DON'T EXPECT INDICTMENTS IN PLAME CASE

Thus sayeth John Dean, the Nixon White House insider who spoke of a cancer on the presidency and helped excise the malignancy.

In an essay on FindLaw, Dean says it's "difficult to envision Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuting anyone, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, who believed they were acting for reasons of national security."

Dean continues:

While hindsight may find their judgment was wrong, and there is no question their tactics were very heavy-handed and dangerous, I am not certain that they were acting from other than what they believed to be reasons of national security. They were selling a war they felt needed to be undertaken.

In short, I cannot imagine any of them being indicted, unless they were acting for reasons other than national security. Because national security is such a gray area of the law, come next week, I can see this entire investigation coming to a remarkable anti-climax, as Fitzgerald closes down his Washington Office and returns to Chicago.

In short, I think the frenzy is about to end -- and it will not go any further. Unless, of course, these folks were foolish enough to give false statements, perjure themselves or suborn perjury, or commit obstruction of justice. If they were so stupid, Patrick Fitzgerald must stay and clean house.

Dean also skewers the New York Times (the paper "should own the story, does not") and says insider tension is "mounting ... This tension was not matched during the Whitewater/Lewinsky investigation, nor during Iran-Contra."

It feels like Watergate, Dean declares. He also fingers the Four Horsemen of Traitorgate. Read all of it here.