Woodward on Joe: Blowhard

It's only fair to conclude, after Bob's interview on Larry King:

WOODWARD: ....You know the significance of this is yet to be determined and what's the good news in all of this is when it all comes out, and hopefully it will come out, people will see how casual and offhand this was.

Remember, the investigation and the allegations that people have printed about this story is that there's some vast conspiracy to slime Joe Wilson and his wife, really attack him in an ugly way that is outside of the boundaries of political hardball.

The evidence I had firsthand, small piece of the puzzle I acknowledge, is that that was not the case. ....

WOODWARD: ....the day of the indictment I read the charges against Libby and looked at the press conference by the special counsel and he said the first disclosure of all of this was on June 23rd, 2003 by Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff to "New York Times" reporter Judy Miller.

I went, whoa, because I knew I had learned about this in mid- June, a week, ten days before, so then I say something is up. There's a piece that the special counsel does not have in all of this. I then ... called the source the beginning of the next week and said "Do you realize when we talked about this and exactly what was said?"

And the source in this case at this moment, it's a very interesting moment in all of this, said "I have to go to the prosecutor. I have to go to the prosecutor. I have to tell the truth."

And so, I realized I was going to be dragged into this that I was the catalyst and then I asked the source "If you go to the prosecutor am I released to testify" and the source told me yes.

[big snip]

KING: OK. Your source, did the source indicate whether Mrs. Plame was an undercover agent or a desk analyst?

WOODWARD: Good question. And specifically said that -- the source did -- that she was a WMD, weapons of mass destruction, analyst. Now, I've been covering the CIA for over three decades, and analysts, except -- in fact, I don't even know of a case. Maybe there are cases. But they're not undercover. They are people who take other information and analyze it. And so -- and if you were there at this moment in mid-June when this was said, there was no suggestion that it was sensitive, that it was secret.

[Emphases above, the FLUBA's]