WP: Patrick Fitzgerald: The steely-eyed sleuth

CIA leak probe and its prosecutor seen as tough, but fair


By Peter Slevin and Carol D. Leonnig
Updated: 10:52 p.m. ET Oct. 23, 2005

CHICAGO - Patrick J. Fitzgerald's final witness was behind bars, refusing to testify, and no one was budging. Hunting for room to maneuver, the special counsel talked with one side, then the other. He drafted a letter that nudged the witness and needled I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff.

Three days later, Libby put fingers to keyboard and told New York Times reporter Judith Miller that she was freed from her promise to protect his identity. He praised her mightily and urged her to "come back to work -- and life." Satisfied, she quit jail after 85 days, testified to Fitzgerald's grand jury and surrendered details she had vowed never to reveal.

Miller's testimony carried Fitzgerald one step closer to the climax of his investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name, an inquiry that a federal judge termed "exhaustive" and President Bush called "dignified." In typical fashion, the Chicago prosecutor interceded personally, with a blend of toughness and flexibility, and pocketed what he needed.

Even-keeled from the startFitzgerald's most difficult and contentious choices -- whether to seek criminal charges -- remain to be announced, possibly this week. Yet in a case with huge political stakes for the White House, a portrait is emerging of a special counsel with no discernible political bent who prepared the ground with painstaking sleuthing and cold-eyed lawyering.

So far, Fitzgerald has given neither Republicans nor Democrats grounds to question his motives as he excavated the machinations of a White House that prided itself on its discipline and its ability to push its pro-war message. He did not blink, lawyers and witnesses say, and he did not leak.

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