Valerie Plame Puts Critics to Shame
Valerie Plame, the covert CIA agent who was ‘outed’ after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly disagreed with the Bush administration, is testifying before Congress today and reportedly speaking very well.
AP via CNN:
Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA operative at the heart of a political scandal, told Congress Friday that senior officials at the White House and State Department “carelessly and recklessly” blew her cover to discredit her diplomat-husband.
Plame Wilson, whose 2003 outing triggered a federal investigation, said she always knew her identity could be discovered by foreign governments.
“It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover,” she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Washington Post: Valerie Plame, the Spy Who’s Ready to Speak for Herself
She has been silent nearly four years. Today, the CIA officer whose unmasking fueled a political uproar and criminal probe that reached into the White House is poised to finally tell her own story — before Congress.
Valerie Plame’s testimony will have all the trappings of a “Garbo speaks” moment on Capitol Hill, with cameras and microphones arrayed to capture the voice of Plame, the glamorous but mute star of a compelling political intrigue. But while she hopes to clear up her status as an agency operative when her name first hit newspapers in July 2003, America’s most publicized spy is unlikely to betray any details in open session about her mysterious career.
The reason: Plame remains gagged by the same secrecy rules that governed her 20 years as a CIA employee working overseas and at Langley in classified positions.
People close to Plame say her primary goal in testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is to knock down persistent claims that she did not serve undercover. “She is so tired of hearing that,” her mother, Diane Plame, said in an interview earlier this week.
UPDATE by MvdG
Think Progress has a good post up about Valerie Plame’s testimony “under oath before the House Government and Oversight Committee”. Plame said that she was still a covert agent at the moment her name was leaked to the press, she added: “While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.”
Think Progress has a video up, be sure to watch it. She doesn’t just explain that she was a covert agent, she also explains what the leak meant to her personally:
“all of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, all the value of my years of service, were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly”.
As both TP’s Faiz and The Carpetbagger Report point out, quite some people have denied that Plame was, at the time that Novak wrote his column, a covert agent. Plame (and CIA sources for that matter) contradicts that.
TCR has her entire open statement up – you all should read it in its entirety. She also pointed out:
“The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave, but I can’t provide details beyond that in this public hearing. But the concept is obvious. Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized, even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake.”
Long story short: everyone involved should be fired immediately. Karl Rove should be forced to leave the White House today. This is an embarrassment and I find it, to be quite honest, insulting to the American people and to those who choose to serve their country, for anyone to defend the conduct of certain people in the White House in this matter.
For an incredibly diverse, and constantly updated round-up go to Memeorandum.
71 Responses to “Valerie Plame Puts Critics to Shame”
[...] Mar 16th, 2007 by mvdg To read about Valerie Plame’s testimony go here (a post by Holly and yours truly). [...]
I watched this testimony on c-span, and was glad to see the Republican talking points -which minimized the “non-crime”, actually blamed the victims (the Wilsons) and an overzealous prosecutor for wasting the government’s time and taxpayer money, finally put to rest. Predictably, GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee tried to politicize Plame’s testimony by asking her what political party she belonged to.
The testimony which followed was equally amazing. The WH never looked into the breach of security, despite Bush’s promise of a complete investigation. The leakers (except for the unfortunate Libby) were never denied their security clearance, leaving open the possibility of a reoccurence whenever politically inconvenient info surfaces.
How could you have a post of this length, on this subject, that doesn’t mention the name Richard Armitage once? Remember him?? The LEAKER???
But of course Armitage was not the leaker but instead one of the leakers. It’s been well documented how this information was being shopped around by the administration to journalists but IM will never admit that because he’s too involved in trying to protect the Bushistas sterling reputation for honesty and integrity.
We’ve posted about the involvement of Richard Armitage in the past.
Did Armitage continue to out Plame – no, he brought this up as “gossip”. Liby and team became obsessed with Plame, why the overreaction when Chris Matthews asked questions. Mary Matlin is still carrying on with the hatchet job. Do we hear a peep from Armitage, no.
Valerie Plame Speaks…
Nearly four years after her cover at the CIA was blown, Valerie Plame testified before Congress today and she made it perfectly clear that “that senior officials at the White House and State Department “carelessly and recklessly” ble…
“Continue to out”??? What is that supposed to mean exactly?
I’m curious. Because once the information is out, its out. Rove can’t “continue” leaking anything.
