Monday, September 29, 2003

Wilson/Plame Affair: A Tangled Web

The Wilson/Plame affair - or is the Plame/Wilson affair - or (groan!) "Wilsongate" - is a very serious matter. It could well become the American version of Tony Blair's Hutton inquiry, in which an occurrence peripheral to the Iraq War winds up dramatically highlighting the degree of deception involved in making the case for war.

Even if this weren't connected to the war the way it is, for the White House to leak the name of an undercover CIA operative would be a big deal. As I understand the law, which was passed at the particular urging of the first President Bush during his time as Reagan's Vice President, this is a felony. It is not a crime for the reporter to receive or publish it, unless it's done repeatedly in a way that shows a pattern intended to damage national security.

In this case, we can certainly question Robert Novak's journalistic decision to publish the information. It was reportedly given to at least five other reporters, none of whom used the information in published stories or broadcasts. So presumably their judgment on the matter was different, whether from ethical reasons or because it was judged not to be a legitimate part of the "uranium from Niger" news story, the context in which it came up.

This story raises many questions. For the other journalists who received the information, is it permissible for them to reveal the leaker(s) on the grounds that Administration officials were breaking the law on a matter unrelated to the uranium story? Can the Justice Department legally require reporters to give the names?

According to White House spokesman Scott McClellan Monday, President Bush knows Karl Rove was not one of the leakers. Yet he also denied that the White House was conducting its own investigation. But why not? And how can Bush know that Rove was not involved unless there has been some kind of White House investigation?

The larger story here is the false prewar claims about "weapons of mass destruction" that the Bush Administration used to justify the Iraq War. When no WMDs were found in Iraq, they had to defend their prewar claims as somehow valid, or at least honestly mistaken. Which led, among other things, to the questions about the Niger uranium claims, which gave rise to the Valerie Plame leak.

Some people would say it's karma. But one way or the other, the WMD lies are coming back on the heads of Bush and his team.

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