You're being purposely obtuse. Senior staff IS aware of every issue raised at the White House press briefing or gets up to speed in case it becomes something. That's not just the TV show*The West Wing); that's reality.

Hmmm... I have to agree with the above.

You really think they did not know about it?

Really?

You want a theory that is partially exculpatory. I'll give you one. The White House was very aware of what happened and realized immediately how bad it was. Informally, they were the ones who tried and initially succeeded in the effort to limit media coverage, but they couldn't contain the blogs. On top of that, they couldn't produce the leakers (because of who they are) for the CIA which the CIA demanded. Finally, the impasse was broken when the CIA went straight to the press.

Dan, are not you ignoring your own blog?

You linked last night to Howard Fineman who reported that YES the White House did peddle the story back when.

Well, do you now discount Fineman?

Given that the leakes came from the White House, and very likely from reasonably high up, it defys the imagination to think they weren't aware of it. You seem to be grasping at straws.

You don't possibly think that Krugman and DeLong could be motivated purely by partisan political concerns do you? I mean, I hate to even entertain that possibility but there's just this little nagging thought . . .

/sarcasm

To clarify:

1) Obviously, whoever leaked the story knew about it.

2) That doesn't mean the rest of the White House senior staff -- especially the national security team, which would have cared most about the leak -- were aware.

3) We don't know when Fineman's source found out about the leaking.

4) We certainly don't know if Bush knew about any of this in July.

To repeat -- I'm not saying that Kleiman and DeLong are necessarily wrong. I'm saying they're making an assumption.

Bear in mind that on Sunday lots of people -- muself included -- assumed Karl Rove was the source of the leak. Now the speculation has shifted to Lewis Libby. The point being, there are still way too many assumptions chasing too few facts.

So far, I think all the commentators save the WSJ editorial page and James Taranto are trying to make too much of this whole deal. I certainly agree with Fineman that the whole point of raising Plame's connection with Wilson was to show the in-groupery and nepotism surrounding Wilson's appointment to study the yellow cake issue, and thus undercut his point. This is entirely appropriate, it seems to me, raising issues of conflict of interest at the policy-wonk level among those who opposed the Iraq war.

So far, we STILL have no information that suggests (1) that Plame actually worked undercover overseas in the las 5 years, (2) that the CIA made efforts to concel Plame's identify (maiden names don't count, sorry), or (3) that any of the "leakers" intentionally released her CIA connection with the intent of blowing her cover. All three are needed to prove an illegality occurred, and two former independent counsels/staff on The News Hour last night said it would be essentially unprovable.

So I'm still puzzled at the flapdoodle here. The actions of the Bush staffers weren't even unintentional errors. It seems to me that, given their allowable partisan role, they were entirely appropriate. It's only the combination of desperation among some in the press and the intelligence community and the self-absorption of the Wilsons that gives this any legs at all.

Yeah, this is extremely weak. Even if no senior staff were involved in the initial leak, it defies belief that they would have been unaware of the issue after the CIA initially contacted Justice and prominent Democrats started calling for an investigation.

Here's an article from July which makes it pretty clear how unlikely it is that the whole thing failed to make it onto the White House radar until now.

http://www.thehill.com/news/072903/schumer.aspx

And here's the relevant excerpt from the WH briefing:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/07/wh072203.html

The point being, there are still way too many assumptions chasing too few facts.

Very true, but the effect of your blogging about this so obsessively has, in my opinion, been to lend too much credence to the maximalist interpretation of the minimal facts we have.

There are countless pieces and blog posts about this published every day. The vast majority of them contain no new facts, but are merely more speculation about the few facts we have fueled by a partisan agenda. This goes for almost all of the reporting, even the stuff that supports my side. It's not really reporting in the sense of conveying facts but an attempt to keep this non-story alive on the part of partisans who want to hurt Bush and reporters who want to be the next Woodward or Berstein.

It's good that you're refuting this spinning and agenda pushing on the part of DeLong and Krugman today, but the net effect of your obsession with this non-story over the last few days has been to lend respectability to this sort of argument by assumption. Most of it is not even worth responding to because it's, as you've indicated, mostly speculation with little basis in fact.

Here is my grand unification scandal theory which allows people like Dan to believe these bastards are not evil while I go on believing that they are the spawn of Satan. It involves evil, innocence, and stupidity in varying measures, but no criminal behavior.

1. There is a huge flap raised over the 16 words and whether it was a conscious lie.

2. Wilson writes his op-ed which means that it had to be a lie or gross incompetence. The evidence (including Tenet previously warning Bush) is building that this must be so.

3. Here it is critical that Victoria Plame is CIA in the WMD area because her reports are coming across the VP's desk and others in the White House. Her reports are whatever the CIA equivalent of shrill is. I'm speculating that her reports essentially ask, "are you smoking crack?" and state that there is no imminent threat from Iraq and that North Korea is the main threat. They are written using her maiden name and the people who leaked this are senior enough that the name is not blacked out in their copies.

4. Plame explicitly references Joe Wilson's trip report. It may be the main document the White House has in their possession that proves that they knew the 16 words were a lie. The connection with him is either made explicitly in the report or a quick search (google?) after the heat is on for the 16 words issue finds the connection.

