I think some (or someone) in Val's group outed her themselves just to be rid of the Wilsons.
The Kristof and Pincus articles and Wilson's op-ed were embarrassing for them because it showed how casual they were about sending an ex ambassador to do a spook's job and they hadn't even bothered to put him on a leash.
Wilson's mouth was a liability for them and they suspected Val was telling him more than she should about Company business.
Val wasn't going on junkets anymore because of a previous outing. She was doing good work, but she wasn't able to do much of what she was trained for. Damage would be minimal, so screw them.
They were the ones who slipped 'Valery Plame' into the gossip stream to punish the Wilsons.
Beyond that they didn't much care how it played out or who would be blamed.
Unless Fitzgerald is hiding it on purpose, there is little in the public record regarding who knew the actual name 'Valery Plame' (Miller's notebook and Novak's article) and nothing showing anyone in the administration knew or related that specific datum to anyone else in the administration. How did the fact of Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment get from Mrs. Wilson/Wilson's wife to Valery Plame?
I doubt we'll ever know.
8 comments:
I had the same thought.
Last night on Special Report Mort Kondracke said that Fitzgerald made some reference to Official "A" having spoken to Novak before he wrote his article.
Mort took that to mean said official outed her. Brit Hume pointed outed to him that Fitzgerald himself did not say anything of the kind.
MOrt was worried this might keep people from joining the CIA for fear they would be outed.
I am thinking the sheer stupidity of the whole episode will keep more people away from the CIA than anything Libby might have said.
In fact I would say the most lasting effect will be on the flow of news in DC. Let this be a lesson to any official when speaking with reporters: you might end up in jail. Best to hang up on them. Clic
I do think this makes the agency look bad, no matter how you slice it.
After all...Novak warned them about the article and they did not stop it. The CIA did not even ask the publisher to kill it.
Why didn't he?
"Why didn't he?"
Exactly. Either on purpose, or they have to be viewed as Keystone Kops.
Looks bad for them either way.
BTW, Official A is most likely Rove. All Rove said to Novak was 'I heard that too'. Rove wasn't the leaker.
We don't know who Novak's source was and Fitz ain't sayin'. Maybe he doesn't want to / or can't go there.
If the source is CIA, then we have our answer: The CIA leaked the name. The CIA confirmed her employement.
The administration 'outing a CIA agent in retaliation' is just a sideshow.
Yet those dismissing the whole affair as a sideshow are missing the real juicy bits.
Ready, set; HA! mine goes farther than yours.
He listed her name inWho's Who and on the bio of the website of EPIC where on June 14, 2003 he made a speech disclosing he was the source for the Kristof and Pincus articles.
In Oct 2003 he told a reporter he had contacted the Kerry camp and told them his story.I'd bet my bottom dollar he told them his wife worked for the CIA in the very area of WMDs to add to the credibility of his story, and I wouldn't be the least surprised if that helped spread the word in the press.
Knuck....good summary. You might add that he went around like a good dimplomat prior to the war and said it wasn't just about WMD's, which he had, Saddam was a bad guy, and war was inevitable.
Later he joined the KEdwards campaign and changed his tune.
However, I see some are under the misimpression that public knowledge should mean 'not classified'. Not true.
An agent of a foreign government wouldn't necessarily believe something that is public knowledge and often characterizes it as misinformation and/or smokescreen. They're just not sure. They always look for some official confirmation.
That's why an official confirmation of something classified, whether public knowledge or not, is 'bad'.
And Fitz was going on principle. We shouldn't just dismiss that. Her status was indeed classified and classified information should be protected.
Now she may very well have done some covert things in the past few years. We don't know. From what Woodward said her 'outing' caused little more than embarrassment.
But whatever those facts are has nothing to do with whether her CIA employment should have been officially leaked to the public.
Capiche?
The brouhaha aspect of this case is that the press screamed for and got an investigation. THAT's where the problem lies.
Humanity has to be better than this :(
And beneath it all is that debunked claims were about a sales agreement.
Bush and Blair declared Saddam was seeking, which shows intent.
No claims of actually getting their hands on the stuff.
Yep, humanity still goes after the red herring.
Wilson ran all over DC for months trying to drum up interest in the President's "lies" about uranium.
Someone finally bit, and he finally had the opportunity to write the op-ed he had been trying to get for months.
Plame's alleged role was as a Director of Operations, according to earlier reports.
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