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Another follow-up by Cliff May: http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_07_10_corner-archive.asp#069737

RE DAVID CORN
My friend David Corn is hopping mad and he’s calling me names and questioning my motives. I understand that. I feel his anger.

But he hasn’t actually challenged any of the facts or analysis in my piece.

Except one: He is arguing that providing the name of a CIA employee – or operative -- is the same as exposing the identity of a CIA covert agent.

Now that may play out in the boondocks among people who have never known anyone who worked at the CIA and who assume that everyone at CIA has a secret identity and works for a CIA front.

But anyone with any knowledge or experience knows that is it doesn’t work like that.

The facts are these: (1) Bob Novak did not say that Valerie Plame was a secret agent; (2) David Corn did; (3) we don’t know who Bob’s sources were; (4) we know David’s source was Joe Wilson.

The rest is commentary.

Another follow-up from Cliff May:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_07_10_corner-archive.asp#069740

CORN STRIKES BACK [Cliff May]
On his blog, David Corn attempts to rebut my NRO piece. I don’t think he gets very far but it’s here so you can judge for yourself.

His major argument is that Bob Novak reporting that Joe Wilson’s assignment for the CIA came about because Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, recommended him, is no different from David Corn revealing that Valerie Pame was a “top-secret” CIA agent.

He adds: “Once Valerie Wilson's name appeared in Novak's column, her days as a CIA undercover official were done.”

But why would that be? If the day after Novak’s column came out, Valerie Plame, CIA analyst at CIA HQ in Langley, were to disappear, and Mallory Flame, arms dealer, were to arrive in Istanbul with a passport and contacts and a “legend,” how would anyone make the connection?

They could not, nor would anyone who had worked with Plame in the past know anything --assuming that when Plame had been under cover she had used false identities.

However, once Wilson told Corn – and Corn published -- that Plame was not just a CIA analyst but a secret agent with an extensive network of contacts, and once she and Joe posed for pictures in Vanity Fair, her career as an undercover spy was indeed over.

BTW, he also says I ignored his notes to me. In fact, I published them all, though not in the story but here in the Corner under the title “Reporters’ Notebooks.”

He also continues to deny that Wilson was his source. So how did he know things that Novak didn’t report? He doesn’t tell us, he just says things llike, “the story was that Valerie worked for an energy firm…”

The story? Whose story? Novak didn’t tell this story? Who did? What was the source?