The Fate of Officials 'A'

From MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: First off, the baseline here. Has the status of the Fitzgerald grand jury changed? Has the status of Mr. Rove in the investigation process itself changed?

DAVID SHUSTER, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: Well, first, on the investigation, defense lawyers say that the grand jury investigation is active again, and that the panel has been meeting in recent weeks, although prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was not seen at the grand jury this week and hasn‘t been seen there at some—for some time.

Now, regarding Karl Rove, the—according to the latest documents, for the first time, Rove is now described as a subject in the overall case, a subject being a technical term meaning that somebody is under investigation. And the latest prosecution documents also go out of their way to suggest that Rove is not going to be a prosecution witness at the Libby trial, even though Rove is part of the narrative against Scooter Libby.

And the reason that‘s significant is because prosecutors usually don‘t put subjects on the witness stand for tactical reasons if they want to leave open the possibility of later charging that particular subject in a separate case.

The other thing that has long been intriguing about Karl Rove, and that is, we‘ve known for months that in the Scooter Libby indictment, when they referred to official A, official A is Karl Rove. And the indictment against Libby says that official A disclosed to Scooter Libby that he had had a conversation with columnist Robert Novak.

The reason prosecutors describe an official as an official A is when there‘s pejorative information about that person, and the person has not yet been indicted and had a chance to defend themselves. But we‘ve looked at prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald‘s record as far as designating people as official A or official B, and in every single case we have found, Keith, that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, when he designates somebody as official A in an indictment, that person eventually does get indicted themselves.

And that‘s why, I think, with everything coming together, there‘s so much intrigue tonight about Karl Rove.

And, as fans of Illinois politics and Patrick Fitzgerald's investigations know, our own dear Governor Blagojevich has been tagged to as “Official A.”