But hey, who cares about logic, or facts, or the law or anything…let’s just “get” Rove.
BTW, In order for Novak to write his column outing Plame, he needed a confirmation. He got it from Karl Rove. It was recently revealed in the media that an unnamed GOP bigwig faxed a copy of Novak’s column to Rove before it was even published. Yet after helping to out a CIA agent, Rove still retains his security clearance.
Lets compare that to Col. Anthony Schaeffer who lost his clearance ostensibly due to 67$ in personal calls made on his military-issued cell phone. Slight double standard here.
Kim,
But Novak has also claimed that someone at the CIA also confirmed Plame’s status. Why would they have done that if she was supposed to be covert? That’s the crux of the issue: did the people involved have reason to believe that there was anything wrong in identifying her.
But hey, who cares about logic, or facts, or the law or anything…let’s just “get� Rove.
Who cares about logic, or facts, or the law or anything . . . let’s just continue to defend Rove no matter what sleazy, slimy activity he is involved in.
CS- Well, maybe Novak needs to come before Congress and reveal his source at the CIA. After all they were the ones who initiated the probe for outing her in the first place-why would they have asked for an investigation if they didn’t believe she was covert?
BTW, even if Fitz couldn’t prove a felony was committed for leaking, wouldn’t it be incumbent upon anyone who did reveal her name—Armitage, Rove, Libby or Fleisher to check first? Especially since she was actively working on proliferation in Iraq- the very issue that started the war! I have a very hard time believing that no one in the WH or State Dept questioned whether or not she was covert or that revealing her status would be harmful to national security before leaking her identity.
It looks to me like the whole affair was due to political games between the CIA and the White House. And that’s not to say that I defend either side in those games, but I do get the feeling that Cheney reacted so strongly to the Wilson op-Ed because of animosity, a feeling that there were people at CIA who wanted to discredit the White House. That doesn’t make it right for Cheney to discredit Wilson in an underhanded way (I think the most ridiculous part of all of this is that he could have defended the administration’s position against Wilson’s accusations in a direct way instead of attacking his credibility). But I think it’s likely that there was also an element of Wilson representing people who wanted to attack the WH credibility in an underhanded way as well. Why else would he have sought publicity in the press for his concerns instead of going to people who were in the position to know the answers to his questions first?
So in that sense, if that narrative is accurate, I’m not sure we can say that the CIA’s motives for asking for the investigation were pure or that they were driven by a desire for justice in an actual crime, rather than an opportunistic attempt by some at the CIA to bring down Rove and Cheney. In other words, it doesn’t necessarily prove that Plame’s status really was covert and since Novak did get confirmation from someone at CIA (unless you think he’s lying), then perhaps it’s not unreasonable to think that people in the administration really didn’t think that there was reason to have concern over whether or not she was covert either.
Sorry, but her testimony is a crock of partisan crap. The CIA has admitted that she recommended her husband, but she denies it now. He was found by the commission to have blatantly lied and misrepresent just about all aspects of the trip to Africa.
That Republicans tried to discredit him is true, but quite frankly, he and his lying wife needed to be discredited.
And I just plane don’t believe that she was a ‘covert agent’ in the sense of an ‘undercover agent’, and that real damage to National Security was done.
As was widely reported before it was unfashionable to report it anymore, the Wilson’s were very active members of the Washington social and political party scene, and her job and employer were very well known.
Geez, guys and gals. Still getting all kerfuffled over the details and not the big picture.
The story of the day was not Plame, but the drop-dead admission of James Knodell, director of the White House’s security office, that at no time was any effort made to figure out who had leaked classified information and how to plug said leak.
It doesn’t matter if Plame was a covert agent or an Avon sales agent. The White House had a plan and that was to embarrass a critic of the war and his wife and it simply didn’t matter if rules were broken.
She swore under oath that she was, AR. Also Fitzgerald claimed she was, as well as Hayden. Or are they also lying?? None of the other sources has sworn under oath. If you don’t trust Fitz or Hayden’s word, who’s word would you trust? Fitz could have kept going and tried to bring down Cheney, but he didn’t . He didn’t overreach like Ken Starr did, but kept a narrow focus.
CS- Cheney did have animosity towards the CIA. He and Scooter camped out there daily to interrogate agents working on Iraq’s WMD’s. And its true that the feeling was mutual. But Cheney has not gone under oath to tell us his side- he was as far away as you could get after stating he was willling to testify for Scooter. Does he seem like someone who wants the truth to come out about this?
