Look in his eyes: is this the face of a liar?
Because this is the last time I'll comment on this story, because I love to piss off Andy, here's Hitchens' latest, in which he argues that, based on columnist Robert Novak's latest statements, the White House or "senior administration officials" could not have possibly blown former CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover for retributive reasons (I caught Novak on Tim Russert's show this Sunday; he seemed tamed, if not leashed, no doubt by a lawyer making hand signals off-camera). Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is the name that's come up most often, and Armitage, as Hitchens remarks, was hardly chummy with Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neoconservatives:
When one thinks of the oceans of ink and acres of paper that have been wasted on this mother of all nonstories, one wants to weep for the journalistic profession as well as for the trees. Well before Novak felt able to go public, he had said that his original source was not "a partisan gunslinger," which by any reasonable definition means that he was consciously excluding the names of Karl Rove or Dick Cheney. And how likely was it anyway that either man, seeking to revenge himself on Joseph Wilson, would go to a columnist who is known to be one of Wilson's admirers (praise for him and his career was a central theme in the original 2003 article), is friendly with the CIA, and is furthermore known as a staunch and consistent foe of the administration's intervention in Iraq? The whole concept was nonsense on its face.Hitchens also claims that he's uncovered new evidence -- or old evidence, rather -- that "the original British intelligence on the Niger connection was genuine." Let the fun begin.
7 comments :
This column is as worthless as the last. And throughout it, Hitchens assumes that Novak couldn't possibly be a partisan hypocrite. "His past role as a right-wing defender of the agency against whistle-blowers also makes it highly improbable that he would have exposed any employee to danger." Clearly, someone who's written a column in defense of the CIA couldn't possibly do it harm when it serves his politics. There's no way someone who buckled under slight subpoena pressure while Tim Russert, Mat Cooper and Judy Miller fought them vigorously could be a self-serving opportunist.
If indeed it was Armitage who was Novak's original source, and it probably was, and that he found the name, as he claims, in Who's Who in America, it absolutely doesn't make a difference. Administration officials still confirmed that she worked for the CIA, and that's classifed part of the information.
I advise anyone who wants to see a most uncomfortable sweat-athon to watch Novak on Meet the Press. You can get the video here.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/
It's not breaking the law to admit you work or work for the CIA, or to tell a third party that John Smith works for the CIA. As we well know, a certain percentage of Miami Cubans were Langley tools at one point or another, and will admit it freely. The classified part of the information isn't that she worked for the CIA: even her neighbors knew she worked for the CIA. According to Novak, his source(s) didn't say she was a covert operative -- a point he has argued since 2003. Let's not cloud our judgments because we all dislike Novak's opinions, hair, and those curious red sweater vests for which he has a weakness.
Could there still be some fire underneath this smoke? Possibly. Remember: Patrick Fitzgerald cleared Karl Rove. Either Fitzgerald is doing an estimable job Finding The Truth or he's yet another example of the Beltway's fascination with neuteured independent counsels who are political tools (of which there are many). He can't be both.
Actually, it is a crime to disclose the identity of an undercover operative. Reagan signed that bill. And I'm not sure that I know what Miami Cubans have to do with the whole thing. The CIA gave a lot of people money, but that doesn't mean they're employed by it.
Also, her neighbors did not know she worked for the CIA.
But that's what I wrote: Novak found out she worked at the CIA, not that she was a covert operative. Here's the direct quote from the 2003 column: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
As for her neighbors, I'm pretty sure I read in that 2003 Vanity Fair cover story that this information was public record.
Regardless of what Novak wrote, telling him that she worked at the CIA is possibly criminal, and indisputably irresponsible--it certainly endangered her life if abstractly and did a diservice to the country.
I don't know what Vanity Fair said in 2003, but even Novak who has maintained that it was known in certain DC circles, wouldn't admit that her neighbors knew on Meet the Press.
But most ridiculous in this nonissue, is that Hitchens is still making this argument and you're echoing it, when, as it turns out, Joseph Wilson was right. Regardless of his many quirks, in the end, there were no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq hadn't sought uranium from Niger, and the real danger was in Iran and North Korea. If Iraq was really on the lookout for weapons of mass destruction, why not get them easy way, from the AQ Kahn network, the way North Korea and Iran got them? But I suppose we should all trust Hitchens, whose every prediction on Iraq has been thoroughly opposite to the actual outcome of the war.
My point is that the Plame case is not the best example of the administration's perfidy. George Packer, Ron Suskind, Kenneth Pollack, Jeffrey Goldberg, as well as former administration officials like Powell, Armitage, and Paul O'Neil have all confirmed the WH's invidious habit of "stovepiping" (ugh -- the word itself singes my nosehairs) evidence.
My own faith in Wilson was shaken after that grandstanding Vanity Fair cover. Remember? Wilson and Plane in a Cadillac or whatever, posed like they were just on their way to an Eagles concert. I thought, "Things CAN'T be so bad if they can pimp themselves to the entertainment industry."
I read Hitchens these days to remind this weary Iraq War supporter of why we fight. I'm not obtuse enough to ignore an ominous irony: I read Hitchens to boost my morale, not as the necessary corrective -- as he would have been 10 years ago.
I will always read Hitchens fondly, but he continues to embarass himself everytime he writes about the war. And sadly, his attacks continue to get more invective, as his claims get more outrageous. At this point, he should drop the subject altogether if he's not willing to admit he was wrong.
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