In September 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was reported to have identified Mrs. Plame as a CIA agent who convinced the agency to send her husband on a mission to Niger in 2002....Court papers filed by the defense suggest that Mr. Armitage leaked Mrs. Plame's identity to Mr. Novak and perhaps to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward.....Then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman was alleged to have told Mr. Libby of Mrs. Plame's employment at the CIA a month before her identity was leaked.

The lawyers' goal, according to the article, is to highlight the infighting among the White House, State Department and CIA over the flub over weapons of mass destructions.

"If the facts ultimately show that Mr. Armitage or someone else from the State Department was also Mr. Novak's primary source, then the State Department and certainly not Mr. Libby bears responsibility for the 'leak' that led to the public disclosure," the defense said in the March 17 filing.

Putting aside that Libby isn't charged with being the source of the leak but lying about where he learned the information and whom he told about it, that Fitzgerald will fight the introduction of this kind of evidence and it's up in the air as to whether the Court would allow it, Insight reports that Libby plans to subpoena Powell, Armitage, Grossman and Rove, and that "National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley has also been targeted by the defense."

Of course, bloggers and journalists reported this the day after the motion was filed (more here, here and here.) So what's the point of writing about it now?

I can only speak from a legal angle, but here's what I see: Libby's team is getting ready to throw Marc Grossman under the bus.

The defense has also identified another former State Department official as the possible leaker. Then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman was alleged to have told Mr. Libby of Mrs. Plame's employment at the CIA a month before her identity was leaked.

"If Mr. Armitage or another State Department official was in fact the primary source for Mr. Novak's article, Mr. Grossman's testimony may be colored by either his personal relationship with Mr. Armitage or his concern for the institutional concerns of the State Department," the defense said.

That says to me that Grossman is cooperating with the Government and going to be a prosecution witness, and that Libby's lawyers are publicly laying out how they intend to impeach him: by claiming he is not to be believed because (either or both) his true loyalty is to Richard Armitage rather than to the truth, or he is a self-aggrandizing government employee who thinks of himself a true patriot whose duty it is to save the integrity of the State Department. (See Jason Leopold's article last month on whistleblowers in the State Department.)

I wonder what they have in store for Colin Powell and Richard Armitage.