And Occam's Razor says nothing about the reasons that no one has been convicted of any crime for which no person has been indicted.

But the Republican Bush Administration appointed prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, did explain that Libby's obstruction of justice through his lies to the FBI in the course of their investigations prevented him -- and the grand jury -- from determining whether the alleged leak violated federal law.

It is possible that not eveything that results in a disagreement is a lie.

He won that fight, the journalists appealed, and Fitz was still considering asking the grand jury to indict Rove as of the time he filed his briefs in the D.C. Circuit.

One of the things that the D.C. Circuit three-judge panel relied upon — as part of their balancing of the grand jury's and Fitzgerald's need for the testimony versus the reporters' desire to keep their sources confidential — was Fitz' assertion that this testimony from the journalists was essential in order for him to be able to decide whether to ask the grand jury to indict Libby.  We've known that since the Libby indictment.

Now we also know that Fitz told the D.C. Circuit at the same time that he needed the journalists' testimony to decide whether to ask the grand jury to indict Rove, too.  That was hidden — redacted, or concealed — in the version of the D.C. Circuit's decision that was previously released, in order to protect the privacy rights of people who were under grand jury consideration but hadn't been indicted (like Rove).

We can presume that after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the journalists' petition asking them to overturn the D.C. Circuit's decision, Fitz did eventually (after Judy Miller gave up her defiance and got out of jail) get all the testimonial cooperation he wanted.  Otherwise he would have brought further contempt charges.  We don't know exactly what all that testimony was, though, because it's still largely cloaked in grand jury secrecy (and always will be).  Of course, we know what those witnesses later said at Libby's trial, but they may have been asked things about Rove in the grand jury that nobody had a sound basis to ask about during the Libby trial.

We know that Fitz has said he's not going to seek any more indictments in addition to Libby.

So whatever the journalists did say, after the courts made them testify, it ended up either (1) not persuading Fitz to ask the grand jury to indict Rove (the most likely explanation), or (2) Fitz did ask them to indict Rove, but the grand jury no-billed him (very unlikely).

The new revelation of what was going on behind the scenes at the D.C. Circuit is fascinating, but it doesn't change anything.  Rove still isn't going to be indicted.

It is, however, surprising to me at least that the D.C. Circuit saw fit to allow it to be revealed that Fitzgerald was trying to indict Rove.  I need to study its decision a bit, and might comment on that on my own blog.

Does that help, Electa?