How do you know that Wilson didn’t check with the CIA first before writing his op-ed? He may have been amazed that the discredited intel was used in the SOTU. Obviously the WH knew it was shaky, because it was retracted soon afterwards by Hadley.
I think your reasoning about Plame’s covert status is shaky, too. Just about anyone who worked in Plame’s division would have been considered covert because of the nature of her assignment. All I can see out of this is that Cheney and Libby were determined to make the case for war, badgering CIA agents out at Langley. When Wilson came back from Niger he was debriefed, then expected that his findings would affect our policy. When he saw that Bush used debunked intel in his SOTU, he became outraged and wrote his editorial. Cheney and Libby became obsessed with Wilson and when they found out who his wife was, set out to discredit him by outing her. She was outted 20 times by WH and State Dept officials. It was deliberate , reckless and showed utter disregard for her career or national security. It also further politicized our intelligence agencies who are supposed to reach their findings independently.
Even if they didn’t know, it was incumbent upon them to check on her status.
“And I just plane don’t believe that she was a ‘covert agent’ in the sense of an ‘undercover agent’, and that real damage to National Security was done.”
Perhaps that’s because you are not a ranking member of any national security or intelligence agency – like, I don’t know…the current head of the CIA who just testified that she was covert and damage was done.
Your ignorance doesn’t make it any less of a crime.
Kim,
Wilson’s OpEd itself posed questions, basically saying that he had no idea of whether or not there was a reason that his info had been downgraded. I don’t know for certain that he didn’t make some inquiries, but the way he stated it sure sounded as though he went straight to the media.
I agree with you on wishing that more people had been subpoaened, and I’d even go as far as agreeing that the administration officials who spread the info SHOULD have checked into Plame’s status thoroughly, but the situation does appear to me as though they really never even thought that was necessary. You are right though that I’m taking the word of people who weren’t put under oath and that’s why I wish more people had been put on the stand.
From the AP:
“I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him. There was no nepotism involved. I did not have the authority,” she said.
That conflicts with senior officials at the CIA and State Department, who testified during Libby’s trial that Plame recommended Wilson for the trip.
From Fitzgerald’s indictment:
On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson’s trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.
AR, the indictment statement doesn’t indicate that anyone testified to that effect. Doesn’t say who “believed” her to be responsible or why.
I’ll grant there are valid objections to Wilson, but CS’s statement certainly raises a question. (I think the most ridiculous part of all of this is that he could have defended the administration’s position against Wilson’s accusations in a direct way instead of attacking his credibility).
It Cheney and staff knew they could defuse the controversy openly and directly, why didn’t they? And surely, CS, they did know.
Two reasonable explanations suggest themselves: either they anticipated that they could counter Wilson’s article but that Wilson or someone else would then introduce something they couldn’t counter, or they simply don’t operate by engaging critics in an above-board debate of the issues.
It seems to me if you accept either of those two explanations, then much of the criticism of Wilson becomes irrelevant. Wilson didn’t start a war, didn’t make any claims about weapons of mass distruction. Should we really care about the mixed bag of Joe Wilson when there’s a pathologically vindictive Dick Cheney operating to who knows what end?
CS- Think about it. The same people who were making the case that Saddam had WMD’s (remember Cheney saying on cable news that he knew exactly where the sites were) outted a CIA agent whose primary responsibility was finding intel on those WMD’s. Her work included travel abroad with unknown contacts, whose identity might be jeopardized by outting her. How could they possibly have not thought that she was covert? I think a lot of the controversy over her covert status rests with the fact that she lived in DC, but if she was directing covert operations abroad, she should have been covered by the law. Its difficult to prove that Cheney, Rove , Libby and Armitage knew she was covert-which is why only Libby was prosecuted, and not for the crime of leaking.
If it was all an innocent misunderstanding, with no underlying crime, why did Libby try so hard to obstruct the investigation. He must have been hiding some powerful information if he was willing to go to jail to protect Cheney and Rove.
“Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.” ”
According to Novak’s original column, the CIA never claimed that Plame recommended Wilson for the job-that was misinformation put out by “senior administration officials” probably Rove and Armitage, to make it look like Wilson was some errand-boy doing his wife’s bidding- a victim of nepotism. The CIA, who actually sent Wilson, would be in a better position to know than the people who were assigned to discredit him.
