During a conversation with Robert Luskin, Karl Rove’s lawyer, last July, Luskin said, “Rule number one is cooperate with Fitzgerald, and there is no rule number two.” It was a standard defense attorney line; the last thing one would want to do is to alienate Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor who controls every aspect of the CIA leak investigation.

That rule applies to reporters, too. See this morning’s front-page story in the New York Times, “Leak Prosecutor is Called Exacting and Apolitical.” Its first sentence:

In 13 years prosecuting mobsters and terrorists in New York, Patrick J. Fitzgerald earned a public reputation for meticulous preparation, a flawless memory and an easy eloquence.

The article goes on to praise Fitzgerald in ways big and small, suggesting that his only flaw is a kind of charming bachelor messiness. But it appears that the more important point of the Times story is to defend Fitzgerald against yet-unmade charges of political bias, in the event that Fitzgerald chooses to seek indictments against Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, or other administration officials:

Unlike Mr. Walsh and Mr. Starr, both former judges, Mr. Fitzgerald is a career prosecutor. And as a Bush administration appointee, he is less vulnerable to attack from the White House.
“It will be much harder than it was with Starr to say this is a partisan prosecution,” Ms. Harriger [an expert on independent counsels] said.

But the Times seems intent on fighting the last war. Who has accused Fitzgerald of political bias? Perhaps someone, but it hasn’t been a prominent complaint. Fitzgerald has been criticized by members of the press for pursuing reporters to testify about their confidential sources. Beyond that, the line of criticism of Fitzgerald that might develop in future weeks is actually given some support in the Times piece. First, the paper approvingly passes on a colleague’s description of Fitzgerald as having a single-minded dedication to the law. And then:

Some attorneys who admire Mr. Fitzgerald detect a hint of zealotry or inflexibility in his approach and wonder whether what works with terrorism translates to an inside-the-Beltway case involving White House officials and their multilayered relationships with journalists.