Reply #37: I meant that in this sense:

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Watergate started out as a burglary and then turned out to be very big conspiracy of spying and cheating in order to win elections and destroy enemies.

Plame started off looking like someone made the mistake of breaking a law in order to harm the credibility of an administration critic. Sure they wanted her to lose her job and for there to be financial consequences for the Wilson family, but it was conceivable (although unlikely) that the worst thing they did was simply not run this by the lawyers before pulling it. Had the lawyers pointed out the statute, they might have decided not to do it (not that that would have been a legal defense).

Now, it's starting to look like this is much bigger and deeper -- it's starting to look like it was part of a grand strategy of trying to control every aspect of the public perception of the invasion through lies and through control of the media, and, regardless of whether they knew about the statute making the plame revelation illegal. Now it looks as if, even if they hadn't outed plame after consulting a lawyer, there would still be enough other crimes and serious allegations to pursue (and I'm not talking only about post facto obstruction of justice charges, but charges that related to sharing top secret info with people without clearance, and trying to falsify evidence, and, perhaps, other acts of retribution against other critics that are illegal under US law).