5. Noone at the White House knows Plame is covert or was covert. It's just a name on a report. Lots of professional women use their maiden name for work and their married name socially.

6. They shop the connection around. It's a twofer. They get Wilson AND they preemptively defang a CIA analyst who has the goods on their lies in the lead up to the war.

6. Novak publishes his column. He uses the word operative and makes a mistake. He sees the Plame/Wilson marriage and the shrillness of her reports and the fact that she was the one who brought it to the White House's attention and the Wilson op-ed as a partisan thing. He doesn't know what he has done. It doesn't matter because now the Internet has enshrined those two words as they relate to Plame and there is no going back. People who didn't know she was CIA now know and since she kept it such a secret, it follows she was covert.

7. A second wave of calls go out from the White House still under the mistaken impression that the Wilson/Plame connection is partisan. She is "fair game".

8. Newsweek confirms that she was covert and/or the CIA starts screaming at the White House and it becomes crystal clear what a massive f-up just occurred.

9. A third wave of calls go out from either the CIA or the White House or both playing down the issue and trying to stuff the genii back in the bottle.

10. The CIA is not mollified by the fact that the White House did not intentionally reveal the covert aspect of Plame's job. They see the fact that the story was shopped around at all as an attack on them and a further indication that the White House will stop at nothing in politicizing intelligence.

11. The White House is not ready to burn anyone over what they see as a "no big deal" issue and certainly not criminal. CIA wants blood.

12. CIA leaks it to the press.

I'll try to stop obsessing now.

If the White House did not know about this until recently then there is certainly no one on the Senior Staff who committed a crime.

But (taking the leap to believe this is the case) what does it say that this could go un-noticed around the White House? Am I the only one who finds it concerning that they can manage to be so isolated from something that has, if nothing else, become a big deal in the media and among people who follow politics?

I should probably follow the links, since Messrs. Kleiman and DeLong have been pretty astute on (some of) this, but one wonders what, friends of the White House have been left spinning? This story was comatose (and now some bloggers are, if I can believe these comments).

I think the ghastly mistake theory (my "ooops theory") will hold up - the WH leakers thought there was news value to the CIA connection - wife picks Ambassador, what a hack, ha, ha. Bad news judgement, but these are the subtle clowns who leaked the story about the gay Canadian reporter. (A stupid, tone deaf, but not illegal leak, BTW).

I doubt it was hours, but eventually (a week?) it is clear that there is a problem. Remember, the CIA spokesman confirmed her status to Novak and TIME, and did not make a big push to hold Novak back (which they will do, and which reporters respect, if I can believe the WaPo). If the CIA guy was confused about her significance, a WH staffer might have been, too.

Leaving the WH where? Unsure of whether a crime has ocurrred, unsure of whether national security has been compromised - the CIA assessment is ongoing (WaPo).

Let the process play out, is their next instinct. What, exactly, should have happened next - a press conference to fire someone before the law or the facts have been established?

Bringing us to this point. Bush is mouthing words of concern, Ashcroft is arranging interviews, the CIA is assessing damage, everything is jake. What do you want?

Now, punishment for deterrence? Every already knows Bush doesn't like (some) leaks, and I suspect that they have figured out that this particular type of leak is a mistake.

Punishment for its own sake? Fine. Get the facts, first.

Now, I admit, I think there was a Cheney-Libby faction hoping the whole thing would go away, so the complete strategy was part process, part delay and deny.

I think the "Protect Bush" faction emerged over the weekend - J Marshall pegs it as the damage control theory of some of these leaks (although he initially at least favored Tenet as the source). Calling it the "White Knight" or "Bush's Guardian Angel" theory would probably be too much for some folks to handle. With a straight face, anyway.

I'm not quite sure what Rich is implying -- is he criticizing senior White House staff for not foreseeing that someone would turn entirely appropriate calls for attention to the fact that a CIA analyst conveniently recommended that her husband do a study of yellow cake in Niger into a steamy conspiracy theory that they were trying to get her hit to get back at her husband? This is like saying that when I walked the dog with the intention of having my dog poop outside the house, I was at fault for not foreseeing that my neighbor across the street would interpret this as a signal to the little green men that it was OK to start beaming the ray at her head again.

This is an indication of how weird the thought processes are in this matter, it seems to me.

Dear John Bruce, Deamer, et al.

Your grasp of the situation besides being morally bankrupt is both uninformed and most unwise. This case is a big deal.

First, a "non-official cover" or a covert identity of a CIA operations officer outside the usual government channels is both expensive and difficult to maintain over time. This makes them more and not less important than standard overseas assignments.

Secondly, merely because an officer is not currently stationed overseas does not mean someone is not actively collecting intel. In the day and age of email, mail, and jet travel one would think this would be obvious. Her cover gave a legitimate channel through which to inconspicuously gather information. Now it will be watched and all those sources will necessarily dry up.

Third, an undercover identity is not something that you put on like a Halloween mask. It has to be maintained so that it can be used at some future point. So any *future* value of her network of contacts or overseas deployment is now ruined.

Finally, and most importantly there is a bigger issue. The CIA and black ops community risk their lives and peace of mind *everyday* to give average American citizens safety and security. The thought that one of them could be exposed as punishment for resisting the push from the Top, is a chilling affect. Chilling as on your safety Deamer and Bruce. As on mine.