> The story of the day was not Plame, but the drop-dead
> admission of James Knodell, director of the White House’s
> security office, that at no time was any effort made to
> figure out who had leaked classified information and
> how to plug said leak.
This from a leak-loathing administration…otherwise.
“From Fitzgerald’s indictment:
On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson’s trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip. ”
You mean Scooter (liar) Libby’s word is actually good anymore Austin? LMAO
Maybe it needs to be said again since you didn’t absorb it the first time Austin….”Your ignorance doesn’t make it any less of a crime.” -Eural
kritter:
You got it right!
If that is true, then don’t you find it a bit odd that the Wilson-Plames would choose to publicize her appearance? If she had these contacts who knew her presumably by an alias, then nothing would have been changed by the publication of the fact that “Joe Wilson’s wife works for the CIA.” However, once her image was made public, you are darn right that any contacts she may have had abroad might have been endangered. Think about that and then tell me if you still believe what Plame is saying. Their behavior after the ‘leak’ simply doesn’t add up with the way people would be expected to behave if their story were true.
And before anyone jumps on me for defending Cheney/Rove/Libby or what have you, I don’t think they should have made Plame’s identity public. I think it was foolish and foolhearty and completely unnnecessary, and was a political smear tactic. So I don’t say this stuff about Plame and Wilson to defend them, but my opinion is that there is blame just about everywhere you look in this story. Personally I think the reporters should bear more responsibility as well.
“If that is true, then don’t you find it a bit odd that the Wilson-Plames would choose to publicize her appearance?”
Her being seen publically didn’t matter as soon as her name, front company she worked became public, any intel agency worldwide atm knew what she looks like, don’t be naieve.
You are softening the wording for Cheney/Rove/Bush ALOT, call it what it technically is to do what they did, treason….atleast in G.H.W. Bush’s mind it is, or does it change now since it’s his son and GOP memebers at fault?
but my opinion is that there is blame just about everywhere you look in this story. Personally I think the reporters should bear more responsibility as well.
Granting the Wilson is compromised, and you’ll certainly get no argument from me that reporters fell short of their journalistic responsibilities, do you think Cheney, Rove, and Libby are no more culpable than anyone else?
That they didn’t just respond openly and directly to Wilson’s article is HUGE. It wasn’t just a tactical lapse. It indicates something very bad–much worse than anything Wilson or the reporters are guilty of, IMO.
In that respect, “there is blame just about everywhere you look in this story” seems more an obfuscation than a real argument.
If everyone is to blame, then no one is to blame, right?
And our government can go on outing its own spies for political purposes, just as long as they remember to do it the way the Bush Administration did: conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury.
Right?
There once was a guy
Who just passed by.
His name it does not matter.
But we followed his tip,
And Joe made the trip
(Our checkbooks got much fatter).
Pyst— It was undoubtedly a treasonous act, and a betrayal from the last source that an act like that should come from. Maybe that’s why Scooter fell on his sword to protect Cheney.
They originally thought that the matter would be handled and more than likely buried by friend-of-W, AG Ashcroft. But Ashcroft recused himself and referred the case to straight arrow Fitzgerald. Too bad Miers and Rove cooked up the idea to replace all 93 USA’s a little too late, lol!
CS,
You always do this. First you defend them, yes, defend them by putting forth their talking points that attack their enemies, presents what GOP partisans consider mitigating circumstances or claim that blame should be apportioned equally for some reason and then toss out some kind of qualifier trying to claim that you’re not doing what you’ve just done. What a stinking load of hypocrisy. It’s that kind of behavior that makes me angry towards you and fuels my accusations of partisanship that you always deny.
CS- Her image wasn’t made public until after she was outted by Novak. By then it no longer mattered. Why are you trying so hard to blame the victim?
Why is the right so loath to place the blame where it really belongs- not you CS- you at least seem to be blaming everyone! But rather than accept any responsibilty they persisted in tagging Plame as “having a desk job”, Wilson was a lying traitor, and their guys were victims of their own memory lapses and an overzealous prosecutor! Remember even mainstream journalists were calling for an apology for Karl Rove, when he was up to his neck in the mess.
If you put all of this crap out there, the average person can’t really get to the truth. BTW, I think Novak should be horsewhipped for his role in the mess.
