More Lame Plame Plodding

For the life of me, I cannot determine how this woman is so damned important. Was it a slow news week—like Abu Ghraib—when this story eventually broke, or what? For all those readers whose eyes glaze over when they catch the mantric rise of vehemence in the press over anything regarding this administration, let me explain who Valerie Plame is.

Valerie Plame worked at CIA, in the WMD non-proliferation branch of the government organization. There is debate over whether or not the woman was a covert operative, and whether or not her cover was actually blown, presumably by the administration. Now, the debate is centered over sources that supposedly tipped off Matt Cooper of TIME, and Judith Miller of the New York Times.

Miller is sitting in jail for failing to cooperate with federal investigators, and Cooper sang like a canary when he dramatically received the "all clear" from his source to reveal it to investigators. What is more retarded about Miller is that the main investigator, Patrick Fitzgerald, already knows who her source is. He admitted such to the judge overseeing the Miller case. He knows him, but for some convoluted reason, they are trying to force her to give that person up.
If you know who the person is, why not just go talk to them?

But Newsweek today seems to blow open some of this three ring circus, especially involving Matt Cooper and Karl Rove.

For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.

Okay, so Rove yacked with a lawyer. The last time I checked, that is not a prosecutable offense, nor, under oath, did Rove claim otherwise.

The controversy arose when Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying that he had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson said he had found no evidence to support the claim. Wilson's column was an early attack on the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify going to war in Iraq. The question for the prosecutor is whether someone in the administration, in an effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, intentionally revealed the covert identity of his wife.

First of all, Wilson was sent to Niger on a trip arranged by his wife, not by the Director of Central Intelligence. Those charges were not first made by the administration, but by Great Britain—a statement Tony Blair, MI-5/6, French, German, and Italian intelligence all stand behind to this day. The column was an attack on the administration as it basically stated that the administration blew up phony intelligence to use an excuse to execute the Iraq phase of the War on Terror.

But that is not the only evidence that we had in hand. We still had all the evidence from 1996-1998 used by then-President Clinton in his justification to continue pounding Saddam with cruise missiles, and for the Congress to pass a resolution calling for regime change in Iraq. Those that stand firmly opposed to this phase of the war seem to have forgotten anything that happened in this nation prior to 9/11, or for that matter, prior to President Bush’s first term in office.

As for the "covert identity of his wife," I seriously must question this point. If anyone does any serious digging (of which you do not have to do much of) Valerie Plame was known to work for the CIA. From my own researching, she was an analyst, not a covert operator. She was known in many Washington circles to be working for the CIA, in the WMD branch, and her work was anything but "covert." She arranged the trip for her husband for who knows what reason (was Clinton in town that week?), and he sat around Niger drinking tea, and laughing it up with the boys. He launched no serious inquiry into checking the allegation made by Tony Blair, and accepted within the intelligence community.

Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... "

Wilson went on a non-authorized trip, arranged and approved by his wife, to slime the president. (I thought she was an analyst, not the DCI. Is there not a protocol to be followed at CIA? How about a chain-of command?)

Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.

A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa.

So, the "evil" Karl "Darth Vader" Rove did not blow the lid open on Plame’s identity to Cooper, and neither Cheney or the DCI had authorized or known about Wilson’s trip to Niger. Rove has testified before three grand juries on this issue, and has sworn—under oath—that he did not blow the woman’s cover. Though I am still trying to figure out what sort of cover she might have had.

People in Washington knew who she was, and whom she worked for. She and her husband, after this flap began, did a layout in Vanity Fair. A new layout in Vanity Fair is coming out with Plame in it (sans scarf and sunglasses this time.) She was not a known NOC—that, confirmed by the CIA. This whole thing has been blown out of proportion. The people who are winning in this game are Wilson, his wife, and the two reporters that have gone from know-nothing no-names to martyrs.

I expect more book deals to come out of this. I expect an ABC/CBS/NBC movie of the week out of this. Hell, I would even expect a Larry King Live interview out of this one. But what will not come out of this is who leaked her name. It was no one in the administration. Rove was the last guy in the administration that could have. Anyone that might have in the administration is so far down the rungs of the ladder that it is not worth the continued zeal. This will not bring down the president, nor the vice-president. It is time for the media to put their knives away, and go back to the drudgery of inventing the news instead of reporting the news.

And as for Joe Wilson: He once stated that he wanted to see Karl Rove "frog-marched" out of the White House in handcuffs. If I were him, I would keep quiet because if I were in the president’s shoes, he would have some serious explaining to do. He went on an unauthorized trip, on behalf of the CIA, without the Director’s knowledge or approval. On the taxpayer’s dime he wined and dined it up over there, and did little digging for the truth. And when the story starts to get going, it is admitted his wife—acting outside the proper protocols of the CIA—had put the whole trip together.

Who is to be "frog-marched?" I think Joe Wilson and his wife would look lovely in a matching set of wrist bracelets.

The Bunny ;)