(CBS) There were no round ups. No perp walks. No handcuffs or mug shots. No smiling faces of relieved suspects. No one declared victory, even of a temporary kind, and rightfully so. The comments afterward were clipped, cautious and premonitory. In the end, this long-anticipated day in the life of this long-watched investigation marked a milestone but by no means an end. It was a day perfectly in tune with the dogged nature of the prosecutor who determined the case's nuanced twists and turns and a day antithetical to the sort of swift and decisive conclusion that politicians love but rarely achieve.

We now know that there are at least five felony charges stemming from the investigation into the public disclosure of the identity of a then-undercover CIA agent. We also now know that none of these charges are based upon the crime of disclosure but instead about the alleged crimes of obstructing an investigation into the crime of disclosure. We know — indeed we have been reminded — that officials at the highest levels of government are all-too-often unable to avoid falling into the "it's not the crime it's the cover-up" trap — an astonishingly avoidable mistake given how much play that canned line has had in Washington since the days of the Watergate investigation. Politicians are known for failing or refusing to learn the lessons of history but this really takes the cake.

For I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Richard B. Cheney's now-former chief of staff, it was the first day of the rest of his life. Instead of huddling with the men and women who run the world he will instead now have to huddle with his own lawyers, whom he has to pay out of his own pocket, to save him from potentially serious prison time for the felonies with which he has been charged. His defense will be that he did not intend to mislead the grand jury, or impede the investigation, or commit perjury, by making false statements. He will say that he never had any criminal intent. Or he will say that the statements that he made indeed were not false at all under the often-torturous legal definitions that permeate all of these statutes. Ask Martha Stewart about how likely it is for that sort of defense to prevail. She famously spent five months in prison for being convicted of fewer charges.

The case against Libby will come down to the quality (or credibility) of Libby's story versus the quantity of the prosecution's external evidence against him. I do not anticipate a "political" defense by Libby — I don't expect his attorneys to scream that Fitzgerald is a political hack out to destroy the Bush administration. He isn't and everyone knows it. Instead I expect a very technical defense that will be a bit more fact-oriented than law-oriented. I don't expect a long trial, if we ever get to that point, but I do expect one brimming with the public disclosure (ironically enough, there is that word again) of less-than-ideal facts about the White House. I also suspect that Libby (and perhaps the White House as a third party) will put pressure on the trial judge to seal or otherwise keep private portions of the trial under the guise of national security and/or executive privilege. Look for that issue to come up early in the process.

For Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's right-hand man, it was a day of relief tempered by angst. Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the disclosure of the identity of a CIA agent is not over, and Rove and his lawyer know it, and now both have to contend with the idea that Libby, who presumably talked with Rove regularly about things large and small, now has great incentive to share whatever he hasn't already shared with Fitzgerald and Company. And that, of course, might give even more momentum to an investigation that has been sailing with the wind at its back since Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter at the center of much of this, finally talked to investigators a few weeks ago.

By Andrew Cohen
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