CS- You do give that gang a lot more of the benefit of the doubt than they deserve. I’m sure you realize their pattern of secrecy, inflated rhetoric followed by a power grab, followed by collosal screw-up, followed by cover-up and personal destruction of anyone who has the temerity to try to tell the inconvenient truth. Look at the bodies they’ve left in their wake— Clarke, O’Neill, Larry Lindsay, Shinseki, Wilson, Anthony Schaeffer etc.
Look at who’s been awarded medals of freedom- Tenet, Wolfowitz, Rummy and Bremer. All massive screwups. Think they wanted them to go quietly into the night??
“Granting the Wilson is compromised, and you’ll certainly get no argument from me that reporters fell short of their journalistic responsibilities, do you think Cheney, Rove, and Libby are no more culpable than anyone else?”
I actually think Armitage and Fleischer were in on it also. Armitage panicked at the beginning and ran to his old friend Colin Powell, then threw himself on Fitz’s mercy. Fleischer also wanted to save his own skin and wrangled complete immunity. The reason Fitz didn’t name Armitage was he was trying to get more clarity on Cheney’s role. That’s why he accused Libby of creating a “cloud of suspicion” around the VP, when he obstructed the investigation. But I’m really sick of people blaming Plame, Wilson and people like Matt Cooper who were caught up in this through no fault of their own.
Just read Gen. Hayden’s statement. I completely retract any statements and comments concerning her covert status, against her being a covert operator, and her ‘outing’ not being damaging to our national interests.
I was as wrong as wrong can be on that part of this affair, and absolutely would not make any attempt to impeach or limit Gen. Hayden’s opinions on this matter, and accept them as statements of fact.
Gracious of you to admit that AR, but why wouldn’t you take Valerie Plame’s sworn testimony before Congress as the truth?Got Any proof that she lied about any of this? Or is it because she’s a Democrat?
Because I considered (past tense) her, and her husband and all their supporters, to be as partisan as those on the Right. Frankly, I thought they all lied, covered up, distorted, and presented half-truth’s to win political points.
There is still a lot of truth in that statement, particularly towards Mr. Wilson and the others (on both sides) IMHO, but Plame herself, on the subject of her status and role in the CIA, has been completely vindicated, at least in my eyes.
Personally, I think the leak was the result of bungling and not malicious intent. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, you’d expect the original leak to come from a Department less hostile than State. I haven’t seen any evidence that Armitage was ordered or otherwise directed to leak her name.
Secondly, after that initial leak (and I may be wrong here), the rest were confirmations as reporters interviewed for their stories.
Third, and probably most important, how does outing Plame really hurt Wilson? It hurts the CIA, it hurts operations she was involved it but not Wilson. Had it not blown up into a huge scandal it wouldn’t have hurt her much – she could move to a different division the CIA like many do when they’re out of operations. If anything, it’s helped them immensely both in stature and financially. If I were wanting to get revenge, or discredit someone, “outing” their wife’s CIA status would probably be last on my list. Wilson wasn’t some squeaky-clean person the administration couldn’t have attacked either directly or in an underhanded manner. There was no reason or purpose that I can find for outing her instead of going after Wilson.
Fourth, outing her was obviously doomed to backfire in their faces. If that was truly their intent and they knew it was illegal would they really have talked so openly to so many people about it and thereby expose themselves to the scandal they’re in now to say nothing of criminal prosecution? If outing was the goal, they would have covered their tracks and made it impossible to trace back to them.
It just doesn’t make much sense to me so I don’t quite buy the theory she was purposely outed to “get” Wilson. To me, it seems more like negligence and sloppiness related to their desire to discredit Wilson and his op-ed.
No, that’s not right at all. If everyone is to blame, then everyone is to blame. It indicates that there are a lot of corrupt people and a systemic problem that allows the corruption to flourish, and that’s why I feel it’s important to look at ALL of the guilty parties. Contrary to Jim’s angry reaction to my comments, this is why I tend to look at both sides of every story. When I see people taking one side, I generally suspect that there’s more to it than a one sided view, and I look deeper at the side that they seem to be ignoring. Jim (and probably others) feel that when I point out blame that others here are reluctant to see or admit, that I’m doing so in order to soften my criticism of the conservative/right/Bush side of the equation. I’m sure I’ll never be able to convince Jim otherwise, but hopefully some fairminded people can accept that I’m not doing any such thing. JJC objects because he feels that I’m saying that there is EQUAL blame to go around, which I never said. I would say based on what I know, Cheney/Rove were most culpable (if for no other reason than the authority of their position demanding higher accountability). I do qualify that because I really don’t know what they knew and when they knew it, but even with that they should not have engaged in this type of tactic anyway (and have to agree with superdestroyer in that doing this to undermine an ‘enemy’ is a pretty dumb thing to do anyway). AND, given that they chose to react in this way, even if they didn’t believe that Plame’s status was covert they should have taken pains to check into it thoroughly.
