Playing the Valerie Plame Game
By Isaiah Z. Sterrett (07/27/05)
I HAVE TO ADMIT that I haven’t been very attentive to the news lately, mainly because I just got a job in Joe Wilson’s office. He takes care of the missus—shhhh!—while I plan his “investigations.” Next week he’s off to Disney World to “find Mickey.” Look for his upcoming op-ed in the New York Times, tentatively entitled, “What I Found in Orlando.”
My current favorite hobby is pretending that—unlike everyone in Washington—I actually didn’t know who Wilson’s wife is. That’s how the game works. I pretend to be shocked when anyone mentions ol’ what’s-her-name. Then I blame my incredulity on Karl Rove, whom I pretend to hate. I call this game “Being a Democrat” or, alternatively, “Chuck Schumer’s Day Off.”
When we first had the unpleasant duty of discussing Joe Wilson, we were concurrently discussing Bush’s assertion that a British report showed that Saddam had sought uranium from Africa. Liberals were yelping back then, too, assuring us that Bush had lied, that no such event had taken place.
The problem was that Bush didn’t say anything about the event, per se; he merely pointed out that intelligence from the U.K. seemed to mesh quite nicely with intelligence from the rest of the world. Liberals say the international community was against the war in Iraq, but they certainly weren’t against the theory that Saddam was a dirt bag. Everyone agreed on that. Bush’s only sin was showing that the people across the pond had done their homework, just like we had. As the president said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." There’s not a scintilla of fiction in that sentence.
But now it’s Karl Rove’s fault because he may have outed Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson’s wife and the aspiring spy, to columnist Bob Novak. Everybody in Washington already knew Ms. Plame, but it’s much more fun to ridicule “Bush’s Brain” than to tell the truth. Now we’re left with Rove’s “scandal.”
Scandal mongers tested the idea that Rove had violated 1982’s Intelligence Identities Protection Act, but of course he had not. Valerie Plame was not a “covert agent,” and thus Rove spoiled no secret by publicly using her name. He was as free to use “Valerie Plame” as “Ethel Mertz.” Funnily, however, only now is the Act—from 1982!—upsetting liberals. Frank Rich, for one, considers the “covert agent” aspect of the law an extremely “high threshold of criminality.”
Personally, I love Rich’s logic. He admits that Rove broke no law, but Rove’s still a brute. “Trashing is in [Rove’s] nature,” he writes. Yet Bill Clinton, who broke multiple laws according to the United States House of Representatives, is just as swell as a guy can be.
And speaking of Clinton, I don’t remember the outrage from Rich’s shrill pen when Sandy Berger put classified documents in a position remarkably similar to that in which Clinton placed Monica Lewinsky. Ponder for a moment the crisis that would unfold if Karl Rove had stuffed secret papers in his khakis.
What makes this story much more fun is that we’ve just learned that Valerie Plame gave money to the anti-Bush cause of Bruce Springteen. (I’m told he plays music for money.) Ms. Plame bought tickets to a concert in her married name of Valerie E. Wilson and deemed the show “great.” Her husband, Ambassador Wilson, reportedly opened the show with his hit, “Send in the Yellow Cake.”
The Springsteen money went to the liberal PAC America Coming Together, which finances George Soros. He gave the group approximately $10 million.
Just as an indication of where this “scandal” has taken political discourse, this is what happened when Bob Novak visited CNN:
INTERVIEWER CANDY CROWLEY: Well outside whether you testify—I assume you can't tell us whether you testified at the grand jury or still won't tell us. Outside of that, can you tell us whether you ever told Karl Rove about Valerie Plame's status?
NOVAK: I can't tell anything I ever talked to Karl Rove about, because I don't think I ever talked to him about any subject even the time of day, on the record.
CROWLEY: Stay tuned. Will you come back and tell us when you can tell us?
NOVAK: That would be my pleasure.
Obviously, this story is huge.
© Copyright 2005 by Isaiah Z. Sterrett
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