The Disinformation Campaign Begins

Though the Angry Left’s visions of sugar plums turned into a stocking full of coal, it still has the benefit, as Cliff May points out, of a simple narrative line that friendly media will allow Joe Wilson, Harry Reid et al. to recite without contradiction.

Also assisting the leftist prevaricators is the laziness of the press. I doubt, for instance, that Michael Duffy, writing a long article about Scooter Libby’s downfall for Time, intends to falsify the record. Nonetheless, it is obvious that he has not actually read and digested the Libby indictment. If he had, he could not have written, “The indictment alleges that Libby . . . leaked the identity of Wilson's wife to several reporters to undercut the validity of Wilson’s criticism”, for that is not alleged. What the indictment actually asserts is that Mr. Libby did not talk about Mrs. Wilson with Tim Russert, confirmed Matt Cooper’s information, derived from other sources, that she worked for the CIA (according to Mr. Cooper, the confirmation consisted of, “Yeah, I’ve heard that”) and may have said something to Judith Miller (though Miss Miller can’t remember what). On no reasonable reading does that add up to “leaked the identity of Wilson's wife to several reporters”, and, of course, Mr. Libby is not charged with having done so.

A yet clearer sign of failure to read the source material is Mr. Duffy’s later howler,

Fitzgerald was appointed to run the case, and the hard-charging prosecutor began interviewing witnesses within weeks. That, according to Fitzgerald, is when Libby began to spin his web. In his interviews with the FBI and later in his testimony to the grand jury, Libby swore that he had first heard about Wilson’s wife not from other senior officials in June 2003 but instead on July 10 or 11, 2003, from NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert [emphasis added].

The indictment does not say that. It states that Mr. Libby told the FBI and the grand jury that he first learned about Mrs. Wilson’s employment from sources within the Administration but that he had forgotten that information when he spoke to Tim Russert. He is not accused of lying about his original source, only of inventing details of a subsequent conversation with a reporter.

Needless to say, Mr. Duffy, while repeating Joe Wilson’s version of his famous mission to Niger, neglects to add the important detail that Wilson’s narrative has been proven false. Even the Washington Post, no center of Bush fandom, has labeled it “mostly erroneous”.

With so much of the media earnestly peddling disinformation, getting the truth out to the public will be a challenge. Happily, the truth is in this case clear, convincing and simple: A special counsel of unquestionable ability and with complete access to the facts examined this affair for two years. He knows what Valerie Plame Wilson really did for the CIA and how the fact of her CIA employment became public. With that knowledge in hand, he has chosen to bring charges against no one for improperly disclosing confidential information. The case against Mr. Libby deals solely with what he did after the inquiry began, not with any earlier misconduct. The idea that a grand conspiracy existed to silence a “whistle blower” or that the White House’s conduct was improper to any extent rests purely on partisan wishful thinking.