Plame's area of expertise is on WMD. Now the next time a CIA agent/operative has the chance, if they push the envelope a little and take some risk, to find out exactly how far along the North Koreans are ... will they?

Or will they hesitate to stick out their neck, because the Admin policy is to be "skeptical" of NK WMD progress and they don't want to be whacked like Plame.

Or about Iran. How can we get good intel about whether Iran is getting nukes or not, if the CIA knows that the Admin line is that Iran is in the process of getting them - and they run the risk of turning up info that might contradict that. Can we as a nation survive if our eyes and ears overseas start second-guessing themselves over who next will be punished for getting out of line?

That way leads to a plutonium warhead being floated onto the beaches of LA or the harbor of Port Sound.

Wake up! Stop shoving your heads up your asses. This was deadly wrong. Hell, even Phillip Agee thinks so!!!

When President Herbert Bush said that those who expose sources were the most insidious of traitors, he did not say "but only when they are overseas" or "but it's not so bad if they're doing more analysis than operations recently".

He, the man I voted for, said "the most insidious of traitors." Period.

I suggest you foghorns wake up to reality. If this doesn't go all the way, you can look forward to a serious degrading of CIA morale and the intel that protects your ass and mine.

Elliotq: I was with you until the Niger connection. I can't draw the connection between the Niger trip and the SOTU. I thought the Bush administration had controlled that effectively by pointing to British Intelligence in the SOTUA. Many democrats have been beating that drum but it wasn't, and really still isn't, getting much traction.

The question of the disclosure of Amb. Wilson's wife is still more puzzling. What was the grand connection between discrediting Wilson and outing his wife. If his wife were really an analyst, how would disclosing her name have had any impact on the credibility of Wilson and his opinion? Are we to believe that Wilson's wife gave the job to her husband out of nepotism? That is just silly. Besides disclosing the name of an analyst in the press tends to enhance their career, not hurt it.

So I'm left with the questions of why the Bush administration cared what Wilson said, their source was supposed to be British intelligence, and what harm they thought they were doing by disclosing her name and position if she was an analyst?

The only way this makes any sense is if she was NOT an analyst and the discloser knew this. Then you can see a connection with silencing criticism and adversely impacting a career. In which case a crime has been committed.

Even so...Unless there is something more to this than we currently know, I can't see this political dirty trick turning into anything more than short term news. Leaking classified information is very bad and very common and not likely to stop any time soon. Blast away, but this will be old news in less than a month.

Dear Rich,

You're right. At the very least, this Admin is guilty of wanton stupidity in the treatment and handling of critical national security assets. As my post outlined to Deamer et al. the implications go far beyond the effectiveness of a single intelligence officer to our entire network of intel regarding WMD.

However, the probable fact is that reading between the lines that this was no accidental or incidental leak. It was a hatchet-job pure and simple, orchestrated from very high up.

How high up? Well people have been trying to guess who it might be. That's too bad, because the circumstantial evidence clearly points to one and only one W.H. player as prime suspect.

Reports are that the W.H. aides were trying to peddle this b/c they felt they got set up as far as Wilson and Niger goes. Well who was the farthest out on the limb as far as WMD went, going so far as to say Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons? Whose office was it that nominatively got Wilson sent to Niger, but felt like they got burned when the CIA sent a war-skeptic like Wilson? Who was it that through Rumsfeld axed Powell's State team that was supposed to be working for Garner, perpetuating a feud over Iraq policy over a decade old? Who was the hardliner Sec. of Def. who wanted to go all the way before and was opposed to Colin Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff even then? Who was it that had the history of trying to pressure intel analysts to conform their stories to the Admin public line on Iraq? Who was it that brought Rumsfeld in and is giving him his marching orders? Who is it that is putting quislings in State that Armitage and Powell refer to as "bats"? You know Murtha blamed Rummy for Iraq. But then Murtha said that a couple people had called him up and told him they weren't the *real* decision makers. After convincing him, Murtha said that he didn't blame Rummy anymore. So who was it calling the shots then?

There's only one man whose been doing these things. There's only one man who had the security clearance, access, means, motive, and opportunity to authorize something this big and yet be so indispensible that the W.H. has to cover him.

It wasn't Ari in the press room with a reporter. It wasn't Rove in his backoffice with a phone call. It wasn't Libby with an aide and a memo.

It was the man in the secure undisclosed location running things from behind the scenes.

Oldman:

I can not get the fact that it was a Republican dirty trick = Rove connection out of the formula I'm using to try and make sense of this. This is the Rove MO, not the Cheney MO. Cheney has to be protected from either making the decision or having records that indicate that he made the decision.

This will not lead to to the front men (Bush or Cheney) like Watergate did with Nixon. Nixon made two mistakes, crime/cover up and not properly delegating. Bush and Cheney will have properly delegated the responsibility for political hits.

If, and I don't believe it, this turns into a 'real' criminal investigation and the perpetrator is caught, both Bush and Cheney will be properly shocked and dismayed that this violation of national security occurred. Their staff let them down.

Meanwhile whoever the fall guy turns out to be will be treated to all the best insider deals and shall financially be cared for by the administration friends for taking the prat fall. I'm sure applications for that position are quietly being accepted right now. Just like a modern crime family, a good political party cares for its stooges.

