[Mb-civic] Bated Breath and a Shortage of Loose Lips - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Bated Breath and a Shortage of Loose Lips
CIA Leak Case Has Capital In Animated Suspense

By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page C01

Remember folks, these are only exit polls, we don't know anything yet, 
relax, it's all speculation. . . . Oh wait, that was last year's 
teleprompter script.

Forget the part about the exit polls. Otherwise the script is still 
good. No story with so few facts has so thoroughly distracted Washington 
like the CIA leak story has this week. Yesterday was especially 
excruciating as we waited to hear if there would be indictments of 
people in the White House.

You know it's a screwy week in Washington when presidential spokesman 
Scott McClellan so perfectly sums up the gestalt of the town -- albeit 
in that banal, totally unrevealing way of his:

"There's a lot of speculation going around," McClellan said in his White 
House briefing yesterday. "And I think there are a lot of facts that are 
not known at this point."

Our little power corridor is, it's safe to say, entranced by this story 
-- even as we acknowledge that there are large swaths of the country 
that couldn't care less.

"It's like the evil that dare not speak its name," says Rep. Peter King 
(R-N.Y.), referring to the only thing "it" can possibly refer to this 
week. In other words, it has come to suffice for a broad and complicated 
story with all manner of weird dimensions -- yellowcake, covert agents, 
and a cast of characters with great comic strip names like Scooter, Judy 
and Valerie Flame.

" It's obviously very big and very distracting," King says. " It's just 
everywhere."

Amid all the cable blather, BlackBerry chatter and "what'dya hears," the 
one truly reliable piece of information yesterday was that the federal 
grand jury met for three hours and adjourned without announcing any action.

In other words, happy waiting, come back tomorrow.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR2005102602551.html?nav=hcmodule
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