PINCUS and 1x2x6. The Washington Post's Walter Pincus took the stand as the first witness for the defense in the Libby trial, and he cleared up one of the longest-standing mysteries in the CIA leak investigation: the anonymous administration official who blew Plame's cover to him on July 12, 2003 was then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Fleischer himself appeared to testify that, while he leaked Plame's CIA identity to two other reporters, David Gregory and John Dickerson (the latter denies it, intriguingly enough), he had no recollection of having leaked to Pincus. The defense will probably try to use Pincus' testimony to impeach Fleischer's, which was damning for Libby. In any case, now that there are three reporters to whom Fleischer has been tied as a leaker -- regardless of the fact that I am strongly inclined to believe Dickerson over Fleischer on their interaction -- we may be getting closer to understanding a far more central mystery of the leak investigation: the source and status of what is known as the 1x2x6 article, the September 28, 2003 Washington Post article that reported that "a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife," and that they did so for revenge. This article had at least two very important effects: it set investigators, who had only just begun their inquiry, on the hunt to verify or falsify it. And it convinced the public that the two White House officials named in the WaPo story were the same as Novak's two senior administration officials who outed Plame to him for his July 14, 2003 column -- which we now know not to be true, as Novak's two sources were Richard Armitage, not even in the White House, and Karl Rove.