There were two waves of reporting on the Niger thing. The first was deflected with a line that said maybe it wasn't the strongest intelligence and there might have been some skepticism, but the British are 100% behind this claim. The second wave was going on at the time that Wilson published his op-ed. It was less easily deflected because it elevated the skepticism and lack of US intelligence to the level that the administration must have known that the British had it wrong. This was where the story was at when the Novak column was published. I speculate that there is at least one smoking gun CIA report to Cheney (significantly) prior to the SOTU which states unequivocally that the Niger connection is bogus. I think that report might have Plame's name on it.

I would be very surprised if the late-July communications from CIA to Justice about the leak were not noted by the White House, and were not explicitly brought to Condi Rice's attention by George Tenet.

Either there is a deep sense of betrayal motivating the CIA in the way this is coming out, or this is an ambush...

Uh, they knew about it in July because Robert Novak, among others, wrote articles about it in July. The premise behind all of the assertions is that in July, when Robert Novak wrote his article, the thing for the "honor and decency in the whitehouse" president to do was investigate the leak. That no action was taken to investigate the leak untill the CIA and the mainstream press had to knock on the door after a second article was published shows that the "honor and decency in the whitehouse" actually means "honor and decency in the whitehouse, as long as no one notices the dishonorable, indecent things."

elliottq:

Now that makes some sense. I have already commented that I think the leak was not designed to shut Wilson up but was designed to shut up someone more damaging than him from coming forward.

I suppose it could have been Plame, but I think it more likely that it was someone else that was being sent the message because Plame would not have sent materials directly to Cheney, they would be filtered by analysts. I also do not see how outing Plame would have shut her up. It would have a chilling effect on future leakers. The message being, "If you talk, we will destroy your career." Message sent.

They will most likely get away with this. I know it makes you grit your teeth but they own the Government apparatus and unless some journalist wants to destroy their own career, they will not disclose sources. The sad thing is that, at this point, all of Washington probably knows who the leakers are but either they can't say or they won't say on the record.

One way that this entire scandal will go away is when someone tries to do something to actually protect the CIA and CIA covert agents. I can just imagine the twisting that would occur if a Republican sponsored legislation to better insulate the CIA from partisans in Congress or the White House. Ooops! The critics don't want that...

I'm starting to understand it now. This is the perfect story for everyone because anyone is qualified to opine (make stuff up) about it, and because very little research can possibly be done as there are almost no living, breathing, indisputable facts involved. In essence, it's the perfect blogosphere story: All that's known can easily be found on your computer screen and all that's unknown can easily be supplied by your imagination and biases.

John Bruce makes a big ol' assumption but states it as fact: the whole point of raising Plame's connection with Wilson was to show the in-groupery and nepotism surrounding Wilson's appointment to study the yellow cake issue, and thus undercut his point. This is entirely appropriate, it seems to me, raising issues of conflict of interest at the policy-wonk level among those who opposed the Iraq war.

There is no evidence that asking Wilson to go to Niger to find out about the yellowcake documents was nepotism, and that is so even if it's true that Plame suggested Wilson be one of the people to go. (Two others went, too, apparently.)

Nepotism would be if Plame had said "Hire my husband for the job, he's not qualified but I want him to do it." Even if Plame did suggest his name (and we only have Novak's word for that) there's clear and obvious reasons why Wilson was asked to go - he had past experience in the region, he knew people to talk to, and he came back with the information he was asked to find out, which was that the probability was very high that the yellowcake documents were forged. (Which, as everyone now knows, they were.)

This was in February 2002. Despite rightwing gollum claims, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Wilson was anti-war with Iraq at that time. He'd been asked to do a job, he did it, and there is no evidence whatsoever that he was the wrong person for the job or that he did it badly.

So, John: you're making a couple of big assumptions and then extrapolating from them. The first assumption you're making is frankly a smear: you're assuming that Wilson was asked to take a trip to Niger (for which he was not paid) out of nepotism, and not because he was an experienced and able ambassador. The second assumption you're making is completely groundless: you're assuming that in February 2002 Wilson was anti-war. I challenge you to find any public statement by Wilson made anytime in 2002 in which he says he's opposed to the US invasion of Iraq. Put up or shut up, John.

Jesurgislac:

He did do the job badly. To see that all you have to do is read the New York Times article he wrote. It was not convincing and did not indicate a high degree of diligence in performing his assignment. If he did in fact do a more thorough investigation than indicated in his op-ed why on earth would he choose to make himself look so bad in the pages of the most powerful and widely read newspaper in the world.

I'd love to know what connections you have that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the yellowcake documents were forged. British intelligence, of course, still stands firm behind their earlier assessment.

He clearly was the wrong person for the job, just as any CIA-connected person was the wrong person for the job. These people, as best exemplified by Valerie Plame's good buddy Larry C. Johnson, have made a career out of downplaying threats to my country. I've seen from about a block away three thousand people vaporized in about an instant because of their stupidity (or corruption?), so I have very little sympathy for whatever alleged "wrongs" have been done to them now. Liberals, of course, also used to hate the CIA, but apprently have undergone a remarkable change of perspective, and now are incredibly concerned about it's employees.

