Ciao, Machiavelli!

I don't like minor bureaucrats toying with national security

The case of the “compromised" CIA employee, Valerie Plame

Thank God this jet-set, wannbe lady spook finally resigned (more accurately, “retired”) yesterday from her desk job at CIA headquarters at Langley! She and her out-of-work, minor diplomat hubby, Joe Wilson, managed to wring every bit of undeserved attention and anti-Bush wrath possible—with the more-than-willing collaboration of the Washington Post and the New York Times, to the delight of Democrat party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid of Congress, the vast array of Lefties, down to and including the weirdos (not to forget the clownish Democratic National Chairman, Howard Dean).

Both she and Joe are products of JFK's mythical "Camelot" era--moved on from recreational pot-smoking (“Yes, I inhaled, and I enjoyed it,” Joe declared in one of his many staged interviews these past months) to mainstream respectability and the fat paychecks of federal jobs. Joe won an appointment with the State Department's Foreign Service in the 70s and worked his way up a mediocre career ladder to an undistinguished early retirement. Valerie, a converted campus flower child of the Camelot era into an upward moving mainstream, avowed feminist, snagged a desk job as an analyst in CIA and married Joe.

Joe trudged through his 25- year career to qualify for a fat government pension. And when Valerie passed her 20 year-plus mark a couple years later, they decided to fold their government-paid tents to enjoy their pensions and perks that amount to more than $100,000 annually--an amount that will continue to support their high-flying lifestyle: An upscale home in a fashionable Washington suburb and their expensive trendy convertible import that moves them back and forth to the A&P in style.

But now to the unexciting, meaningless Washington-only game: The "leak" that so far has cost taxpayers about $700,000 for a special Department of Justice investigator (Patrick Fitzgerald) to answer the profound question: “Who outed Valerie Plame in the CIA?” Although Americans outside Washington could care less, the Left is doing its best to make the "leak" the Second Watergate, so we're forced to be conversant about it.

Before you plod through this recap, remind yourself about the theory the Left is advancing for the Administration's supposed willful "leak" of classified information: Vice President Cheney (and maybe the president himself) was seeking revenge on Joe Wilson who was trying to neutralize the administration's case for going to war with Iraq (over the question of whether Iraq was "nuclear capable" if it had acquired "yellow cake"). How was Cheney supposed to have done this? The Left's answer: By outing Joe's wife as a CIA "operative."

Now ask yourself: "Wouldn't a highly experienced politician like Cheney (who knows Washington inside and out), had he wanted to seek "revenge," have found a more effective, more mature, more rational, and less risky way to "get back" at Joe? Think how silly this theory is--considering the many other options available to Cheney.

Here are the elements of this Machiavellian affair:

(1) Since 1984, because a disgruntled CIA spy, Phillip Agee, had earlier revealed the names of real U.S. spies in the U.S.S.R. and elsewhere (resulting in the deaths of the outed spies) it has been a federal crime to willfully reveal the identities of CIA deep cover agents (i.e., spies). This law is the foundation for the byzanntine floss that the Left has woven; they claim that Valerie was a CIA spy, and therefore whoever had outed her had committed a serious federal crime. But let's look closer. . . .

(2) Valerie undoubtedly had a “secret” assignment or two (in the CIA, most all their work, even including routine work such as culling open sources for information is at least “confidential”—if not “secret”) during the course of her career but, as far as anyone has been able to ascertain, she was never a “deep undercover agent” in the sense most people associate with the CIA--she was always one of the stable of CIA desk analysts, who constitute the majority of employees. The only "spy" work she did was to classify "secret" (or above) her correlations of open-source material with occasional bits of covert files intelligence. These analysts may, when it's convenient, call themselves "spies," but it's a questionable stretch.

(3) It’s well known in the bureaucracy and among the mainstream media people that both she and Joe, along with factions within the CIA and State Department, have long harbored anti-Bush political sentiments--over time, they have only barely tried to conceal their intentions to do what they could to wound and undermine the president. (It's worth noting here that Bush's first Secretary of State, Collin Powell, did nothing to discourage this in-house corrosive culture during his four year tour of duty.)

(4) Joe and Valerie's predetermined strategy--an effort coordinated with sympathizers inside the State Department and the CIA--played out as follows:

a. When Washington area intelligence agencies were searching for evidence of Saddam’s WMD stocks and/or intentions to acquire them, Valerie, from her position within the CIA, suggested to her bosses that her hubby be sent to Niger to research rumors of Iraq’s attempt to buy uranium ore (“yellow cake”), which British intelligence had endorsed as true.

b. Why CIA paid a non-employee to do this bit of intelligence research for them remains a question that eventually deserves to be answered. Nevertheless, on the strength of his wife's recommendation, the CIA paid Joe for this junket. After a couple weeks of sipping “lots of mint tea” with his African hosts, he returned and, with the apparent blessing of his CIA paymaster, “leaked” his trip report to the Washington Post, in which he left the impression that Vice President Cheney had requested his research and which concluded that Iraq had never made attempts to buy the nuclear ore. Upon reading Joe's op-ed, Cheney was understandably bewildered, so sent his Chief of Staff, "Scooter" Libby, to find out who Joe Wilson was.

c. From this point forward Cheney, his chief of staff, and other White House people were drawn into a morass of confusion deliberately exploited in order to discredit the Bush Administration. It was now that Valerie's name surfaced (Robert Novak wrote the now infamous article that first named her as a CIA "employee"--to this day, he hasn't told the public his source). As if on cue, the CIA requested the Justice Department investigate this as a breach of the "outing-of-spies law."

