By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers
OpEdNews.com
Journalists do not reveal sources. It's what gives the Fourth Estate some
of its clout: Officials, and lower-level whistleblowers, trust us to
receive sensitive information and not get them in trouble by ratting on
them. In Washington and in state capitols, officials leak information all
the time, provide off-the-record statements to reporters, engage in
"background" interviews without permitting themselves to be
quoted by name or title.
We do not say who told us those things. We journalists might get thrown in
the clink for not revealing who provided us the information, but the
sources have no need to worry about their futures. We will keep our mouths
shut. It's not just a journalistic tradition, it's also a practical
matter: If we revealed our source in one instance, we might never get
anybody to tell us anything significant in private again.
So here I am urging my journalistic colleagues -- at least six of them --
to break the tradition and reveal their sources, in the interest of
national security.
You know what I'm referring to. After Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an
op-ed piece in the New York Times that contradicted Bush's false State of
the Union claims about Iraq seeking to buy Niger uranium, two "senior
administration officials" told at least six journalists in July that
Wilson's wife, Valerie
Plame, was a covert CIA agent. Karl Rove, Bush's closest political
advisor, reportedly told Hardball's Chris Matthews that after Wilson's
op-ed piece, Mrs.
Wilson was "fair game.") (www.msnbc.com/news/976116.asp)
This revelation of her undercover role at the CIA is against the law, a
law signed by the first Bush president, George H.W. Bush. In 1999, he told
assembled CIA employees that those who would reveal the identity of
undercover intelligence officers are the "most insidious of
traitors." (www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/1999/bush_speech_042699.html)
FIVE DIDN'T, ONE DID
Five of the six journalists who were provided Plame's name and job-history
chose, for whatever reason, not to run the story. Perhaps it didn't pass
the
smell test: clearly, the administration officials wished to manipulate the
news outlets from private agendas that could only be guessed at. One
right-wing
columnist, Robert Novak -- often a source of Bush administration leaks --
had no such qualms; even though the CIA had asked him not to use Plame's
name, he did so anyway.
It seems clear that the outing of Wilson's wife was not carried out merely
to ruin her career and to punish him, but to warn other government
employees who
might want to oppose key Bush policy to think twice before going public,
lest something similar happen to them.
Many agents in the CIA, appalled at what was being done to one of their
colleagues by high-ranking Bush officials, chose to see the outing of
Plame as a
direct slap at their agency, which had been in conflict with the White
House over intelligence matters meant to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Specifically, the CIA's intelligence analysts, try as they might, were
unable to come up with the evidence on WMDs, nuclear weapons and a Sadaam-al
Qaeda link that Rumseld and Cheney and Wolfowitz and Bush wanted; so,
because the decision already had been made to invade, Rumsfeld quickly had
to set up his private rump "intelligence" unit, staffed not by
intelligence agents but by political appointees who would do his bidding.
That unit, the Office of Special Plans, provided the phony
"evidence" that convinced the American people and Congress that
the invasion was justifiable. The CIA was furious, and agents then began
leaking damaging anti-Administration information to reporters.
Whatever the reasons that led the two "senior administration
officials" to tell the six reporters and thus to violate the law by
revealing the identity of
a secret CIA officer, Plame was out in the cold. Not only was she
compromised and potentially put in danger, but so were those abroad with
whom she had worked over many years in building up intelligence on --
irony of ironies -- weapons of mass destruction. None of this mattered.
The two "senior administration officials" put scores of lives at
risk while doing damage to the one area of inquiry that was of most
importance to their overall policy in Iraq and to the war on terrorism in
general.
This felonious behavior reminds one of the demented logic found behind the
government's firing of Arab-speaking gays who were doing intelligence and
translation work, even though the agencies are woefully short on
Arab-speaking agents. This is a gang that not only can't shoot straight,
it can't even think
straight.
COVERING UP THE PLAYERS
We don't know all the players in the Plame-Wilson scenario. Karl Rove,
Bush's chief political advisor, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
Cheney's chief of
staff, are the main suspects behind the outing, either doing it themselves
or having lower-level aides in their offices speak to the reporters; but,
since Novak
and the five others are not talking, the Administration figures it will
get away with the felony and coverup, since the journalistic tradition of
silence
will continue to protect their dirty secret.
Bush has never showed any genuine curiosity in finding out who broke the
law in this case. He chose not to have an Independent Counsel
("Special
Prosecutor") appointed -- something the GOP would have demanded in an
instant if this had happened under a Democrat president. Instead, he
permitted Ashcroft's Justice Department to handle the investigation
in-house, despite the obvious conflict-of-interest.
As Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington, has written www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/12/con03369.html),
this Ashcroft "investigation" was suspicious from the outset:
"The Justice Department launched its allegedly official probe on
September 26th, but neglected to direct the White House to preserve
critical evidence until the evening of September 29th. Then, when the
White House Counsel asked if he could wait until the next day to inform
the staff of the need to preserve documents, the Justice Department
allowed it. Simply, if the leaker(s) had not been smart enough to get rid
of the evidence between July 6th and September 29th, the White House
Counsel
