Thursday, May 17, 2007

So I guess I missed my chance at an "exclusive" with Wolfowitz -- a comical moment in the middle of a serious story.

But the encounter did provide an important clue: It showed that Wolfowitz was in fact holed up in his lawyer's office for much of Wednesday negotiating his departure with a big condition. He wants the ethics committee at the World Bank to admit some culpability in this mess, hence Bennett's comment about not resigning "under a cloud."

The pivotal turn in all of this came when the White House decided to essentially drop its support for Wolfowitz, with one senior administration official telling me the situation looks grim. "We want it over -- one way or the other."

Many of these congressmen believe that Rove should have quit when he was ahead as manager of the two Bush elections and left in January 2005. However, they do not want to see him limp out of Washington with his scalp hanging on Henry Waxman's belt. "We're not hostile to the administration," one prominent conservative House member who did not want his name used told me. "We just want it to be over."