(5) Here’s where the non-story morphed--among the Inside-the-Beltway mavens--into a story that doggedly persists for no rational reason at all, except that it is being revived on a daily basis--abetted by the help of the news outlets inimical to the Bush Administration: The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and a long list of lesser pundits.

a. It's maddenly frustrating that Robert Novak, a long-time Washington insider, has remained behind the scenes ever since his article started this hullabaloo--leading some to believe that Novak provided enough information (while exculpating himself) to cause Fitzgerald to think he could nail someone high up in the Administration for the (as yet) alleged crime of outing poor little Valerie, while exonerating Novak himself for the "crime." However, that Fitzgerald couldn't make anything out of his two-year investigation except for a dubious "Martha Stewart" indictment (for allegedly having lied to Fitzgerald about some detail in the course of the investigation) of Cheney's Chief of Staff, "Scooter" Libby, lends serious doubt to the validity of the entire investigation.

b. Before Fitzgerald's weak indictment, as if to "help" the investigators, wrote a long op-ed piece in the Washington Post, “clarifying” his (non) relationship with VP Cheney (he said the CIA had tasked his intelligence research and that he "assumed" this was at Cheney's bidding). Then he flat out lied that he had discovered, examined, and found the documentation alleging Iraq's intent to purchase uranium ore to be forgeries; furthermore, he wrote that he reported this to Cheney. How Joe got his facts so mixed up he hasn't explained, but the documents he claimed to have examined didn’t surface until six months after his African trip, well after he wrote his penurious op-ed piece. Maybe Joe had been reliving his pot-smoking days when he wrote the piece, because also made another gaffe--he himself “outed” Valerie by confirming, for the first time since Novak's article, that she was indeed a CIA employee. Then, as though an afterthought, he embellished the truth some more by suggesting the little wife had been a long-time undercover spy, so that now her career was ruined.

c. Judith Miller, a long-time reporter for the New York Times, mysteriously enters the picture. It turns out that her involvement was a total--if odd and apparently unrelated--diversion to the Joe-Valerie plot. Judy was supposed to have been privy to which administration officials were involved in the "leak"—but as it turns out, she unnecessarily created high drama out of this refusing to cooperate with Fitzgerald about her alleged knowledge of the "leak" and spent 85 days in a federal cell for all effort in Alexandria, Virginia.

d. Bob Woodward, the Washington Post’s super-star journalist who, with his sidekick Carl Bernstein, reported the Watergate Affair in the mid-1970s, even came forth--albeit belatedly after Fitzgerald's indictment had been served--to confess that he too had some inside knowledge who might have been the original culprit (Bob has yet to enlighten all those inside the Beltway waiting with bated breath for his revelations).

The entire process is an exquisite tragic-comedy woven from nothing and promoted entirely out of proportion by President Bush's antagonists. It would have been a simple Beltway caper of no consequence had Fitzgerald concluded early on the emptiness of the accusation. But for reasons we can only speculate about at this stage (was it personal or professional ambition that drove him?), Fitzgerald pressed on and finally had to be content--presumably to save face--with convincing the grand jury to issue a dubious, weak “Martha Steward indictment" (the details of which are still unknown to the public and will undoubtedly be dropped by Fitzgerald, thrown out by an Appeals Court, or found by Libby's jury to be false).

Look at this expensive, distracting, mean-spirited affair from an arm’s length distance: Is there any, I repeat any, significance to this non-story that would warrant the screeching and beating of breasts--not to mention $700,000 and two years of a staff of DOJ investigators who could surely have been used more productively in prosecuting pressing matters (such as the War on Terror)? Has anyone, including the CIA, suggested that Valerie's outing as a career employee has done the slightest damage to national security? The answer is clearly "no." But the whole affair illustrates the outrageous Machiavellian mindset of Washington’s politicos who do not demonstrate the slightest restraint in the face of an enemy in their quest to topple a president for the sake of ascendancy to power.

But even more insidious is the realization that these minor bureaucrats, Joe and Valerie and their faceless colleagues inside the government, are allowed--with impunity--to play fast and loose with the country's security. Most disturbing is the revelation that two of the most important bureaucracies in the government—the State Department and the CIA—are riddled with insiders who believe they should determine the standards of governance and may do so by undermining the very government who is paying them-- instead of producing the intelligence Americans are paying for and deserve.

It’s high time these politicized bureaucrats (starting with the small fry like Joe and Valerie and working up the food chain to the very top, if need be) be rooted out, fired, and-- if there's clear evidence--prosecuted to the utmost the law allows. At minimum for breaking their oaths of secrecy to which they are required to subscribe as an inviolate condition of their employment, for which we the taxpayer-citizens are paying.

They’ve been playing fast and loose with this nation’s security far too long. But to continue to tolerate this reckless, anti-American behavior is especially pernicious during wartime—a condition of the state that permits prosecuting violators up to and including treason. And please, don't let them get away with the weak-sister "First Amendment" argument that they have the right (and moral duty) to speak up whenever they believe they should "for the good of the country."

I worked among these "elite" bureaucrats in Washington; after that enlightening three-year experience, I can assure you of this: you should not want bureaucrats mucking around with your security by making unilateral, politically motivated decisions that undermine or replace the purpose of the people we Americans voted for to represent us. We should prefer our elected representatives make all decisions about governance--not a bunch of spoiled malcontents who imperiously appoint themselves as guardians of the "American way of life."