Okay, this is getting complicated in exactly the way that attempting to study a tempest in a teapot is complicated — because it’s so small. Scooter Libby says he learned of Valerie Plame’s identity from Tim Russert. Evidently, Russert told the special prosecutor he did not reveal Valerie Plame’s name to Scooter Libby

Is somebody lying? Maybe — but on the other hand maybe there’s a lot of weaseling going on here and some of it is Tim Russert’s. Knowing as his lawyer must have that the criminally dangerous portion of the statute being invoked requires the actual use of Plame’s name, maybe Russert told the special prosecutor he didn’t use the NAME. “Joe Wilson’s wife” is not Valerie Plame’s name. In addition, if both men used the “to the best of my recollection” terminology when talking before the grand jury, then there will be no way to reconcile these details. You can’t indict one person for perjury in a two-way conversation if their testimony conflicts — I mean, I guess you could, but you could never make the case stick without independent confirmation.

Libby is a high-powered Washington lawyer of long-standing who has dealt with highly complicated negotiations with federal prosecutors. Forget questions of integrity, though I believe there’s no reason to doubt his integrity. I just don’t see how he would destroy his life and career by committing perjury so blatantly, which would not only expose him to jail but also to disbarment and an inability to support himself for the rest of his life.

Here’s the thing: Government officials are panicked about getting caught out perjuring themselves because they get courses on it and know people who have been thrown into the hoosegow for it. Scooter Libby saw friends and colleagues sucked into special-prosecutor investigations throughout the 1980s, and knows what a living hell that could be.

Journalists, by contrast, are far less likely to imagine that they might find themselves cross-wise of a grand jury, and therefore far more likely to be innocently loose-lipped. I’m not saying Russert did anything wrong, because I still think there was no crime committed here. But the presumption that he would have spoken the absolute truth before a grand jury and Scooter Libby would have dissimulated doesn’t necessarily jibe with the truth.