Libby Indicted; Rove on the Ropes

A Mixed bag hit the White House today with the Special Prosecutor choosing not to bring an indictment against Karl Rove. He is not out of the woods yet, because Fitzgerald said the investigation into his role in the CIA leak is still continuing.

Lewis Libby did not fare as well. He has been indicted on 5 counts of perjury, false statement, and obstruction of justice.

Will President Bush stand by his pledge of July 7 when he said anyone involved in the CIA leak "will no longer work in my administration?" Or will he find another loophole?

Notably the loudest silence is coming from Dick Cheney. He has said nothing. The White House has seeming left Libby out in the wind while protecting Karl Rove.

By all accounts, Libby was certainly at the heart of the administration's high-level arm-twisting in the intelligence community, trying to massage evidence to make the case that Iraq was an imminent danger to the world. He and his boss Cheney, along with a cadre of administration hawks, took the lead in trying to sell a number of bogus claims, from the notion that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger to the false assertion that hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi spy before 9/11.

Many of the clues pointing toward Libby come from Novak himself, who's provided a number of details about his source.

A consummate Washington Republican insider, Libby rarely throws bombs in the press, or parades in front of the talking-head cameras. Instead, he's considered a behind-the-scenes power broker who bounces back and forth between senior government jobs and his lucrative Beltway law practice. Between 1995 and 2000 Libby served as fugitive billionaire Marc Rich's attorney.

Karl Rove is being looked at for possible perjury. With the bad week the President has had, he has no choice but to let these men go. To do anything else could cause a firestorm.

David Gergen believes that any indictments could have an enormous impact on the Iraq war. He told Larry King, "they will raise questions about whether criminal acts were perpetrated to help get the country into war."