WASHINGTON – Bob Woodward’s latest bombshell – this one about the CIA leak investigation – touched off a furor in Washington on Wednesday, raising questions about the noted journalist’s previous failure to disclose what he knew, the completeness of the government’s investigation of the case, and the identity of yet another top Bush administration source.

Woodward, author and assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, disclosed that he had been told by a senior Bush administration official in mid-2003 about CIA operative Valerie Plame, making him the first journalist known to have been leaked information about the wife of an administration critic.

Some observers said the disclosure abruptly alters the picture in the criminal case against a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was named by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald as having leaked Plame’s identity to other journalists.

“Woodward’s disclosures are a bombshell to Mr. Fitzgerald’s case,” Ted Wells, an attorney for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former Cheney aide, said in a prepared statement.

Other lawyers familiar with the case downplayed the likely impact of Woodward’s revelation on the prosecution’s case.

But there was rampant speculation about the identity of Woodward’s source. The reporter has had unparalleled access to administration officials at the highest levels in researching material for his books and news stories. Some people familiar with the case were shocked that Fitzgerald had not rooted out the conversation earlier.

“It’s just amazing to me,” said a lawyer who represents someone involved in the investigation. “It says to me that you don’t know the whole story yet.”

Woodward disclosed in the Post that Fitzgerald interviewed him under oath this week after the unnamed official came forward and told the prosecutor on Nov. 3 about the conversations.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward said, he told Fitzgerald that the unnamed official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction.

Woodward told Fitzgerald he also met with Libby on June 27, 2003, and that he does not believe Libby mentioned Plame.

The news was greeted as a godsend Wednesday by Libby’s lawyers, who were in Washington’s federal district courthouse reviewing documents.

Libby has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the case, which started after Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly criticized the Bush administration for “twisting intelligence” in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Wilson had been sent by the CIA to look into reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger, and found little evidence to support the claims.

Administration officials are believed to have leaked Plame’s name as a way of undermining Wilson’s credibility. Her identity became public in a syndicated column by Robert Novak in July 2003.

Libby’s lawyers jumped on the Woodward disclosure as helpful to their client and hurtful to the prosecution’s case.

“First, the disclosure shows that Mr. Fitzgerald’s statement at his press conference of Oct. 28, 2005 that Mr. Libby was the first government official to tell a reporter about Mr. Wilson’s wife was totally inaccurate,” said a statement released by Wells. “Second, Woodward’s disclosure that he talked to Mr. Libby during this period and that Libby didn’t discuss Plame undermines the prosecution’s claim that Libby was actively seeking to discredit Wilson by leaking information about his wife.”

Dan French, a lawyer representing a witness in the case, said that he doubted that the revelation would be as explosive as Libby’s lawyers were claiming, because it does not change the facts as to whether Libby lied to investigators about what he said to whom.

Others were more focused on Woodward’s behavior. Woodward apologized to the Post on Wednesday for failing to tell editors about the conversation until last month, more than two years after it occurred.