21 Administration Officials Involved In Plame Leak

From Think Progress courtesy of Eschaton:

The cast of administration characters with known connections to the outing of an undercover CIA agent:

Karl Rove
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby
Condoleezza Rice
Stephen Hadley
Andrew Card
Alberto Gonzales
Mary Matalin
Ari Fleischer
Susan Ralston
Israel Hernandez John Hannah
Scott McClellan
Dan Bartlett
Claire Buchan
Catherine Martin
Colin Powell
Karen Hughes
Adam Levine
Bob Joseph
Vice President Dick Cheney
President George W. Bush

Then it goes on to give quick factoids on each of the individuals involved, detailing exactly what their connections to the scandal are. Click here for the rest.

By no means are all of these individuals guilty of leaking Plame's name. However, Rove and Libby had to get their information from somewhere, and if the leak was a planned event, there's quite a good chance that they weren't the only ones involved--this is probably a good pool of both potential conspirators and well-meaning dupes. What's fascinating is that this article does a good job of showing just how wide-ranging Fitzgerald's investigation has become, going much further than anybody could have possibly predicted two years ago. As I've said before, this investigation seems to have the potential to blow the whole lid off of not only the Bush administration's smear operations, but also the seemingly unstoppable lie machine that got us into the illegal and unwinnable quagmire in Iraq. I don't expect this to happen, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

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