"The Defendants reached an agreement to discredit, punish, and seek revenge against the Plaintiffs . . . . Said agreement was motivated by an invidiously discriminatory animus towards those who had publicly criticized the administration's stated justifications for going to war with Iraq."

"The Defendants chose not to address publicly, directly, and on the merits why they may have thought Mr. Wilson was wrong or unfair in his statements on the President's misstatements. Rather, they embarked on an anonymous 'whispering campaign' designed to discredit and injure the Plaintiffs and to deter other critics from publicly speaking out."

"But for Mr. Wilson coming forward, it is unlikely that the Administration ever would have acknowledged its error. The fact that the administration had to admit its mistake is one likely reason why the Defendants chose to attack the Wilsons"

"The Defendants fraudulently concealed the existence of the Plaintiffs' cause of action . . . by, among other things, giving false or misleading testimony to federal law enforcement personnel and/or the federal grand jury empanelled to investigate the unlawful publication of Plaintiff Valerie Plame Wilson's classified CIA employment . . . ."

The possibility of a civil suit in this scandal has been in the background almost from the beginning. The Wilsons put the issue aside while the criminal investigation was ongoing, but now that Patrick Fitzgerald has wrapped up his probe, it is, as Atrios put it, "game on."

Remember, Paula Jones' civil suit against Clinton led the Supreme Court to rule unanimously that these cases can proceed, even against a sitting president, so it's not as if Bush's allies are in a position to tell the Wilsons to wait a couple of years.

Consider, for a moment, just how interesting discovery in this case is likely to be. A decade ago, Jones' lawyers used a civil suit to ask all manner of interesting questions, force White House officials to deliver under-oath depositions, and fish around for politically damaging information — which, if I recall, they found.

With this in mind, the Wilsons' lawyers will likely get Cheney, Rove, Libby, and others — including, possibly, George W. Bush — to answer questions, well beyond the scope of Fitzgerald's narrow investigation. The possibilities are limitless….