Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Posts Tagged Valerie Plame

Why Is Scooter Libby On Trial?

Feb 1

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

I’ve promised one last Plame post numerous times, but the Scooter Libby trial requires comment — if only for the sheer fun of saying the defendant’s name. If you want the ins and outs, Tom Maguire is as always your man. I’m taking a big picture look.

First off, near as I can tell just about everybody who got roped into Fitzgerald’s investigation has had trouble with remembering what actually happened — who said what to whom when — or has changed their story, yet only Mr. Libby is on trial. Mr. Fitzgerald claims that is because Mr. Libby deliberately mislead him and impeded his investigation, but his investigation into what? He determined that no crime occured, and that determination had nothing to do with who leaked first, it had to do with Ms. Plame-Wilson’s status.

Secondly, Joe Wilson has lied long and loud and clear yet he suffers no penalty for doing so. I’m not even sure he actually went to Niger since he’s lied about everything else. And as it turns out, he is the guy who actually leaked his wife’s status as an ex-NOC — up until he yapped to Mr. Corn, his wife simply worked at the CIA. It’s bad enough Armitage, Fleischer, Rove and Libby let out that much, but Joe himself did the most damage.

Third and last, why is Fitzgerald and the government wasting time with this prosecution when real live CIA leaks that actually caused harm are going uninvestigated and unpunished?

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Another Confederacy of Dunces

Jan 21

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s licking his chops at the thought of the Scooter Libby trial and the thought of all those top drawer journalists hauled into court and forced to testify. What a gratifying spectacle that will be. It’s too bad they don’t allow TV cameras into court rooms – they really ought to make an exception in this case. Perhaps it could be on pay-per-view, I know I’d pay good money to watch. It would be Reality TV at it’s finest. Instead we will have to content ourselves with comparing the carefully sanitized version from the organizations who have their minions testifying and independent outlets. I’m reminded of the ending of Samson – you know, where the Philistines capture him and make sport of him in their temple, so he pulls the temple down on him and them.

Do I know if Scooter lied or not? No, I wasn’t party to the conversations. I do think lying during a criminal investigation is not just a bad thing, but a legally punishable one. My problem is that once Fitzgerald concluded that no law had been broken by the leak of Ms. Plame’s connection to the CIA, then his whole investigation should have been over. And that conclusion had nothing to do with his investigation of Libby – in fact, that should have been determination number one. And once the determination was made that there was no crime, then the Fitzgerald should have shut the whole enterprise down and gone back to actual crime fighting. If Fitzgerald got sand in his eye, it was because he took it off the ball. Instead, he went ahead to try and find out who said what to whom when in Washington. Good luck buddy, you’ll need it.

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You Go George

Jan 10

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

I’ve already explained my thoughts on the whole “domestic spying” controversy – it isn’t domestic, and why my phone/email communications can’t be searched by a US government agent without a warrant while crossing a border yet I and my property can be is beyond me.

But Tom Maguire does his usual treatment of subjects that fascinate him (he’s still even posting on the Plame kerfuffle, bless his heart) which means he’s thorough (but gentle, as a blogger should be). So we have not just one post, not just two posts, but three whole posts about it. He gives a hypothetical situation on why even the 72 hour retroactive warrent may not be good enough – and frankly why the whole framework of FISA may simply be OBT (Overtaken By Technology) and rendered obsolete. He takes us through the thoughts of the Democrats who were briefed (including the New York Times – you know, the media wing of the Mediacratic party of which the Democrats are the political wing (kind of like the IRA and Sinn Fein, but different because we don’t know which side of the media/democrats is calling the shots and we know the IRA is calling the shots (pun not intended and regretted)) and concludes:

Possible unifying answer – Harman, Rockefeller, and the editors of the Times are all dupes. Uh huh. Another possible answer is, they know enough about this program to know that there might still be some secrets there.Folks who think that the catalog of Atrios’s ignorance and the limits of his imagination define the boundaries of human endeavor will remain bemused by his question. For myself, I am convinced that I don’t know enough about this program to have any solid idea what security issues might be involved, so I am relying on the good, if unsteady, judgments of elected representatives such as Harman and Rockefeller.

 

It’s clear from the Brit Hume interview with Rep. Harman that Tom links to that she thinks that there are still secrets there:

HUME: You say it’s basically foreign. Were you not made aware individuals within the United States’ conversations with the suspected terrorists overseas were part of the program?HARMAN: It’s a classified program, so I can’t discuss what I was made aware of. But let me say…

HUME: Well, I know, but the…

HARMAN: No.

