Plame saddles up the dead horse, starts flogging

It’s been 6 months since I’ve even mentioned the Plame scandal and I wish there were no reason to do so again. However, the alleged “target” of the “leak” fantasy that members of the Anti-Bush League continue to drone on about has decided to give the media a feeding frenzy and shoot her mouth off to members of Congress. Desperate to find some way to recover the victim status she was accorded without analysis by the Left and to press on with the clearly obvious political agenda she and her husband have signed on to, Valerie Plame got in front of a House committee and proceeded to deceive and distort some more about her so-called “outing.”

Valerie Plame, the CIA operative at the heart of a political scandal, told Congress Friday that senior officials at the White House and State Department “carelessly and recklessly” blew her cover to discredit her diplomat-husband.

Plame, whose 2003 outing triggered a federal investigation, said she always knew her identity could be discovered by foreign governments.

“It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover,” she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“If our government cannot even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency and providing needed intelligence would think twice,” Plame said in response to a question.

Hello? The person who “leaked” her name to reporter Robert Novak is quite well-known, and it wasn’t Bush, Cheney, Libby, or Rove. It was Richard Armitage. How do we know? Because he said so and he did so to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. That’s why none of the above-mentioned people were so much as indicted on the matter of Plame’s “outing” let alone convicted. Richard Armitage walked away without so much as a parking ticket.

And how did he manage that, considering he admitted to being the one who told Novak about Plame? Because Fitzgerald studied the evidence and concluded that Armitage’s conversation with Novak didn’t break the law. Why’s that? Because while Plame lacks the ability to determine her own legal status with regard to her being a covert operative, Fitzgerald was able to figure that out just fine. By the definition of the statute, Plame was no more a covert agent than is Mickey Mouse. No covert agent status, no law breakage. No law breakage, no indictment. Even the AP reporter who wrote the linked story knows the real reason for today’s appearance:

Her appearance was a moment of political theater. Only about half of the committee’s members attended and they were well outnumbered by journalists and photographers.

(Emphasis mine.) Quite. This hasn’t stopped the Left or Democratic Congressman from breaking out the old “Get Rove” drum and starting to beat that sucker into the ground.

This is all just more posturing in an effort to find something that will stick to the Bush Administration and Karl Rove, specifically. It’s pre-book-publication PR the likes of which someone like Plame could never have bought. If she’s really convinced that this action – the disclosure of her name to a reporter – has wrought her some serious harm, where’s the lawsuit against Richard Armitage, the man who has admitted to the act? That she and her husband aren’t pressing such a suit tells me everything I need to know about their thoughts on how illegal that disclosure really was.

Still waiting to see the apologies, by the way. Not holding my breath, tho.

Technorati Tags: Plame, Fitzgerald, Armitage, Rove, politics