Richard Armitage finally confesses to his role as the leaker who revealed Valerie Plame's name and status to two different reporters. He claims that he could not speak out until Patrick Fitzgerald released him from his pledge to remain silent -- and said George Bush wanted it that way:

Expressing regret for his actions and apologies to his administration colleagues, Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, confirmed Thursday that he was the primary source who first told a columnist about the intelligence officer at the center of the C.I.A. leak case.

“It was a terrible error on my part,” Mr. Armitage said in an interview, discussing his conversations with reporters. He added: “There wasn’t a day when I didn’t feel like I had let down the president, the secretary of state, my colleagues, my family and the Wilsons. I value my ability to keep state secrets. This was bad, and I really felt badly about this.”

Mr. Armitage also confirmed what had long been speculated — that he was the anonymous government official who talked to Bob Woodward, the Washington Post editor and reporter, about the Central Intelligence Agency officer, Valerie Wilson, in June 2003. It is the first known conversation between an administration official and a journalist about her. ...

He expressed irritation over assertions in some editorials and blogs that, by his silence, he had been disloyal to the Bush administration, saying he had followed President Bush’s repeated instruction that administration officials cooperate with the Fitzgerald inquiry. “I felt like I was doing exactly what he wanted,” he said.

Oh, please. I'm sure somewhere in his imagination, Armitage has convinced himself that Bush really wanted people to spend the last three years calling him a liar and accusing him of abuses of power, but only if he's suffered some brain damage in the intervening period. Armitage can make all the rhetorical defenses he likes, but the record clearly shows that he stood by, silent, while his colleagues endured false vilification, and he did it knowing that Fitzgerald knew from the moment he took over the investigation that Armitage had confessed.

No excuses he can make now will wipe away the three years the nation wasted on this witch hunt. The same must be said about Colin Powell, who knew from the first moments that his right-hand man leaked the information. Both men sat closed-mouthed while Fitzgerald ran amok. All either had to do to end the spectacle was simply tell the truth, publicly and irrevocably. Revealing one's own grand jury testimony is not illegal, nor in the case of this runaway prosecution, would it be unethical.

At least the New York Times finally figured out what Armitage's confession means:

The confirmation of Mr. Armitage’s role, long the subject of news media speculation, showed that the initial leak of Ms. Wilson’s identity did not originate from the White House as part of a concerted political attack against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had criticized the administration over the Iraq war. Rather it was divulged by a senior State Department official who was not regarded as a close political ally of Mr. Cheney or other presidential aides involved in the underlying issues in the case.

The only remaining scandal is the Fitzgerald investigation, especially since Armitage was the source for both Novak and Woodward. Perhaps the Times can pursue an investigation into that travesty with the same vigor it demanded into the non-existent conspiracy to out Plame.

UPDATE: Amok, not amuck. Thanks, Brant!

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