And Kim alludes to the fact that my analysis may be too nuanced for the average person to understand. Well, sorry, but if the public is too simple-minded it doesn’t mean we should dumb everything down for them. We don’t have to put partisan Democrats on a pedestal in order to highlight the guilt of the partisan Republicans. If both sides were wrong, then we should be able to say so and if there was a difference in relative amounts of guilt then I have no problem in stating that even if it means my ‘side’ were the guiltier ones, provided we have enough evidence of that.
The problem with the simplistic view that one side is wrong therefore the other side must be right, is that it enables bad future behavior on both sides.
Oops, that was Entropy that I was agreeing with, not superdestroyer (concerning whether or not it makes sense for the administration to have chosen the “outing of Plame” as a tactic to hurt Wilson.)
CS- AR-Just because someone is a partisan does not make them wrong. Did you ever think that Plame is a patriotic American, and that her husband became more partisan when he saw that his findings in Niger were being ignored, and that the info was being used to take us to war? Did you expect him to be sympathetic to this administration when Cheney et al exposed his wife, ruined her career, and jeopardized critical operations abroad??
Also to blame is the right wing smear machine-starting with Novak, and followed with just about every other conservative commentator. Every journalist or pundit that either minimized the damage or knowingly put out misinformation is at fault. I don’t hear any outrage from commenters on the right that they’ve been continuously lied to about the facts including- Plame’s status as a covert agent, the unimportance of her mission at the CIA, the lack of credibility of Wilson since he was sent by his wife, that the aluminum tubes were for centrifuges, that Libby merely had a memory lapse, that Plame outted herself since she appeared in Vanity Fair with Wilson. The lies go on and on and you should ask yourselves why you continue to read and believe the sources that have perpetuated them. Plame ‘s version was suspect just because she isn’t a conservative Republican- so you wouldn’t give a patriotic American the benefit of the doubt. Isn’t that in itself a terrible partisan bias????
CS- There is nothing wrong with looking at all sides objectively- but I don’t see that that is how you’ve looked at this case at all. Right from the beginning you’ve been trying to spread the blame around instead of putting it on the perpetrators—Novak, Armitage, Libby, Rove , Cheney, Fleischer, and Bush. Bush promised this big investigation, that he would remove anyone responsible for the leak. Big lie. Also if your number one goal is to defend this country from terrorists who could get ahold of WMD’s, you don’t take out operations which would have revealed where those WMD’s are located. It undermines everything this adminstration says they stand for, and reveals them for what they really are- political hacks and cynical opportunists who have used the GWOT to further their own narrow ambitions.
kritter – you make good points, but it was not Cheney et al that exposed her – it was Armitage. And Armitage and Powell are not friends of Cheney (or the WH for that matter), and would not have done anything to help him. Whatever they did they did for their own reasons.
That said, it still doesn’t excuse anyone else who subsequently verified the information, as she was a classified operative.
Kim,
What I question is right from the start, why Wilson took the action that he took. I can understand him feeling concerned that the administration was still using a claim that he felt he debunked (though he didn’t- he failed to prove it but that’s not the same thing as disproving it). His OpEd itself raises the questions and admits that perhaps there were reasons that his information had been downgraded. I’m sorry, but there’s no plausible reason that I can understand for taking the leap straight to a “whistleblower” position before going to the people who would be able to set the record straight first.
So my distrust of Wilson and Plame goes straight to that, their initial actions. Then when you look at their later actions and desire to capitalize on the publicity afterward, to me it becomes implausible to see it any way other than corroborration of my initial impression.
And you and everyone else, as AR points out, seem to forget that we now know that Cheney and Rove at most confirmed her identity rather than being the actual leakers. I’m sorry if my outrage over that doesn’t rise to the same level that it does for you, but the fact is that this makes it more plausible that they actually didn’t believe that her identity was secret at that point. As I have already stated, they still shouldn’t have done this because any dispute of what Joe Wilson said should have been a direct dispute of what he said, not some backhanded attack on his credibility.
