The Washington Post reveals that big foot reporter Bob Woodward heard from some government official who was not either Libby or Rove about the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent about a month before Libby is supposed to have told anyone about Wilson’s wife and before Wilson wrote his NYT editorial.

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Woodward doesn’t think that he mentioned this in June when he talked to Libby but he may have since his notes indicate that it was one of the things that he was planning to ask Libby about.

Woodward said he also testified that he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, and discussed Iraq policy as part of his research for a book on President Bush’s march to war. He said he does not believe Libby said anything about Plame.

He also told Fitzgerald that it is possible he asked Libby about Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. He based that testimony on an 18-page list of questions he planned to ask Libby in an interview that included the phrases “yellowcake” and “Joe Wilson’s wife.” Woodward said in his statement, however, that “I had no recollection” of mentioning the pair to Libby. He also said that his original government source did not mention Plame by name, referring to her only as “Wilson’s wife.”

Woodward’s testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official — not Libby — the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source.

What interests me is that Woodward testified that he told Walter Pincus of the Post about Wilson’s wife but that Pincus doesn’t remember the conversation at all.

Woodward’s statement said he testified: “I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst.”

Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview, Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.

“Are you kidding?” Pincus said. “I certainly would have remembered that.”

Pincus said Woodward may be confused about the timing and the exact nature of the conversation. He said he remembers Woodward making a vague mention to him in October 2003. That month, Pincus had written a story explaining how an administration source had contacted him about Wilson. He recalled Woodward telling him that Pincus was not the only person who had been contacted.

Pincus and fellow Post reporter Glenn Kessler have been questioned in the investigation.

So, if Woodward and Pincus both testify to different memories of their conversations, how is that different from Libby and Russert both testifying to different memories of their conversations? If we can believe that the great Bob Woodward is misremembering when he told someone something, isn’t it possible that Tim Russert could misremember something, too? Or that Scooter Libby could? Why is one discrepancy worthy of indictment and the other one chalked up to “confusion about the timing”?

(Link via Decision ‘08, who has links to more reaction to this story.)

Sensible Mom has some more thoughts on how the media covers each other.

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