Why is Fitzgerald after reporters Miller and Cooper?

Has the Fitzgerald investigation of the Plame leak shifted to investigation of likely perjury/obstruction of justice charges? If so, and if Miller and Cooper are protecting a source who lied to obstruct justice, Miller and Cooper are themselves very possibly open to such charges.

John Dean discusses this possibility.

”Hoyle [a writer hired by Ambassador Joe Wilson’s publisher to add to the forthcoming new paperback edition of Wilson’s book] writes that Washington Post reporter Walter "Pincus, for example, reportedly confirmed the time, date, and length of his conversation with a source…, but Pincus would not reveal his or her identity."

“Hoyle continues, "That lent credence to reports that Fitzgerald had subpoenaed records of every contact that White House personnel had had with reporters during the period in question and was engaged in a meticulous search to match such times and dates with records of meetings and telephone calls between reporters and Bush officials gleaned from calendars and telephone logs."

“So let's suppose this kind of matching is indeed going on. Plainly, Special Counsel Fitzgerald must have matched Cooper and Miller's numbers to calls to or from the phone lines of White House personnel - just as he did with Pincus. But just as plainly, Fitzgerald cares very much about the content of the conversations with Cooper and Miller - which may or may not have been the case with Pincus. He may also care about the identity of the source to whom they spoke - which was not the case with Pincus.

“More evidence for this theory comes from the fact that Cooper reportedly provided Pincus-style cooperation (times, dates, but no names) - yet Fitzgerald is still going after Cooper, to force him to testify.”

John Dean reports the generally held belief that the focus of the Fitzgerald investigation has shifted from finding who leaked Valerie Plame's name and CIA connection to Robert Novak to investigating a possible charge of perjury and/or obstruction of justice against some big fish in the White House. If so, then the content of telephone conversations with Miller and Cooper might be the essence of the case because the person or persons Fitzgerald is looking at spoke by phone to the two reporters during the time window such criminal action took place.

This would explain why Miller and Cooper are under Fitzgerald's guns and Robert Novak is not. Miller and Cooper's source(s) are suspected of committing perjury and/or obstruction of justice, while Novak's contact is not.

A reporter who protects the identity of someone who told him something he subsequently lied to an investigator about is also committing obstruction of justice. This is quit outside any privilege to protect his sources a reporter might expect to legally have. This becomes a reasonable speculation since both the Federal District Court and the Appeals Court has let Fitzgerald continue pressuring Miller and Cooper.

Dean also suggests the possibility that the conservative block on the Supreme Count might place the case “on the docket” in order to freeze action until after the midterm elections. This requires only four Supreme Court Justices, and these are the same Justices who installed Bush in 2000 with no law on which to base their decision.

The Plame investigation is important, and MUST be completed and reported SOON!