After months of following the Joe Wilson Valerie Plame
story, I am finally convinced that Democrats think if
they repeat a lie often enough, a majority of Americans
will believe it. What else to conclude about the
repeated lie of the “covert” status of Valerie Plame?
Neither space nor
patience allows me to go into all of the details here
but a great summary of where we stand in America about
who is lying to whom over the war in Iraq, why we went
there, WMDs and the Joe Wilson Valerie Plame “kerfluffle,”
as it has been characterized by Jim Taranto of the
Wall Street Journal, may be found on the website of
Commentary Magazine, (CommentaryMagazine.com.) “Who
Is Lying About Iraq” by Norman Podhoretz should be
read by every American.
The crux of this latest
bout of finger pointing by the left at the Bush
administration is that Vice President Cheney et al
“outed” a covert CIA agent and that such behavior is
treasonous. But if Lewis Libby or Karl Rove or Dick
Cheney or anyone else in the Bush administration had
outed a covert CIA operative, doesn’t it make sense that
that person would have been indicted by Fitzgerald in
his two-year grand jury investigation?
Newsmax reported on
Nov 4., “In the last six days, there have been 261
references to Plame's ‘covert’ status in mainstream
media accounts, according to a Lexis Nexis search. The
wave of erroneous reporting continues despite
Fitzgerald's clear denials during his press conference
[wherein he announced] Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby's
indictment. Fitzgerald told reporters: “I am not
speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert.
And anything I say is not intended to say anything
beyond this: that she was a CIA officer from January
1st, 2002, forward . . . We have not made any allegation
that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert
agent. We have not charged that. And so I'm not making
that assertion.”
Fitzgerald explained
instead that Plame's CIA association was “classified,” a
security status enjoyed by almost everyone who works at
the agency.
In order to be
considered “outable,” a person—which if his identity
were revealed to the public would violate the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act—would had to have
been stationed undercover, overseas, within the last
five years prior to the outing.
But a story that
appeared in USA Today revealed what Valerie
Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote in
his book, “The Politics of Truth,” about the timeframe
of their activities overseas. Wilson wrote he and his
future wife both returned from overseas assignments in
June 1997. Neither spouse was again stationed overseas.
Plame would have been stationed in the U.S. for six
years before Bob Novak published his column citing her
over two years ago. As USA Today notes, the
column's date is important because the law against
unmasking the identities of U.S. spies says a “covert
agent” must have been on an overseas assignment “within
the last five years.” The assignment also must be
long-term, not a short trip or temporary post, two
experts on the law say.
In a subsequent
interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Wilson admitted, “My
wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob
Novak blew her identity.”
And just this past
Wednesday, Bob Woodward’s sworn testimony before the
grand jury was released. The Washington Post’s Assistant
Managing Editor said, “Fitzgerald asked for my
impression about the context in which Mrs. Wilson was
mentioned. I testified that the reference seemed to me
to be casual and offhand, and that it did not appear to
me to be either classified or sensitive. I testified
that according to my understanding an analyst in the CIA
is not normally an undercover position.”
n
