Thursday, March 24, 2005
Our esteemed colleague Simbaud (as some one or other would say) flags an Editor & Publisher article that predicts the Plame investigation will conclude without identifying the guilty party:
Well, you know, at least Congress is getting to the bottom of the whole steroids in baseball scandal...
Paradoxically, there is now little expectation that Fitzgerald will succeed in identifying the person or persons in the Executive Office of the President who was first to knowingly and intentionally violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing Valerie Plame's covert CIA identity to journalists. It appears that every official is in a position to claim that her name was "out there," in circulation, before Bob Novak's July column, and that they merely repeated what had been heard from someone else to members of the press or the administration.
For example, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- a skilled lawyer -- is claiming that he first heard Plame's name from a press source. (Bob Novak is speculated to be Scooter's alleged source; Judith Miller comes in second.) If Libby mentioned the sensitive information to staff, they might have passed on what they had heard about Plame to selected reporters, without necessary knowledge of the law.
Or other reporters could have first heard of Plame from Novak's column, or Matt Cooper's online story a few days later, and then called officials for confirmation. However, as later claimed by Novak, her professional identity may not have been "much of a secret," as Walter Pincus of The Washington Post -- who did not write about it at the time -- had heard the tale before any word appeared in public print.
Thus, it would seem to be only a matter of time before Fitzgerald concludes an inconclusive investigation into who committed a felony.
Well, you know, at least Congress is getting to the bottom of the whole steroids in baseball scandal...
