In my very last entry, I muttered something incoherently about the Valerie Plame issue. I just paid a visit to Atrios, and he posted a link to a WaPo article that makes a tepid attempt..If it can even be called that, to provide some color to what are, in all seriousness, unanswered questions.

A teaser:

Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum

(I'm resisting the urge to apply exclamation points ;))

The Justice Department has added a fourth prosecutor to the team investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity, while the FBI has said a grand jury may be called to take testimony from administration officials, sources close to the case said.

Administration and CIA officials said they have seen signs in the past few weeks that the investigation continues intensively behind closed doors, even though little about the investigation has been publicly said or seen for months.

According to administration officials and people familiar with some of the interviews, FBI agents apparently started their White House questioning with top figures -- including President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove -- and then worked down to more junior officials. The agents appear to have a great deal of information and have constructed detailed chronologies of various officials' possible tie to the leak, people familiar with the questioning said.

The Justice Department has added a prosecutor specializing in counterintelligence, joining two other counterintelligence prosecutors and one from Justice's Public Integrity section.

Agents investigating the matter have been increasingly apparent at CIA headquarters in Langley over the past three weeks, officials said. "They are still active," a senior official said.

But sources said the CIA believes that people in the administration continue to release classified information to damage the figures at the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA officer by unidentified senior administration officials for a July 14 column by Robert D. Novak.

Wilson, a prominent critic of the administration over Iraq, has said that was done to retaliate against him for continuing to publicize his conclusion, after a 2002 mission for the CIA, that there was little evidence Iraq had sought uranium in Africa to develop nuclear weapons.

Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.

CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended the meeting.

"It has been circulated around," one official said. CIA and State Department officials have refused to discuss the document.

That takes you to the midway point of the article. Unless I am blind, there isn't a whole lot of new material there. Then there are these select gems:

Capitol Hill aides in both parties said Wilson had badly hurt his credibility with his apparently enthusiastic participation in a spread in the January issue of Vanity Fair that includes a glamorous photo of him and his wife outside the White House, a scarf and dark glasses shielding her. In another photo in the magazine, she shields her face with the front section of The Washington Post as he eats breakfast barefoot on their deck with the Washington Monument in the distance.

Wilson is quoted as saying he is "appalled at the apparent nonchalance shown by the president of the United States on this." The article includes Wilson's steamy account of his early romance with Plame. Congressional aides said the article bolstered the contention of Wilson's critics that no one had done more than him to draw attention to Plame, and that the couple had eagerly contributed to their celebrity.

Wilson, in an interview, defended his participation in the glossy magazine's article. "The Republicans are going to say anything to deflect attention from the crime, which was exposing a CIA operative," he said, adding that his wife's "cover was completely blown" before the article appeared.

"My only regret about the Vanity Fair photo is that after all my wife and I have been through on this, that she had to be clothed as generic blonde in order to deal with the genuine concern that some wacko on the street might easily identify her," he said. "It was just in the interest of personal security."

Okay. Let me see if I have this straight. Wilson's claim that his wife's cover was completely blown is pretty much a matter of no contention, yet he is being chastised for what? Bringing additional publicity to his case? This is the same Vanity Fair that Paul Wolfowitz reputedly told: "for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue - weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on" whan asked about how the Iraq war was sold to the US populace.

This thing may yet die on the vine, but I for one, want to know just what the hell happened. If Bush was really on board with this investigation it wouldn't be being -- as far as I can tell -- 'soft pedaled' by the administration.

A felony was committed. As to what, how or why someone did after the crime occurred doesn't matter a freakin' whit!!! Bah. I need food. I'm rambling and incoherent.