I'm not sure what "right-wing gollum claims" are and I"m too tired right now to figure out if you're trying to make some kind of anti-Semitic remark. Anyway, the earliest expression of moonbatty views by Mr. Wilson that I can find is February, 2003. I'll keep looking. Of course, keep in mind that in February, 2002 there was no real public debate about going to war in Iraq. Remember that didn't start until after Bush's UN Speech on September 12th, 2002, so the question strikes me as kind of a fake out.

The WSJ editorial page (notice I haven't seen Daniel linking to that much) nails it today:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004106

Key grafs (as they say):

Intelligence sources" are routinely quoted questioning Administration claims and complaining of "political interference." In yesterday's New York Times, those "sources" admitted to reporter James Risen (their go-to guy) that Joseph Wilson had been chosen for the Niger mission precisely because the CIA did not take Vice President Dick Cheney's interest in pursuing the yellowcake story seriously.

Conveniently, the motives and policy aims of these sources are spared scrutiny by the cloak of anonymity. But are they really just the disinterested experts the media portray them to be? Joe Wilson (Ms. Plame's husband) has made no secret of his broad disagreement with Bush policy since outing himself with an op-ed. Likewise, those friends and colleagues who have flocked publicly to Mr. Wilson's side have made it clear their dispute with the Administration goes well beyond any possible leak.

Consider Larry Johnson, the former CIA and State Department counterterrorism official interviewed on PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" Tuesday night. Most of us are still waiting to learn the details surrounding the mention of Ms. Plame. But Mr. Johnson had no doubt "this was about a political attack. . . . It sickens me." He called the Administration's interest in the Niger-yellowcake story "a stupid policy, an erroneous policy."

Who is Larry Johnson? He's the author of one of the more poorly timed op-eds in history. On July 10, 2001, he wrote in the New York Times under the headline "The Declining Terrorist Threat" that "Americans have little to fear" from terrorism unless they travel or work in a few of the world's hotspots. He added that "Early signs suggest that the decade beginning in 2000 will continue the downward trend" in terrorist activity. (He co-authored a similar piece for this page in 2000.)

A month earlier, and only three months before 9/11, Mr. Johnson told U.S. News and World Report that "Bin Laden has an international network of contacts, but it's more analogous to the Elvis Presley fan club than a corporation like General Motors."

In the same vein, current senior CIA official Paul Pillar wrote shortly before 9/11 that counterterrorism should not be viewed as a "war" we can hope to win, but more like "the effort by public-health authorities to control communicable diseases" or improve "highway safety." He also reportedly assailed Mr. Bush's Iraq policy in a public appearance earlier this year at Johns Hopkins. This is precisely the mindset that failed to prevent September 11.

By all means, let's have a national debate about intelligence priorities and counterterrorism policy. But let's acknowledge what we are really debating and not hide behind sideshows over leaks and claims of "politicized intelligence." When the arguments are made, we imagine Americans will feel safer with the Bush policy than with the one advocated by Joe Wilson and his anonymous friends.

Game. Set. Match. Journal

Eric,

It's been stated before but it bears repeating.

Wilson, his job, his ideas, his comments, are all completely irrelevant to what the DoJ is investigating.

You can cut and paste 'till you are blue in the face (or the hands?) but you are simply answering a question that nobody is asking.

Stating it is not the same as building a rational argument for it. (GT=George Tenet, intentional?)

The DoJ is doing a routine investigation of which 50 or so are done a year. Joe Wilson, Larry C. Johnson, and various bloggers are trying to manufacture a scandal out of it. This is the situation as it stands.

If the investigation does indeed find that Valerie Plame truly was a covert operative and the leak of her name was intentional and malicious, two big ifs, then this gets out of the realm where Wilson's and Johnson's motivations matter. We're not at that point yet.

To the contrary, GT, I think Eric's clips are very useful -- they demonstrate the basic principle of "If the facts are against you, smear the person" that got the White House into this.

Anyway, speaking of the White House . . .

how are DeLong, Kleiman, and Krugman so sure that senior people at the White House -- besides the leakers -- knew about this? How do they know Bush knew about this?

Well, my suggestion is that you just read the transcripts of the WH press briefings, and notice the evasiveness when either Rove or Bush's response to the leak comes up.

In fact, on Tuesday, the poor spokesman (Scott McClellan) was aggressively questioned about when Bush learned of the leak of Plame's name, and what his reaction was -- and McClellan didn't know. So he promised to research the matter and report back.

On Wednesday, he said he had looked into it, and he still didn't know when Bush found out, or what his reaction was. Which means they couldn't even figure out a decent cover story.

That's a bad sign.

He did do the job badly.

Got any evidence of that, other than your misinterpretation of his NYT Op-Ed? No? Thought not.

I'd love to know what connections you have that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the yellowcake documents were forged.

Well, let's see. The International Atomic Energy Authority has said publicly that they're fakes. Does that work for you?

British intelligence, of course, still stands firm behind their earlier assessment.

The yellowcake documents were forged. Even MI6 isn't claiming anything else: Blair, caught in a political quagmire, claims that MI6 has other evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. Evidence which (he says) he cannot disclose to anyone, including the CIA.

He clearly was the wrong person for the job, just as any CIA-connected person was the wrong person for the job.

And yet, he got the job done, as requested. He discovered in February 2002 that the yellowcake documents were forgeries. So your opinion is clearly not worth much.

