Atrios linked to a Washington Post article that pretty much suggests Judith Miller as possibly being the ultimate source for the Valerie Plame leak.

The most interesting excerpt is this one:

“The lawyer, who has knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors, said President Bush’s deputy chief of staff has told investigators that he first learned about the operative from a journalist and that he later learned her name from Novak.

Rove has said he does not recall who the journalist was who first told him that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, or when the conversation occurred, the lawyer said.”

This caused all sorts of sparks to go off in my fertile little brain.

If that is, indeed, what Rove told investigators and the Grand Jury, then we we can play Cyber-Clue and figure out who it is that Patrick Fitzgerald is REALLY targetting in this investigation.

Thus, after reviewing what we know, it has to be Karl Rove!

And he’s pursuing a possible perjury or obstruction of justice charge against Rove.

How do we know this?

Well…if Fitzgerald believed Rove’s testimony, then Judith Miller would be the focus of his investigation.

And he’d treat her that way. Which means that she could, by rights, invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify without being held in comtempt. But she didn’t do that!

Instead, she chose to go to jail.

If, however, Fitzgerald needs Miller to testify in order to determine whether Rove committed perjury, or whether he lied to the FBI, then Miller’s conduct makes more sense.

So, it appears that one of two people are on the hotseat here: Karl Rove or Judith Miller.

But, Miller could get out of jail if she wanted to by either testifying to the Grand Jury, or by invoking her Fifth Amendment privilege.

Of course, Fitzgerald is too canny a prosecutor. If he’s actually targetting Rove, he could offer Miller immunity for her testimony against Rove and prevent her from pleading the Fifth Amendment.

Thus, by process of elimination, Fitzgerald MUST be looking at some sort of a perjury or obstruction of justice charge against Karl Rove. If Miller was his target, she’d be pleading the fifth right now and not be in jail.

Now, aside from the Rove angle…his claim that Miller (we all know who he’s referring to) was HIS source for the Plame information is interesting.

So just for kicks, let’s assume that Rove IS telling the truth. If so, how did Miller learn Plame’s identity?

My theory? Plame was once one of Miller’s sources!

It makes sense.

Miller was the New York Times’ resident “expert” on Chemical and Biological weapons.

And, as we also know, Valerie Plame was a CIA officer who worked on WMD issues.

Thus, it is not unreasonable to speculate that Plame may have been a SOURCE for one of Miller’s articles on WMDs. And I’m not talking about the BS Miller wrote in the runup to the Iraq invasion.

I’m talkng about her work on bioweapons, and other related issues.

So, if what Rove said turns out to be true…then (in the ultimate irony) Judith Miller might be sitting in a jail cell right now because she actually burned one of her sources!

But even if the above scenario is off base, it makes no sense that Miller had some OTHER source for Plame’s identity in the Bush administration. If that were true, why would the source ONLY tell Miller? Wouldn’t they also tell Rove?

So, I still believe that Rove is the one who’s in big trouble here. News reports have said Fitzgerald “knows” who Miller’s source is. That’s about as strong a piece of evidence you can get (given what else we know) that Fitzgerald does not believe Rove’s story.

If Miller “has a source” for the information, and Fitzgerald “knows” who that source is, then Fitzgerald is building a case against her “source,” not Miller.

So, I think he needs Judith Miller to nail down an indicment against Rove.

The question is, why is Judy refusing to testify?

I’ll leave that to you all to figure out.

UPDATE: Lawrence O’Donnell specualtes based upon the written legal opinions of the Judges revieweing Miller and Cooper’s appeals that the charges being pursued are more than just perjury and obstruction of justice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: While Karl Rove may have been in the book depository, Think Progress believes that Ari Fleischer was in the grassy knoll.