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Instapundit somehow finds l'affaire Plame too complicated for him. Even after reading the Washington Post story that I thought laid it all out quite well. He seems to be stumbling over the question of why they would do such a thing. Here's a suggestion: think back to Watergate. How many of the things that came out during that investigation seemed, in the light of day, bizarre and/or downright stupid? Why break into DNC headquarters? When you spend to long listening and talking to the same small group of people, your view of reality gets warped. I was astonished when Bush told Brit Hume that he didn't read the newspapers, and got all his news from a small, trusted group of people. What that means is that he's getting all his information from people who overwhelmingly have one of two biases:

1. Curry favor with the boss by telling him what you think he wants to hear, or
2. Try to manipulate the boss by telling him what you think will make him do what you want done.

There's nothing special about this; it's the way things work in any beaureaucratic organization. IBM is no more immune to it than the White House. But the performance of the White House in things like sacking Gen. Shinseiki because he didn't toe the party line on how many troops it was going to take to garrison Iraq only reinforces the impression that one had best avoid being the bearer of bad news at all costs.

The other thing that doesn't seem very complicated at this point is locating the leakers. Why are we waiting for a Justice Department investigation? We know that "a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife" from the Post. Noting the different usage ("administration official" vs. "White House official") lends a bit of weight (IMO) to the speculation that the "administration official" is CIA Director Tenet (who happens to be pictured along with the story). So it seems pretty obvious to me that if Bush wanted to, he could have that "senior administration official" give him the names (assuming he doesn't already have them) and produce them in about 14.7 seconds, give or take a news cycle.

So why doesn't he? More and more, it looks like the question, what did the President know and when did he know it? may be coming back for a second turn in the limelight. All we need now is a latter-day Woodward and Bernstein to shake things up a bit, jump in, and hang on. Mr. Pincus, Mr. Milbank? Call for you from central casting.