I'm not sure what "right-wing gollum claims" are and I"m too tired right now to figure out if you're trying to make some kind of anti-Semitic remark.

Paranoid much? No, it's a Lord of the Rings reference. As someone posted on another blog, the Bush-worshippers are behaving very much like Gollum over this.

I've seen from about a block away three thousand people vaporized in about an instant because of their stupidity (or corruption?), so I have very little sympathy for whatever alleged "wrongs" have been done to them now.

Interesting. I hadn't realized that the new plan from the right wing was to blame 9/11 entirely on CIA intelligence failures. While I agree the CIA share the blame, I feel that the FBI also deserve a large chunk of it, for ignoring reports about someone learning to fly who wasn't interested in learning to land, and the White House, for ignoring messages transmitted to them that al-Qaeda intended to attack the US, and that the attack would involve hijacked jetplanes. Bluntly, I think that 9/11 was a tragicatastrophe that owes blame to all who were responsible for the security of the US and failed so desperately, including the man at the top with whom the buck stops, and who spent half an hour or so after the first plane hit the WTC taking part in a third-grade reading class until his team had decided what to do with him.

Of course, keep in mind that in February, 2002 there was no real public debate about going to war in Iraq. Remember that didn't start until after Bush's UN Speech on September 12th, 2002, so the question strikes me as kind of a fake out.

The question arose because of claims made by right-wingers that Wilson was openly anti-war at the time he was sent to Niger. In February 2002. Since right-wingers have made the claim, right-wingers need to prove it. So far, they've failed to do so. I agree it's a fake-out, but the fake-out originated with the gollums, not with the rest of us.

Jesurgislac:

ad hominem much?

Well if you think that the DoJ has to investigate the WH for possible leaks leading to the outing of a covert operative 50 times a year be my guest. If you don't undertsand the difference between this accusation and the normal, once a week referrals, I can't help you. In any case the DoJ will, hopefully get to the bottom of this.

I don't think there is any more doubt about Plame being a covert operative. But if you want to doubt that as well...

Eric,

That is exactly correct. At this point there are principal groups keeping this one going - those whose jobs are to report or comment on stories currently receiving attention for whatever reason, and those whose faction benefits from keeping the story going.

Because there aren't facts - just endlessly rehashed speculation.

"I'm starting to understand it now. This is the perfect story for everyone because anyone is qualified to opine (make stuff up) about it, and because very little research can possibly be done as there are almost no living, breathing, indisputable facts involved. In essence, it's the perfect blogosphere story: All that's known can easily be found on your computer screen and all that's unknown can easily be supplied by your imagination and biases."

Here's another scenario which fits the known evidence:

(1) A faction in the CIA took a poke at the Bush administration, with Joe Wilson being the vehicle. It didn't work. (2) Someone at DOD (not the White House) who is either a high level career type, or a middling/lower level political appointee (i.e., about the same effective level in terms of power) took a poke back. That didn't work either.

(3) Wilson squawked about (2) and the whole thing seemed to die - a routine investigation was ordered as seems to happen about once a week. But (2) and (3) were noticed, and the Democrats used it as a vehicle for an ambush. The ambush was sprung when the other-wise routine investigation of the leak got to the point where the DOJ started its part based on the CIA referral.

This is speculation too, and fits the evidence better than most of the other speculation.

Tom,

To you I repeat. What Wilson may have said or done is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

The DoJ is not investigating whether Wilson did a good job or not. They are investigating who leaked Plame's job status and why. That's it. The rest are simply red herrings right now.

Eric Deamer writes: "He did do the job badly"

Well then so did General Carlton Fulford, who also investigated, independent of Wilson. See below.

Fulford clearly isn't married to Plame. Probably isn't a liberal. Probably isn't anti-war. Probably isn't anti-Bush, though he might be now the way the military is being treated. So you can toss the theory that Wilson's report was biased by his politics.

What we have here in Fulford is called a "control". Wilson and Fulford both found the same information. It's possible they investigated badly, but the fact they both got the same results disproves that Wilson's results were the result of any bias.

"Wilson's understanding of the Niger uranium trade is seconded by General Carlton Fulford, who until his retirement the month before Bush's State of the Union was the senior-most military official with direct responsibility for Africa. Not only did his account of the uranium business in Niger coincide exactly with Wilson's, Fulford himself visited Niger in February 2002 to learn if uranium could be spirited away, and came back highly dubious--a message he communicated back to the Pentagon. What's more, despite his access to every bit of intelligence relating to his area of responsibility, Fulford never received a single word from any U.S. agency about any attempted Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger."

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=debate&s=ackermanmay093003#thursackerman

Jesurgislac and George Tenet:

So let me get this straight. You think that Wilson underwent some complete political conversion from being a stauch Republican in February 2002 and to begin a Nation contributor in March 2003? I guess it's plausible. Again, it's unverifiable whether he was pro or anti war in Iraq at that time because it wasn't clear what our plans were regarding Iraq at that date.

That aside, as you bizarrely assert that the political agenda of the accuser in the scandal is irrelevant, (while right-thinking people of course found the social class, attractiveness, weight etc. of Clinton's accusers to be profoundly relevant)you have now more narrowly defined what Wilson's job was to be in Niger, based on nothing. HOw do you know that his job was merely about finding out if certain documents were forgeries? I would hope that his job was to more generally find out if such an attempted transaction took place. If it wasn't it should have been.

