Having It Both Ways
By Michael R. Bowen (09/30/03)
What do you do when you want to keep a secret? If it's really important, you don't even bring the subject up. When pressed, your posture is one of ignorance. However ill-informed the remarks of others may be, you certainly don't speak up and correct them.
Unless of course your name is Joseph Wilson. Wilson kept the secret of his wife's background by the time-honored tactic of loudly injecting himself into a controversy which was the hot focus of global attention. He kept things nice and shady by publishing an editorial in the New York Times. He craftily diverted attention from the Wilson household by working the talk show circuit to accuse the president of lying. Bingo! Instant celebrity for Mr. Wilson.
Now we all know what happens to celebrities: people want to know all about them, and the media will dig diligently for all the juicy details of income, career, social habits, family life. All will be spread across the front pages and television screens. You can be sure that, if your wife works for an organization intimately involved in the controversy into which you have just shoved your oar, it will come out in spades.
Here we encounter the peculiar logic of the Left—and Mr. Wilson is most certainly of the Left, writing for The Nation and delivering fiery speeches to gatherings of the Bush haters. The logic: free speech means that I am free to attack you in any way I wish, but you are not free to return fire. I may call your president a national disgrace, but you have no right to refuse to purchase my music. Mr. Wilson is free to call the president a liar, but the president's supporters have no right to ask just what expertise qualified Mr. Wilson to investigate Saddam's weapons, and why, if he had no expertise in that area, was he sent to Niger, and, finally, in a nation with many other doctrinaire Leftists, how did Mr. Wilson come to be selected by the CIA for this mission? Why not Sean Penn? Why not Michael Moore?
These ugly questions (which we have no right to ask) were bound to lead directly to Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife who, in an interesting coincidence, happens to work for the CIA. Reports are that she recommended her husband for the job. In a turn of events no one would have predicted, America's Leftists have begun to care about the safety and anonymity of CIA operatives. The Bush Administration is now being accused of "blowing" Ms. Plame's "cover". Of course, it's not even clear that Ms. Plame is an undercover agent. Undercover political operative, perhaps. But agent? Probably not. Most reports describe her as an analyst with WMD expertise, which sounds a lot more like someone flying a desk at Langley than a furtive figure slipping down the back alleys of Baghdad, Saddam's secret police on her trail.
But I think we can rest assured that it wasn't the Administration who outed Ms. Plame. It was Mr. Wilson with the help of the Times. It was the CIA, who sent him on his mission. And it was Valerie Plame herself, who provided the connection between Wilson and the CIA, and exposed herself to the world.
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