OLEAN -- The Question: Does the huge flap in Washington over the leaked identity of a covert CIA agent have enough staying power as news to influence the 2004 presidential election?
The Answer: Yes. Hell, yes.
Indeed, it is difficult to count the ways.
First, a brief tutorial for those readers who weren't paying recent attention to the intelligence community circus in Washington:
Numerous FBI agents spent much of last weekend tromping around the White House, Pentagon, State Department and other Washington venues, questioning Bush administration officials concerning the unlawful "outing" of a CIA undercover agent named Valerie E. Plame.
Plame is a 40-something attractive blonde who married former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. They have 3-year-old twins. Wilson was acting ambassador to Iraq during the run-up to Gulf War I -- during which time he behaved admirably, according to records of the administration of Bush the Elder, and was the last American official to meet with Saddam Hussein.
Wilson seemed to be trusted by the current Bush administration.
He is the guy either the White House or CIA sent to Africa in the winter of 2002 to check out an intelligence community claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy "yellowcake" uranium from the country of Niger in order to build weapons of mass destruction.
Wilson came back and, after a long interval of many months, said publicly the claim was pure hooey -- but not before Dubya had cited it in his State of the Union address as a good reason for going to war with Iraq.
This apparently made the Bush administration angry, because in July conservative columnist Robert Novak unmasked Plame as a CIA operative in a column, and said his sources were two unnamed officials in the Bush administration who had leaked him the information.
Five other Washington journalists allegedly received the same "leak," but chose not to publish Plame's name.
Plame's husband got mad and two weeks ago started publicly blaming the leak on Dubya Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove, whom Wilson said he would like to see "frog-marched out of the White House in chains."
Rove vehemently denies it.
The White House vehemently denies it.
So, a tidy plot for a spy novel -- and collateral damage all over the place.
For one thing, the printed leak now has led to exposure of the CIA front company with which Plame was associated -- Brewster-Jennings & Associates.
That kind of thing usually causes a great unraveling.
Right now, it is likely Plame's name and that of Brewster-Jennings are being entered into the databases of foreign intelligence agencies to see where she was, who she met and what she might have done in their countries. Other CIA contacts and operations may be identified and come undone as a result.
This is the kind of thing that gets people killed.
It is now known that Plame, the daughter of an Air Force colonel, often worked abroad, and usually described herself -- not as a government employee, as many spies do -- but as a private energy expert.
The foreign intelligence services will thus inspect the attendance logs of energy conferences and match them with other meetings, seminars or business sessions where Plame was present to find common attendees or participants. Conclusions will be drawn.
This is the kind of thing that gets people killed.
Even her attendance at the prestigious London School of Economics -- where she obtained a master's degree -- will be studied for classmates who may have embarked on common paths or crossed them with her later in life.
Why does this whole affair "have legs" -- as the Washington press corps likes to describe a story that holds the public interest for months and months -- and why might it influence the presidential election?
Even as I write this, Democratic presidential candidates are all over the television, calling for an independent counsel instead of letting Attorney General John Ashcroft -- right-wing loyalist of the current president -- head the investigation.
Fresh polls show about 70 percent of the American public agrees: Name an independent counsel.
Republicans have a 12-vote margin in the House and one in the Senate, but that may not be enough to stem the surge for such a prosecutor with almost unlimited subpoena powers.
Once an independent counsel is appointed -- and Bush himself may have to buckle to this pressure to eliminate appearances of a cover-up -- the prosecutorial rules are essentially no-holds-barred.
The story also seems to have unexpected traction with young adults.
In a university class I teach to freshmen -- notably inattentive to political intrigue and government doings -- a recent current events test based on newspaper readership came back with 100 percent of the class getting the question on the CIA leak correct. They're paying attention. Follow-up class discussion showed they're really paying attention.
Besides, these things have a cascading effect in Washington.
Last Friday, more than 2,000 White House workers were given this Tuesday, close of business, as a deadline to comply with an FBI request for any computer or print or telephone records containing mere references or more to Wilson and his wife.
These include calendar jottings, written correspondence, message slips, phone logs, diary entries and other memos and notations. The employees were told NOT to contact the White House counsel for instructions or legal advice. They have to get their own lawyers. They have to sign legal affidavits stating they have no such "relevant documents" if they fail to turn any over.
State Department and Pentagon officials have been warned they must not destroy any records relevant to the case until the feebs can get around to them, also.
And the FBI has started asking journalists questions, too.
The furious husband says, "The desire to implicate my wife in this was intended to intimidate others from coming forward" about lack of evidence concerning weapons of mass destruction. This prospect has led to some journalists referring to the whole mess as "Intimigate." Others are merely calling it "Leakgate."
The potential for pointing out ample irony in this affair can keep a legion of political columnists busy until the autumn of 2004. The prescient Jonathan Alter, of "Newsweek," calls the whole mess a "festival of hypocrisy" -- noting that lefties and liberals who never gave a crap in the past about exposure of CIA covert agents are now "suddenly outraged."
And right-wing fulminators, like those on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, who always drum on about the "reprehensible" exposure of CIA assets, are suddenly pooh-poohing the importance of this leak by fellow conservative Novak.
There are plenty of hypocrites to go around in this story, no matter what your political stripe.
Ashcroft was one of Attorney General Janet Reno's prime critics when she was in charge of probing White House frivolities under President Bill Clinton, claiming it would take an independent counsel to do the job. Where is he now? In Reno's shoes, assuring the public he can be impartial. Hillary Clinton, our senator -- who, when she was first lady, was so cheesed by the behavior of independent counsels in investigating her husband that she called it part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" -- is now in favor of one to probe Leakgate.
The ramifications of this go way beyond the usual riveting images of members of Congress spouting and posturing endlessly in televised committee meetings.
The consequences could spill over into other professions -- such as journalism, such as the judiciary.
What if the other five reporters who were favored with the original "leak" resort to the standard journalistic defense of "I never reveal my sources" and refuse to talk? Technically, the "source" wasn't a source -- they never told a word of what was said in print or video. Do they still get to clam up? After all, the blabber about Plame was just someone committing an obvious crime.
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, so often cited by President George Bush the Elder -- himself, ironically, a former CIA director -- states that whoever "having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information (read that: journalists) ... shall be fined $50,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
So, are journalists allowed to protect criminals? What if a judge demands these probably prominent Washington journalists talk or be thrown in jail?
Alter is causing journalists' eyebrows to lift within media circles by further suggesting that "the premise behind their longstanding refusal to reveal their sources -- that it would put them out of business" is not applicable in this case and that reporters routinely ask people in government and business to "violate the spirit of confidentiality in their own institutions."
Why, asks Alter, "shouldn't reporters themselves, on very rare occasions, leak in the same public interest, especially if their own identities can be protected? That is simply asking reporters to act in the same gabby way we expect of everyone else."
Sense a possible paradigm shift here?
Novak, as he should, is taking a hiding on talk shows for -- as one former CIA analyst put it -- being the Bush administration's "useful idiot" in furthering intimidation of possible White House critics, even if that means outing an undercover agent.
Let the games begin. Let's see if everyone in Washington is willing to play by the same rules.
I've got a feeling we already know the answer to that one.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 7 2003 |