Is There A Snitch In The White House?

It appears so. From the New York Daily News:

[A]t least six current and former Cheney staffers - most members of the White House Iraq Group - have testified before the grand jury, including the vice president's top honcho, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, and two top Cheney national security lieutenants.

Cheney's name has come up amid indications Fitzgerald may be edging closer to a blockbuster conspiracy charge - with help from a secret snitch.

"They have got a senior cooperating witness - someone who is giving them all of that," a source who has been questioned in the leak probe told the Daily News yesterday.

The Daily News article also touched upon an issue that has been running through my head for the last few days, namely, if Cheney is now a target of Fitzgerald's investigation, doesn't that mean that Scooter Libby is as good as indicted? What I mean is -- doesn't the road to Cheney necessarily have to go through Scooter's office first? The Daily News article continues:

Libby is often described as "Cheney's Cheney," a loyal and discreet lieutenant who shares his boss's hard-line philosophy and bareknuckle attitude toward political enemies of the Bush administration.

Cheney and Libby spend hours together in the course of a day, which causes sources who know both men very well to assert that any attempts to discredit Wilson would almost certainly have been known to the vice president.

"Scooter wouldn't be freelancing on this without Cheney's knowledge," a source told the Daily News. "It was probably some off-the-cuff thing: 'This guy [Wilson] could be a problem.'"

I guess I could understand a person like George W. Bush keeping some distance from what his underlings were doing. After all, Bush doesn't appear to be a hands-on, micro-managing type of guy.

But Cheney certainly strikes me that way. After all, Cheney is the one who made all those trips over to CIA Headquarters during the run-up to the Iraq Debacle in order to make sure the analysts at Langley were reaching conclusions about Iraq that would support BushCo's (i.e., PNAC's) invasion plans.

Indeed, the Washington Post reported yesterday that Fitzgerald "has assembled evidence that shows Cheney's long-running feud with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame." It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Cheney was pulling Scooter Libby's strings all along when it came to Libby's TreasonGate-related activities.

Regarding this "secret snitch," I note that the article does not say that this person is a current member of the Bush Administration. The purported "snitch" is merely described as a "senior cooperating witness."

Sounds like an office pool may be in order. I'll take Ari Fleischer.