Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly notes today’s Washington Post column regarding the excruciatingly protracted investigation of whom in the White House outed CIA agent Valerie Plame in retaliation against her husband, former diplomat and turncoat fact-finder Joe Wilson, of “there is no yellowcake” fame.

David Ignatius, the columnist, suggests that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may be looking at making a perjury case against an administration official rather than trying to prove a violation of the hairsplitting law that may have been violated when Plame’s identity and occupation were revealed, and that’s why he’s continuing to squeeze Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper, who wrote a piece about the incident, and New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who didn’t. (Miller is among the subjects of a Salon interview with outgoing Times public editor Daniel Okrent, who couldn’t say enough bad things about her. Or at least didn’t say enough bad things about her.)

Ignatius’ theory is that since Fitzgerald appears to have interviewed everyone else he intends to, and since Cooper and Miller weren’t among the lead journalists on the story — although Miller never wrote about it, she apparently took phone calls from one or more of the White House sources under suspicion — the likelihood that they know anything more about the leak than the journalists closer to the incident who haven’t been threatened with jail is slim. So Ignatius thinks Fitzgerald is more likely to be pursuing a crime, involving an official lying about having spoken with one or both of the two writers Fitzgerald is squeezing, that arose during the investigation of the original offense.

More interesting, perhaps, than the intricacies of the case is what it might say about the two journalists claiming the non-existent First Amendment privilege shielding them from revealing their sources. If the investigation is now about perjury, they’re shielding someone who lied to Fitzgerald about talking to them, which puts them in the position of protecting him not because of what he talked about, but because he lied about talking to them about it.

The Washington Monthly’s Drum and Ignatius both think that if the Ignatius scenario is accurate, the reporters are in something of a bind about whether they should breach their confidentiality agreements with the source. But unless they promised the source not to reveal his name in connection with any crimes he might commit during the investigation of the original one, it’s difficult to see the difficulty. Miller might suffer some pangs of conscience about giving up someone who is probably among the sources who lied to her about the Iraq threat, and some trepidation about losing access to other highly placed liars. But that’s not really a First Amendment issue.

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