Clarifying

Hitch in today's Opinion Journal:

{...}In the absence of any such assertion or allegation, one must be forgiven for wondering what any of this gigantic fuss can possibly be about. I know some apparently sensible people who are prepared to believe, still, that a Machiavellian cabal in the White House wanted to punish Joseph Wilson by exposing his wife to embarrassment and even to danger. So strong is this belief that it envisages Karl Rove (say) deciding to accomplish the foul deed by tipping off Robert Novak, one of the most anti-Iraq-war and pro-CIA journalists in the capital, as if he were precisely the pliant tool one would select for the dastardly work. And then, presumably to thicken the plot, Mr. Novak calls the CIA to confirm, as it readily did, that Ms. Plame was in the agency's employ.

Meanwhile, and just to make things more amusing, George Tenet, in his capacity as Director of Central Intelligence, tells Dick Cheney that he employs Mr. Wilson's wife as an analyst of the weird and wonderful world of WMD. So jealously guarded is its own exclusive right to "out" her, however, that no sooner does anyone else mention her name than the CIA refers the Wilson/Plame disclosure to the Department of Justice.

Mr. Fitzgerald, therefore, seems to have decided to act "as if." He conducts himself as if Ms. Plame's identity was not widely known, as if she were working under "non official cover" (NOC), as if national security had been compromised, and as if one or even two catch-all laws had been broken. By this merely hypothetical standard, he has performed exceedingly well, even if rather long-windedly, before pulling up his essentially empty net.

However, what if one proposes an alternative "what if" narrative? What if Mr. Wilson spoke falsely when he asserted that his wife, who was not in fact under "non-official cover," had nothing to do with his visit to Niger? What if he was wrong in stating that Iraqi envoys had never even expressed an interest in Niger's only export? (Most European intelligence services stand by their story that there was indeed such a Baathist initiative.) What if his main friends in Niger were the very people he was supposed to be investigating?

Well, in that event, and after he had awarded himself some space on an op-ed page, what was to inhibit an employee of the Bush administration from calling attention to these facts, and letting reporters decide for themselves? The CIA had proven itself untrustworthy or incompetent on numerous occasions before, during and after the crisis of Sept. 11, 2001. Why should it be the only agency of the government that can invoke the law, broken or (as in this case) unbroken, to protect itself from leaks while protecting its own leakers?{...}

As they say, go read the whole thing.

This whole thing is such a non-starter, it's amazing. It's typical Dee Cee, I swear. It's as if the dorks who run that town need to have a good scandale once in a while, and if they don't have the makings of a juicy one, well, they'll find one where they can. It's such a B-movie scandale, too. Valerie Plame, the starlet du jour, was not undercover for the CIA, hence no law was violated at her outing. She was a desk jockey, for crying out loud. She also recommended her husband for this gig, so if one were looking for cronyism, this is where you would find it. Never mind that her husband was an incompetent boob. And you have a special prosecutor who's been investigating this thing for two years and only came back with perjury charges on one of the main players. Fitzgerald, apparently, couldn't even get an indictment for conspiracy.

If Scooter Libby perjured himself he should, indeed, pay the price for that. Perjury is perjury is perjury. But to have perjured yourself over this? Come on. That's just stupid. Cheney's got a rep as the evil mastermind of this administration to uphold. That his Chief of Staff would blunder on something so goddamn basic isn't going to help keep the rep intact, ya dig?