Among those who provided information to the FBI incriminating Shelby was Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron. He told investigators that Shelby shared information about the intercepts shortly after the June 19 hearing, according to sources close to the investigation.

Immediately after Shelby spoke with him, Cameron told the FBI, he watched as Shelby walked down a Senate office building hallway and conversed with Dana Bash, then a producer, and now a correspondent, for CNN. Cameron was not privy to the Shelby-Bash conversation, but CNN later ran a story about the intercepts based on information that was almost identical to what Shelby had told Cameron. Cameron, who indicated that he was irked that Shelby shared the information with a competitor, also told investigators that he delayed a broadcast of his story because he wanted to make sure that he was not compromising intelligence sources and methods, according to these sources.

A congressional staff member, the sources said, recounted to the FBI that Shelby told the staffer about the NSA intercepts -- that Al Qaeda was about to attack the United States, but that the intercepts were not translated until after September 11. Shelby indicated to the staffer that the issue should be brought to the press's attention, although the staffer said that Shelby did not provide specific details of the information that the senator wanted divulged, the sources said.

The investigation stalled when investigators were unable to compel Cameron, Bash, and other reporters to provide evidence or to testify before a federal grand jury on the sources for their stories.

One senior Justice Department member familiar with deliberations on the case said that some Justice officials were not convinced that the leak probe rose to the level of importance of issuing subpoenas or jailing journalists. This official said: "You have to weigh the costs... versus the benefits. We could have ended up with a reporter going to jail, and still ended up without the ability to make the case -- either because the reporter would refuse to testify or because, even with their testimony, we were unable to make a case."

Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in an interview that she agreed with the decision. "The public is better served when reporters are not required to act as investigative agents for the government," she said.

Dalglish asserted that although the Libby trial has demonstrated that some "leaks are done in the service of slimy political dirty tricks," there are a vastly greater number of "journalists working heroically... in the service of the public good" and "who are at risk of going to jail or are already in jail."

In the case of the NSA intercepts leak, CNN indicated that it would not cooperate with the federal criminal inquiry. Reporters for The Washington Post and USA Today probably would not have cooperated either. And although Cameron voluntarily provided information to the FBI, Fox News executives balked at allowing him to testify before a grand jury.

Graham says that even if Shelby had leaked information about the intercepts to the press, Graham believes with some degree of certainty that certain executive branch officials did so as well. Although CNN broke the story, the next-day stories in The Post and USA Today contained details that Hayden had not disclosed to the Intelligence committees, Graham said. "That would lead a reasonable person to infer the administration leaked as well, or what they were doing was trying to set us up... to make this an issue which they could come after us with."

War of Leaks
Regarding the Plame investigation, in sharp contrast to the NSA leak case, Fitzgerald and Eckenrode were able to obtain the voluntarily testimony of a score of journalists, most importantly columnist Robert Novak, who told Fitzgerald who his sources were. In other instances, when journalists refused to comply, Fitzgerald and his prosecutors pursued contempt charges.

Evidence presented by prosecutors during Libby's trial has detailed Cheney's role in directing Libby and others to selectively leak or declassify intelligence information to discredit Wilson, other administration critics, and the CIA, while defending the Bush administration's actions.

One such instance was when Cheney -- with the direct approval of President Bush -- instructed Libby to leak to the press portions of a still-classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Such a disclosure, Cheney and Libby hoped, would prove that the CIA had provided the White House with erroneous intelligence. Later, Cheney directed Libby to leak portions of a highly classified CIA debriefing of Wilson upon his return from Niger -- which Cheney and others mistakenly thought was a CIA cable.

The Times' Miller testified that during a June 23, 2003, meeting with Libby -- the first time that she said Libby had shared information with her about Plame -- he "appeared to be agitated and frustrated and angry" about what he described as a "perverted war of leaks" initiated by the CIA against the White House.

The main justification for invading Iraq had been that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. But with inspectors unable to find any evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, the White House blamed the CIA for faulty intelligence. Senior CIA officials, in turn, said that the White House had often misrepresented accurate intelligence information.

It was during that volatile time, on July 6, 2003, that Wilson wrote his New York Times op-ed alleging that the administration had distorted intelligence information about Iraq's purported attempt to procure uranium. When Cheney and Libby learned that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and might even have played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission, they perceived his allegations as one more effort by the CIA to shift blame away from the agency.

Four days later, on July 10, 2003, Mary Matalin, a senior aide to Cheney at the time, warned Libby that Wilson was a "snake" and that his "story has legs," Deputy Special Prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg said in court at Libby's trial.

Matalin then suggested a course of action, according to Zeidenberg: "We need to address the Wilson motivation. We need to be able to get the cable out. Declassified. The president should wave his wand."

Two days later, on July 12, 2003, Cheney and Libby flew together to the Norfolk naval base in Virginia, where they attended ceremonies to christen the USS Ronald Reagan.

On the way home on Air Force Two, the two men sat alone in a front compartment as Cheney counseled Libby on what to say to the press. One bit of advice: Provide reporters with details of the CIA debriefing of Wilson's Niger mission.

The vice president told Libby that the president had waved his wand.

Upon landing at Andrews Air Force Base, Libby and Cathie Martin, a press aide to Cheney, searched for a private room so that Libby could call Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and other reporters. Later from home, he also spoke to Judith Miller.

It was toward the end of conversations with both reporters that Libby told them that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, Miller and Cooper testified.

Before the trial, Cheney denied that he ever authorized anyone to provide information about Plame to the media -- or that he even suggested such a thing. But FBI agent Deborah Bond testified that on the return trip from Norfolk, the vice president might indeed have talked with Libby about revealing Plame's CIA connection to the press. "Mr. Libby told us he believed they may have talked about it but he wasn't sure," Bond told the court.

As Bond testified, Libby furiously scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad. If he looked like one of the accomplished attorneys at the defense table, it was because Libby is one, too. A graduate of Phillips Academy Andover, Yale University, and Columbia Law School, Libby had been, just before going to work for the vice president in 2001, the managing partner of the Washington office of an international law firm then named Dechert, Price, and Rhoads.

But as Graham points out, Libby, who as the vice president's chief of staff had vigorously demanded leak investigations of others, became a victim of his own "boomerang that had come around."

Scooter Libby was not just another lawyer at the defense table anymore. He was in the dock. -- Previous coverage of pre-war intelligence and the CIA leak investigation from Murray Waas. Brian Beutler provided research assistance for this report.

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