Plausible update: the whisper campaign

Swopa at Needlenose suggests that Judith Miller may have been Novak's source. If you read the press conference transcript carefully, it notes that

Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true.

It was false. He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.

This strongly implies that reporters started talking to one other. Libby (though this sounds like classic Rove) launched a whisper campaign.

So how did Fitzgerald say it began?

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

Interesting.