An odd thing happened in Washington last week.

Terence Hunt, the Associated Press's White House correspondent, described it like this: "When the president boarded Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, he walked up the steps and waved - and not a single camera followed. He looked perplexed. All lenses were trained on Rove at the bottom of the steps."

For those of you who don't know who Rove is, I'd better explain that he is one of the most powerful politicians in the United States. Karl Rove served as chief strategist for President Bush 's presidential campaign, and now manages the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the Office of Strategic Initiatives at the White House. President Bush is said to refer to him - I'd better warn you that I got this from a dyed-in-the-wool Democratic source - as Boy Genius.

The reason the cameras are trained on him is that he is, at the moment, at the centre of one of those extraordinary scandals that Washington produces every once in a while. It's the hottest media feeding frenzy since President Clinton took up cigars. Every spinner between here and Samoa is hard at work trying to shape the story according to his or her own particular political taste. The facts, those which you can describe as clearly being facts, at any rate, are relatively simple, if a little bizarre.

Back in the days when people were looking for reasons to go to war with Iraq, a story surfaced that Iraqi officials had tried to buy yellowcake from Niger. Some documents suggesting this was the case had been found by the Italian intelligence agency, but they later turned out to have been forgeries. Yellowcake, incidentally, is uranium that has been extracted from ore, purified and concentrated in the form of a yellow-coloured salt. It's handy if you're trying to make an atomic bomb. Vice President Dick Cheney asked the Central Intelligence Agency to check it out. The Agency, in its turn, asked a retired diplomat, a man called Joseph Wilson, to go to Niger to do that. He went in February of 2002. When he came back, he told the CIA that the story was not true. The CIA passed that on to Mr Cheney and the National Security Council.

Nonetheless, the yellowcake story was included in President Bush's State of the Union address in January of 2003. Mr Wilson was upset. On July 6, he published an article in the New York Times that accused President Bush of exaggerating the case for war with Iraq.

A few days later, on July 14, columnist Robert Novak said in his column, published in the Washington Post, that Mr Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson (n?e Plame) was a CIA "operative". There is a law in the United States - the Intelligence Identities Protection Act - which, understandably, makes it a crime to 'out' an undercover intelligence agent.

Allegations have been made that Karl Rove and one other White House staffer were the ones who leaked Mrs. Wilson's name to Novak and to other reporters.

These allegations are now being investigated by the FBI, although there have been calls for it to be put in the hands of one of those special prosecutors they are so fond of in the US.

Sound straightforward? Believe me, it is not. There are more loose ends and strange coincidences in this story than you can shake a stick at, and every single one of them is being used to best advantage by people with an axe of some sort to grind. The American media is just overflowing with stories about them.

Before I mention some of them to you, it will probably help your understanding of them if you keep two things in mind. The first is that the Democrats have been having a tough time cobbling together a credible and cohesive line of opposition to President Bush and his policies since he took office in January, 2001. That inability has translated into political weakness for the Democrats, and they are very anxious to regain their strength in the run-up to the November, 2004, presidential election.

Second, the head of the CIA, George Tenet, had to apologise to the American people for allowing the yellowcake remark to get into President Bush's State of the Union address. If you think it was entirely fair that he should have had to take it on the chin for that mistake, or if you think he volunteered to perform that service for the White House because his conscience told him it was the right thing to do, then call 295-5151 and ask about the bridge they've got for sale.

So here's the first loose end. Why on earth did the CIA pick Joseph Wilson to go to Niger? He was the last American ambassador in Baghdad before Operation Desert Storm in 1990. He describes himself as "a former hippie, surf bum and ski bum". He had no experience of the kind of mission he had been sent on. His trip to Niger was described in the Wall Street Journal as "a sloppy tea-drinking investigation...from a retired ambassador with a less than stellar record". Wilson once briefed reporters with a hangman's noose around his neck, instead of a tie, to thumb his nose at Saddam Hussein's threat to hang anyone who didn't hand foreigners over to him. If Tupac Shakur had done that, not an eyebrow would have twitched, but it is hardly what one expects of a senior diplomat. It has been suggested - we won't learn for a while if it's the truth or not - that he came to be sent to Niger because his wife, the CIA operative, suggested he might be good at it. That throws up a couple of loose ends. There is good, on-the-record reason to think that the intelligence services believe the Niger yellowcake story is true, despite the forged documents. So despite his wife's faith in him, it looks as if Wilson was a bit of a bumbler. And if the CIA sent a bumbler on such an important mission on the say-so of his wife, what does that say about their efficiency? The CIA would certainly have got Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement before he went, in which he would have agreed not to divulge details of his trip. What was he doing writing an article in the Times about it? That Valerie Wilson worked for the CIA was no secret in Washington. The American law banning any identification of an intelligence agent was obviously written to deter putting agents and their work at serious risk. But there's a difference between the kind of risk that would be run by a low-level employee, and that run by a bona fide spy. What did Mrs Wilson do for the CIA? Well, there's a lot of spinning going on here. Columnist Novak said he called her an Agency 'operative' in a generic sense, the way a journalist might call one of a wide variety of individuals an 'insider'. Some say she was an analyst, as distinct from an agent. Some say it doesn't matter. But take my word for it, it will matter to a court of law, if ever this little tempest reaches one.

Did Karl Rove leak her name to Robert Novak and others? Not according to Rove, and not according to Novak.

Oh, yes he did, according to word coming, indirectly, from journalists who were also recipients of the leaks, who say publicly that they are determined to protect their sources even unto death, but who are, we are asked to believe, willing to rat on them at the drop of a hat as long as they are not quoted.

But why would a senior, responsible and, above all, politically savvy person like Karl Rove do such a thing? Well, according to (depending on who you read) either Mr Tenet himself or "people who are familiar with the way his mind works", Rove did it in revenge for Wilson's article in the New York Times. Even though Wilson could have been attacked for publishing it in breach of a CIA confidentiality agreement? Hmmm. One of the spinners last week was quoted as having said this scandal was far worse than Watergate. That's the best example of wishful thinking you'll ever see. Quite apart from anything else, one's taste in these matters becomes a little jaded with time. This one is obviously not going to be as boring as Whitewater, and for that we can be grateful. But we have been spoiled by that nice Miss Lewinsky, haven't we? A little sex? Some drugs? That might set Wilsongate to rocking and rolling. And when they start with that, I hope you remember that you read it here first.

gshorto@ibl.bm