But to me the facts just don’t support the level of outrage over the outing itself (because Wilson and Plame themselves showed very little regard for privacy before and after the event) and to whatever degree that it was harmful, you still have to look at whether or not the people who spread the information had reason to understand what they were doing. And even on that, I’ll grant you that an abundance of caution should have been taken and wasn’t, but since it’s been said that Plame’s status was well known to reporters, it’s hard for me to say that Ari Fleisher and Scooter Libby were outing her when they mentioned her to reporters (because obviously, they too may have been under the impression that they weren’t telling the reporter anything that he/she didn’t already know.)
I’m going to bow out of the discussion; I’m sure that some people will feel that I’m minimizing but you probably aren’t getting the full gist of what I’m saying (you have to keep in mind that my outrage is directed at the fact that the administration attacked ad hominem instead of defending themselves on substance- not over the outing itself because the facts of that are too muddy to me to feel that it was so egregious.)
kritter,
“o you wouldn’t give a patriotic American the benefit of the doubt. Isn’t that in itself a terrible partisan bias????”
Your points about partisanship are completely valid. The right has consistently spun the Plame controversy to its own ends. However, I hope that when the time comes that you’ll give a political opponent who is a patriotic American the benefit of the doubt as Plame should have received. There is a left-wing smear machine too, you know, and their tactics are just as condemnable as the right’s.
BTW, one more thing to add to my argument a couple of comments up is the lack of any criminal prosecutions on the substance of the case. If the leak was the result of malicious intent, why was Armitage not prosecuted? And if you don’t prosecute Armitage, then how can you prosecute others who confirmed it? Much of the left has focused on the Libby prosecution as the smoking gun, but there were no indictments for leaking by anyone, even though it’s pretty clear who said what and when. I think this goes back to intent. I think Armitage screwed the pooch, so to speak, but his leak wasn’t intentional or malicious.
CS,
To piggyback on some of what you said:
The information, such as it was, that Wilson brought back was one piece of an intelligence puzzle. Wilson may have felt it was a definitive debunking, but it would have been weighed with other evidence at the time. It’s also important to note that Wilson’s information amounted to interviews with local officials and business people in Niger. Since support to Iraq’s WMD programs was illegal it’s hardly surprising that the people interviewed in Niger by Wilson would not admit to it as they would, in essence, be admitting to illegal activity. Wilson, to them, was just some random US official, hardly someone they could trust. So, Wilson’s information was valuable but his conclusions were not definitive. The administration had every opportunity to publicly call them into question but instead they sought to undermine his credibility. Shame on them for that, but I agree with CS that Wilson shouldn’t be placed on some kind of pedestal. His wife, though, was an innocent party in my view.
entropy- thanks for the intellectual honesty. I’m not putting Wilson on a pedestal, just saying that his actions are pretty understandable. He and his wife shouldn’t have been made to look like the villains here- and statements like “there’s plenty of blame to go around” just make the picture more murky.
I do think the outting was intentional-the plot was hatched between Libby and Cheney-the piece of the puzzle that’s missing is how they got Armitage to cooperate?? He wasn’t prosecuted by Fitz because it is so hard to prove intent, and because he went to him right away and admitted what he had done. There’s no way that I would believe that Cheney’s office just confirmed Plame’s status- that makes no sense at all. Novak’s column was faxed to Karl Rove 3 days before it was published—-that’s a conspiracy.
Wilson may have felt it was a definitive debunking, but it would have been weighed with other evidence at the time. It’s also important to note that Wilson’s information amounted to interviews with local officials and business people in Niger… Wilson, to them, was just some random US official, hardly someone they could trust.
1. There was other evidence. The Ambassador to Niger had also investigated the matter, also found there was no evidence that Iraq had recently tried to buy yellowcake, and had also submitted a report to that effect to the White House. She told Wilson as much when he arrived. So the WH ignored at least two reports that didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear.
Considering that the WMD claims turned out to be false, including the yeelowcake claims, and considering that the war in Iraq was begun under false pretences, giving the WH any benefit of the doubt is a bit absurd.
2. Wilson was not ‘just some random US official’ to the people he spoke to. This gets to the heart of why Wilson went. He’d had years of experience in that region; he knew a lot of the government officials there, and he was held in high repute by them.