Joe Wilson's 'Secret' Wife
BY JAMES TARANTO
Best of the Web
Wednesday, November 1, 2005
As we noted yesterday, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby does not allege that Valerie Plame, the long-suffering wife of Bush-hating egomaniac Joe Wilson, was a covert CIA agent. It does, however, claim that Plame's "employment status was classified" and that before July 14, 2003, when her name appeared in a column by Robert Novak, her "affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community."
We guess that depends what you mean by "common." It seems that at least two journalists knew that Plame worked for the CIA long before the kerfuffle that bears her name was a gleam in the eye of Angry Leftists.
From the New York Sun, July 6, 2005:
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Among the letters submitted by [Time's Matt] Cooper [to the judge considering whether to compel his testimony] was one from a former Time White House correspondent, Hugh Sidey. "In this case it seems to me the protection of a source transcends the other considerations,which do not seem to threaten national security," he wrote.
Mr. Sidey said in an interview that the identity of the CIA operative, Ms. Plame, was widely known--well before Mr. Cooper talked to his sources. "You know this game as well as I do," Mr. Sidey said. "That name was knocking around in the sub rosa world we live in for a long time."
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And this is an exchange between host Alan Murray and guest Andrea Mitchell on CNBC's now-defunct "Capital Report," Oct. 3, 2003 (transcript not available publicly online):
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Murray: Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?
Mitchell: It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it.
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In fact, Novak did not report that she was covert; Fitzgerald did not allege it; and the factual assertions Joe Wilson makes in his own book, if accurate, prove that she was not. It's further evidence that this "scandal" is about nothing, and that Libby's indictment--even if he turns out to be guilty--is a tragedy.
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