Tuesday, November 15, 2005

What's wrong with this sentence?

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.
Does that mean that it wasn't disclosed when Woodward was told about it?

I've had the feeling for a long time that the Plame Identity was known to quite a few reporters, which is why Judy Miller "can't remember" who told her and why she altered Plame to Flame in her notes. It could easily have been Plame herself, and we'd never know, because Judy would go to jail rather than tell. Let Libby take the rap, even if he's not guilty of this, he's guilty of being closely associated with Darth Cheney. And it's all right and fair because they're protecting journalistic ethics. Besides, with Fitzpatrick prowling around, who would dare speak that truth. Of course it can't be proven, but it would explain a lot, such as why Miller preferred to go to jail rather than testify, but changed her mind when she only had to testify about Scooter Libby and nobody else.

I can't find anything that says Fitzpatrick ever talked to Plame herself to see what reporters she knows or has spoken to about her job. Has she treated her identity and employment as classified?

If I were investigating a case like this, I'd want to check out Libby's assertion that it seemed like a lot of reporters knew about her before I indicted anybody. Maybe that's why he only indicted Libby for perjury, but that still strikes me as a chickenscat indictment. I would have concluded that there was no case there because of the serious possibility that some reporters knew about this, and there's no way to prove it since they'd refuse to admit it.

Update: I guess I didn't get why Woodward's revelation was such a blockbuster. I assumed that because his source was a different high level administration official, it would just mean that Fitzgerald will have to keep investigating. He'd be stupid to do so, but this just illustrates my point, above, that you can't investigate a leak when nobody in the media will answer your questions. And if they have to be excluded, what's to keep defendants from insisting that there's this vast reservoir of information out there where knowledge passes around like air and that whatever was leaked came from there? Instant reasonable doubt!

So much for protecting real classified information. You can leak whatever you want, and unless we start putting a lot of reporters in jail, you'll never get convicted. Even if bureaucrats are forced to sign waivers of confidentiality, the reporters may not accept them as truly voluntary and still refuse to reveal their sources, and once the story gets into print (or on the air) it'll be at the end of a trail of casual conversations that can't be traced.

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