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July 19, 2006
Wilson-Plame: There never was any "There" there
Lefty journalist Christopher Hitchens with the final word on the Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame kerfuffle.
Robert Novak's July 12 column and his appearance on Meet the Press ... have dissolved any remaining doubt about the mad theory that the Bush administration "outed" Ms. Valerie Plame as revenge for her husband's refusal to confirm the report by British intelligence that Iraqi officials had visited Niger in search of uranium.
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When one thinks of the oceans of ink and acres of paper that have been wasted on this mother of all nonstories, one wants to weep for the journalistic profession as well as for the trees. Well before Novak felt able to go public, he had said that his original source was not "a partisan gunslinger," which by any reasonable definition means that he was consciously excluding the names of Karl Rove or Dick Cheney. And how likely was it anyway that either man, seeking to revenge himself on Joseph Wilson, would go to a columnist who is known to be one of Wilson's admirers (praise for him and his career was a central theme in the original 2003 article), is friendly with the CIA, and is furthermore known as a staunch and consistent foe of the administration's intervention in Iraq? The whole concept was nonsense on its face.
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No reporter or lawyer concerned with the case believes that Novak's original source was any other than Richard Armitage. I have heard it lamely said that, if true, this would "undercut" the idea that Wilson and Plame were targets of an administration vendetta. No. it wouldn't "undercut" the idea. It would annihilate it. Mr. Armitage exceeds even his own former boss and current best friend Colin Powell in visceral hatred of the neoconservatives. In that sense, and in his collusion with Bob Woodward on the story of the origins of the war, he actually is a "partisan gunslinger"—but on the Wilson side of the argument. However, in the present instance, that would only lend credence to Novak's testimony that the "disclosure"—if it was a disclosure and not just a confirmation of something well-known—was inadvertent.
So, after almost three years and an exhaustive investigation by a fairly serious and renowned prosecutor involving the jailing of a distinguished reporter, it has been concluded that there was never any breach of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act to begin with. One official at the White House has allegedly been caught in a secondary or even tertiary conflict of evidence. And the hapless Wilsons have been obliged to file their own civil suit, as if the "discovery" it might afford will surpass what Fitzgerald, armed with a quiver of subpoenas and waivers, has been able to accomplish. Meanwhile, the evidence continues to mount ... that the original British intelligence on the Niger connection was genuine, and that Wilson missed it.
What will the Moonbat Left obsess over next? Or will they simply dismiss the impeccably-credentialed Fellow Traveller Hitchens as simply another lackey of the Bushites?
Of all the lunacy in the post 9-11 years, the Valerie Plame "scandal" is the lamest of the lame.
Posted by Mike Lief at July 19, 2006 12:48 PM
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