July 23, 2003

Another Non-Scandal

The Left is in a tizzy over a charge that top Bush administration officials illegally revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent in an effort to discredit her husband, the author of a report that appeared to discredit claims that Iraq sought to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger. In the weird world of Washington DC scandals, this is as inside-baseball as it gets.

It's also probably a load of bunk, but that isn't stopping the Lefty side of the blogosphere from going on the attack.

The first four paragraphs of this Newsday article show the Democrats in full attack mode:

Democrats yesterday denounced the alleged disclosure by administration officials of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, and members of both parties indicated a congressional investigation is likely.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), an Intelligence Committee member, said it plans to investigate who revealed the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, who is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. In a move that sparked the current controversy over allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger, Wilson revealed two weeks ago that he had warned the Bush administration the reports were unfounded.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the intelligence panel, called the disclosure of Plame's identity "vile" and "a highly dishonorable thing to do; highly, highly dishonorable." He, too, said a probe is probably necessary and accused the White House of strong-arm tactics aimed at those who question their policies. "To go after him [Wilson] is one thing, but to go after his wife is another thing," Rockefeller said.

Former intelligence officials joined in denouncing the release of Plame's name by "two senior administration officials" to conservative columnist Robert Novak.

It appears that Corn, a Lefty who writes for the very left-wing magazine The Nation, sliced and diced a paragraph from a Robert Novak column in order to manufacture the scandal. His article was the first to make the allegations that the Bush administration illegally outed Plame as a CIA undercover operative, in order to discredit her diplomat husband.

The core of the mini-scandal is the charge that "two senior administration officials" told Novak, a famous conservative political columnist and commentator, Valerie Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. But that is not what Novak wrote. You see, I'm not just a reader of the news, I'm a journalist with a very inquisitive mind - and an Internet connection. And I've got Google. So I did what those Lefty bloggers apparently didn't do before swallowing Corn's version hook, line and sinker. I Googled and found Novak's article. Here is what he wrote, verbatim and in its entirety, about Valerie Plame:

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 his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

Corn, conspicuously, does not quote Novak's entire paragraph anywhere his piece - and Corn's piece is the foundational article of the entire "scandal." Corn does assert that Novak told him that "government officials" told him of Plame's real job, but it is telling that the words Corn said Novak uses are "government officials," which could be virtually anyone in the government. And Novak's piece does not source Plame's identity to the "senior administration officials," as Corn implies it does. In Corn's piece, in fact, the allegation that it was "administration officials" seems to rest on a claim by Corn that Wilson told Corn that Novak said so. That's third-party. It's hearsay. It would not be admissible as evidence in a trial. And Wilson, remember, has an ax to grind.

Yet the Lefty bloggers are grabbing Corn's spin and claiming they have "confirmation" and "official" proof that the White House released Plame's identity as a smear against Wilson. (How, exactly, it is a smear, I don't know...)

Did administration officials "out" Plame? The evidence is rather lacking. In fact, it is increasingly clear that Wilson is the one who is revealing his wife's identity as an undercover agent - if indeed that's what she really is. As even Kleiman unwittingly admitted in his blog item I linked to above, when he said this: Joseph Wilson, who had previously been slightly cagy about the role of his wife, Valerie Plame, has now publicly charged on NBC that the Administration deliberately blew his wife's cover as an a act of intimidation. In doing so, he implicitly confirms that she was in fact a covert agent.

UPDATE: The anonymous blogger of Seamole has some more background on Plame and Wilson. Start here. Then go here and here. Would it surprise you to know that Wilson once worked for Al Gore? Would it surprise you to know that Wilson delivered a keynote speech at a June conference of an activist group that opposed the Iraq war and blamed Iraq's misery on U.S. compliance with U.N. sanctions rather than on Saddam's refusal to comply with U.N. resolutions?

UPDATE: Don't miss Donald Luskin's coverage of this non-scandal. In part of it, he wonders how Corn could know that Plame was an undercover CIA operative, "since he (Corn) says Wilson wouldn't tell him 'whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee,' and he cites no other sources." So, perhaps it is Corn who outed Plame?

Also don't miss Tom Maguire's coverage over at his Just One Minute blog. He's been covering it since the Corn article first appeared, and is doing a better job of it than I am. An excerpt:

The distinction between "administration" and "government" officials haunts this story. TIME clearly makes a distinction, and so does Mr. Corn here. My impression is that "Administration" means what it says; "government" is non-White House executive branch. In this story, the CIA would be "government", and White House officials would be "Administration".

So, when asked directly by Mr. Corn, Mr. Novak says his sources for the key personal information are "government". This agrees with the TIME formulation. The phrase "and its accurate" may suggest, to deep de-constructionists, that Novak got independent verification from a second source.

And Mr. Wilson's description of Mr. Novak's discussions with him? We know that Mr. Novak claimed some "administration" sources in his own column, so the fact that he also claims that with Ambassador Wilson is not news. Since the specifics of his conversation with Ambassador Wilson are not available, I deem this to be inconclusive.

However, Mr. Corn was surely eager to get Mr. Novak to admit to "administration" sources, and could not...

Novak was coy in his original column as to sources, but there is a lot to suggest he got a lot of his details from the CIA. TIME pretty probably had CIA, or at least "government" sources, for info similar to Novak's. Consequently, the headline for this scandal may one day be "CIA in Disarray - Feud Outs Agent". If the fallout from the Iraqi war includes a politicized and divided CIA, that is bad for the nation.

But it may better for Bush than the alternative, which is that his own aides outed a covert agent and compromised national security in order to punish a political opponent. For Bush supporters (hey, that includes me!) the choices seem to be bad, and worse.

A Reader Reminds Me: The first commandment for Presidents ought to be, "Don't Pick a Fight With The CIA".

Scroll up for a follow-up from Luskin....