Wanna Bet This Won't Help Scooter?

Wizbang is reporting that Bob Woodward is another hole in the seive entrusted to guard Valerie Plame's possibly covert (or not) identity. From the Washington Post:

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 -- one week after Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

Don't expect any indictments over leaking Plame's name, but it might be a safe bet that there will be more indictments for fudging to Fitzgerald. You might think it reasonable to ask, "Why did Bob hang back on this one? Surely a newsman like him would have been following the case, done some date-checking, and sent a message to Fitz earlier, like, say, before someone got indicted for perjury."

Simple, simple reader. Clearly the point of this story is that there is an official in the Bush administration who told Bob about Valerie, and who now must also pay the penalty for speaking the name of Plame!

PS Cassandra's had some of the best Plame commentary and coverage to date, so expect more on this.