As we noted earlier today, Joseph Wilson said Thursday that if anyone is indicted in connection with outing his wife, it's likely to be Karl Rove or Scooter Libby. Wilson may well be right, but that doesn't mean that involvement in the Valerie Plame case stops with the two of them. One way or another, the Plame case goes much farther within -- and without -- the administration of George W. Bush.
Think Progress has just posted a guide to administration officials involved in the Plame case. It's not a short list: Think Progress identifies 21 people with what it calls "known connections to the outing of an undercover CIA agent." The list starts with Rove and Libby, of course, but it winds its way though knowns and unknowns -- from Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley and Andrew Card to John Hannah, Adam Levin and Bob Joseph -- before winding up at Dick Cheney and George W. Bush himself.
It's easy to name names, but Think Progress has gone beyond that, providing evidence and links that tie the officials in question -- some more tightly than others, of course -- to the outing of Plame. Some, like Rove and Libby, have been implicated directly in the leak itself. Others are shown to have played a role in the efforts to discredit Wilson, to have had access to the information that was leaked or to have assisted with the denials and the coverup that came later.
As ABC's the Note notes, "In an age when the general public would be shocked at the degree to which major news organizations are wholly dependent on interest groups for their research, this one will get some Gang of 500 bookmarking."
We know of one "Gang of 500" member who has a certain fondness for reference works. Perhaps he'd like to check out this one.
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