As many of you know, Jason Leopold's stories on Truthout.org appear to have been substantially off target. Leopold reported that Karl Rove had been indicted by grand jury in Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation. Truthout has distanced itself from Leopold, but says the full truth hasn't yet been revealed, because all we have so far is based on what Karl Rove's lawyer has said. Patrick Fitzgerald's office has not, apparently, issued a detailed report on this matter, and the Rove indictment or non-indictment has not been confirmed or officially denied.
Now, Dan Rather was victim to a similar set of circumstances. Rather, a lifelong and esteemed journalist was tricked (apparently) into reporting on national CBS-TV news that GWBush had official documents implicating him with regard to problems pertaining to his National Guard service in the early 1970's.
What is the similarity between these two cases? In both cases, journalists reported, and staked their reputations on their belief that the facts indicated that high Administration officials had officially documented evidence of highly problematic misbehavior of one sort (indictment) or another (national guard service).
It is known that Karl Rove is highly skilled in the use of dirty tricks, and that one type of dirty trick is to engage in acts of "agents provocateurs" (as in the Reichstag bombing in the late 1930's, blamed on communists and used as an excuse to destroy the communist party in Germany, helping to set the stage for a right wing takeover in that nation).
Rove has used many different types of dirty tricks through the years, and has even been disciplined and dismissed from campaign duties for doing so in past campaigns by former Republican Presidents.
There is a particularly ingenious dirty trick, which involves making false documents or falsely reporting that there are documents, in essence "leaking" this kind of information to journalists. Once the reporting is conducted, the trap springs into place. An investigation is conducted, and the perpetrators of the trick know exactly how to reveal that the information was false, because they were the purveyors of the false information. Exactly how they convey the false information to the press certainly varies from case to case, but as is well known, it is not difficult to provide information to reporters.
The result of this sophisticated dirty trick is a bounce in the polls for the individual (Rove, GWBush) who was seen as being the "victim" in these affairs. Some people feel sorry for Rove now, because he was falsely reported to have been indicted, and as a result, Rove's name is magically "cleared" when the investigation into the media's behavior is revealed.
Now, there is another possibility in the Leopold/Rove affair. Perhaps Rove actually has been indicted in some way, shape, or form, but perhaps Fitzgerald concluded that the evidence wasn't strong enough to merit prosection, or perhaps Fitz concluded that Rove's cooperation with the grand jury and investigation was sufficient to preclude indictment of Rove. In the latter case, perhaps Fitz has received information from Rove that will lead to convictions of other central Admin figures. This seems to be a bit much to hope for, from our perspective, but it remains possible, and we won't know for a while because Fitz is such a thorough, deliberate, and methodolical investigator.