Washington - For aficionados of scandal, farce and the dark arts of power politics, Washington's latest potboiler has it all.
One of the president's men has been caught out, a special prosecutor is prowling and newspapers dispense a daily drip feed of tales of alleged White House skulduggery.
Leading players include a dashing diplomat and his glamorous blonde CIA spy wife, and a journalist thrown in jail for refusing to reveal a source for a story she never even wrote.
Grouchy journalists and duelling political hacks round out the supporting cast in a drama featuring cameos by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the fabled reporters behind Watergate, the Washington scandal to end all scandals.
At the centre of the storm is Karl Rove, the political bruiser and electoral alchemist decried by enemies as "Bush's Brain" who is accused of blowing the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame by leaking her name to journalists.
His alleged motivation: revenge for claims by Plame's ex-ambassador husband, Joseph Wilson, that President George W Bush fudged the truth to go to war in Iraq.
Bush is standing by his man, pending a report by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, but he may be painting himself into a corner, as the White House said he would sack anyone found guilty of the crime of leaking an undercover CIA officer's identity.
Despite the brouhaha, veteran observers say the current drama pales in comparison to past intrigues like the Iran Contra affair during president Ronald Reagan's administration or president Richard Nixon's demise in Watergate.
In terms of political bile, if not scale, the Plame affair does recall the scandal which engulfed president Bill Clinton after his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, said veteran reporter Jack Germond.
"It's comparable to the Lewinsky thing because it is being driven by partisan reasons - in this case, the Democrats," said Germond, who has charted presidential missteps for 44 years.
Despite news reports which say that Rove did speak to the journalists about the affair - and which refute previous White House claims that he was not involved - it so far seems a stretch to say the White House deputy chief of staff broke the law.
Press abuse
Rove's plight has sent both parties' political machines, already primed for battle over a Supreme Court nominee, into overdrive, with a blizzard of daily briefings and mailings reminiscent of election season.
If it will feed nothing else, this scandal may feed the revenge of the White House press corps, brow beaten by the Bush White House for four-and-a-half years.
"The press has taken enough abuse," Germond, a former Baltimore Sun columnist, told AFP.
Bush's spokesperson Scott McClellan may have been tempted to reach for the flak jacket handed down by successive White House press secretaries after refusing 35 times in one briefing last week to comment on the issue.
McClellan later referred to a cartoon which showed "sharks" in the press room, suggesting they had devoured a pound of his flesh, though he admitted any weight loss was not immediately obvious on his stocky frame.
Journalists, meanwhile, are brooding because one of their own paid a heavy price for being caught up in the scandal: Judith Miller of The New York Times was jailed last week for refusing to name a confidential source - presumed to be Rove.
Ironically, given its focus on anonymous sources, the Plame affair has coincided with a revival of interest in Watergate.
Woodward has been popping up all over television, with Bernstein in tow, to plug his new book The Secret Man, rushed into print after former FBI number two Mark Felt admitted that he was the famous "Deep Throat" source.
In one bizarre twist, Woodward offered on prime time television to serve some of Miller's jail time, in defence of the principle of using anonymous sources.
"If journalists can't protect the identity of sources, what are you going to do?" he said on CNN's Larry King Live.
"Are you going to interview all of the public relations people, all of the spokespeople, and that's it? Imagine, you know, the varnished pabulum that would come out."
Mercifully, this Washington scandal so far has yet to acquire the suffix "gate" harking back to Watergate, as in "Filegate," "Irangate," etc., leading some cynics to say it may not have the legs to outlast Washington's steamy summer.
