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Tuesday, July 12, 2005Who's responsible for leaking Plame's identity? Rove - and Wilson and PlameI'm not sure where the Plame/Rove thing will go, but here's my uninformed, er, carefully considered opinion: 1. Knowingly leaking the identity of a covert agent is a no-no, first because it can get our people killed, second because that knowledge can discourage agents from signing up or sticking out their necks for us. 2. Unknowingly revealing information that can reveal the identity of a covert agent is a no-no for the same reason given in number one, but is understandable and not illegal if I understand things correctly. 3. Abusing one's protection as a covert agent to subvert the policy of the United States government is a no-no. I believe it's called sedition or treason depending on how you go about it. Joe Wilson wrote a NYT op-ed in which he said that the CIA had sent him to Nigeria to follow up a "Saddam's buying uranium" story. Once Joe Wilson wrote his op-ed, he invited the question, Who in the CIA sent him? Joe Wilson did not go out of his way to say that a) the DCIA was not the authorizer of the trip, b) the authorizer of the trip was on a distinctly different wavelength than the DCIA and c) the DCIA didn't agree with his conclusions. Indeed, the impression was left that the CIA, from the Director down, had sat on something crucial for the sake of the administration. Within the CIA, disagreements have been known to exist. Some thought the Soviets were going to overrun us while others (a very few) saw the Soviet Union crumbling. Just because someone in the CIA thinks something doesn't make it so. And just because there's disagreement doesn't mean there's a great plot to hide the truth. Had Joe Wilson started his op-ed, "An associate at the CIA who was dubious of Director Tenet's conclusions sent me to Nigeria to investigate and I think she was right to be skeptical," I would be fine with this. But that would have undermined old truth-telling Joe's aura by showing he was in the middle of a dispute within the agency, rather than descending Moses-like to reveal what the administration had known but kept from us. Reporters are supposed to be taught to follow the money, to see who benefits from surprising turns in stories, etc. The French advise in every scandal: Cherchez la femme. La femme, however, was Wilson's wife, and she used her authority to lay the groundwork for undermining her boss' conclusions about a highly sensitive matter. What is scary in this case is that we are faced with two horrors: Because of the way Valerie Plame exercised her authority and her husband invoked it as representative of the CIA's evidence about Saddam, our choices were to a) eventually out a covert agent in figuring out what was going on or b) allow a civil servant to use federal powers to challenge the approach of our elected leaders in a forum where they couldn't respond. Karl Rove is probably in the wrong. But he was put in a box. If the American people have a right to know that some in the CIA were highly skeptical on the WMD issue, they also have a right to know how reliable the skeptics are. If you tell me that the director sent you to Nigeria but you bailed when you discovered the awful truth he was hiding, I'm impressed. If you tell me your wife thought her boss was off-base and when you checked it out you agreed, I'm a little less wowed. Karl Rove should face serious questions about potentially leaking Valerie Plame's identity. Joe Wilson should face serious questions about publishing the findings of a highly sensitive mission in the New York Times. Valerie Plame should face really serious questions about a) assigning sensitive missions to the sort of people who write New York Times op-eds about them and b) working outside of CIA channels to affect CIA and/or national security policy when she couldn't sell her view to her bosses. If Martha Stewart sent her boyfriend to investigate whether her special placemats were made with child labor and he said no, we wouldn't be bowled over and gnash our teeth and rend our garments in shame for falsely suspecting it was so. Likewise, there need be no cloth torn over the fact that a guy whose wife was upset with things at work looked into the matter and agreed with her. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame abused the power and the prestige their government stations conferred upon them to attack the highest ranks of government while maintaining silence about who exactly they were and on what authority they spoke and acted. To me, the solution to this is obvious, though outside the bounds of our jurisprudence: Ask Plame what punishment Rove should receive for pointing the way to her identity. At the close of the hearing, Rove would receive this sentence. So would Wilson and Plame. 
posted by gbarto at 11:39 PM |
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