The Washington scandal that wasn't
- From: "Elected Newsgroup leader Chuck" <chuckadams05@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 2 Sep 2006 07:11:14 -0700
The Washington scandal that wasn't
David Frum
National Post
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Has a Washington scandal ever ended with a more anti-climactic splat
than
the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson affair?
This week it was at last fully and finally confirmed that it was former
deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage who had leaked the name of
CIA
agent Valerie Plame.
Put like that, the story sounds pretty bare. So let me put it another
way.
Imagine that Ken Starr's investigation had concluded that Monica
Lewinsky
had made the whole thing up -- and that it was established beyond all
possible doubt that at the very moment Monica claimed she was
experiencing
ecstasy in the Oval Office with Bill Clinton, Clinton was in fact up in
the
White House family quarters helping Hillary sort old wedding
photographs.
Imagine all that, and you only begin to imagine how utterly the biggest
scandal of the Bush years has fizzled into nothing.
The scandal originated in George Bush's Jan. 28, 2003, State of the
Union
address:
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Six months later, on July 6, 2003, The New York Times published an
op-ed by
one Joseph Wilson that accused the president of twisting intelligence.
Wilson explained that the CIA had sent him to Niger in 2002 to
investigate
Iraqi uranium buying -- and that he had reported back that it was all
bunk.
Suddenly all Washington was asking the same question: Who the hell was
Joe
Wilson?
Wilson, a former ambassador to Gabon now struggling to earn a living as
an
international business consultant, seemed a very unlikely person to
investigate a secret nuclear transaction. The next week, syndicated
columnist Robert Novak provided the answer: Wilson had been proposed
for the
assignment by his wife, Valerie Plame, "an Agency operative on weapons
of
mass destruction."
The administration's critics immediately erupted in outrage. "Did
senior
Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working
covertly in a field of vital importance to national security -- and
break
the law -- in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and
intimidate
others?" So demanded David Corn of The Nation magazine.
For his part, Ambassador Wilson vehemently denied that his wife had
anything
to do with his assignment.
The administration succumbed to media pressure and appointed a special
prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to investigate the case. Critics
gleefully
settled in to wait for "Fitzmas" -- the happy day when the prosecutor
would
indict the so-called neocon cabal. Many speculated that the scandal
must
touch the Vice President, even the President. Wilson himself said he
was
looking forward to seeing Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House
in
handcuffs.
Over time, it became clear that almost every detail of Joe Wilson's
original
story was false. Wilson's appointment was engineered by his wife. The
report
he filed did not acquit the Iraqis. Wilson had not detected forged
documents. Above all: An Iraqi trade mission had in fact sought uranium
in
Niger in 1998 -- the President had spoken accurately.
Nonetheless, the Plame scandal ricocheted throughout the government.
The
Bush administration's pro-democracy, pro-Israel foreign policies were
ferociously opposed by most of the U.S. national-security bureaucracy,
and
especially the CIA. Inflamed by the Plame allegations, CIA officials
acted
almost as part of the Kerry campaign organization through campaign
2004.
Since Kerry's defeat, CIA betrayals of administration secrets have
helped
clinch one Pulitzer Prize for The New York Times and another for the
Washington Post.
Yet somehow Fitzmas never came.
And then last week, Newsweek excerpted a new book co-authored by the
magazine's Michael Isikoff and arch-conspiracy theorist David Corn that
reveals that the Plame leak sprang not from Rove or Cheney, but from
Armitage -- and that Patrick Fitzgerald has known this truth for close
to
three years.
Armitage was never an administration hawk. Indeed, he and his close
friend
Colin Powell loathed the so-called neocon cabal as fervently as David
Corn
himself. Armitage identified Plame to Novak not to settle scores, but
out of
a weak-minded delight in gossip.
Armitage, a former Marine, often questioned the physical courage of
civilians who disagreed with him. But after the scandal exploded, and
even
as his administration colleagues and the President to whom he owed
loyalty
were exposed to enormous legal jeopardy by his actions, he kept silent
to
protect himself.
It's a shameful story. But the shame does not fall quite where the
media
promoters of the story hoped it would. Which may explain why newspapers
such
as The New York Times and left-wing blogs which once relished every
last
twist and turn of the saga have suddenly gone as silent about it as
Armitage
himself.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=bce...
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