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My take on this latest Democrat/MSM story.

I don’t know what Valerie Plame’s status with the CIA was in July 2003 when Robert Novak wrote his column mentioning that she was an “agency operative” and had recommended her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for a fact-finding trip to Niger. Was Plame a covert agent then? If not, how recently had she been a covert agent?

NO.

I also don’t know what’s going on with The New York Times’ Judith Miller.

Since top presidential adviser Karl Rove and top vice-presidential adviser Lewis Libby signed strongly worded waivers releasing all reporters from any pledges of confidentiality, why hasn’t Miller testified? Does that mean her source was someone else who has not signed a confidentiality waiver?

Yes.

I also don’t know why Miller is involved in all this at all, since she never wrote a story about it. Was she some sort of “carrier,” as is now being theorized, and actually helped spread word of Plame’s identity?

Yes.

For that matter, I don’t know what Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper was doing either. Rove’s lawyer says Rove signed the waiver about a year and a half ago and has never changed it. Why was that waiver not acceptable to Cooper for 18 months and then, on the brink of going to jail, Cooper agreed to testify?

I don’t know.

I don’t know anything about the role the other journalists caught up in the case — Tim Russert, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler — played. Apparently on the basis of waivers signed by sources, they all gave information to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. What did they say?

I don’t know.

And of course I also don’t know what is happening with Novak. Given Fitzgerald’s aggressiveness in dealing with all figures in this case, Novak must have made some sort of accommodation. Did he testify? Refuse to testify?

I don’t know.

I also don’t know why many in the press, most notably The New York Times, were once so enthusiastic about the Fitzgerald investigation. On Dec. 30, 2003, the Times published an editorial headlined “The Right Thing, At Last,” which said, “After an egregiously long delay, Attorney General John Ashcroft finally did the right thing yesterday when he recused himself from the investigation into who gave the name of a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak.” Why did the Times do that?

They still thought they could spin it in their favor.

And then, why did the Times change its position and condemn Fitzgerald who, the paper said, “can’t even say whether a crime has been committed.” Why would the Times say that, when it had once been so sure that a crime had been committed?

They found out they couldn't spin it in their favor.

I also don’t know about the actions of Joseph Wilson. For example, in his book, The Politics of Truth, he wrote, “The assertion that Valerie had played any substantive role in the decision to ask me to go to Niger was false on the face of it. ...Valerie could not — and would not if she could — have had anything to do with the CIA decision to ask me to travel to [Niger].” But later, the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its bipartisan report, said that “interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that [Wilson’s] wife, a CPD employee [a reference to the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division], suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife ‘offered up his name’ and a memorandum to the deputy chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from [Wilson’s] wife says, ‘my husband has good relations with both [Niger’s prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.’” So why did Wilson say his wife played no “substantive role” in it?

He lied.

I also don’t know why Wilson’s defenders accuse the White House of “smearing” him. What was the smear? Was it a smear to say that Wilson got the Niger assignment, at least in part, because his wife recommended him? If so, then the Senate committee “smeared” him, too. If not, what is the smear?

Any attempt to correct Democrats lies are branded as VRWC lies.

And finally, I don’t know about Karl Rove’s public statements on the case. Last year on CNN, he said of Plame, “I didn’t know her name and didn’t leak her name.” Even if he hadn’t passed on Plame’s name — just mentioned her as Wilson’s wife — why not just say nothing, especially since the whole thing is under criminal investigation?

I don’t know.

The bottom line is, some of the most critical facts in the whole Wilson/Plame/CIA matter are just not known, at least not known by anyone outside of the Fitzgerald investigation.

But don’t worry. At least we can be sure that we will someday know them, right?

I don’t know.