I'm not quite up to speed on the whole Plame/Wilson/Rove/Cheney/Novak fooferaw. To be honest I've pretty well ignored it. Then I followed Rusty's link (below) over to Wizbang, which has been absolutely flooded by venomous, boorish DU zombies or Kossacks or some swarm of very angry leftists who enjoy telling everyone how much smarter they are than people who disagree with them.

But I got to thinkin', as I scanned over the claims traded back and forth there, none of which really led me to think any crime had been committed. There's still a weakness in the right's argument on this issue--I was thinking about that weakness and then I started writing this post which has gotten quite long, so I'll stick it down below the fold. I end up making a guess as to Judith Miller's sources.

1. The defenders of Novak (and theoretically of Rove, if that's Novak's source, as has never been nailed down) keep making one point that I think is especially weak. That's that Valerie Plame was not undercover (or a "NOC"--Non Official Cover) because she had to drive to work in Langley every day, and a terrorist or spy could simply have followed her to see where she worked if they wanted to find out or watched the gates of CIA HQ to see who drove in.

Well, sorry. I expect a lot of CIA case officers roll in to HQ in between assignments abroad. And then they go back to Djibouti and resume their cover identity as an energy consultant or whatever. Furthermore, not everyone who goes into CIA HQ is an employee. Academics, civil servants, policy wonks, consultants, lotsa different people might have occasion to enter the building now and then to present information, meet with analysts, fix the copier, whatever. So seeing someone drive into the campus once at Langley doesn't prove anything--unlike a statement by an official that someone is a CIA agent.

What's more important is that even an ambiguous statement like that can give bad guys cause to start looking where they wouldn't have singled out Valerie Plame before. It makes it easy for them.

2. I've met folks who work for the CIA; they're pretty discreet about that fact even though they're not technically undercover. I get the impression it's just bad form to stand on the bar and shout, "Whooee! Look at me! I'm an analyst for the CIA! Dun-digga-dun-dun, nar nar nar, Dun-digga-dun dun, nar nar nar Beeeeyow Nananaaa!" (That's a, um, phonetic rendering of the Bond theme.) Why would you want to draw that kind of attention to yourself, and get some Move-Onanist all up in your face about what you did to Allende, following you home and pouring blood on your driveway and leading a protest? Just not worth it. You just say you work as a consultant or "for the government" or something vaguelike that if it comes up.

There's a line out there somewhere between discretion and actual secrecy. I don't think Valerie Plame's career was a secret, or undercover, by the legal standard, and it hadn't been for five years. But criminal issues aside, it's just awkward and strange to go around telling everybody that Valerie's a spook. Usually you let people be discreet.

3. But that's the strangest part of this whole deal to me. According to Cliff May, Plame's identity was common knowlege in DC before Joe Wilson's editorial. May heard it offhandedly from someone not at the White House. And rather than hiding in the shadows, Joe Wilson pretty much shoved the spotlight on his family when he wrote his infamous NYTimes OpEd. Then they pose in Vanity Fair.

You know, part of the reason for that secrecy statute is to protect not just the agents themselves, but also the "Crown Jewels" --the sources and methods that undercover agents rely on. So if for example an undercover agent talks to AQ Khan's butler, and then the agent is exposed, people are going to put two and two together about the butler and the agent and kill or arrest the butler. Hence the five year statute of limitations.

Yet here's Yellowcake Joe telling us all about his trip and his sweet mint tea and the mining manager and the folks he talked to on his junket. If you were in Iraq, would you want your identity published as collaborating with a CIA inquiry? Niger isn't Iraq, but it gets back to that discretion thing again. The man has all the discretion of a wild Russian boar.

4. This is the Judith Miller part. Back up to what Cliff May said: who didn't know Plame worked for the CIA? Well, given the pattern of blab that her indiscreet husband has shown, I'm not surprised. I can see how half of Washington knew.

Cliff May, in a more recent column, thinks it might just be Joe Wilson who leaked the information in the first place.

Remember for a second that Bob Novak said he first found out from other reporters that "Wilson's wife works for the CIA".

If so, it makes a lot more sense that Judith Miller has gone to jail to protect Joe Wilson. What if Wilson were leaking secret stuff to Miller--and other reporters-- over a long period of time, perhaps stuff he got from Plame?

That part's speculation, yes, but how did the reporters find out about this in the first place to tell Bob Novak? Who told the reporters?

I think Plame and Wilson themselves are the most likely candidates for Miller's secret sources. Plame and Wilson definitely knew she worked for the CIA, so it's a reasonable guess that they were the ones who first let the cat out of the bag. Wilson wrote his piece for the New York Times, Miller's paper. They have shown a pattern of indiscretion and political manipulation, and the fact that Plame's job was already an open secret suggests she was indiscreet about this issue as well.

Now, if Plame did blow her own cover, what is the appropriate response?

Posted by: seedubya at 08:34 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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