Plamegate: MysterySolved
By Kenneth R.Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com | July13, 2006
Finally some straight talk on the Valerie Plame case, thanks toRobert Novak, the conservative columnist who first revealed theidentity of the not-so-covert CIA officer three yearsago.
Novak’s July 14,2003, column on the much-disputed trip to Niger by Plame’shusband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, triggered an FBIinvestigation, a federal grand jury, and eventually the appointmentof special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who indicted top WhiteHouse aid Scooter Libby for perjury along the way.
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At issue was whether Saddam Hussein ever sent a buying team to Nigerlooking for uranium yellowcake in the 1999-2000 period. After tea andcrumpets with former friends in the Nigerian government, Wilsonconcluded that it never happened. At least, that’s what he saystoday.
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(The definitive Senate Select Intelligence Committee report onpre-war intelligence on Iraq, released in November 2004, assertsunequivocally that Wilson lied in public about the conclusions hesent to the CIA about his Niger trip).
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Despite all the sturm und drang over the past three years,Novak kept silent about who said what regarding Wilson’s trip.The Left has imputed all kinds of scurrilous motives to Novak’ssilence. They have accused him of cutting a special deal with thespecial prosecutor. They have accused him of fingering Libby andRove. They have accused him of total disregard of the FirstAmendment, preferring to violate the “sanctity” ofanonymous sources in favor of going to jail.
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They have compared unfavorably to former New York Timesreporter Judith Miller, who went to jail instead of revealing hersources in the same case.
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But when the Left realized that Judy Miller had been close to ScooterLibby and actually reported on the facts of Saddam Hussein’sweapons programs, rather than the¬Ýcreampuff versionbeing put out by the anti-Bush crowd at the CIA, they dropped herinstantly. She was fired by the NY Times almost the minute shewas released from jail.
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Fitzgerald finally has closed the leak case in so far as Novak isconcerned. “That frees me to reveal my role in the federalinquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret,”Novak wrote yesterday in anaccount he published in HumanEvents.
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“Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's missionwas revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an officialwho I have previously said was not a political gunslinger,”Novak revealed. “After the federal investigation was announced,he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertenton his part.”
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The official who was Novak’s primary source did not even knowthe name of Wilson’s wife. But it wasn’t a veryclose-held secret. “I learned Valerie Plame's name from JoeWilson's entry in ‘Who's Who in America,’” Novakwrote.
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I have asked a number of former CIA clandestine operators aboutValerie Plame.
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One former senior clandestine officer scoffed at the claim thatValerie Plame had ever been truly covert. “How can you be[covert] when you are married to an ex-U.S. ambassador andwork for the State Department overseas?” Somebody looking ather from a hostile power (say, Iran) would have to have a brain thesize of a pea to miss her connection to the U.S. government, headded.
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And yet, former CIA officers who vigorously oppose thisadministration have signed public letters and gone on networktelevision to protest the exposure of her identity as the greatestnational security breach of the century.
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Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who became a deputy director ofthe State Department’s counter-terrorism bureau, has launchedan internet witchhunt against Karl Rove for allegedly “outing”his former Camp Perry classmate, Valerie Plame. (Gee, Larry: Guesseverybody must have known about Val’s Camp Perry date with you,so it’s okay to talk about that, right?)
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Novak’s column takes the wind out of their sails. Not only wasKarl Rove not Novak’s primary source, but Valerie Plame’srole at CIA was so well-known that a CIA spokesman, Bill Harlowe, wasable to confirm to Novak that Plame had suggested Wilson for theNiger trip.
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Like Novak and hundreds of others of reporters, I have had dealingswith Harlowe over the years. Even if you had nailed down the identityof a covert CIA operator who had worked for the agency 20 yearsearlier, Harlowe would never confirm that person’s existence.The standard line was to neither confirm nor deny.
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But if you asked if so-and-so who was posted overseas to a U.S.embassy, and was now working as an analyst, could give you abackground briefing on their subject of expertise, he would at leastget back to you with a yes or a no.
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And that is exactly what he provided to Novak. The CIA public affairsoffice was his third source.
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Larry Johnson and others had kvetched that Novak blew Valerie Plame’scover at her “top secret” CIA proprietary, BrewsterJennings, in Boston.They allege that Plame was working undercover asan energy industry analyst to penetrate Iranian nuclear procurementnetworks.
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But guess what? It wasn’t Bob Novak who revealed that ValeriePlame may have been working undercover (with an alleged tie to thealleged Brewster Jennings in Boston, which now hosts an Internet gamesimilar to “Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego”?)
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It was left-wing columnist David Corn, writing in The Nation,just two days after Novak’s first column.
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It turns out that Corn is a close friend of the Wilson/Plame couple,and knew all about their various foreign outings. Unlike RobertNovak, he didn’t need to consult “Who’s Who inAmerica” to learn Valerie Plame’s name.
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If any security breach occurred with the disclosure of Valerie Plame’sname, look toward Joe Wilson, who posted his wife’s name to “Who’sWho,” and to their circle of political and professionalfriends.
My hunch: it was allpart of a carefully orchestrated public relations scheme, that nettedlying Joe Wilson prime time television appearances, a best-sellingbook, and a $2.5 million contract for the memoirs of Madame.
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