As noted, there’s much ink today on the Wilson/Plame investigation. Most of it is confusing, dull and devoid of new insights.

The bottom line, as I see it: Judy Miller testified that Scooter Libby “did not refer to Plame by name or mention her covert status.” (I’m quoting from Howie Kurtz’ piece in the Wash Post).

Indeed, Miller says in her piece that based on her conversation with Libby she assumed Plame “worked as an analyst not an undercover operative.”

Well, that would mean Libby did not expose a covert intelligence agent, the crime charged by Wilson and his supporters.

The most likely scenario continues to be what I and some others have been theorizing all along: Joe Wilson was claiming – and/or implying – that Dick Cheney arranged for him to be sent by the CIA to Niger but that Cheney then ignored Wilson’s report “proving” that Saddam wasn’t attempting to purchase uranium in Africa.

*Various reporters asked Libby and others: “Why did Cheney do that?” Libby and others replied: “He didn’t. It’s not true. He didn’t send Wilson. He never saw any report from Wilson.”

Reporters naturally asked: “So how did Wilson get the assignment?” Libby and others said, truthfully, that Wilson’s wife, who worked at CIA HQ recommended him.

But there has been no evidence to suggest that any of them knew – much less told reporters – that Plame was or had been undercover.

If that is the case, the crime alleged by Wilson was not committed.

If that is the case, it would tend to confirm what Bob Novak has maintained all along: That while he was told that Plame worked for the CIA, he was not told she worked undercover. As I’ve said in this space and in NRDT, the Nation’s David Corn was the first to report unambiguously that Plame had been covert and to specify what kind of covert work she did and what her cover story was. And Corn’s source, I am convinced, was Joe Wilson himself.

Update: Bill Kristol just predicted on Fox that while it is unlikely that anyone one will be indicted for exposing Valerie Plame – the crime originally charged — indictments are to be expected for perjury or obstruction of justice or something else.

Last point: Judy Miller’s article makes clear the extent to which the CIA did not work for the White House but instead went to war with the White House, selectively leaking to undermine the President and shift blame for shoddy pre-91// intelligence (while paying Michael Scheuer to write a book damaging to the President’s re-election campaign).

* Wilson’s “report” was never written; he merely discussed his trip with a CIA official. CIA analysts did not agree with Wilson’s conclusion that Saddam hadn’t sought uranium; on the contrary, while sipping tea with officials at his hotel in Niamey, Wilson heard that an Iraqi “trade delegation” had visited Niger. Because Niger has little to sell other than uranium, that tended to confirm suspicions rather than dispose of them.