HUME: … toothpaste is out of the tube…

HARMAN: … it was made clear to me — no…

HUME: … when it’s known that that’s the case.

HARMAN: But it was made clear to me that conversations between Americans in America were not part of the program and require — and I think they do — a court warrant in order to eavesdrop on them.

And that’s been a point of confusion, because some of the press articles allege that this is a so-called, as you said, domestic surveillance program. That’s not what I believe it is.

HUME: Well, all right. So in other words, your belief is that this was indeed a case of Americans being picked up, perhaps within the United States, in discussions with people overseas.

HARMAN: Well, let’s just leave your comment there. I really don’t want to confirm what…

HUME: All right.

 

No Brit, the toothpaste isn’t all out of the tube, and even if it were, the information hasn’t been declassified yet. The New York Times may rule the Mediacrats, but they don’t have the power to declassify (something that Joe Wilson forgot when he blew the cover off his wife being a covert operative).

And it’s nice to know that Rep. Harman and I agree that this isn’t domestic surveillance, but foreign and international if need be.

The same papers that demand we search every cargo container entering the US and fault the administration for moving too slowly here are the very ones who are attacking them for listening in on foreign and international calls without a judge’s approval. Again, what gives phone calls such privileges? What makes a judge so special? Is a judge more sober than members of Congress?

Frankly, it’s nice to know the Bush administration was on the ball with this one. And I hope they catch the SOB who leaked and comprimised an ongoing and effective covert intellegence operation in wartime – a war that is has been and continues to be fought partly on American soil. Sometimes I think some people forget that.

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Wilson Plame Who Cares Anymore?

Nov 30

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

Yes, I know some of you never cared about the whole Wilson Plame saga from the beginning, and some gave up caring long ago, but I’ve stopped. I know, Tom Maguire who is a better writer and investigator is still going full steam ahead, but this is I hope my last word on the subject. I’m going cold turkey.

Yes, I’m upset by the leaking of classified information, but then unlike a lot of people excited by the whole affair I’m upset by the leaking of any classified information. Frankly, it was a shock when Fitzgerald announced that revealing classified information wasn’t a crime in and of itself. It ought to be, but then there might not be anyone left at the CIA (or Congress for that matter).

Part of the ennui is the excessive focus on the least important parts and the ignoring the of the most important. And by that I mean the focus should be on our ability to gather intellegence, analyze it, promulgate it, and protect it. In other words, the process. Instead, the focus has been on the personalities, the who instead of the what. The whole mess has been (or at least should have been) an embarrassment to everyone involved. The CIA comes off as bumbling at best or rogue at worst; the press comes off as bumbling at best and biased at worst; even the vaunted Patrick Fitzgerald comes off as a bumbler – he didn’t deliver on what he was asked to do, namely get to the bottom of who leaked to Bob Novak — instead he got Libby who appears to have leaked to everybody but Novak, his prosecution of Libby now looks weak since Bob Woodward nonchalantly announced that he got a leak from somebody else before Libby started and while I’m always up for perjury the idea that Libby diverted Fitzgeralds investigation is nonsense – it ultimately saved it from coming up empty – because Libby wasn’t party to the leak to Novak. Apparently, prosecuting the mafia, terrorists, and Illinois politicians is a walk in the park compared to unraveling the relationships between the press and the government in D.C. – which is a reflection not on Mr. Fitzgerald but the Byzantine workings of Washington. The whole prosecution has this weird feel because even though we have a prosecutor investigating a crime, he can’t come after the witnesses, and let’s face it, partners in crime AKA reporters with the full majesty of the law like he could against mob bosses, terrorist masterminds, and crooked politicians.

And finally, the left seems to be deranged on the subject. Consider Marty Kaplan, otherwise brilliant renaissance man – bright light to my dim bulb, who wrote the most astonishing blog post A Piss Is Not A Leak:

When government officials or campaign operatives go off the record to a reporter in order to smear someone, spread disinformation, lie about an opponent, stab someone in the back while wearing the cloak of anonymity, kindle a propanganda brush fire, slander critics, psych out enemies, and throw red herrings in an investigator’s path, they are engaging in the dark arts of psy ops.

