The mystery man

The Wall Street Journal is upset that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is a careful newspaper reader. As part of making the case that Dick Cheney's chief of staff was spinning like a top and leaking like a sieve in July 2003 about the supposed validity of the Iraq WMD intelligence, Fitzgerald notes that the Journal had peculiarly good sources for an editorial quoting directly from the then current National Intelligence Estimate:

So imagine our surprise when Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald declared his intention last month to use that editorial as part of his perjury and obstruction case against former Vice Presidential aide Scooter Libby, who had also questioned Mr. Wilson's claims. It suggests that his case is a lot weaker than his media spin.

Mr. Libby wasn't a source for our editorial, which quoted from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate concerning the Africa-uranium issue. But Mr. Fitzgerald alleges in a court filing that Mr. Libby played a role in our getting the information, which in turn shows that "notwithstanding other pressing government business, [Libby] was heavily focused on shaping media coverage of the controversy concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Niger."

The prosecutor comes close here to suggesting that senior government officials have no right to fight back against critics who make false allegations. To the extent our editorial is germane to this trial, in fact, it's because it puts Mr. Libby's actions into a broadly defensible context that Mr. Fitzgerald refuses to acknowledge.

Well then -- unless they're suggesting that government officials have a specific right to anonymous spinning and leaking, why not tell us who their source actually was?