And David Corn replies to Andrew May's suggestion that Corn, who first reported that Plame was undercover, was given the information by Wilson in an attempt to set up the GOP. His retort is a bit weak and emotional, in my estimation, yet highly readable. May might be on to something in his discussion about Corn--the plot is thickening:
davidcorn.com
The Rove Scandal: Now I'm Smeared as the Leaker
I have rarely read a column as stupid, absurd and wrong as the one posted today by Clifford May, a former New York Times reporter who left journalism and became a spokesman for the Republican Party. It begins:
This just in: Bob Novak did not reveal that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent for the CIA
Who did? Apparently, I did. And, by the way, Mark Felt was not Deep Throat; it was me.
May notes that in Bob Novak's column that first outed Valerie Wilson, Novak described her as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He argues that this did not reveal Valerie Wilson as a truly undercover CIA officer--what's known as a NOC (an officer under "nonofficial cover"). He then points out that when I wrote about the Novak column two days later, I referred to Valerie Wilson as "a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital important to national security." Breathlessly, May writes, "Since Novak did not report that Plame was 'working covertly' how did Corn know that's what she had been doing?" His answer: Joseph Wilson must have told me when I interviewed him after the Novak leak. Thus, Valerie Wilson was really outed by me because Joe Wilson leaked to me.
Got that?
There are several problems with May's piece. He claims that Novak's story did no real harm to Valerie Wilson's standing as a CIA officer. He writes, "On the basis of Novak's story alone, it is highly unlikely that anyone would have had a clue that Plame...had been a NOC. At most, her friends in Washington would have been surprised to learn that she didn't work where she said she worked." May is assuming that an undercover intelligence officer is not really outed unless a journalist writes something like, "She works at the CIA and and she's undercover there." That is incredibly daffy. If Cliff May had been a CIA NOC when he was stationed overseas for the Times and a newspaper published a piece saying he was an "operative" for the CIA, that would have indeed outed him as a NOC. And it would have caused a mess of trouble. Revealing an undercover officer's relationship to the CIA is what blows the cover. One need not spell out the NOC's relationship to the agency. Once Valerie Wilson's name appeared in Novak's column, her days as a CIA undercover official were done. Moreover, operation that she worked on--and possibly other officers and agents with whom she had worked--were compromised.
Before Valerie Wilson was exposed, she was known to family and friends as an energy analyst who worked for a private firm. That was her cover. When Novak said she was a CIA "operative," that cover was destroyed. This was not just a matter of letting her friends and relatives in on a little secret. Novak's column was not merely an inconvenience for her. (Remember, the CIA did ask the Justice Department to investigate this leak; the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has repeatedly called it a big deal: and various federal judges have affirmed Fitzgerald's characterization.)
So May is profoundly wrong when he argues Novak's leak was not all that consequential.
He's also off the deep end when he claims that I outed Valerie Wilson. In my article--which was the first piece to suggest that the Novak leak might be evidence of a crime committed by Bush aides--I did not report that she was an undercover officer. I posed a question:
Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US 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?
That was not a statement of fact. And in that article, I noted that I had spoken to Joseph Wilson and that he had refused to say whether his wife worked at the CIA:
Wilson says, "I will not answer questions about my wife. This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President's statement in the state of the union speech."
So he will neither confirm nor deny that his wife--who is the mother of three-year-old twins--works for the CIA.
May does not believe me. He argues that I could not have written that Bush officials might have outed an undercover officer without Wilson having told me she was an undercover officer. He writes:
Any reporter worth his salt would immediately wonder: Did Wilson indeed answer Corn's questions about his wife--after Corn agreed not to quote his answers but to use them only on background?
He can wonder all he likes. I noted rather clearly in my piece that Wilson did not answer my questions. And when May emailed yesterday about this, I sent him a rather unambiguous note:
When I spoke to Joe Wilson after the Novak leak, he would not tell me whether or not his wife worked at the CIA. He spoke only in hypotheticals. He said, imagine if she did, what would this leak mean, AND imagine if she did not, what would this leak mean. So I do deny that he told me because he did not. That's the truth, the absolute truth. No spin. No parsing. No stonewalling. If you find any wiggle room in this response, let me know and I will unwiggle it. And you can believe it or not.
May, the former reporter, did not believe me. Worse, he did not quote this email in his column. He only mentioned an earlier email in which I pointed out to him that I was asking a question not making a "statement of fact." (That explanation apparently did not suffice, so after he queried me again, I sent him the above note, which he ignored.)
Now let's turn to the great mystery May believes he has solved: how did Corn know--even in his supposin'--to describe Valerie Wilson as a "top-secret" operative? Two explanations. First, I assumed the worst, in order to explore fully the possible ramifications of the Novak leak. Second, I knew that the Wilsons had told friends and family members that Valerie was an energy analyst at a private firm. That would mean that if she was a CIA operative (as Novak reported--and don't we trust his reporting?) then she had to be an undercover CIA operative. Could there be any other alternative? CIA employees who work overtly at the CIA--and there are many--do not tell people they work for a private firm. And since the story was that Valerie worked for an energy firm, that meant that she could not have what's known as "official" cover. (That's when a CIA officer is stationed as a diplomat in an embassy overseas.) And Novak had reported her field was weapons of mass destruction--which is a top-secret field. So this is the info I possessed: she was a CIA "operative" working on WMD issues and she told people she was an energy analyst at a private firm. In my calculations, that could only add up to one thing: if Novak's report was accurate, she was a NOC working in a highly sensitive field.
I needed no secrets from Joe Wilson to reach that conclusion. And he gave me no secrets--on background, on foreground, or on any ground.
Novak ruined Valerie Wilson's career. His words put her past operations in jeopardy. May is now desperately trying to absolve Novak and the Bush administration leakers (such as Karl Rove) by blaming Joe Wilson (a victim) and me.
Here's another fact that may interest anyone who thinks May might have a point:
Number of times I've been contacted by Patrick Fitzgerald, interviewed or contacted by his investigators, and called before the grand jury: 0.
What motivated May, who now is the press flack at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (a conservative outfit much in favor of the Iraq war), to write such hyperbolic and false tripe? Only he can answer that question. In the past, I have enjoyed debating politics and policy with him on various talk shows. I considered him an honest--though misguided--adversary. But now I will regard him as a hack who cares not a whit for facts and truth. And if this is the sort of defense--and defender--that Rove needs, then maybe Rove really is in trouble.
******
Back to the Real World: If you want to see my analysis of the most recent Rove scandal news, click here. In short, Rove is now defending himself by admitting he leaked classified information to two reporters and by proving that the White House did lie about his involvement in the Plame/CIA leak. What a defense! |
