portion of the transcript wherein it appears the official saying, “everyone knows it,” referring to the wife’s employment at the CIA,” Jeffress added. “We have not heard that tape. If, in fact, as the transcript suggests that one official said, ‘Everyone knows it,’ who did he mean by ‘Everyone knows it?'”

Interesting… In fact, Fitzgerald claims it is not clear, not that it is not said. And he admits he has found reporters who knew about Valerie early on!

Fitzgerald disagreed with the interpretation.

“Your Honor, now that we have sort of burned what was sealed, my understanding of that conversation, there are people talking over each other, my understanding is that was a reference that everyone knows it, that Mr. Wilson is the unnamed ambassador,” Fitzgerald said. “Mr. Wilson didn’t reveal himself as the unnamed ambassador until July 6. This was prior to that time. We turned it over in an abundance of caution but I don’t believe that says it, and frankly there is a very limited number of reporters that we found out who had known it. I can’t represent we know every reporter because we took seriously the attorney general guidelines.”

Well, well. Fitzgerald is admitting there was knowledge of Plame in the media prior to Libby? Seems so:

“Your Honor, simply it is a fact that is key to this case to know what reporters out there knew or had heard about Wilson’s wife, what they were saying to each other, what they were saying to government officials,” Jeffress said. “And here is a key person, the first person that we know of, according to the evidence, actually discussed Mr. Wilson’s wife’s employment with a reporter and not only did it then but did it again with a separate reporter later. This is some person not in the White House.”

Poor Fitz-Magoo. He really bungled this one. Woodward’s post indictment mea culpa is really messing with his case. This is now the essence of the Fitzgerald case:

“Your Honor, the one thing that is clear is we should focus on what the allegations are,” Fitzgerald said. “The indictment alleges that on Monday Mr. Libby told [former White House press secretary Ari] Fleischer this information about Mr. Wilson’s wife and indicated that it wasn’t widely known, on a Monday.”

It seems Fitzgerald’s entire case relies on whether Libby recalled, three and nine months later, what happened on a Monday verses a Wednesday of the same week. And prove it there was intent to not recall correctly. What a putz. Valeri’s marriage to Joe and her CIA job were well known – it will come out.

Addendum: Raw Story has learned of a pending Washington Post story on how the focus of the Plame leak is shifting from the WH to State. Did State hold a grudge against the CIA for not supporting State’s view on Iraq? Did State try to get some retribution against the Valeri’s group in the CIA for holding the Niger forgeries in their safe until it was too late to alter public opinion?

Correction: Not for me, but for Raw Story (they never get much right). Seems Raw Story is talking about a story that ran last week in
the post!

Update: Tom Maguire has a post on the article here.