D- D- D- Defense

Brad DeLong has a good post asking, “Where are the grown-ups in the Republican party?”

Hanyes Johnson and David Broder wrote a book called The System about the rise and fall of Clinton’s health care plan. (Incidentally, DeLong reviews the book here.) One of the most interesting threads is about the struggle between “Bob Dole Republicans” and “Newt Gingrich Republicans” for the soul of the party. Sheila Burke was one of Bob Dole’s advisors who found herself at the pointy end of the Gingrich Republicans:

By June, Sheila Burke found herself experiencing abuse of a kind she had never known before, all as a consequence of “the Right being ginned up.” The True Believer mentality was at work, she thought. “They support nobody who doesn’t totally agree with them,” Burke said then. “It’s not about governing, which is what we do.” She paused, and repeated for emphasis, “It’s not about governing. That’s not how they think.”

The System, page 385.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that quote this weekend as the Plame/ Wilson story developed.

There’s a mess of good commentary, from Calpundit, Daniel Drezner, Atrios, Mark Kleiman, Oliver Willis, Josh Marshall, Billmon, Tom Tomorrow, Quiddity Quack, and many others.

It’s very interesting to see the lines of defense that are being thrown up. One main line of defense seems to be throwing poo at Clinton (see Jane Galt’s comments), at Ambassador Wilson (“What possible benefit… when what they could have said is what the British did say, which is that Wilson was gullible and inept?”– Glenn Reynolds. Also see Clifford May), at filthy hippies (“I suppose I should just be happy to see such solicitude on the behalf of a reputed CIA agent from people who aren’t usually so solicitous“- Glenn Reynolds), or at opponents of the war in Iraq (“I rather doubt that most of the people who are so exercised here were condemning that hero of the antiwar left, Philip Agee, who really did put lives in danger“- shooting for the stars, that’s funnyman Glenn Reynolds. My emphasis). I doubt that anyone needs me to explain why these approaches are not terribly helpful.

Another line of defense seems to be that it’s no big deal; it is presumed that Plame is not in personal danger because she’s probably retired or a desk analyst somewhere. This is the meme that says that the only threat is to Valerie Plame’s travel schedule.

Hogwash. The relevant law doesn’t say that revealing classified information is only a crime if it can proved that it threatens someone’s life. Arguing that “no one got killed” is irrelevant and stunningly amoral. However, I’d like to put to bed the theory that Valerie Plame wasn’t a real CIA agent:

She is a case officer in the CIA’s clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction. Novak published her maiden name, Plame, which she had used overseas and has not been using publicly. Intelligence sources said top officials at the agency were very concerned about the disclosure because it could allow foreign intelligence services to track down some of her former contacts and lead to the exposure of agents.

The most popular line of argument seems to be sheer disbelief. It just doesn’t seem likely that senior Administration officials would take this kind of risk for such a small reward. Again, Glenn Reynolds:

It doesn’t make sense to me. First, if you want to “intimidate” someone, committing a felony at which you can be caught — and which doesn’t hurt the target — doesn’t seem to be the way to do it. What possible benefit was there to the Bush Administration in saying that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

I talked about this story to my apolitical fiancee yesterday, and she had the same thought. “Why would they do that?”, she asked.

I can see the logic. The risk/ reward ratio of exposing Plame seems wildly out of whack. It’s a risk that I wouldn’t dream of taking; the behavior is so outrageous that I can’t blame the press for sitting on this story.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter what we would have done in their place. There are a couple of facts that have to be explained-

* Robert Novak got Valerie Plame’s identity somehow.

* Novak himself attributed his account to “two senior administration officials.”

* The CIA has performed its own investigation and formally asked for a Justice department investigation.

* A senior Administration official (probably CIA director George Tenent, but who knows) says that two senior Administration officals contacted at least six journalists trying to spread the story, in violation of the law.

* The White House has done nothing about this for two months, and has no plans to do anything about it:

The aides said Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in revealing the name of an undercover officer who is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, one of the most visible critics of Bush’s handling of intelligence about Iraq.

(Tim Dunlop has some interesting quotes from back in the day about how Dubya used to feel about people who leaked classified information.)

In order for the White House to be totally exonerated, Bob Novak has to be deliberately lying, and George Tenet has to be opportunistically using the false story in order to smear the White House. Surely no one believes that this is what happened.

Barring that, the absolute best outcome for the Administration seems to be that they collar two low-level staffers. No journalist comes forward and says that they were approached by different Administration officials. These people go to jail.

The White House claims that the multiple news stories identifying the leakers as senior officials are all wrong. Then they shut up, refusing to say any more or comply with subpoenas.

They will then have to explain why they did absolutely nothing about felony leaks of classified information for more than two months, whereas they complied with a request for phone logs from the Weekly Standard within a day or two.

As far as I can see, this is the best case. Republicans of conscience may want to reconsider if they want to go down with this ship.

UPDATE: Mark Levin at NRO has another line of defense: Joseph Wilson brought this on himself:

Why would the CIA choose Wilson as the administration’s fact-finder on the Niger uranium issue knowing that his wife’s activities might become exposed? Well, in the same Robert Novak column that reveals the identity of Wilson’s wife, Novak reports that it was Plame herself who recommended her husband for the job!

Shouldn’t it have occurred to someone in CIA management that sending the husband of an agency operative on a highly sensitive, high-profile mission could jeopardize that operative’s activities?

While I’m all in favor of investigating national-security-related leaks, we’ll never know if foreign-intelligence agencies, among others, had already learned of Plame’s position thanks to the attention her husband drew to himself by taking the Niger fact-finding assignment in the first place. Like it or not, Wilson bears some responsibility for his wife’s predicament.

Holy moley. This is a deeply disingenuous argument. I suspect that everyone involved felt pretty all right about sending Wilson because (a) he was an ambassador with a great depth of relevant experience, and (b) they never dreamed that someone would cynically expose his wife to try to discredit him.

It’s also worth pointing out that the trip to Niger happened months before the uranium issue became politicized. No one could have known before the trip whether the claim was true or false (that’s why he took the damn trip), no one could have predicted that the sixteen words would appear in the State of the Union, and no one could have predicted that it would become a political issue.

Wilson made a choice to inject himself into the national debate when he wrote the “sixteen words” editorial. But should all administration critics assume that they will be the target of smear campaigns? Could he have any reasonable suspicion that his wife would be a target?

Apparently that’s the argument, and it stinks.