But Pearlstine had erred in other ways, some of which he’ll concede when his book on the case appears in August. Notably, he admits he paid little attention to the case for more than a year after I’d written that Time had been a recipient of the leak.

What caused Captain Pearlstine to finally notice the iceberg was the argument that Abrams—who represented Miller, Time Inc., and me—made in December 2004 before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. It did not go well. A celebrated litigator, Abrams was tongue-tied that day, finding himself in a hypothetical discussion about whether a blogger could post nuclear secrets and then hide behind confidential sources. During the hearing, I jotted down, “Je suis fucked.” To be fair to Abrams, even Clarence Darrow wouldn’t have won that day. Still, after Abrams’ performance, Pearlstine later told me, he called Time Warner general counsel Paul Cappuccio to discuss jettisoning the First Amendment lawyer. “Pooch,” as friends call Cappuccio—a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia—pushed, not surprisingly, for a conservative replacement: Ted Olson. Cappuccio and Pearlstine went to Washington to meet Olson, who put on a bravura performance. At one point, Olson took out a yellow legal pad and demonstrated how they could convince five of the nine justices needed to prevail in the Supreme Court. As Pearl­stine walked out, he later told me, he made the decision to hire Olson.

I felt bad for Abrams because I didn’t think Olson could win our case either. But a right-wing icon like Olson might be able to rally conservative opinion at a time when only other journalists were championing my cause in public. (Privately they were egging me on to go to jail.) After the case was over, however, Olson fell in my estimation when he called me asking for my permission to assist in Libby’s defense. I was taken aback. It was close to serving two sides in one case, and since Libby’s defense ultimately involved my word against his, I couldn’t allow it. Olson graciously backed off.

Despite having great representation, we faced an immovable object in Patrick Fitzgerald. Another special counsel might have dropped the case when he learned that columnist Robert Novak’s leaker was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. But Fitzgerald is not ordinary. Now 46, he’s an unmarried workaholic who made his name prosecuting those responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing. The son of Irish immigrants—his father was a doorman—he followed a trajectory that took him to Amherst College and Harvard Law School. As United States Attorney in Chicago, Fitzgerald was a modern Eliot Ness, pursuing Democrats in city hall as well as convicting Illinois’ Republican governor George Ryan and indicting Conrad Black, the conservative press baron.

Fitzgerald declined to talk with me for this piece, but I spent hours with him before my grand jury appearances and in preparation for testifying at the Libby trial. (I would have met with Libby’s team had they ever asked.) Most federal prosecutors leave interviewing witnesses to underlings. Fitzgerald didn’t, and he remembered my notes and emails as well as I did. He was almost always serious but sometimes wry. At one point I was discussing an email I wrote to my bosses: “Spoke to Rove on double-super-secret background.” When I explained to Fitzgerald that it was a reference to the “double-secret probation” Faber College’s dean put on John Belushi’s fraternity in Animal House, Fitzgerald deadpanned, “Dean Wormer, of course.”

While Time Inc. went into the woodchipper, the Washington Post found an elegant way to avoid it. Walter Pincus, an investigative reporter and skeptic of the weapons-of-mass-destruction spin, was in a situation akin to mine. He had heard about Plame’s C.I.A. status from a source (later revealed to be White House press secretary Ari Fleischer) and had also discussed Wilson’s mission with Libby. They found a way for Pincus to testify, not fight. It was a smart move.