On reporting the Rove investigation

It's been 2 1/2 years since Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to look into who–if anyone–knowingly leaked the name of covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to the press. The CIA leak investigation has been reported–and mis-reported, mostly on some notorious blogs–in excruciating detail.

Late yesterday afternoon, Bob Luskin, presidential adviser Karl Rove's attorney, received a fax from Fitzgerald saying he had decided not to pursue the case any further. Rove was on a Baltimore runway at the time, so Luskin BlackBerried him that the case was over. No indictment.

Fitzgerald's reasons for ending the investigation seem pretty obvious: He decided that he could not prove what he may have suspected–that Rove was lying to him about not remembering a conversation with journalist Matthew Cooper of Time.

This may come as news to a whole hoarde of bloggers out there, one in particular who reported that Rove had ALREADY been indicted in mid-May. Oops. Guess Fitzgerald must have changed his mind, right?

Call me old-fashioned. Better yet, call me a reporter. As these blogs were continuing to report indictments–or coming indictments–every news editor in America was calling every serious journalist on the staff to check out the blog rumors. It was like Alice Through the Looking Glass: You knew what your sources were telling you. You knew they weren't lying. Yet you felt like you had to disprove something that was just patently false. One of the bloggers who reported a false rumor of the Rove indictment ("in a sealed envelope") said he would out his source if it turned out not to be true. We are all waiting.