Posted on 10/05/2003 4:32:15 AM PDT by billorites
IF AMBASSADOR Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was indeed a covert agent for the CIA (and not just an analyst), and if a Bush administration official did expose her, a 1982 federal law may have been broken and someone should pay. But considering the many ironies of this story, Wilson’s allegation that Bush’s administration “outted” his wife to punish him (by risking her death, implicitly) just doesn’t figure.
Wilson wrote a New York Times op-ed faulting the White House for suspecting that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. (An ambassador in both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations and a long-time friend of and former aide to Al Gore, Wilson admits he became anti-George W. Bush after the 2000 South Carolina primary. He is now a big supporter of John Kerry’s Presidential campaign.)
Irony No. 1: The Bush administration allegedly released the name of a CIA officer as political payback against the officer’s husband. Doesn’t the Bush administration need the help and high morale of the CIA right now to help prosecute the War on Terror? What would it have to gain by putting a CIA operative’s life in danger? One must assume the leaker knew he wasn’t endangering Valerie Plame’s life.
Irony No. 2: Columnist Bob Novak was the journalist who printed Plame’s name. Novak opposed the war against Saddam Hussein because he, like Wilson, did not believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to the United States. Was Novak used by the administration? Was he callous about Plame’s safety?
Having worked for Novak for five years, I know him to be an exceptionally savvy journalist who doesn’t allow himself to be used as a pawn of any administration. He is a patriot who cares deeply about the safety of men and women defending our country, and he is a recent convert to Catholicism who takes ethics and human life seriously.
Novak explained in his Oct. 1 column how Plame’s name ended up in his July 14 column. After Wilson’s predictably anti-Bush New York Times piece appeared, Novak probed into the matter of why the CIA would want a Kerry supporter to go to Niger to investigate possible “yellowcake” uranium sales in the first place. Administration officials said the reason Wilson was sent was because his wife, a CIA officer, pushed for him to go.
Here’s where a law may have been broken by administration officials, but here is where it also is necessary to digest a few facts.
The fact that Wilson’s wife was a CIA officer is newsworthy, because it tells Americans that even after the massive intelligence failure of September 11, the CIA may be making decisions based on politics and personal ties instead of what’s best for the country.
Was former ambassador Joe Wilson the best person to send to Niger to search for uranium dealers? Maybe not, given his strong anti-Bush bias and the implausibility of thugs from Niger revealing anything noteworthy to an official ambassador who grandstands in the New York Times about his CIA connection. Why did the CIA not send a qualified investigator in Wilson’s place?
Secondly, it is important to realize this: Lots of people in Washington work at the CIA, and most of them are not glamorous secret agents whose lives would be endangered if their identities were revealed. In fact, columnist Maureen Dowd has revealed that Plame blabbed to Wilson about her CIA work around the time of their first kiss. She was apparently as casual as the administration about her “cover.”
In the 10 years I spent in Washington, I met three people who rather off-handedly told me they had done work for “Langley,” the Virginia neighborhood where the CIA is openly situated. When Novak called the CIA to confirm his sources’ allegation, he wrote, the CIA confirmed it but asked him not to print Plame’s name. The CIA did not say that printing Plame’s name would endanger her. Instead the official said it could make traveling overseas more difficult for her, Novak reported.
Here’s where a journalist makes a decision about motives: Is it likely that the CIA asked that Plame’s name not be printed because her life or health would be jeopardized as an analyst? Or is it more likely that the CIA is embarrassed that someone found out the politics and personalities behind its post September 11 decision making?
Irony No. 3: Who are the fiercest defenders of CIA operatives and fiercest critics of “freedom of the press” now? U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Harvard officials, and the editorial pages of the liberal Washington Post and New York Times.
If a law was broken, whoever broke it should pay the price. But let’s not be naive and accept Joe Wilson’s tripe about the White House wanting to endanger his wife as payback for his criticisms. The more likely motivation is administration concern that even after the CIA fell down on the job before 9/11, it continues to take short-cuts in the War on Terror.
Bernadette Malone is the former editorial page director.
You may get your wish. Keep it up, Dems, and you'll live to regret it. You know you're wrong, you're lying, and you're also beginning to sweat because you're attempt is backfiring. Sweet dreams!
And I'll just add, the only explanation that is absurd on its face is the "Bush administration leaking for revenge" explanation.
The term Novac used, "senior administration officials," is less general, but still very broad. It refers to appointed people OR bureaucrats in the executive branch of goverment, but they can be partisans of any political party. In other words, in any department, NSA, CIA, FBI, Energy, Education, EPA, etc, past or present.
"Senior Bush administration officials" would be even less general, but still broad. It refers to appointed people OR implies bureaucrats in the executive branch of goverment, but they can be partisans of any political party. In other words, in any department, NSA, CIA, FBI, Energy, Education, EPA, etc, serving during EITHER Bush 1's administration or Bush 2's.
"Senior W Bush administration officials" or "current administration officials" is still broad. It refers to appointed people OR implies bureaucrats in the executive branch of goverment, but they can be partisans of any political party. In other words, in any department, NSA, CIA, FBI, Energy, Education, EPA, etc, serving during the time of George W Bush's adminsitration.
"Former senior officials" refers to appointed people OR implies bureaucrats in the executive branch of goverment, but they can be partisans of any political party. In other words, in any department, NSA, CIA, FBI, Energy, Education, EPA, etc, who are not currently serving the current administration. This could be people who served under previous administrations or could even be people who served the current one but left the executive branch of government before the reporter published the article.
What's the difference between a senior official and an official? Depends on a reporter's integrity, I suppose, or his need to hide his source's ID. What the reporter considers senior may vary from reporter to reporter. Just remember that the more senior a reporter implies his sources are, the higher the reporter's status. The more so if the reporter's sources have a tendency to be spot-on accurate. And remember that reporters can be played by nonauthentic or once authentic but no longer good sources too, sometimes even for years. (Not to mention that reporters are themselves partisan and may occasionally fabricate, as we saw with Blair of the NY Times.)
Should say : "Former senior administration officials" refers to appointed people OR implies bureaucrats in the executive branch of goverment, but they can be partisans of any political party. In other words, in any department, NSA, CIA, FBI, Energy, Education, EPA, etc, who are not currently serving the current administration. This could be people who served under previous administrations or could even be people who served the current one but left the executive branch of government before the reporter published the article
Anyone who knows me on this forum knows that I think Bill Kristol is a mole for the Rats! Chuck Hagel is a McCain wannabee.
Bwahahahahaha! I will now go read the rest of your expectedly laughable response.
The first few days this story was reported and Wilson was everywhere ad nauseum it was like watching a gigantic media orgasm. Even their faces were flushed as they breathlessly reported the "scandal". Every outrageous claim was reported as fact, obscuring the point of Novak's article--Plame helped set the trip up and suggested hubby to do it. Tenet never knew. Once he saw the information he chose not to pass it on to the President or Cheney because it was of little or no value."
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