Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Dead Enders

So that settles that. I hope the wingosphere can finally stop bleating about how she wasn't "really" covert and there was no harm in what Libby et. al. did.

They were? Plame drove into the office in Langley. She traveled abroad under her own name. She helped arrange for her husband to do some fact-checking on a sensitive intelligence matter. Her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, then came home and leaked his observations to two nationally-known journalists, and then wrote his own op-ed in the New York Times under his byline.

And her husband managed to list her in Who's Who, where any journalist could look up the entry -- and where Robert Novak did just that.

Much mud is being tossed at Victoria Toensing, predictably, as a result of the document, without considering that Toensing was describing Plame’s status as a matter of law and with reference to the intended effect of the legislation regarding the unauthorized revelation of an agent’s covert status. Certainly, what was NOT intended is that such a status ought to provide a legal shield for agents who knowingly undertake a disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting an administration that prevents the administration from attempting to set the record straight.