And again, of course, we're stil talking about the most miniscule side issue in the case for war, about something that no one gives a damn about aside from the BUSH LIEEEDDDDDD!!!!! crowd.

I agree that there's plenty of blame to go about 9/11, though I've never understood the obsession with that video of his immediate reaction to 9/11. What would you have had him do? Immediately infiltrate one of the remaining hijacked planes like in that crappy Kurt Russel movie? As far as I know the CIA was the only branch of government that had agents going on TV to tell people to stop worrying about terrorism.

So you call anyone who is slightly more supportive of this administration thatn you "gollum". Can we call anyone slightly to the left of us an "orc" or would that be evil right wing hate speech?

Jon H:

Do you think the best way to find out about super-secret weapons deals is to have an American general go barging in there? I'm not too surprised that this approach didn't yield results.

Last one I swear:

I must repost:

Intelligence sources" are routinely quoted questioning Administration claims and complaining of "political interference." In yesterday's New York Times, those "sources" admitted to reporter James Risen (their go-to guy) that Joseph Wilson had been chosen for the Niger mission precisely because the CIA did not take Vice President Dick Cheney's interest in pursuing the yellowcake story seriously.

Your beloved anonymous sources admit the nature of Wilson's mission to the New YOrk Times.

Have a good weekend.

Eric,

I see what your error is.

You have old talking points. You need new ones.

You see, Wilson is no longer the accuser. Last week he was but not anymore.

Now it's the CIA and the DoJ. They are the ones that think a law was broken.

I repeat, it doesn't matter what Wilson said or did anymore. The CIA and the DoJ both agree there is preliminary evidence somebody broke the law. And that it may have come from the WH.

All else is irrlevant.

I mean, don't get me wrong. We are all very interested in your observations avout the quality of Wilson's work. Given your extensive experience in security affairs and the many years you spent in Africe it's a shame they didn't call you to do the research.

But that's another topic. The investigation cuurently going on is not related to that at all.

The DoJ is investigating to see if a law was broken. The elements of the crime would be that (1) Plame was working undercover overseas within the last 5 years (not known, and nobody's rushed forward with the info, if it's there) (2) the CIA was taking active measures to conceal Plane's identity (nobody's rushed forward to leak this, if true, either); and (3) the leaker knew of the covert status and the efforts to maintain it, and deliberately revealed the information to blow her cover. All three must be present. There must be probable cause for all three for an indictment. Good luck.

Jon H,

Wilson is central to this. Criminal investigation SOP alone makes him the prime suspect.

I personally would love it if Libby Lewis lost his job over this, or lost it for most any reason. I don't like him at all, and I'm not the only one who feels this way. That's subjective. Objectively, Libby Lewis is my No. 1 suspect of the potential high-level perps in the Bush Administration, because it smells like something he'd do.

But it is highly unlikely that any of this could be traced to Libby in the event that he is dirty, and Joe Wilson is at least equally suspicious. This is, for me, one of the fun parts of the fuss. I love murder dramas where lots of people had motives to help the dearly departed to his or her reward.

Too many people take this matter seriously.

Trust no one.

Dear Ratherworried,

Normally you would be right about there being a fall-guy prepared for the public opinion sacrifice. The question is why haven't they done so already if it was all that easy?

The implication is that it's not that straight-forward. Either my previous hypothesis is correct and there is some loyalty factor kicking in, or there is some sort of extra difficulty that would arise in making said sacrifice. Like someone having an incriminating authorization memo and not wanting to go down for the count.

Remember also that the law broken here specifies up to a decade of prison time. Unlike a typical scape-goating this would be more along the lines of Susan McDougal going to jail rather than talking. Maybe somebody doesn't want to take the fall.

In any case, this is getting messy - fast.

Eric writes: ad hominem much?

No, not so much.

You think that Wilson underwent some complete political conversion from being a stauch Republican in February 2002 and to begin a Nation contributor in March 2003?

Ah. So, in your view, only a staunch Republican should have been sent to Niger to investigate? Because anyone not a staunch Republican might have come back with the facts, as Wilson did, rather than the lie the Bush administration wanted? You have a very, very low opinion of staunch Republicans if that's what you think - much lower than I do!

Again, it's unverifiable whether he was pro or anti war in Iraq at that time because it wasn't clear what our plans were regarding Iraq at that date.

Then don't you agree that it's kind of bizarre for rabid right-wingers to claim that they know Wilson was publicly anti-war in 2002? That in fact, these Bush-worshippers are lying about Wilson?

That aside, as you bizarrely assert that the political agenda of the accuser in the scandal is irrelevant, (while right-thinking people of course found the social class, attractiveness, weight etc. of Clinton's accusers to be profoundly relevant)

Excuse me? What does Clinton have to do with this? Isn't this a little random?

you have now more narrowly defined what Wilson's job was to be in Niger, based on nothing.

Based on what was said at the time. Based on what has been said since. Documents had been acquired by US intelligence, which suggested that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger. Wilson was sent to discover if those documents were reliable (and they turned out to be crude forgeries). Apparently two other people were also sent publicly, and who knows who might have be sent covertly?

