Without ever having been tragedy, the Valerie Plame kerfuffle is repeating as farce. In the fantasy world of Joe Wilson and Daily Kos, suing Dick Cheney and Karl Rove may be a brilliant legal maneuver. Outside the surreality-based community, it will be a continuing source of amusement (to friends of the Bush Administration) and embarrassment (to its non-moonbatty critics).
According to press reports – I haven’t bothered to pore over the complaint itself – the gravamen of Wilson & Plame v. Cheney, Rove et al. is that the Vice President and his dark minions invaded Valerie Plame-Wilson’s privacy and endangered the lives of herself and her children by disclosing the deep, dark secret that she was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. If Mr. Cheney’s lawyers have a sense of humor, they can make great fun out of the accusation of endangerment.
Why would anyone wish to harm Mrs. Plame-Wilson? The theory, presumably, is that the revelation of her position made her a target of terrorists wishing ill toward the United States. Now, what could a terrorist have inferred from the leak that appeared in Bob Novak’s column? Only that she was married to a former member of the diplomatic service and played a role at the CIA that enabled her to influence the selection of her husband to investigate rumors about Niger. Maybe al-Qa’eda’s dot-connecting ability verges on the psychic, but that information wouldn’t lead me to think that Valerie Plame was anyone of special significance. No doubt Osama bin-Laden would be delighted to kill everybody in Langley (he has, after all, shown limited acuity in distinguishing friend from foe), but nothing that Mr. Novak wrote would single out this particular cog in the American intelligence apparatus as an especially hateful infidel.
On the other hand, a mufsidun who read the Western press diligently would have found, on October 5, 2003, a Reuters story, published in the Washington Post and elsewhere (but the links have proven ephemeral; you may have to look it up in Lexis or hard copy), a story by Sue Pleming, in which Mr. Wilson was quoted as asserting that “a leading former CIA official had said his wife ‘was probably the single highest target of any possible terrorist organization or hostile intelligence service that might want to do damage’.”
Well, there is a clue and a half for murderous Islamofascists.
Q. Ambassador Wilson, why do you believe that your wife’s life was in danger?
A. Because she was a key CIA operative, maybe the most important they had.
Q. How would a terrorist have known that?
A. It was in the press. Reuters published it.
Q. Would that be here, in Exhibit P-9876, an article by Sue Pleming, where it says that your wife “was probably the single highest target of any possible terrorist organization or hostile intelligence service that might want to do damage”?
A. Yep. That’s right.
Q. Did Ms. Pleming cite her source for that disclosure?
A. Er, yes.
Q. Would you care to read to the jury the last paragraph of the story, where the source is named?
A. Sorry. I can’t find my glasses.
In actuality, no doubt, the proceedings will be mundane. Likewise, no doubt, the further they progress, the more obvious it will become that Mr. Wilson is a mentally unbalanced prevaricator, who can’t bear the thought that Fizzlemas ended his quarter hour of celebrity. Let the games begin!
Discovery should be fascinating, and probably quite uncomfortable for Wilson/Plame.
Posted by: Mark Linneman | Friday, July 14, 2006 at 05:14 PM
Why can't you simply admit that Wilson's interview with the Post took place almost three months after Novak's column? Why leave out this small detail?
Posted by: Peter Hodges | Friday, July 14, 2006 at 01:21 PM