In some previous post, I gave my take on this. In brief: The CIA commissioned anti-war former Clinton official Wilson to go to Niger and see if Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. He came back and said they were not, and later wrote a scathing op-ed in the New York Times accusing President Bush of ignoring his report. Robert Novak then reported that Wilson's wife, "Valerie Plame", worked for the CIA and had suggested Wilson go to Niger. Wilson, Sentator Schumer, and various weblogs then complained that Novak's source had violated federal law by releasing the name of a CIA covert operative, and should be sent to prison.
Novak now gives what is the story I suggested earlier: that Mrs. Wilson is not a covert
operative, and that the complaints are just trying to deflect attention from the fact
that the CIA sent a Democrat on a mission whose main purpose was probably to embarass
the Administration. From Drudge:
"According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy,
not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives."
When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for
her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to
use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else.
Possibly it will turn out that Mrs. Wilson actually is a spy as well as an analyst.
Various people have claimed that, without giving their exact source. In that case, I
would think the federal law is being violated by whoever reveals that she is a spy, not
by someone who reveals that she works for the CIA in a normal, analysis, capacity.
Maybe it is too early, but this makes me think of a point regarding the morality of political tactics. Wilson has implied that his wife is a covert operative and that the Administration was trying to wreck her job because of his op-ed. This charge is a convenient and very successful distraction from the Novak op-ed's point that there was impropriety in the CIA's choice of a hostile Democrat to go on the Niger mission. A likely scenario is that Wilson knows that his wife is not a covert operative and that the Administration was not trying to punish her, but merely to let people know how Wilson was chosen for the mission. Wilson's tactic of charging retaliation works equally well whether the charge is true or false, since the CIA can't really go into the details of its inner workings. If his charge is false, though, it is immoral, I think. He is lying, and lying because he knows that those who know the truth will not succumb to the temptation to refute him at the expense of their duty. But we'll see; treat this as a hypothetical till we find out the truth.
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