Yesterday, The Washington Post's duo of Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig set off somewhat of a firestorm with a front page article reporting that The Post's Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward had testified in the Plame investigation that he had been the recipient of the leak -- but not from Scooter Libby. The New York Times' Todd S. Purdum does some further reporting on the story and comes up with the following:

The disclosure that a current or former Bush administration official told Bob Woodward of The Washington Post more than two years ago that the wife of a prominent administration critic worked for the C.I.A. threatened Wednesday to prolong a politically damaging leak investigation that the White House had hoped would soon be contained.

[...]

Mr. Woodward said he provided sworn testimony to Mr. Fitzgerald on Monday, only after his original source went to the prosecutor to disclose their two-year-old conversation. But because Mr. Woodward said that source had still not authorized him to disclose his or her name, he set off a frantic new round of guessing about who that source might be and a wave of public denials by spokesmen for possible suspects.

A senior administration official said that neither President Bush himself, nor his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., nor his counselor, Dan Bartlett, was Mr. Woodward's source. So did spokesmen for former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; the former director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet; and his deputy, John E. McLaughlin.

A lawyer for Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who has acknowledged conversations with reporters about the case and remains under investigation, said Mr. Rove was not Mr. Woodward's source.

Mr. Cheney did not join the parade of denials. A spokeswoman said he would have no comment on a continuing investigation. Several other officials could not be reached for comment.

Editor & Publisher reads the Purdum story as follows.

In an article for Thursday's New York Times, reporter Todd Purdum, through the process of elimination, leaves Vice President Cheney still standing as a high ranking Bush administration official who has not denied being Bob Woodward's newly revealed key source in the Plame/CIA leak case.

This would certainly add some credence to the theory that Libby's alleged perjury and obstruction of justice were attempts to inhibit the special prosecutor from reaching Cheney with the probe.