Two of the Bush administration officials questioned in the Plamegate investigation, according to the American Prospect, have told the FBI that they asked columnist Robert Novak not to make the CIA agent’s name public. This is interesting. First of all, this version directly contradicts that of the right-wing columnist. Novak has maintained all along that he was told that Valerie Plame was a CIA analyst — not a covert operative whose cover (and career) would be destroyed by public disclosure of her name. Now Novak and his sources seem to be at each other’s throats, and the White House’s principal journalistic “channeler” can only defend himself by outing the two administration officials who outed the secret agent. At that point everybody’s cards will finally be face-up for all of us to see. Secondly, how does it get the two “government officials” off the hook anyway? If they asked the columnist to keep Plame’s name secret, they must have already given it to him. And once they identified a covert operative to a journalist, if I understand the law correctly, they had already committed a felony. Naturally, the two officials are denying Novak’s story as vigorously as he is denying theirs. Read the full American Prospect article by Murray S. Waas and see if you can come up with any way for the whole lot of them to avoid indictment. I can’t. Somebody is lying or, most likely, everybody is. :m: Peace.
