Different versions

In todays CCTimes the op-ed page contained a reprint of a Washington Post editorial.
To me it sounded like "sour grapes". The gist was that the whole Libby affair was a needless wasted of time and an assault on the freedom of the press. The latter being the way news reporters were treated by the investigators; particularly Judith Miller who spent some 80 days in jail.

The claim that Joseph Wilson's allegations, about the White House claim that uranium was procured from Niger, were false is patently untrue. It was proven that the White House lied. Demeaning Wilson is the administration's tactic because of it's being found out. Cheney camped over at Langley to get the intelligence reports so he could make his own determinations, not trusting the CIA. He indicated to the CIA that the Niger thing should be checked. Wilson's wife didn't "send" him. She merely suggested him since he had experience in the region. It was Tenent's decision to interview Wilson and sound him out. There is a question about the report Wilson did or did not prepare and who it was that received it. The Post's claim that all Wilsons allegations were false is just not the case

The status of Wilson's wife is of little import. Obviously Cheney felt obliged to disclose her employment at the CIA as a means of discrediting Wilson. He and the President went so far as to declassify specific information for the sole purpose of doing so. Libby was the pawn who sought out certain news hawks to leak information to. The machinations of the Vice President's office, it's apparent obsession with the Wilson article in the Times, not the Post, took up a great deal of Libby's time. With that kind of effort it is not plausible that he "forgot" who told him what.

As to the fact that Fitzgerald already knew who the leaker was does not mitigate the stupidity of the cover up. If the President, who must have been privy to the scheme had been forthright, very uncharacteristic of him, and called a halt to the matter by
bringing out the truth, it would have been over quickly. Such was not the case so things proceeded. That is not a fault of Fitzgerald's. He was given an assignment and went ahead with it.

All the hand wringing and recriminations are the fault of yet another misjudgment by the White House. Their record for being mistaken is pretty much perfect. The whole sorry mess is additional proof of the wrongheadedness of our going to war in Iraq.
That is the long and the short of it.