Wilsongate
This scandal is taking shape quickly, but right now I'm not sure if this dog will hunt, at least as far as anyone going to jail or the Bush Administration being seriously scarred. But that might be a matter of luck as much as anything.
What we know, or seem to know, is that several journalists were called with this story, including sources at Time, Andrea Mitchell of NBC, and of course, Bob Novak.
As of today, Novak's story is that he uncovered this information in the course of doing research on Wilson, that no one from the White House told him about it, and that he didn't go digging for it. In fact, he claims that someone else mentioned Wilson's wife's occupation to him offhand some time before his story, implying that this wasn't particularly sensitive information to begin with.
And that could certainly be possible. It could certainly be that Valerie Plame was not still an operative, or that her past as an undercover operative was reasonably known.
But the question is, does that then lessen the culpability of the leakers? Even if she is no longer in the field, the very public revelation of her past work could still jeopardize operations and lives. And what may be well-known among U.S. diplomatic circles may certainly not be known in the community at large, especially the community in Niger, where Plame was potentially doing her undercover work.
But, as Jack Shafer notes in his Slate piece today, Novak's original wording might not be the smoking gun people assumed it to be originally. Novak simply asserts that Plame is a CIA operative. He then attributes the idea that Wilson was sent to Niger at his wife's request to the White House. That is both a small and big difference. As Novak wrote it, it's just a smear campaign. If the CIA information came from the White House, it's potentially criminal. The problem for Novak, as Josh Marshall notes in today's Talking Points Memo, is that Novak's story has changed significantly. Specifically, according to Newsday story published on July 22nd:
Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."
Yeah, that's a different story altogether from what Novak is saying now, when he's in a much hotter fire.
Additionally, there are too many other voices coming out on the media side who were given the same scoop, and didn't use the same wording as Novak. The Time.com story is very specific, though, in this respect:
And some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore, sometimes referred to as yellow cake, which is used to build nuclear devices.
Clearly, a lot of calls were made at about the same time, from somewhere within the White House. There two outlets (Time and Novak) who have broken the story who attribute it the same way (If you buy Novak's original version...), , and at least one named source, Andrea Mitchell, who says that the White House came to her with the information.
On top of that, the Washington Post has named a "senior Administration source" as saying that calls did indeed take place to at least six sources, but that source won't name the leaker, nor will they name who the leaks went out to. Well, do we even care about the second part of that statement? We know at least three of them, right? No, we care about the names of the people doing the leaks.
Is there any doubt that a leak took place? Three named sources, two of which ran the name at around the same time, all say they were called by the White House and told that Plame was a CIA operative who helped get Wilson the luxury Niger trip. The Washington Post has a senior, though unnamed source.
We know the leaks happened.
Then there are two questions. Was the leak just a smear, or an actual leak of sensitive intelligence information? That has to be addressed, because that will determine if this is just a smarmy and disgusting and inept political operation, or if it is in fact a criminal proceeding (that would border on treason).
The second issue is whether we can ever find out who the leaker(s) might have been. The journalists are unlikely to name their sources. And although records and phone logs and the like are going to be looked at (in theory) by Justice or whoever is doing the investigation, the track record of prosecuting leaks is very poor, usually because they can never nail anyone down. But of course, the White House brings extra scrutiny along with it, if anyone was foolish enough to make calls from the White House to set this up.
I think that, barring other revelations, they either won't get to the names of the leakers, or it will be determined that Plame's identity wasn't that closely guarded, which lessens the severity of the incident. And that's what I mean when I say it might be a matter of luck that nothing comes of this; you wonder if the geniuses who thought this was a way to discredit Wilson even knew if Plame was a real operative or not, or what leaking her name might mean.
While I would love to see Karl Rove tied to this in a criminal way, I guess I don't think the public needs to wait on formal investigations to begin to form an opinion about this. Criminal conduct or not, the intent was clearly to smear someone who was critical of the Administration, and caused them a major and very public embarrassment. I'm not naive about the way politics works, not at all. This happens on both sides.
But consider the context: We were pushed into a war with Iraq. Many people supported that war, grudgingly, because of the belief that removing Saddam would be better for Iraqis and because Saddam appeared to be a threat to the world. It now appears clear that much of the case for ousting Saddam was exaggerated to varying degrees. They ratcheted up their rhetoric in an important address to the nation to include images of mushroom clouds, and then told us about scary reports of uranium transactions in Niger.
The smoking gun, right? Then somebody, this peon of a guy named Joe Wilson, who isn't even one of "their guys", has the nerve to come out and try to cast doubt on it by going public in the NYT. Not content to just address Wilson's report or his methods (which they tried, and about which there are legitimate questions), they went for the smear route as well.
Reckless, inept and possibly illegal. Same as it ever was. They deserve harsh treatment, just on the basis of what is already known, even if no criminal conduct is ever proven.
11:51:19 AM 
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