Zell speaks: We need a new Rule

I’ve come to think quite a bit of Zell Miller and I’ve written about him before on these pages. He and I don’t agree on everything but his approach and his manner of speaking plainly are things I admire greatly. So today I’d like to link to his article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on his take on a new rule we need: the Plame Rule.

But the rules on agents are clear. They can’t purposely distort gathered intelligence, go public with secret information or use their position or information to manipulate domestic elections or matters without risking their job or jail.

But their spouse can!

The agent realizes her spouse can go out on behalf of the spy agency, can distort information, go public with classified information and use all this spy-agency-sponsored material and credentials to try to pull down the current government, and it is all perfectly legal.

Suppose the spouse adds just one more brilliant, well-aimed lie: claim your foremost political opponent put the spouse up to the trip. As your spouse uses your agency’s name to mount attacks, your enemy may fall into your trap. Will your enemy suffer your spouse’s lies or take the bait and try to clarify his non-role? If he tells the press he didn’t hire your spouse, the press will demand to know, “Then who did?”

Instead of you violating secrecy laws, it is your victim who is guilty because he tried to set the record straight. Heads, you win; tails, he loses.

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Exactly correct. As a holder of a security clearance and a former contractor working on IT projects for certain 3-letter organizations in Washington, DC I can tell you emphatically that there are rules in place precluding me from writing about the activities of those agencies without a thorough vetting process. Failure to abide by those rules would, I assure you, have negative impacts on my freedoms. Valerie Wilson has the same rules in place over her, but it seems pretty clear that someone, if not Wilson herself, discovered a way around it. Power Line has a recent post that asks a whole bunch of very pertinent questions along these lines. The questions about why a person with no serious intel background was sent at all, let alone without the standard NDA’s signed and the standard strictures on publishing on the matter, are especially pointed. As Zell Miller points out, however, our media aren’t interested in pursuing that line of inquiry at all. One wonders why.

Senate Dems throw private hissy-fit

Using a Senate Rule not invoked for over 25 years, Democrats forced the Senate into a closed door session last night to… well, I’m not entirely sure what the point of the exercise was. They’re making a lot of noise after leaving the session that they had to do it to demand the truth about the “misinformation” and “disinformation” given by the Bush Administration in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

Did I miss something and fall into a time warp? Wasn’t this the same screed they used ahead of the Bipartisan Commission formed to examine exactly the question of whether such disinformation was offered? That Commission’s report showed summarily that no such disinformation campaign was waged. In fact, the only confirmed liar in the whole mess was Joe Wilson, the husband of allegedly outted CIA covert agent Valerie Wilson nee Plame.

Ah, but there’s the point of contention precisely. After 2 years of investigation, Prosecutor Fitzgerald has managed to uncover absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anyone did any such thing. That’s got the Dem’s panties in a twist and, to make matters worse, the only indictment coming out of Fitzgerald’s investigation was announced and just didn’t get the air time the Dems were hoping for. The announcement of Judge Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court knocked Scooter Libby off the front page. They couldn’t let that stand so they invoke this rule to, effectively, wave their hands in the air and say, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

May I remind the Dems that Fitzgerald himself said that the indictment of Libby had no bearing on the war one way or another and that there was no accusation that Libby violated any law pertaining to Plame’s status as a covert? Had nothing to do with it. It’s a ridiculous ploy for attention because the Dems have nothing else to play.