I have been out of position and working on another story, but a few things stand out about the Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame lawsuit against Cheney, Libby, Rove, and ten unspecified officials.

The first has to do with the Plame book deal. Remember that her deal with Crown, for a reported $2.5 million, fell apart a few weeks ago. No one has publicly said what happened, but it appears that the deal had been finished and then, for some reason, both sides announced that they were releasing the other from their obligations. Neither side would comment on what took place.

The Wilsons then began talking to Simon and Schuster, but in the interim, Patrick Fitzgerald sent out word that he did not intend to indict Karl Rove. Even with New York publishers who are avidly on the side of anyone willing to attack the Bush administration, that news did some damage to the Plame proposal. The value of her book, such as it was, was that it would tell the story of the human costs of a conspiracy that went straight to the top of the U.S. government. A Rove indictment would have been a great blessing for her book proposal; the absence of such an indictment was a great loss.

And if there are no further indictments in the case — and it certainly seems that Fitzgerald, by sending word to Rove and to Robert Novak that their parts in it were over, is winding down rather than gearing up — then the conspiracy scenario that underlay the Plame book proposal, and indeed all of Joseph Wilson’s public appearances, appears to be falling apart. How does one keep that alive, at least through a seven-figure book deal and a few more speeches? Well, a lawsuit wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Back in the 1990s, attorney Bob Bennett famously called the Paula Jones lawsuit “tabloid trash with a legal caption.” Think of that what you might, but it would not be far off the mark to call the Plame/Wilson lawsuit a left-wing blog with a legal caption.

The bigger question in all this involves Fitzgerald. Remember that everything we are learning now, he has known for years. For example, he apparently knew who Robert Novak’s sources were by January 2004, less than two months after he was appointed. Yet he continued with the case — indeed, continues with it to this day — for reasons that are not clear. He set a terrible precedent for the use of waivers in forcing reporters to testify or face jail. And all of it appears to have happened after he learned that the main players in the case had not violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or any other national security law.

So yes, the Plame/Wilson lawsuit is ridiculous. But many serious questions about this case remain. And most of them should be directed to Patrick Fitzgerald.