I’m not sure many people outside the Beltway and polarized activists gives a damn about this entire scandal that somehow involves Karl Rove, Joe Wilson (a very lazy former ambassador) and his wife. But since it’s drawing so much attention, and I’ve been sick of what seems to be a poorly executed but thoroughly “non” scandal for the past 2 years, I’d like to hightlight Joe Wilson’s admission from his little-read book last year:
It was Saddam Hussein’s information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as “Baghdad Bob,” who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade — an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium.
That’s according to a new book Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy enriched “yellowcake” uranium. Wilson wrote that he did not learn the identity of the Iraqi official until this January, when he talked again with his Niger source.
I blogged it at the time, after Wilson appeared on “The Daily Show” to revel in his brief celebrity, and wondered if anyone else was paying attention. Apparently not. So Wilson went to Niger, did the bare minimum of actual work, then came home and said his pathetic little investigation cast doubt on a claim in Bush’s state of the union? Let’s get this out of the way – Niger was never mentioned in Bush’s SOTU. He said “Africa,” and it may be splitting hairs, but Wilson’s lazy stroll through Niger didn’t do much to evaluate this claim. That’s not to say the intelligence wasn’t bad, or forged, or not reliable for another reason. But Wilson’s trip added nothing but political bloviating.
Second, I have yet to see any evidence that Valerie Plame was covert. Working in the CIA doesn’t mean you’re under wraps, and it’s common to leave covert status for a relatively quiet but not at all hidden desk job. The prosecutor in this case has gone much further than he needed to evaluate this central concern, and through his mad rush to stick innocent journalists under the lamp, has implicitly associated heavy-handed media treatment with an administration that, whatever its contempt for the press, never tried to jail anyone. That pisses me off.
This story has been misreported from the beginning, built on speculation and in the end will have little impact on respect for the law or protecting national security. I’m not saying that Karl Rove didn’t act unethical – we really don’t know yet. What I’m am saying is this supposed outing of Plame was an unusually stupid PR move by an administration that should know better, but also a case of pack-journalism hysteria and prosecutorial zealotry.
If you can stand it, I put down my condensed thoughts on this already here.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.