How to get to the bottom of this CIA agent thingy.

Oh, my, life is getting more interesting regarding the outing of the covert CIA operative with this New York Times article, in which we apparently now have a third administration official who mentioned Valerie Plame's name and undercover status to a reporter:

Mr. Pincus has not identified his source to the public. But a review of Mr. Pincus's own accounts and those of other people with detailed knowledge of the case strongly suggest that his source was neither Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, nor I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and was in fact a third administration official whose identity has not yet been publicly disclosed.

OK, so there's our apparent third person. And how hard will it be to figure out who this is?

Mr. Pincus has said he will not identify his source until the source does so.

Whoa ... now that's a useful piece of information since it means that all that source has to do is waive confidentiality. And what are the chances of that? Theoretically, you'd think it would be pretty good given President George W. Chimpster's previous statements that:

• No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than he does.
• He's asked everyone in his administration to co-operate fully with the investigation.

Under the circumstances, then, it shouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that Chimpy order all his staff to waive confidentiality en masse. Then we'd get to the bottom of things, wouldn't we?

Of course, if George refused to give such an order, well, that would be kind of curious, wouldn't it?