Atrios says Capitol Hill Blue isn’t a reliable source, and no one else has this yet as far as I can see, but Capitol Hill Blue reports that a witness told the grand jury in the Plame case that GWB knew in advance about the disclosure of her identity and did nothing to stop it. That would explain why the President suddenly decided he needed a lawyer.

It’s not impossible that Capitol Hill Blue just scored a major newsbeat, but for now file this under “rumor.” (Or, if you’re a Democrat, under “pipe dream.”) What’s horrible is that we don’t know anything about Bush’s character that makes the story unlikely on its face. None of us would have believed any such thing about his father, for example.

[The New York Daily News reports that questions to grand jury witnesses (yeah, the questions that are supposed by law to remain secret)* have focused on Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.]

*Update Readers point out that the rule of grand jury secrecy applies to grand jurors, prosecutors, and investigators, but not to witnesses or to anyone the witnesses might tell, including their own lawyers. So if the Daily News’s sources are witnesses or their lawyers, the story reflects no impropriety. My bad.