[First posted on October 20, I've bumped it up since reporters are beginning to focus on the March, 2003 rather than June, 2003 date.]

Joseph Wilson wrote in his book and told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that the White House campaign to discredit him began in early March, 2003, after he had appeared on CNN and criticized the Niger documents as forgeries. In an earlier post, I quoted both:

Wilson's Book:

...According to my sources, between March 2003 and the appearance of my article in July, the workup on me that turned up the information on Valerie was shared with Karl Rove, who then circulated it in administration and neoconservative circles.

....Apparently, according to two journalist sources of mine, when Rove learned that he might have violated the law, he turned on Cheney and Libby and made it clear that he held them responsible for the problem they had created for the administration.

Via AmericaBlog, the Providence Journal reports:

A Rhode Island Republican Party fundraiser scheduled for tonight featuring Andrew H. Card, White House chief of staff, has been canceled because Card is spending the weekend with President Bush at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Patricia Morgan, Republican state chairwoman, said yesterday.

I suspect they will be discussing replacements for those who about to be indicted, and/or those who have agreed to plead guilty.

I'm still leaning towards believing that Rove and Libby will fall on their swords and have plea agreements in place by next week, to spare their respective bosses, Bush and Cheney, the ugly fallout from a protracted criminal case and from being called as witnesses.

The question is, will Bush pardon them in return for their loyalty before or after they serve any jail time required by the deals?

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post reports Patrick Fitzgerald and the Justice Department has created a website relating to the Plame Grand jury.

Here it is.

Former White House aides are now charging Libby orchestrated a campaign to discredit Joseph Wilson that continued into 2004. The LA Times reports it has received documents establishing this from the former aides.

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.

Those efforts by the chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began shortly after Wilson went public with his criticisms in 2003. But they continued into last year — well after the Justice Department began an investigation in September 2003, into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the CIA operative's identity, say former White House aides.

Who's sticking up for Libby? Cheney Chief Cheerleader Mary Matalin. [hat tip Patriot Daily.]

Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin explains Bush's pardon power in the context of Plamegate.

• A president's pardon power is unreviewable
• He can pardon people before they are charged with a crime or anytime after they are charged or convicted

Why Bush might pardon his cronies in Plamegate:

• To avoid being called as a witness in a criminal prosecution

Why Bush might not pardon his cronies, at least right now

• The political fallout. He is only in the first year of his second term.

The New York Times reports tonight:

• Fitzgerald has advised both Libby and Rove they are in serious legal jeopardy. He will decide whether to charge next week.

• Fitzgerald is considering charges of Perjury, Obstruction of Justice and Making a False Statement to Federal Officials. He seems less focused on charges over the leak. It's the cover-up, not the crime.

• Fitzgerald knows who Novak's source is, and it's not someone who works at the White House.

• Additional persons could be charged.

There may be others in the government who could be charged for violations of the disclosure law or of other statutes, like the espionage act, which makes it a crime to transmit classified information to people not authorized to receive it.

Reading between the lines from a legal standpoint, here's how I interpret this, and remember, it's just speculation: Fitzgerald is done. All that's left are the pre-indictment plea deals. He's previously made deals with John Hannah and David Wurmser. Now he's offered them to Rove and Libby. As I've said before, it's their "come to Jesus moment." I suspect both will accept the best deals their lawyers can negotiate. Rove will fall on his sword to protect Bush, and Libby will fall on his to protect Cheney.

Eriposte at Left Coaster has written a few pieces on Judith Miller's statements that she can't remember who told her about "Valerie Flame" or how that name got into her notes. Asptrader at Daily Kos has more on this, particularly Robert Novak's reference to "Valerie Flame" in this October 6, 2003 Human Events column. Novak's TownHall column on October 1 had the name spelled correctly as Valerie Plame. Or did it back then?

Murray Waas breaks more news about Judith Miller, which is confirmed by her lawyer Robert Bennett.

Miller was asked about the June Meeting with Libby during her first grand jury appearance, and didn't recall it until Fitzgerald showed her secret service logs showing she had been at the White House Annex that day.

When a prosecutor first questioned Miller during her initial grand jury appearance on September 30, 2005 sources said, she did not bring up the June 23 meeting in recounting her various contacts with Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Pressed by prosecutors who then brought up the specific date of the meeting, Miller testified that she still could not recall the June meeting with Libby, in which they discussed a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa by former Ambassador Joe Wilson, or the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

When a prosecutor presented Miller with copies of the White House-complex visitation logs, she said such a meeting was possible.

Arianna has an indispensable timeline for those tracking discrepancies between Libby and Tim Russert. Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has more today. Jane at Firedoglake has the background.

As background, the New York Times reported on July 16, 2005:

A must-read: Ray McGovern's "Cheney's chickens come home to roost."

The Wall St. Journal (free link) reports:

Officials who know Mr. Libby say he was almost certainly trying to shield Mr. Cheney from Mr. Wilson's charges that the White House manipulated prewar intelligence on Iraq. What is unknown is whether Mr. Libby's conversations with reporters were done on impulse, or part of a larger, scripted White House effort to discredit and punish Mr. Wilson by disclosing that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the Central Intelligence Agency. The grand jury on the case has also four times questioned White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove.

WaPO has more details on Rove's last grand jury appearance in which sources familiar with his testimony (if it's not Luskin, I bet it's Ben Ginsberg) say Rove told the grand jury he learned of Plame's identity from Libby who said he learned it from Russert.

This Counterpunch timeline by Former NSC staffer Roger Morris is well-worth re-reading.

Former intelligence agents have told the New York Daily News that members of the White House Iraq Group funnelled information to Judith Miller and that she was a "charter member" of the group.

There were a number of occasions when White House officials or Vice President [Cheney's] staffers, or others, wanted to push the envelope on things," an ex-intelligence official said. "The agency would say, 'We just don't have the intelligence to substantiate that.'" When Wilson was sent by his wife to Africa to research the claims, he showed the documents claiming Saddam tried to buy the uranium were forgeries. "People in the Iraq group then got very frustrated. It was a side show," said a source familiar with WHIG.

TalkLeft's eminently qualified Washington Correspondent reports:

I don't ordinarily criticize newspaper coverage, but today's New York Times story on Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation is not only wrong, but damaging. The thrust of the article is that although "[a] final report had long been considered an option for Mr. Fitzgerald if he decided not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing," Fitzgerald has indicated he is not going to issue a report. According to the Times, this indicates that Fitzgerald is more likely to seek indictments.

This is wrong on so many counts.