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.
The trouble at PURA and the two energy companies it oversees began – ages ago, it now seems – with the elevation of Marissa Gillett to the chairpersonship of Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulation Authority. Connecticut Commentary has previously weighed in on the controversy: PURA Pulls The Plug on November 20, 2019; The High Cost of Energy, Three Strikes and You’re Out? on December 21, 2024; PURA Head Butts the Economic Marketplace on January 3, 2025; Lamont Surprised at Suit Brought Against PURA on February 3, 2025; and Lamont’s Pillow Talk on February 22, 2025: The melodrama full of pratfalls continues to unfold awkwardly. It should come as no surprise that Gillett has changed the nature and practice of the state agency. She has targeted two of Connecticut’s energy facilitators – Eversource and Avangrid -- as having in the past overcharged the state for services rendered. Thanks to the Democrat controlled General Assembly, Connecticut is no l...
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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.