Reads like a whodunit novel

by David Grand
July 21, 2005

The plot, which has more twists and turns than a West Virginia mountain road, revolves around, who in the White House blabbed the name of a covert CIA agent to reporters, putting that person's life and those of their overseas contacts in jeopardy.

And I daresay, it would tax the collective investigative skills of such fictional, super sleuths as Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, Inspector Clouseau and Dick Tracy to uncover that blabbermouth's true identity, and that of any others who may also have let the cat named Valarie out of the bag. But getting anyone to fess up to it would be like trying to open an oyster without a knife.

It  was Robert Novak, that cantankerous, ultraconservative journalist, who's to blame for first outing Valarie Plame, as that CIA spook in a column he wrote in the Chicago Sun on July 14, 2003, which he says was given to him by "two senior administration officials." He also revealed that she is the wife of former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson. (Wonder why he didn't mention their dog's name while he was at it.)

And one of those officials had to be Karl Rove, who he spoke to eight day earlier about Wilson's trip to Niger in 2002, to check on a report from British intelligence indicating that Iraq had been buying uranium ore there. And they also discussed whether it was his wife who sent him on that mission, which, as it turns out, was at the State Department's urging. It should also be noted, that Rove has since said that it was from Novak that he first learned of her name. 

I'm sure they didn't have anything complimentary to say about either of them. And no wonder, for upon Wilson returning from Niger  he wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times debunking that claim, which the President referred to in his 2003 State of the Union speech, as clear evidence of the military threat posed by Iraq.

Three days after his tete-a-tete with Novak, Rove said during an interview with Time's reporter Matthew Cooper, that "Wilson wasn't a whistleblower, as he'd like Americans to believe, but a zealous partisan trying to discredit the justification for the Iraq War during the election campaign." That's what's called ignoring the message and killing the messenger. (Rove's defenders now argue, that since he only referred to her as Wilson's wife, who worked for the CIA, but not identifying her by name; ergo, he wasn't guilty of the crime of divulging classified information.) To me, and many Democratic senators who are howling for his scalp, that's a distinction without a difference. And ignores the intent and spirit of the law against outing a CIA operative.

When the matter first surfaced, the president vowed to fire whoever unmasked Ms. Plame, a pledge he's now hedging on in light of Rove's possible involvement. But that's understandable. For the mere thought that he might lose Rove, who's often referred to as his brain, would make him jumpy as a goat.

In Sept. 2003, Scott McClellan, the White House's mouthpiece said, "it's simply not true that Mr. Rove or anyone in the Vice President's office was involved in the leak." Words he's had to eat.

And I can only imagine his consternation, when Time's reporter Cooper said on NBC's "Meet the Press " this past Sunday that Cheney's top aid Lewis Libby was among his sources for his story about the identity of that CIA operative; and that he spoke to him after learning about Wilson's wife from Rove. That makes him the second biggest fish caught in the net, so far.

But the low point in this growing scandal (although it wouldn't hold a candle to Watergate, the "granddaddy" of all scandals in the nation's history) occurred last week, when New York Times reporter Judith Miller was imprisoned in the same maximum-security prison as would-be 911 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, for the story she never wrote two years ago. She'd gotten Valarie Plame's name from a source in the White House who spoke on condition of anonymity. In short, she's in prison for refusing to break her word. Maybe it makes sense to you. But not me, by a long shot.

How will it all end? Don't ask me. Hopefully, by the time leafs fall, but most likely when snowflakes do. But then again, Watergate began as a third-rate burglary and look what it mushroomed into, and how long it took for Nixon to finally "throw in the towel."