And that’s from the calmer part of the rant. Why do I consider it deranged? Becuase of the often heard claim, repeated not just by the many like Kaplan but Joe Wilson his own self, that he was smeared by the Bush Adminstration. What exactly was this smear? Was it that he as a cross dresser, like the left likes to smear the definately unsaintly J. Edgar Hoover? Did they call him a traitor or a liar like President Bush is routinely savaged? Nope, the big bad smear is that somebody in the administration pointed out that Joe Wilson got the job to go to Niger because of his wife. Holy Mackaloney, that’s about the worstest thing you could say about anyone. Instead of “your mother wears army boots”, tell somebody they got a two week paid assignment because their spouse wrote a glowing assessment, then watch the punches fly. And the really crazy thing is, the left hates to admit, and Joe Wilson pretty much can’t admit it himself, but it’s the truth. There, I said it, Joe Wilson got the job to go to Niger and nose around because his wife recommended him, and that’s been backed up by every investigation into the matter.

 

On the other hand, this laudable devotion to the truth and fair politics somehow falls to the wayside when it comes to examining Joe Wilson’s claims which again, have been revealed to be false by every investigation into the matter. Those claims which were, how shall we say, leaked under the cover of annonymity to the New York Times to kindle a propanganda brush fire – a propanganda brush fire that continues to burn (Bush Lied!) and divert attention and resources from important things. So you have Wilson pretty much doing everything the left is foaming at the mouth mad at the Bush administration for but not doing, which strikes me as deranged. It must be amazingly emotionally satisfying, to be so utterly convinced of one owns superlative righteousness that reality itself is distorted into a mirror image. Excuse me if I find it boring to hear such smug assertions of fairy tales.

Perhaps we can find a middle ground with it comes to kicking the tar out of Randy Cunningham, who I hope we can all agree behaved reprehensibly in accepting bribes and who’s actions are, in a word, unpatriotic. Frankly, I don’t know if it worse or mitigating that he was a war hero in Vietnam.

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Wilson Plame Libby Woodward

Nov 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | 1 Comment

The case against Scooter Libby took an odd turn the other day when investigative reporter extraordinaire (just ask him, he’ll tell you) Bob Woodward announced the other day that he’d been given Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA analyst by an administration source other than Scooter Libby before Libby talked to Miller, Cooper, and Russert.

Tom Maguire is all over this, as always. And from every angle, especially Cheney.

What I think it means is that Fitzgerald will have a harder time convicting Libby. Why? Because Mr. Fitzgerald’s claim was that Libby was the first leaker based on the testimony of Miller, Cooper, and Russert and therefore his claim to have heard it from reporters first has to be a lie, and not just a disagreement over what was said in a brief conversation a couple of years ago. If it cannot be established that in fact this info was not leaked prior to Libby, then that claim goes down in flames. And further, Woodward claims he told Walter Pincus about Ms. Wilson, although Pincus doesn’t remember that. So now we have two reporters disagreeing about who told what during a brief discussion a couple of years ago. But wait, there’s still more – Mr. Woodward kept mum about this leak, despite the investigation, until Mr. Fitzgerald contacted him because one of Woodwards sources spilled the beans to Mr. Fitzgerald. So no doubt everybody is wondering who else is out there but hunkered down and waiting for Fitzgerald to make the first contact.

I think it also means we’re less likely to ever make sense out of it beyond partisan ax grinding. And that might be a good thing, because as far as I can tell it has become a sideshow, a distraction, the mother of all red herrings, from the important questions – what can we do to improve intelligence collection and analysis at the CIA and what can we do to safeguard classified information better. This is a case where we can’t see the forest for the trees.

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Libby Indicted, Resigns

Oct 29

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, false statements, and perjury yesterday. He wasn’t charged for the actual disclosure of classified information. Since Fitzgerald is alleging that Libby engaged in a pattern of deception, namely Libby’s claim that he first found out about Valerie Plame from reporters and merely passed along what he had heard from reporters, I think he should be charged with perjury. But what I don’t understand is, since Fitzgerald made clear that he considered Plame’s status with the CIA classified information and that Libby did indeed disclose it without proper authorization, why Libby wasn’t also charged with the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. So my complaint isn’t that Libby was charged with perjury, but that he was just charged with perjury.

If that’s all Libby faces, what message does it send? It’s OK to leak classified information, just own up to it in court? We seem to have adopted a standard in the US that disclosing classified information to foreign governments, friendly or otherwise is punishable, but disclosing to the press isn’t punishable. When was the last time a leak to the press itself investigated and charges brought? Here was a chance, and Fitzgerald has (so far) declined to take it. Does disclosure to the press somehow do less damage to national security? I sure don’t think so.

