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.
The Bush administration, or someone within in it, could have very well decided that it was worth the risk of alienating the CIA if it thought that Plame's exposure would prevent Ambassador Wilson from revealing anything else he knew about the yellowcake affair.
Secondly, any White House leaker didn't have to know that Valerie Plame was undercover in order to leak her name to Robert Novak. All he had to believe is that she was a simple 'analyst', and that exposing her would have no significant consequences. An assumption that turned out to be wrong.
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?
Obviously he was being callous about her safety, as he deliberately printed her name and work status despite being asked not to. As to whether or not he was being used by the White House, your guess is as good as mine.
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.
No, he prefers to allow himself to be used by FBI spies named Robert Hanssen. Not only that, but he's been used by Karl Rove in the past to plant false stories.
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.
So it's now okay to expose CIA operatives on the basis of newsworthiness?
The fact that Plame might have been involved in sending her husband to Africa in no way justifies deliberately exposing a CIA operative to possible harm. And if Novak had wanted to, he could have easily avoided mentioning Plame's name and status and still drawn attention to the fact that someone at the CIA with close personal ties to Wilson had been involved in sending him to Africa.
Why did the CIA not send a qualified investigator in Wilson’s place?
On what basis is the former ambassador to Niger NOT qualified to investigate the matter? And how exactly was the CIA supposed to have known about Wilson's supposed 'anti-Bush' attitude in the first place? Prior to his New York times article, it was hardly public knowledge.
She was apparently as casual as the administration about her “cover.”
Absolute nonsense.
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.
No, this CIA official merely asked that her name not be used at all, and then gave Novak some rather broad hints that her actual status was undercover.
Keeping in mind, we currently only have Novak's word for this. Earlier reports had him stating that administration officials came to him for the story, not the other way around.
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?
Again, completely and utterly irrelevant. It doesn't matter motives Novak had in exposing Plame, the fact remains that HE DID.
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.
"I'm a registered Republican and I'm sickened by this," he added. "I've spoken with four colleagues who have since left the agency who worked with her. And they are livid."
Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst.
"[Bush] needs to get this behind him" by taking a more active role. "He has that main responsibility to see this through and see it through quickly, and that would include, if I was president, sitting down with my vice president and asking what he knows about it,"
Senator Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska.
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.
So, the argument is that the administration was trying to get the CIA to clean up its act by deliberately exposing one of its operatives at a time when, by the editor's own admission, needed it badly in the war on terror?
This is pure garbage. And if you guys think that the CIA is simply going to take this one sitting down, you're delusional.
The CIA HUMINT depends on its field operative. Under no circumstances will it ever allow the deliberate leaking of the name and work status of one of its agents by some political official to go unchallenged?
Why? Because if it did, no potential agent would ever, in their right mind want to work for the CIA, knowing that some White House bureaucrat could expose them publically on nothing more than a whim.
There is NO motive to out Plame.
First of all, if the administration wanted to kill her career, they could have done so quietly by having her re-assigned to the desk that monitors activity in Antarctica.
Secondly, quite a few people in DC knew that Plame was CIA. There have been several articles on this story.
Third, President Bush, whose father was a CIA director, values the CIA and has been quite supportive of their efforts, both publicly and in the budget. To think that he would use the CIA for political advantage, and a small one, is silly.
Given Mr. Wilson's attitude and background, I think it far more likely that he used his wife's position to prove his insider knowledge, and that Novak checked with both the CIA and an administration official, who verified it.
Why would Bush go after one ambassador and his wife over this story, when he has tolerated and worked with people such as Ted Kennedy, who have said and done much worse things? It is out of character for him and makes no sense.
Sorry, but I don't buy your long list of comments, since many of them are simply YOUR opinion.
LOL
The Bush administration isn't seeking to prevent Wilson from doing a damn thing. The fact is Wilson did withhold additional information when he wrote his famous op-ed....the "It was I, Joseph Wilson, who went to Niger" op-ed.
What a buffoon.
The fact is, Wilson and his wife were very open about her employer, and a dem told Cliff May about Plame before Novak's column was written. The dem was trying to convince May that Wilson wasn't a partisan hack (wrong--he is) and as proof this dem offered up Plame working at the CIA as evidence of how patriotic they are.
Really, nobody in this administration was out to reek revenge upon the idiotic (and treacherous) Wilsons.
Absolute nonsense.
Hmm. By all accounts, that is exactly right, and not the "nonsense" you state without supplying any reasoning behind your pronouncement.
Well, at least for me, the clicher was that Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called "investigation" was nothing more than, in his own words, "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" at the U.S. embassy in Niger.
Yep. I can picture it in now........
"So, tell me the truth, Jamal, did Saddam Hussein ever try to buy yellowcake from you guys?"
"Why, of course not, Joe!"
"I didn't think so. Here ya go, Jamal, have some more mint tea."
Accurate description of your editorializing. Since you know so much, who killed Kennedy?