The Truth will prevail, but only if we demand it from Congress!

9-11 Inside Job and Neocons Hacked 2004

SCROLL DOWN

[ Home ] [ 9-11 Inside Job ] [ Federal Reserve ] [ Hacking Elections ] [ Iraq War ] [ Fake War on Terror ] [ New World Order ] [ Media ] [ Peak Oil-Petro Euros ] [ Fascism in U.S. ] [ Editorials ] [ About Us ] [ Links ] [ Contact Us ]

Home
Up

Pundits on Plame: Clueless and conscienceless!

Loyal GOP mouthpieces insisted Valerie Plame had a desk job.

Now that we know she was a covert CIA operative, will they

apologize? Of course not.

By Joe Conason

July 23, 2005  |  Under intense political pressure, once scarce information about the CIA leak prosecution is

suddenly emerging from "persons familiar with the case." Should those whispers prove accurate, White House

Deputy Chief of Staff Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove and vice-presidential Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby

may yet be held accountable for whatever roles they actually played in the exposure of Valerie Wilson's CIA

identity -- and in the cover-up of that potential crime.

Accountability will never extend, however, to their eager accessories: the pundits who assisted the cover-up by

persistently spreading disinformation about Valerie Wilson.

Unlike officials who lie to the FBI or the grand jury, those writers cannot be legally penalized for their deceptions,

let alone their imbecilities. But they deserve at the very least to be noted and remembered, especially now that one

of their favorite falsehoods -- the claim that Wilson 's identity wasn't secret -- has been decisively disproved.

On Thursday, the Washington Post published the most important new fact of the Wilson case on Page 1.

Quoting current and former government officials, the Post reported that "a classified State Department

memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a

paragraph marked '(S)' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have

been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials."

That June 10, 2003, memorandum, prepared by a State Department intelligence official, was previously reported by

the New York Times to have been circulated among top Bush administration officials in their quest for information

about Wilson 's husband, former ambassador and administration critic Joseph Wilson. According to Post reporters

Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei, the memo mentions Valerie Wilson, by her married name, in its second paragraph.

They quote two sources saying that the document "was clearly marked" to warn readers that the information about

her was classified "secret." The Post story also notes that the CIA classifies the names of its covert officers as "secret."

Pincus is among the nation's most authoritative reporters on national security and intelligence issues. Ironically, he also

happens to be the reporter whose careful, skeptical reporting about the intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction

was buried by Post editors during the political prelude to the war -- a decision that they have since admitted was mistaken.

In other words, the Post correspondent knows what he's talking about, in telling contrast with the gallery of right-wing

blowhards and fakers who have lately misinformed us about the career of " Wilson 's wife."

Writing in the Weekly Standard, humorist P.J. O'Rourke mocked "the cover that Valerie Plame was using as a covert

CIA agent" as "a masterpiece of hiding in plain sight ... Plame was working a desk job at CIA headquarters." How

does O'Rourke know so much about her work? He doesn't actually know anything, but puffs his "experience as a

foreign reporter" to let innocent readers think he does.

Certainly O'Rourke never bothered to read the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which covers any agent who

operated covertly within five years before her identity was unlawfully exposed. And despite his exciting sojourns

overseas, it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that whether he knows (or thinks he knows) the identity of CIA

station officials working under "official cover" in some countries, he still wouldn't have a clue about those working

under "nonofficial cover" (like Valerie Wilson). Perhaps neither O'Rourke nor his editors at the Weekly Standard

understand the difference between the two kinds of agents, but then basic ignorance never discourages verbal

flatulence at that fine publication.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Steyn wrote that "Valerie Plame ... wasn't a 'clandestine officer' and indeed

hadn't been one for six years. So one can only 'leak' her name in the sense that one can 'leak' the name of the

checkout clerk at Home Depot." It is impossible to tell where the pompous Canadian columnist obtained this

information about her status at the agency where she has served her country ever since she left college. Like

O'Rourke, he speaks with great authority on subjects of which he possesses no relevant knowledge, only talking

points from the Republican noise machine.

"Valerie Plame wasn't a covert field operative," wrote National Review Online's Jonah Goldberg. Actually, she

was. No doubt Goldberg was just repeating what he heard from a couple of Republican legal experts while

watching TV. But he stated it as fact. That's what can pass for informed opinion (or even journalism!) in the

brave new world of the blogosphere.

Yet similar bunk recently appeared in the august old-media newsprint of the New York Times, under the byline

of columnist John Tierney. He suggested that "the law doesn't seem to apply to Ms. Wilson because she apparently

hadn't been posted abroad during the five previous years [before her identity was published by columnist Robert

Novak in July 2003] ... Ms. Wilson was compared to James Bond in the early days of the scandal, but it turns out

she had been working for years at C.I.A. headquarters, not exactly a deep-cover position."

What Tierney surmises about who is or isn't working at CIA headquarters and whether their names are classified

is of little interest, of course, since he has no knowledge beyond whatever came over the fax from the Republican

National Committee. What is interesting is how confidently he pours forth such bullshit into the newspaper of record.

Many of the Republican noise machine's spinning cogs repeated the "Plame wasn't secret" memo, including such

intelligence experts as David Limbaugh and the proprietors of the New York Post editorial page. Then again, no

conscientious writer needed special expertise to understand and explain the evidence indicating that Valerie Wilson,

with whom I have had the honor to become acquainted this year, was certainly a covert agent. That evidence was

easily obtainable long before the Pincus story appeared to confirm it.

Spread on the public record were the basic facts concerning the prosecution of her case, which began with a direct

request from the CIA to the Justice Department's criminal division, following the agency's own two-month internal

investigation. It seems most unlikely that agency officials made such a request, with heavy implications for the Bush

White House, unless they had obtained the approval of then CIA Director George Tenet.

The appointment of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald came several weeks later -- after the Justice Department,

then overseen by Attorney General John Ashcroft, concluded that an investigation was warranted. The predicate of

that conclusion by two top officers of the Bush Cabinet was that a covert agent had in fact been exposed.

Now one would think these facts would be plain enough to anyone capable of rudimentary reporting, not to mention

simple reasoning. Whatever O'Rourke, Steyn, Goldberg and Tierney lack in those fundamental capacities, they

compensate with jaw-jutting certainty and zealous enthusiasm. That's why none of them is likely to offer Valerie