concurring:
I join in Parts I and II of Judge Seiriea’s opinion, and I agree that (i) Matteo’s Sixth Amendment right had attached at the time of his conversations with Lubking, (ii) no violation of Matteo’s Sixth Amendment right occurred, and (iii) any error would be harmless. I write separately to emphasize the importance and utility of interpreting AEDPA in light of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989) and related Supreme Court caselaw.
I.
The court appropriately seeks to read the AEDPA provisions at issue in a manner that “comports with preAEDPA law in this area, which was governed primarily by Teague.” Op. at 890. Indeed, the overall interpretive approach urged by the OBrien court, and largely adopted here, rests on the notion that AEDPA was conceived in the spirit of Teague. See, e.g., O'Brien v. Dubois, 145 F.3d 16, 23 (1st Cir.1998) (explaining that § 2254(d)(1) “perpetuates” the teachings of Teague and its progeny through a “sort of choice of law provision” that “closely emulates Teag-ue.”). I agree that a careful consideration of Teague and the Supreme Court cases following it should inform our interpretation of § 2254(d). I write separately to emphasize that the Teague body of caselaw provides a well-developed analytical framework for determining whether a habeas petition governed by AEDPA should be analyzed under the “contrary to” or the “unreasonable application of’ standard of § 2254(d)(1). This initial determination by the habeas court is pivotal, as it represents a decision as to which of two substantially different standards of review should govern its consideration of the state court’s determination.
Echoing OBrien, the majority opinion explains that “the ‘contrary to provision of AEDPA requires a federal habeas court first to’ identify the applicable Supreme Court precedent and determine whether it resolves the petitioner’s claim.” Op. at 888. The difficulty lies in determining whether the Supreme Court has articulated a rule specific enough to trigger “contrary to” review. Although the statute provides little guidance, the Teague body of caselaw is particularly instructive in this endeavor.
Teague established the general rule that (with narrow exceptions1) “new constitutional rules of criminal procedure will not be applicable to those cases which have become final before the new rules are announced.” Teague, 489 U.S. at 310, 109 S.Ct. 1060. Under the Teague scheme, a habeas court exercises plenary review only insofar as the petitioner seeks relief on the basis of jurisprudence existing at the time the petitioner’s conviction became final. If the petitioner either seeks relief on the basis of a “new rule” (i.e., a decision issued after the conviction became final) or seeks relief that would require the habeas court to announce (and retroactively apply) a new rule, Teague sharply restricts the habeas court’s review. In the interests of “comity, predictability, and finality,” Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. 222, 228, 112 S.Ct. 1130, 117 L.Ed.2d 367 (1992), Teague requires habeas courts to defer to “reasonable, good-faith interpretations of existing *903precedents by state courts, even though they are shown to be contrary to later decisions.” Butler v. McKellar, 494 U.S. 407, 414, 110 S.Ct. 1212, 108 L.Ed.2d 347 (1990).
Under Teague> the habeas court first must determine whether the relief sought by the petitioner would constitute a “new rule.” If it would, the relief is barred and a (reasonable) state decision will stand; if, on the other hand, the relief sought is sufficiently within the scope of then existing jurisprudence to be considered “dictated by precedent,” Teague permits the ha-beas court to grant the relief. Like this “new rule” inquiry under Teague, which considers whether the relief sought is dictated by precedent, the initial inquiry under AEDPA considers whether the relief sought is governed by clearly established Supreme Court law. Under AEDPA, as under Teague, the habeas court’s plenary review powers exist only if the relief the petitioner seeks is governed by clearly established law. Under AEDPA, as under Teague, if the result sought is not “dictated by precedent,” the habeas court must defer to the state court’s reasonable application of prevailing law. Thus, the analysis under AEDPA of whether the Supreme Court has articulated a rule specific enough to trigger “contrary to” review may be guided by the standards already established, under Teague, for determining whether the existing precedent (i.e., old rules) govern the petitioner’s claim (or, put differently, whether the relief sought would constitute a new rule).
Since Teague, the Supreme Court has wrestled repeatedly with the question of when a “rale” — articulated in a case decided after the petitioner’s conviction became final — should be considered “new” and thus inapplicable to the (subsequent) petition. In this context, the Supreme Court has explained that “a case announces a new rale when it breaks new ground or imposes a new obligation on the [government].” Id. at 301, 109 S.Ct. 1060. In addition, the Supreme Court has explained that the principles of Teague also apply if a petitioner, although relying on an “old” rule, seeks a result in his case that would create a new rule “because the prior decision is applied in a novel setting, thereby extending the precedent.” Stringer, 503 U.S. at 228, 112 S.Ct. 1130. This analysis is particularly apt here. Put differently, under Teague, the Supreme Court directed habeas courts to consider whether the result — either sought by the petitioner through the application of an old rule, or achieved in another case through the establishment of an arguably new rule — was “dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Teague, 489 U.S. at 301, 109 S.Ct. 1060. Compare, e.g., Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 110 S.Ct. 1257, 108 L.Ed.2d 415 (1990) (new rule would be established where prior case dictated only what mitigating evidence the jury must be permitted to hear, and petitioner sought rule — not compelled by prior cases — establishing how the evidence must be considered) with Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. 222, 112 S.Ct. 1130, 117 L.Ed.2d 367 (1992) (no new rule established where the prior case’s rule “emerges not from any single case ... but from our long line of authority” on the matter and, despite differences in the petitioner’s case, the result petitioner seeks “follows a fortiori ” from the earlier case).
