The Bush administration would love for Leakgate to stop at Libby, but history isn't necessarily on its side. First of all, Fitzgerald's grand jury isn't the only body that can investigate. Scandals typically attract inquiries by congressional committees, independent commissions and so on.

Also, in the Waterate scandal that took down Richard Nixon, a succession of officials were supposed to take the fall, but the allegations eventually rose all the way to the top. Indeed, one of the designated fall guys, John Dean, cooked Nixon's goose by telling all to the Senate Watergate Committee. Those hearings revealed the existence of Oval Office tapes that implicated the president not only in dirty tricks against his Democratic opponents, buto in a whole series of other crimes.

On the other hand, the indictment of Libby was the minimum that Fitzgerald was expected to come up with last week. He announced that his investigation--particularly into allegations against Rove--is ongoing, but he didn't promise anything. If Libby refuses turn on his former boss or another powerful name in the administration, there's no guarantee that Fitzgerald will take any further actions.

And while liberals are hoping that the indictment will lead to congressional hearings, the Democrats show no sign of taking the offensive--regardless of the golden opportunities placed before them--and Republicans will have to be deeply divided before they really go after Bush.

Still, the leak scandal has done the Bush administration an enormous amount of damage. For one thing, this is the worst tarnish yet on the image of the Bush White House as an efficient, iron-disciplined operation that always manages to avoid defeat.

Federal officials--particularly those, like Fitzgerald, who are themselves upholders of the status quo--may not want to draw the conclusions. But the picture that emerges from the indictment and the media revelations about the leak scandal is one of a vice president who calls the shots for the administration--and who has gathered around him a gang of liars and political fixers to make sure that the policy he wants is carried out. And anyone who gets in the way is a target to be discredited or destroyed.

Even the media are beginning to ask questions that go to the substance of the case--the lies that led to war--rather than narrower concerns about whether a CIA agent's identify was exposed.

The White House leak scandal is a further vindication of the antiwar movement, which from the beginning recognized the Bush administration's case for war as the fraud it was. Now we can take advantage of these revelations to broaden and strengthen the movement against the occupation of Iraq--and Washington's imperial project around the world.

Duped reporter or partner in crime?

NEW YORK Times reporter Judith Miller features as prominently in Patrick Fitzgerald's first leak scandal indictment as many of the White House's most important players. But she's been in that company before.

During the drive to war, Miller served up some of the hawks' most outrageous lies about Iraq. Her front-page "exposés" were filled with wild claims about Iraq's arsenal, based on information from pro-U.S. Iraqi exiles like Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted embezzler who the neocons wanted to rule the "new" Iraq, and assorted "senior White House officials"--who, we now know, were probably Libby most of the time.

Miller wasn't the only journalist to fall for the administration's war lies. Almost without exception, the U.S. mainstream media echoed Bush's case for war, never pausing to investigate the obvious lies and distortions. But Miller's behavior seems to set her apart even from the pro-war cheerleaders--and place her more in the category of co-conspirator.

The details to emerge from Fitzgerald's investigation only compound the questions. According to the indictment, Miller was the first reporter to hear of Plame's identity from Libby, though she never wrote a story about it. Why not? Did Libby talk to Miller first in the hopes that she would help him spread the word about Plame?

Miller's own explanation--made in the pages of the Times--was convoluted and self-serving, raising the question of whether she might be indicted herself, along with Rove and other Bush administration officials.

New York Times management now professes to be shocked and outraged at Miller's behavior. But that comes a little late. "The Times nailed Miller's colors to its mast many years ago," Alexander Cockburn wrote on the CounterPunch Web site. "There are decades' worth of her atrocious mendacities in its archives, and decades' worth of accurate refutations of her news stories ignored by Times' editors."

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