In his masterful style, Christopher Hitchens in Slate Magazine [“Plame Out: The ridiculous end to the scandal that distracted Washington”] bids goodbye to the farcical Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson fandango, concluding that pretty nearly everyone – but most especially the lemming media – got it wrong. It was not the pro-Iraq war Bushies – Rove, Cheney et al -- that outed the CIA intelligence analyst. The outing came from the camp of the dubious -- Colin Powell and Richard Armitage.
I am writing this for members of my family, and for others who may be interested. My twin sister Donna died a few hours ago of stage three lung cancer. The end came quickly and somewhat unexpectedly. She was preceded in death by Lisa Pesci, my brother’s daughter, a woman of great courage who died still full of years, and my sister’s husband Craig Tobey Senior, who left her at a young age with a great gift: her accomplished son, Craig Tobey Jr. My sister was a woman of great strength, persistence and humor. To the end, she loved life and those who loved her. Her son Craig, a mere sapling when his father died, has grown up strong and straight. There is no crookedness in him. Thanks to Donna’s persistence and his own native talents, he graduated from Yale, taught school in Japan, there married Miyuki, a blessing from God. They moved to California – when that state, I may add, was yet full of opportunity – and both began to carve a living for them...
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-ACR
And there are those who say that maybe it was not the pro-Iraq war Bushies – Rove, Cheney et al -- that directly outed the CIA intelligence analyst, but they were on the sidelines cheering what was going on.
Well, sure: There’s rarely an end to litigation. But here is what we know: 1) Plame was not a CIA agent when she was outed. She was an analyst, not the same thing; 2) the claim that Cheney or Rove or Novak did the outing was false. Novack apparently got her name from a Who’s Who report; 3) Armatige was the first administration official who gave her name to a reporter – Woodward, not Novak. It seems to me that these disclosures shred Fitzgerald’s case – which was grossly misprosecuted, since Fitzgerald knew 3) when he zeroed in on Libby.