Thus, out of deference to state court decisions, Teague requires habeas courts to refrain from judging state determinations according to rales (or results) that were not dictated by existing precedent. Similarly, out of the same concern for state court adjudications, § 2254(d)(1) requires habeas courts to employ a deferential, “reasonableness” standard of review unless the Supreme Court has articulated a rule that, “by virtue of its factual similarity ... or its distillation of general federal law precepts into a channeled mode of analysis ... can fairly be said to require a particular result in a particular case.” Op. at 889 (quoting O’Brien, 145 F.3d at 25). In the latter case, under AEDPA, the habeas *904court does not consider simply the objective reasonableness of the state decision, but rather determines whether it was “contrary to” such clearly established Supreme Court law.
The difficult initial inquiry under AED-PA — whether the Supreme Court has articulated a rule specific enough to trigger “contrary to” review — is thus guided by the well-developed Teague caselaw, which is aimed toward the same end, and in which jurisprudential context Congress enacted AEDPA. Accord O’Brien, 145 F.3d at 25 (noting that “[n]ot coincidentally, the Courts pre-AEDPA habeas case law employed this approach in conducting Teag-ue ’s “new rule” inquiries, and other federal courts have followed this praxis (wisely, we believe) when construing section 2254(d)(1).”) (citations omitted). For example, the habeas court must not require the petitioner to point to a factually identical precedent in order to obtain review under the “contrary to” prong, just as, under Teague, a petitioner who sought to apply an old rule to a new factual setting was not necessarily barred by Teague. As Justice Kennedy has explained:
“If the rule in question is one which of necessity requires a case-by-case examination of the evidence, then we can tolerate a number of specific applications without saying that those applications themselves create a new rule.... Where the beginning point is a rule of this general application, a rule designed for the specific purpose of evaluating a myriad of factual contexts, it will be the infrequent case that yields a result so novel that it forges a new rule, one not dictated by precedent.”
Wright v. West, 505 U.S. 277, 308, 112 S.Ct. 2482, 120 L.Ed.2d 225 (1992) (J. Kennedy, concurring).
II.
The issue presented in this case — deliberate government elicitation of incriminating statements in the absence of counsel — is one in which the Supreme Court has provided a well-established principle for resolution. Guided by Teague, I would analyze Matteo’s claim under the “contrary to” prong of § 2254(d)(1) and conclude that the state court’s decision was not contrary to clearly established Supreme Court law.
Although no Supreme Court case has addressed precisely the facts presented here, Massiah and subsequent cases illustrate the fact-dependent nature of the Massiah rule. After Massiah, in which statements made in a car by a defendant not in custody were “deliberately elicited” in violation of the Sixth Amendment, United States v. Henry, 447 U.S. 264, 100 S.Ct. 2183, 65 L.Ed.2d 115 (1980) established that statements made in a cellblock to a paid informant were impermissible under the same theory. Subsequently, Maine v. Moulton, 474 U.S. 159, 106 S.Ct. 477, 88 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985) established that the same rule applied to surreptitiously recorded statements between codefendants, and Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 477 U.S. 436, 106 S.Ct. 2616, 91 L.Ed.2d 364 (1986) drew the line at statements wholly volunteered with no hint of elicitation. In other words, each case in this line embellished the Mas-siah rule with new factual predicates.
Regardless of whether Henry, Moulton or Kuhlmann established a new rule when each was decided, given the constellation of factual settings and commentary these cases now provide, coupled with the necessarily fact dependent nature of the analysis, the application of this line of eases to Matteo’s claim would not, in my view, result in a new rule under Teague. The facts of this case are not sufficiently different from those in the Massiah line of cases to require an extension or modification of the legal principles set forth in that case-law. As such, drawing on Teague, I conclude that the Massiah caselaw “governs” or “dictates” a result in Matteo, thus triggering “contrary to” analysis under § 2254(d)(1).
Having detennined that the proper inquiry is whether the state decision is “con*905trary to” clearly established Supreme Court law, I would conclude that neither phone conversation between Lubking and Matteo violated the Massiah rule against deliberate elicitation. Although the second conversation contains some direct questions from Lubking as to the location of the rifle, this conversation must be viewed in the context of the first and in terms of its substance, rather than its format. Matteo initiated both conversations for his own purpose — to get Lubking to recover (and hide) the rifle. Lubking was unsuccessful in finding the rifle based on the directions Matteo gave during the first call, and when Matteo called a second time to inquire whether the rifle had been located, Lubking informed him of this fact. Predictably, he volunteered more specific directions in order to assure that his purpose would be achieved. In this context, it would elevate form over substance to give controlling significance to the fact that Lubking asked an occasional clarifying question. Matteo’s statements were made on his own initiative, not because they were in response to anything said or urged by Lubking. Lubking’s incidental questions were not “affirmative steps” to elicit incriminating information. Henry, 447 U.S. at 271,100 S.Ct. 2183.
Because I would conclude that no deliberate elicitation occurred, I would not reach the issue of whether Lubking’s actions were attributable to the state. Finally, I agree that any error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence against Matteo.
. Under Teague, the habeas court may also consider a new rule of law in two exceptional circumstances: first, if the rule places "certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal lawmaking authority to proscribe,” Teague, 489 U.S. at 307, 109 S.Ct. 1060; or second, if the rule "requires the observance of procedures that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Id. at 311, 109 S.Ct. 1060.