Josh Marshall Pounds the Table
Best of the Web Today - July 13, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
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As Joe Wilson's credibility has collapsed, David Corn has been silent. Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman has gone back to attacking his old employer. But Wilson has one defender left: blogger Josh Marshall, whose efforts to keep alive the Valerie Plame kerfuffle increasingly remind us of Mike Kinsley's defense of monkeyfishing. We beg your indulgence as we quote Marshall's latest posting on the subject in full, though in two parts (the bracketed explanations are ours):<font size=3><font color=blue>
There's been a rush of egregious commentary about the Niger uranium story in the last couple days. And one point we hear again and again is that if Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, played a role in recommending him for the trip to Niger, as the SSCI [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] report [link in PDF] clearly states, then this wholly changes the legal and political implications of the administration officials' decision to reveal her identity in the press.
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As I pointed out a couple days ago, legally it is clearly irrelevant. Political impact is of course both subjective and unpredictable. So, though we might all venture opinions, there's very little way to know.
But, really, why argue?
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Note that Marshall doesn't provide any links to the "egregious commentary," which presumably includes our item yesterday explaining why, contrary to Wilson's accusation, it's highly unlikely that the revelation of Plame's identity violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Marshall has lost that argument, and he knows it, so "why argue?" Instead he changes the subject:
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If there's no legal case and no political problem, why don't the senior administration officials who leaked her identity just come forward?
If their rationale is a good one and they face no legal jeopardy, what's the problem?
It seems like a great opportunity to clear the air, settle the story, ascertain the facts and let the chips fall where they may.
Doing so will save much of the money being spent on the investigation Mr. [Patrick] Fitzgerald [the special prosecutor] is running. They can save themselves a lot of attorneys' fees. And they can have a free opportunity to explain the rationale behind their decision and why they believed it was the right thing to do in the context.
I can only assume by their silence that they're rather less confident about the quality of their explanation and the degree of their legal jeopardy than their many voluble defenders in the conservative press.
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Now, let's review what's happened here. On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak reported the following:
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Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.
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This turns out to be true, as even Marshall now admits. But Wilson, in a Sept. 16, 2003, interview with Marshall, denied it<font size=3> (link in PDF; quote on pp. 19-20):
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For those who would assert that somehow she was involved in this, it just defies logic. At the time, she was the mother of two-year-old twins. Therefore, sort of sending her husband off on an eight-day trip leaves her with full responsibility for taking care of two screaming two-year-olds without help, and anybody who is a parent would understand what that means. Anybody who is a mother would understand it even far better. Secondly, I mean, the notion somehow that this was some nepotism, that I was being sent on an eight-day, all-expense-paid--no salary, mind you--trip to the Sahara Desert. This is not Nassau we're talking about. This is not the Bahamas. It wasn't Maui. This was the Sahara Desert. And then, the only other thing that I can think of is the assertion that she wanted me out of the way for eight days because she, you know, had a lover or something, which is, you don't take lovers when you have two-year-old kids at home. So, there's no logic in it.
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Hat tip to blogger Gregory Djerejian for unearthing this quote. So Wilson was peddling, and Marshall was eagerly reselling, the story that Novak's sources falsely asserted the nepotism claim in order to blow Plame's cover so as to punish Wilson for criticizing the Bush administration.
To be sure, it's theoretically possible that the sources accurately asserted that Plame had recommended Wilson for the Niger junket but their true agenda was to reveal her identity as payback to Wilson. But if so--if, as Marshall claims, the Plame trip link is <font color=blue>"clearly irrelevant"<font color=black>--why would Wilson go to the trouble of lying about it? In any case, Novak's sources stand accused of a serious crime, and their accuser has impeached his own credibility by falsifying an element of his story. That strikes us as highly relevant.
As for Marshall's demand that the sources go public, this is a dishonorable bit of demagogy. Does anyone really believe that if they came forward with an innocent explanation, Wilson and Marshall would apologize and let the matter die? Not a chance--and Wilson's other erstwhile defenders would go on the warpath again too. Marshall's smarmy suggestion that Novak's sources are guilty until proven innocent is only the merest hint of the smear campaign they would endure if they were foolish enough to follow his <font color=blue>"advice." |
