Unqualified Offerings

Mona gives us just the facts, ma’am, below. Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert officer at the time several Bush Administration officials burned her, and had traveled overseas repeatedly in the recent past, under cover every time. (pdf of the Patrick Fitzgerald sentencing brief.) So let’s engage in irresponsible speculation, shall we!

A common right-wing talking point, originating with Robert Novak himself I believe, was that the CIA didn’t try very hard to kill the story. That always struck me as a matter of extremely self-serving opinion on the part of Novak and the Plame Retardants (just “Retards?”). But maybe it’s true! Some things are, even from such mouths. But if it is true, we need to explain why the CIA “wouldn’t try very hard” in a world – this one – where Plame really was covert at the time.

Here’s one possibility: As Fitzgerald writes

To accept the argument that Mr. Libby’s prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson . . .

My emphasis. And that is the key, I think. Word comes to Mr. Medal-of-Freedom (Pending) that multiple administration operators were dishing on Valerie Plame Wilson. He knows she’s problematic politically because her husband is lately making all kinds of grumpy noises about the Slam Dunk Era of American Intelligence. It’s very possible that she herself is regarded as . . . unsound. (Check out these book excerpts at Tiny Revolution and ask yourself just how many female officers in the CIA were probably working on Iraqi nuclear issues in the runup to the war. I’m guessing there’s enough residue of sexism left in the Agency that the answer is: few!)
So, thinking of himself always as the accomodating survivor, Mr. Medal-of-Freedom (Pending) passes the word, or someone in his office like the hapless McLaughlin passes the word, not to fight Novak too hard on this story. Standard denials only. Let bureaucratic nature, red in tooth and claw, take its course. And the story comes out and Plame’s career is ruined. Always a little crockery broken when you’re sprucing up the kitchen.

And the CIA goes ballistic. People may not know what Tenet personally did (by not doing), but they know damn well what at least three high-ranking government officials did, and they really really really really hate it. And they want justice or at least payback. Tenet realizes he has to do something, so he authorizes a referral of the case to the Justice Department, figuring that it will probably die there, but he can say he went through channels.

For whatever reason, it doesn’t die. My guess would be that interagency ferment between career employees at Justice and CIA keeps it from dying. The Administration ends up having to appoint a special prosecutor. Tenet has done one thing well during the whole process: kept his prints off the candlestick. The rest, as they say, is only partially satisfying history.

(See also No Quarter.)