I’m also of the opinion that lying Joe Wilson should be charged for unauthorized disclosure of classified information, and there is some ammunition in Fitzgerald’s Press Release. First, Ambassador Wilson made the most damaging disclosure of classified information about his wife to David Corn since he went far beyond my wife works for the CIA. But he also maintained that there was nothing classified about his trip – neither his taking it nor his findings. Yet we find in the press release this statement:

on or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents from the CIA were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of Libby and another person in the Vice President’s office. The documents, which bore classification markings, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name.

Hmm, was the trip so unclassified as Ambassador Wilson has asserted?

After consulting with the State Department’s African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

And Fitzgerald’s statement in the press release

shortly after publication on or about June 19, 2003, of an article in The New Republic magazine online entitled “The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War,” Libby spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed the article. That official asked Libby whether information about Wilson’s trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the Vice President had sent Wilson. Libby responded that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure telephone line;

it’s not clear if the information that couldn’t be disclosed about Wilson’s trip is limited to, or even includes his wife recommending him for the job — which would reveal her CIA employment. Maybe there was more classified information to Wilson’s trip and report besides his wife.

Is this the end of the indictments? What about Karl Rove? Only Fitzgerald knows, and he (still) isn’t talking. Certainly the evidence uncovered so far is weaker against Rove or he’d have been indicted too; maybe Karl is in the clear because he did hear from a reporter before saying things like “I hear that too”.

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Fitzgerald, Plame, Wilson, Rove, Libby, Cheney

Oct 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

The web’s aflame with rumor and speculation over Fitzgerald’s investigation into the Plame kerfuffle. Of course, I get all my Plame news from Tom Maguire, who never grows tired of the fact that we know so little. Consider that Fitzgerald and his people are famously closed lipped. Who do all these leaks come from? Even if they came from Fitzgerald (gigantic if there), let me remind you of the most important point about leaks involving politics (OK, any leak for that matter) – they are always self serving for the leaker. Always. The fact that the leaker can provide only partial truth allows the leaker to control and manipulate the story.

And isn’t leaking grand jury testimony a crime as well? I understand a witness can come out and talk about the questioning, even lie about it like good old Sid Blumenthal, but other than that the testimony is legally protected. So the only way for it not to be a crime is if the leaker about a particular witnesses testimony ultimately derived their leak from the particular witness? Which leads us right back to the self serving nature of any leak. Sigh.

So what’s really going on here. Is the most important part of the whole sodden mess the fact that Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA employee? Is it that CIA is a rogue organization that is trying to undermine the elected President of the United States? Or does it’s import derive as proxy for the Iraq war itself?

Personally, what I care about most is the unauthorized discloure of classified information. If Fitzgerald can return indictments about that, even perjury indictements, I’ll consider it a successful investigation. But I want the perjury to be perjury, not just how good Karl Rove’s memory is. So if he deliberately lied to conceal unauthorized disclosure, then good. If he forgot a particular conversation of several that occured with one or more people, then bad. And by that I mean if he were tardy in disclosing a conversation with Matt Cooper, someone who Rove had no reason to believe wouldn’t disclose, then an indictment is just butt covering.

But if it turns out that the Valerie Plame wasn’t covert and the CIA persued this case while it has let plenty of other equally or more serious dislosures go in the past, then I think the CIA becomes the big story. Why should it be OK for a disgruntled current or ex-CIA employee to disclose classified information to the press, but not the White House?

Here are the unanswered questions for me. Was Valerie Plame a covert agent at the time her name was leaked? If so, it raised for me another important question then – how did her name leave the CIA? What does that say about their security proceedures? If not, what is the CIA trying to pull here?

Which reporter broke the sacred confidentiality to tell Joe Wilson who the sources were? I mean, how else was he able to finger Karl Rove and Scooter Libby way back at the start of the kerfuffle? It was only a month after Novak’s article that Wilson said he wanted to see Karl Rove “frogmarched” out of the White House in handcuffs. Libby’s name followed soon after, and then Joe Wilson backtracked and shut up about it. Odd how the press isn’t interested in Joe Wilson’s source, which he admitted to, and how that source named the two people that have been most prominently featured as people who talked to the press.

