Conservative defenders of the White House are saying that that narrative doesn't make sense -- they don't see how the administration would take such a huge risk for so little gain. Andrew Sullivan writes, "Like many others, I'm still baffled by the rationale."

Andrew Sullivan, like most people, is easily baffled when he needs to be. In this case it isn't that baffling when you know the context. Several of the [journalists] who have not revealed their sources have told Wilson of conversations they had [with administration leakers]. The word being used was "nepotism," that Wilson was sent to Niger on a kind of junket. There is a discrediting aspect that they're now pushing strongly. The implication of Novak's column is that the CIA was sending a biased person.

There may be an element here of Rove having a bad temper and getting specifically vindictive, but that's not an unusual trait at that level. People who get that job are tough guys, and there's a reason for it -- they really do need to keep these kinds of secrets, secrets of their lies and their crimes, because they pursue policies that have to be kept secret from the public.

We're now in an aggressive, costly war. The White House had to lie about those policies to make them viable, and when you lie you have to keep the lies secret, you have to intimidate people who might be inclined to tell the truth, all that goes together. Why do they do it? Wilson and I have no trouble knowing why they did it. They don't want people to act the way we do.

If the leaker really was someone high up in the administration, what do you think is going on in the White House now? Is the dynamic of a scandal like this something they can control?

I think we can predict from past experience what's going on in the White House. First, there's the realization that they have one of these daily or weekly crises. There may be a growing sense -- but here I may be a little ahead of them -- that this one has real possibilities for bringing them down. Part of that is because the administration has said that the president knows of no one in the White House being involved. That is almost surely a lie, and it's a lie that is now entangled in a legal process. The FBI is going to be asking who knew what when. [White House spokesman Scott] McClellan says the president knows that Rove has no involvement. That statement is going to be declared inoperative. At the very least, Rove was clearly involved in calling people up and saying Valerie Plame is fair game.

They have already made statements they are going to have to reverse. It is not going to end up that there was no White House involvement. One leak, even of an undercover agent, is not going to look like an impeachable offense, but the lies and obstruction of justice going on now, that stuff is going to come out, and that stuff is going to look impeachable. I can see just how this is going to go down now that there's a legal process as there was in Watergate.

Of course, we wouldn't want to impeach Bush. Cheney is Bush's impeachment insurance, just as Spiro Agnew was Nixon's impeachment insurance. We need to get them all out of there.

But didn't Nixon's downfall depend on some outraged Republicans turning against him? That seems less likely now -- the parties are so much more polarized and zealously partisan.

Once you get people being questioned by the FBI and going before a grand jury, someone is likely to be unwilling to commit perjury. Under Nixon, it reached that point because I was on trial and there was a legal obligation to pass on certain information to my judge. Nixon was withholding the information about breaking into my doctor's office from my trial. There you had a case where Republicans in the Justice Department finally went to the president and said, "You've got to send the information." They were implying they would resign because they didn't want to be caught in obstruction of justice.

There's no exact counterpart here, but there's a real chance someone in the White House will crack on this. Maybe even for conscientious reasons.

The other part is outside the White House; there's the call for a special prosecutor. The administration is trying to hold the Republican line very closely on this, but if you look at the New York Times, it says a Republican with close ties to administration says the White House was monitoring five Republicans in Congress, all of whom have an independent streak. Putting pressure on them -- to tell the truth, to follow their conscience, to break ranks -- would be very worthwhile. This is the time for Democrats and Republicans to be telling those guys, "Do your duty to the country. Don't follow White House discipline on this."

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