A GODFATHER MOMENT

HAS LIBBY FLIPPED?  Or is it someone else? [story]  The PlameOut story will soon start to look like the next mob movie as bodies start to drop everywhere with every dropped hint and tip off.

Cheney's name has come up amid indications Fitzgerald may be edging closer to a blockbuster conspiracy charge - with help from a secret snitch.

"They have got a senior cooperating witness - someone who is giving them all of that," a source who has been questioned in the leak probe told the Daily News yesterday.

MACHIAVELLI MAY NEED to come in for a re-write. Mario Puzo sleeps with the fishes.  Who else will because of this snitch?  Who else could the canary be?

John at Blogenlust:  . ..  I predict it's Ari Fleischer. He's facing serious charges, is no longer in the administration, and by some accounts, wasn't and isn't apart of the inner circle of Bush loyalists. In short, I think he's the most likely to squeal in exchange for not being indicted.

UPDATE: Raw Story says canary likely to avoid cage is Cheney aide John Hannah [via Shakespeare's Sister]

THE HERETIK NOTES John Hannah's involvement has been speculated on most of this year.  UPI reported this February 2005.

Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.

According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.

The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.

HANNAH HAD A HARD ON FOR JOE WILSON [Juan Cole] It is possible that Wilson posed a special danger to Hannah, since Hannah was at the center of the "cherry-picking bad intelligence" effort that led Cheney to maintain that Saddam and Bin Laden were Siamese twins and that Iraq was floating in biological and chemical weapons and within 3-5 years of having an atomic bomb.

THE HERETIK WONDERS what Dick Cheney is doing right now.

Comments

[Blogenfreude]

At Agitprop, we have inaugurated a Cheney Death Watch and are chilling the champagne.

[Redd Turtle]

Colin Powell? More likely, Ari - but you just never know.