Niger

On Sunday I left my mom a message, thereby getting essential Mother's Day credit, and when we talked yesterday she said excitedly that she had heard rumors that Karl Rove was about to be indicted in the Valerie Plame leak case. My mother is a stone Democrat, and I'm not, still she and I agree that this would be fine news. If only these bastards—my mother's favorite word in politics—pay something for the lies they told in pushing the country to a disastrous war.

That said, I find that I really don't care about the core legal issue here: the violation of Plame's identity as a CIA operative. I'm reading her husband Joseph Wilson's book, The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity, and it's not very convincing.  read more »

Valerie (Plame) (Wilson)—who can be sure which name to parenthesize?—is said to be getting $2.5 million for a memoir of her life as a CIA analyst, demonstrating that the leaking of her name is the best thing that ever happened to her career.

Much as I hope this case will take down the vicious Cheney and Rove, and Judith and Scooter, and all the other war cabal-ers, the core infraction has never seemed like a big deal. I wonder how many people knew that (Plame)(Wilson) was CIA. I wonder what she was actually doing, besides commuting to a desk job from her beautiful home in Washington, and reading the Financial Times. Under cover, of course. In what sense was her work compromised? Yes, they were scurrilously trying to undermine Joe Wilson, but how did this leak smear Wilson? He's been dining off it ever since. (Though yes, he was a noble force on the Niger lies.)

I've had brushes with CIA analysts over the years and the sad truth is they're a lot like journalists. They read stuff. They send one another emails. (If you're Ken Pollack on the Iran account, you don't even go to Iran). I know they train to handle guns, but how often do they actually do so? I once visited an embassy compound in the Third World where a friend in State explained to me that the CIA guys just paid off informants to get information about the bad guys. I wonder whether (Plame)(Wilson) even got that far. According to the Vanity Fair profile that launched her blonde meteor, she graduated from Penn State—in the glamour days CIA people did a little better than that—and apparently spent her time in various European capitals, such as dangerous Brussels, working on, among other things, her wifeability. She landed an Ambassador. Good for her. But $2.5 million? There better be a lot of sex.

For nearly two years, the Bush White House has been repeating falsehoods-to the press and the public  read more »

For nearly two years, the Bush White House has been repeating falsehoods—to the  read more »

With their renewed assault on Ambassador Joseph C.  read more »

According to contemporary political lore, the Bush clan exalts loyalty above every other virtue.  read more »