Speaking of Joe, why isn’t he being investigated as the man who clearly did the most to out his own wife? For those who like convoluted conspiracies (I’m not one), why not think the Valerie was tired of living the covert life, have Joe out you, and bam you’re out, in the clear, the darlings of the media, book deals, Vanity Fair articles. Hey, it’s more plausible than Flight Plan.

What about the role of the State Department? Plame was “moving to State Department cover”, there are reports of a State Department memo with her name in it, State opposed the war in Iraq just like the CIA. Has the institutional opposition at these two power centers overstepped the bounds of good government? And will we ever see that probed?

Most of all, what does Fitzgerald really have?

OK, that last one is a repeat of how we know so little. And what amazes me is how there are some who don’t seem to realize that. We don’t even know if Valerie Plame was covert. Did the neighbors know she worked for the CIA? I have no idea, but Mark Kleiman is convinced by an article in the LAT which relies on two neighbors. Did the LAT contact “all” the neighbors but only inlcuded quotes from two? Cliff May said lots of people in Washington knew a long time ago – but Cliff wasn’t a neighbor. Was he just talking trash, or was he telling the truth? Beats me, I don’t live in Washington. We have to rely on these leaked reports to the press, which clearly has lower standards about such leaks than, say, allegations by a victim that she was raped by Bill Clinton.

Some people don’t even know what we do know – namely that Joe Wilson is a liar who came forward not courageously before the war, but after when the status of the Iraq WMD was known. If Ambassador Wilson was so upset by President Bush’s so called manipulation of intellegence before the war (you know, when CIA head Tenet was claiming that Iraqi WMD was a “slam dunk”), why didn’t he come forward then, when it could have done some good?

One last final thoughts (not for the subject, just the post) – whatever you may think of Fitzgerald’s integrity, it seems as if people are treating the indictments as the final word on the subject. They aren’t, they are just accusations. I know that depending on whose ox is being gored, people will ignore that fact or ignore every other fact.

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What About The CIA and Plame?

Oct 16

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

First off, Alex at the Parks Department has put together an excellent list of leaks on “Wilsongate”.

As long as the press is faulting the Bush administration on the pace of it’s investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame’s CIA status, why aren’t they faulting Novak, who knows who leaked, and the six journalists who reportedly know who leaked (because they were leaked to but didn’t publish)? Oh that’s right, because their careers might suffer. Look, this is a serious matter, and probably a crime, and I for one think playing by journalism’s rules (as Craig repeats them from Edward J Epstein’s book) makes no sense. The bottom could be gotten to in an afternoon of eight journalists in front of a grand jury. I mean, do we really want the press to shield criminals? Does that really serve some larger purpose?

Plame’s employment with the CIA was classified. Sometimes people think if you have a security classification, its OK for you to be informed of any classified information of the appropriate level. This is not true. You have to have a need to know the classified information to carry out the tasks for which you have a security clearance. That is the general rule. I can’t be told classified information just because I have a clearance. Sometimes, it’s a little more formalized, and some information has an access list – in other words, only certain pre-defined people can be told particular classified information – they are the only ones to have a need to know. I would think in a properly run CIA, the identities of clandestine agents, which apparently covers Plame, would be access list controled, with a different list for each such agent, with the list limited to as small a number of people as possible. This limits the damage moles and captured agents can do.

So here’s what I find odd – how did somebody in the Bush Administration know she worked for the CIA? Did the CIA not keep her name close to the vest? As an undercover operative, you’d think they’d want to protect her name. Let’s turn to Nick Kristof’s piece (which I by and large agree with):”Third, Mrs. Wilson’s intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington as she rose in the CIA and moved to State Department cover, but her job remained a closely held secret.” This jibes with Clifford May’s piece in National Review that he was told in an offhand manner by a former government worker. In other words, somehow her status got out of the CIA itself – and excuse me, you can’t be an overcover operative if everybody knows you work for the CIA even if nobody knows what you do there. So as long as we’re investigating the leak from the Bush administration (which as I’ve pointed out before should be child’s play but isn’t), we should also be investigating the leak from the CIA (which nobody has mentioned yet). Maybe it was a structural leak – people who didn’t know she was an undercover operative (because that is a closely guarded secret known only to a few) didn’t see anything wrong in letting slip that she worked for the CIA because at this point she was currently not undercover- in which case the CIA needs to rethink how they handle that situation.