HOw do you know that his job was merely about finding out if certain documents were forgeries? I would hope that his job was to more generally find out if such an attempted transaction took place. If it wasn't it should have been.

Ah. Well, there you go. You think you know how to run the CIA's operations better than George Tenet. Backstreet drivers and Monday morning quarterbacks always know best, don't they?

And again, of course, we're stil talking about the most miniscule side issue in the case for war, about something that no one gives a damn about aside from the BUSH LIEEEDDDDDD!!!!! crowd.

Agreed. So why do you suppose that right-wingers keep bringing it up? Why do you suppose two White House administrators leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Bob Novak, and, apparently, to six other reporters, in order to punish Wilson for what was - as we agree - a very minor lie in all of Bush's major lies? Of course, this "minor lie" was in the SOTU and was provably false. It's the one lie Bush has had to publicly retract.

I agree that there's plenty of blame to go about 9/11, though I've never understood the obsession with that video of his immediate reaction to 9/11.

It indicates that Bush's team regard him as a figurehead rather than a leader.

What would you have had him do?

Do? Well, evidently, his team considered him most useful reading to children at that time. I wouldn't dream of arguing. They know him better than we do. Of course, if he were an effective leader, or was regarded as such by his team, they might have wanted to cancel the reading and bring Bush up to speed with events as they were happening. But evidently that wasn't a priority.

So you call anyone who is slightly more supportive of this administration thatn you "gollum".

No. I call people Gollum when they refuse to believe that a felony was committed when Bush administration officials leaked a covert CIA operative's identity to the press, and instead prefer to cast up irrelevant side-issues, such as "Wilson deserved it" (for not being a staunch Republican) "Wilson did a crappy job in Niger" (when all the evidence is in that he did a sound and reliable job, providing accurate information), "Clinton was worse" (no, actually, I think outing a CIA operative is worse than getting a blow-job), and so on. You, sir, are a perfect example of the Gollum type. gollum, gollum

Dear GT,

Excellent points. Deamer and Bruce seem to being purposely obtuse, perhaps because their other option is to try to defend the indefensible. Their only option is to try to spin it into a sea of red herrings.

However, on this issue it won't work. First because as you noted, the CIA has already legally decided to stand behind this as a violation of cover - as seen in the Justice Dept. questions they answered. Second, because this is an issue SO obvious that it can't be spun in such a way to confuse the general public.

The way the general public will see it overall could be summarized as this. Some guy (Wilson) speaks out. His wife (Plame) get's whacked.

Now add to that the "romance" of the story, and you got a winning combination. Both Herbert in the NYT and Dowd touch on this aspect.

Everytime a Republican smears Wilson, he doesn't look Partisan - he looks like a man getting attacked for standing up to his wife.

And who is his wife? A secret agent for the CIA trying to discover WMD.

The popularity of the show Alias in the post-911 period cannot be discounted. It is particularly interesting, since in some interviews Wilson has been publicly trying to sell his wife Valerie as a real life Jennifer Gardner.

And you know what? It's working.

This has all the elements of a great plotline of an episode of Alias. You got the sexy secret agent Chick. You got her stand-up male partner-romance interest. And you got a mean Agency squabble that let's the mean bad guys in power attack the Romantic Secret Agent chick in order to payback her BF for speaking out against them.

Now that is a plotline that the American people are going to buy - and already are.

All this Bullshit#@@!%$!%##@ spinning to the contrary, that's what is getting through. And that I submit is why my fellow Republicans are playing this one the WRONG way. Every time they play stupid bullshit semantic games, they are looking smaller and meaner to the poor defenseless Secret Agent Chick who while risking her life to defend her nation is helpless against the mean men in suits.

Well ... let them continue spewing their crap. Not only is it factually wrong and morally bankrupt, but more importantly it is STUPID. They only shoot themselves in the foot everytime they do it, and move the perception of others more against their cause.

Bill Clinton committed felony perjury. Period.

If a bunch of unproven assumptions are true someone somewhere in the Bush administration may have committed a felony. If that turns out to be the case, that person should be prosecuted. That's all.

If a bunch of unproven assumptions are true someone somewhere in the Bush administration may have committed a felony. If that turns out to be the case, that person should be prosecuted. That's all.

Okay, Eric, I'll let you go with that. "Unproven assumptions" isn't exactly right: what we're talking about is whether or not Novak was lying, and a bunch of other reporters were also lying, when he said that two senior administration officials leaked Plame's identity as a CIA operative to him. But it's closer than trying to claim that the issue is anything to do with Wilson's politics, or bringing up (again) a President who has nothing to do with this horrible scandal.

Oldman writes: "The popularity of the show Alias in the post-911 period cannot be discounted. It is particularly interesting, since in some interviews Wilson has been publicly trying to sell his wife Valerie as a real life Jennifer Gardner."

Clearly an understandable strategic move on his part; the story would be even stronger if the media could put a face on the story.

Consider Private Lynch. Most of the killed and wounded and captured in Iraq receive the barest minimum of attention. Put a cute young blonde girl's face to a name, and you get a national orgy of concern.

I don't think the country would like the prospect of the White House outing a pretty blonde mother of twin babies.

At some point Conservatives will have to decide whether they are committed to the Republican Party or to particular principles.