Free Republic

The rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly no smear campaign against Joseph Wilson for criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country--by the media, by partisan opponents of the Bush administration, even by several Bush subordinates who betrayed the president and their White House colleagues. The hoax lingered...

In an article shamelessly ignoring its role in the Wilson hoax and solicitous of the leaker, the New York Times finally, on a holiday weekend Saturday, mentions that Richard Armitage was the source of the leak of Plame’s identity. It focuses on whether Fitzgerald was right to continue the prosecution after he knew Novak didn’t learn about Plame from Rove or Libby, the people the paper railed against from the moment Nicholas Kristof megaphoned Ambassador Munchausen’s fabulous tale of his Mission to Niger more three years ago:

<p>WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.</p>