I have no idea how much damage this has done (if any) to CIA networks and agents – and anybody who does isn’t (or at least shouldn’t) be talking to the press. Apparently she may have been unmasked earlier – by our old buddy Aldrich Ames. Still, I’m upset that somebody either deliberately or inadvertinately in the Bush Administration leaked the name of a CIA operative, which is a serious breach of trust, and that the CIA didn’t protect their own operative.

Why hasn’t the press asked the question of how (not why or who) the name of an undercover CIA operative popped out of the mouth of an administration official? I guess because nobody’s leaked why that may be important to a journalist.

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Novak, Wilson, and Plame

Oct 2

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | 1 Comment

The latest Washington scandal sounds like an old rock group, but it is serious business. Did someone at the Bush Whitehouse leak the name of a CIA operative (Valerie Plame Wilson) who was the wife of a former ambassador (Joseph Wilson IV) who wrote an op-od critical critical of the Bush administration? If administration officials broke the law by deliberately leaking her status with the CIA, then by all means they should be prosecuted and fired. If it was a nobody somewhere in the great Military Industrial Complex who did this (i.e. me), that’s the fate they would suffer. It shouldn’t change because of either its political nature or the position of the officials. I know that in the past nothing happens to leakers, but it ought to. I think putting a few senators and representatives in the dock would be highly beneficial, but then I think all public officials, regardless of party affiliation, should be held accountable to the same standards as everybody else.

If you want blog coverage, Just One Minute is all over this. If you prefer your coverage from big media, Google News is always a great source.

The odd thing to me is that the parts that should be straightforward are so murky and the the murky stuff is simply opaque. The CIA should know whether or not Ms. Plame is an undercover operative as covered by law and therefore whether or not the leak broke the law. If she isn’t covered, there should be no investigation, so I have to assume she is. And the next stop should be to question the star witness, Bob Novak – just like they should for any journalist who is an eyewitness to a crime. I don’t buy the notion that there is some right to keep sources confidential if a crime has been committed, and I don’t think journalists should be treated any differently than any other private citizen. So it should be straightforward whether or not a law was broken and if so, who did it.

But it isn’t, and so Bush will twist slowly, slowly in the wind while the investigation fumbles along to no certain conclusion. If Bush were machievellan, he’d get a couple of volunteers to claim they were the leakers, that it was inadvertant and not malicious, and have them resign. What would Novak do – reveal his real sources? The scandal would be over, and the whole matter would be forgotten by most of the electorate.

The larger picture is very much confused in my mind. Apparently, Dick Cheney was concerned enough about the intel about Iraq trying to buy yellow cake from Africa that he asked the CIA to indepently check on it. So the CIA sends Joe Wilson – why? Of all the nutty yet courageous ex-Ambassadors, they picked him. What, wasn’t Felix Leiter available? Besides being married to an agent, what were his qualifications (remember his contacts in Niger were from 25 years ago)?

So he conducts his investigation by talking over tea with some Nigerians, comes back to the US where he files only a verbal report, and then goes on to right an op-ed that claims that based on his brief and cursory investigation, Iraq didn’t get yellowcake from Niger, and therefore the Bush administration was lying when it claimed that UK intellegence was reporting that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa.

Then somebody tells Bob Novak that his wife works for the CIA, and that’s how he got the job. How does this person know that Mrs. Wilson works for the CIA? Do they sign their reports, and as an expert on WMD proliferation they’ve been reading a lot of them recently? Is this how everybody seems to know that she works for the CIA? And how is leaking her CIA connection supposed to intimidate the Wilsons, or even undercut his op-ed, which if anything is enhanced by giving him some connection, however tenuous, with expertise in WMD proliferation? It is either really stupid, or simply honest.

After this Wilson claims that even mentioning her maiden name is somehow a breach of security, despite the fact that he included it in his bio on the net. And now he’s claiming that he knew all along that Iraq didn’t have WMD, although he apparently felt confident of it earlier to claim that Saddam would use it against US troops. Yeah, I know, a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of small minds.

And now we have the press outraged that somebody would leak a CIA agent’s name, although not outraged that the press would print it, we have serial leakers (i.e. congresspeople) outraged that somebody would leak confidential information, and we have people demanding a special prosecutor despite their track record when all we need is a justice department that isn’t afraid to put a journalist in jail for refusing to name a criminal.

And yes, you have me, who hopes that we find out who did what and why, who hopes that the guilty are punished and the innocent exhonerated, that justice be applied impartially, and that we all remember and hold accountable the people we place our trust in, in public service or in the media. But then, I’m just an old fashioned guy.

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