Whatever happened to Scooter Libby? Hold that thought…

At least until January of next year - that's when a federal judge has deemed Libby's trial will ready to commence.

Justice delayed is justice denied? Perhaps. But, for sure, we won't be plagued by the details of Libby's and Cheney's scheming to pay back Joe Wilson during the run up to the mid-term elections. Isn't that the goal?

And for those concerned that Scooter may be unemployed for more than a year, the managers of the fund-raising effort on behalf of Mr. Libby say they have already reached the $2 million mark and expect to increase the pace when they open a fundraising Website.

Murray Waas, one of the top investigative reporters in the Plame Affair, has come up with this gem. In the National Journal, he writes: "Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue…
"Despite the CIA's findings, Libby attempted to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger the previous year to investigate the claims, which he concluded were baseless…

"The new disclosures raise questions as to why Libby and other Bush administration officials continued their efforts to discredit Wilson -- even as they were told that claims about Iraq's having procured uranium from Niger were most likely a hoax."

This is consistent with last fall's reports that former Libby aides contended that Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the Wilson's public statements that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and pressed the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him. Three months after receiving the CIA memo, Cheney appeared on Meet the Press and made it sound like the Niger claim was still plausible, "I don't know what the truth is on the ground with respect to that."

And in his personal blog, Waas raises another, perhaps election-rattling, question, based on a letter from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to Libby's legal team.

Libby's lawyers have requested that Fitzgerald turn over 11 months' worth of Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs). The PDB is the very closely held and highly classified compilation of that day's most significant national security intelligence.

In his response, Fitzgerald wrote that he had never asked the White House for any PDBs at all - but that, in fact, he did receive a "very discrete amount of material relating to PDBs" based on his generic request for any documents related to Wilson, Plame, and Wilson's trip to Niger.

So, as Waas asks: "Did President Bush personally receive information during his morning intelligence briefings about Joe Wilson's mission to Niger?"