Man, They Must LOVE Secret Meetings in D.C.

Judging by today's blog discussions, you'd think that nearly everyone in Washington D.C. is or has been involved in clandestine, secret, closed-door, anonymous-source meetings, and has been doing so for a long time.

Washington Post editor (and Watergate reporter) Bob Woodward is today's burstiest person and third most-discussed personality for revealing that one of his sources (still unnamed) told him Valerie Plame/Wilson was a CIA operative almost a month before now-indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby allegedly told New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Is special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald a bumbling Clousea? wonders Wizbang blog? Will the late admission tarnish Woodward's reputation? wonders The Moderate Voice. Promethus 6 points out that Libby's been indicted for obstructing justice, not leaking anyone's name. Which raises the point: who WAS Woodward's source (hmmmm...where have we heard that question before?)

A BlogPulse trend graph tracks Woodward-related buzz in May (when Deep Throat's identity as the secret Watergate source was revealed) and now:



More secret meetings: oil execsToday's second most-shared news story details what some have suspected for a while: that leading oil company executives met with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force in 2001, according to documents uncovered by the Washington Post, despite repeated denials from Cheney (today's top key phrase) and the execs. "No wonder we're running out of oil," comments the Sierra Club; the blogger at Thoughts of an Average Woman is outraged.

Google...again
But what's utmost on bloggers' minds? Google, of course, which this week launched Google Base (today's top blog post), a new service allowing users to load content (including free classified ads, job postings, etc.) to Google's database. "Yuck" and "ugly," says TechCrunch; a "major undertaking," says John Battelle at SearchBlog; "time will tell" says SearchEngineWatch.

Foreign media only?
>Can't help but notice that only foreign media, particularly the BBC, (today's 9th-most-cited news story) have been covering the use of "white phosphorus" (a flesh-burning agent, similar to napalm) by U.S. troops during the assault on Fallujah. We've found the chemical weapons, says twistedchick at Free Speech Zone...and they're ours?