by Matt Barr

And I was saying that in 2003

Megan McArdle posts excerpts from a Wall Street Journal article today that dares ask the question whether any law was broken by "leaking" Valerie Plame's occupation to the press. It says and she says she's convinced none was, and that's right. I wrote about this in Toogood Reports last September. I don't reproduce it among my "blasts from the past" because by the time I resurrected my blog nobody cared about Valerie Plame or Joe Wilson anymore.

But there were other things to consider about the case, and I reproduce them in slightly updated form here (original can be found in its entirety here):

Why did the CIA confirm her employment?

The Washington Post reported that “[w]hen Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson’s wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name ‘for security reasons.’” Novak himself said that “[t]hey said it’s doubtful she’ll ever again have a foreign assignment. They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn’t use her name.”

Confirming that Plame is a CIA employee who once had “foreign assignments” whose name they would “prefer” Novak did not use is probably not the kind of “affirmative measures” the law is talking about. Personally, I would prefer that the CIA’s standard reply to inquiries like Novak’s be “we don’t comment on personnel matters,” but evidently Plame’s employment wasn’t a terribly big deal.

This story percolated above the fold on [September 27, 2003], when the Post reported that “a senior administration official said that before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife…. ‘Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,’ the senior official said of the alleged leak.”

Follow up question, then:

What to make of this “senior official” who claims “revenge”?

We can’t discount the possibility that someone is being condescending. “Clearly, the Cardinals won the National League Central,” someone snooty might say. But it’s more likely that this “senior official” was stating a conclusion of his or her own -- secondhand -- analysis. With firsthand knowledge, he or she would more likely have said, “the motive was revenge,” or, better yet, “So-and-so said to do this to get back at Wilson.” So, how credible is this source? Is he or she the one with an axe to grind?

If what this “senior official” said is true, why didn’t these six reporters report that the White House was trying to leak a CIA operative’s name?

On Monday, the Post reported: “John Roberts, a CBS White House correspondent, said that to his knowledge, no administration official had contacted anyone at the network about Wilson. If anyone had called him, Roberts said, ‘I’d immediately have to wonder what the ulterior motive was. We’d probably end up doing a story about somebody breaching national security by leaking the name of a CIA operative.’”

Roberts and any of dozens of other media types. You get a call from a White House aide outing a CIA operative, and you don’t swing for the fences? The Post said on Sunday that “[s]ources said that some of the other journalists who received the leak did not use the information because they were uncomfortable with unmasking an undercover agent or because they did not consider the information relevant to Wilson’s report about Niger.” Set aside for the moment how these “sources” know that (consider how much more powerful it would have been to be able to report: “journalists we talked to who received the leak said they did not use the information because…”).

So, let me get this straight. These journalists were uncomfortable identifying what they believed was an undercover agent, and so, we’re led to believe, were appreciative of the gravity of such a leak. But they did not report that the leak was attempted -- without using her name? To what end? Is it that conservative bias in the mass media again?

Let’s turn to another angle of this: that this illegal leak was motivated by, pick one, revenge, intimidation, or a desire to “smear” Wilson.

Is the claim of “revenge” credible?

A lot of blog and op/ed bandwidth has been spent on this question already, but succinctly: How does identifying Wilson’s wife as a CIA employee get “revenge” on him for concluding the Iraq-Niger yellowcake deal never happened? “We’ll show you, we’ll tell Bob Novak your wife works for the CIA”? The imaginative can think of a dozen better ways to get “revenge” is that’s the idea -- starting with getting Plame fired.

Add to that that whatever satisfaction there may have been in this “revenge,” does it outweigh (1) the possible national security ramifications, if indeed releasing Plame’s name compromises intelligence sources, and (2) the very obvious political ramifications (is there anybody who couldn’t have foreseen the present controversy)?

Is the claim of “intimidation” credible?

For his part, Wilson said on MSNBC Monday, among other media, he believes the intent was to “intimidate” others into not speaking out against the administration. To the extent other people in a position and with a platform to criticize the administration have spouses working for the CIA and want to keep that secret, maybe that has some legs. But what about others not so situated?

On NPR’s All Things Considered Monday, Wilson was asked whether he knew of anyone who had been intimidated since July (when his wife’s identity was revealed) into not speaking out. He did not.

Is the claim of “smearing” credible?

Wilson, who should probably pick a lane, also variously says that the leak was intended “to smear my good name and my wife’s good name.” It is unclear how identifying Ms. Plame as a CIA weapons of mass destruction expert does either. One suggestion has been that the idea was to suggest that Wilson -- whose investigative background is not evident from his resume -- was sent to Niger not because he was the man for the job, but because his wife suggested it. Imagine, though, that Wilson and Plame were not married. “Leaking” the information that Wilson was sent to Niger at the suggestion of a CIA WMD expert would tend to enhance his credibility, not diminish it.

Browse books from Amazon.com: