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Monday, September 29, 2003The Wilson / Plame AffairThere are many curious features to this affair. Wilson was clearly not an individual that the White House would have picked to send to Niger. He readily admits that his time there was spent drinking tea with a dozen or so officials from the Government of Niger. Hardly "nose to the grindstone" stuff, and unlikely to produce any sort of respectible conclusion. He is an open critic of the current Administration. Why was he chosen? Would "outing" Ms. Plame as a CIA employee endanger her? Only in as much as any employee is endangered. Remember, it was not too long ago that a terrorist walked down a line of stopped cars in Langley and killed two low-level CIA employees waiting to get in to work. The CIA does not normally acknowledge any of its employees for just that reason. It is unlikely she was a covert operative. Or, the Ambassador never travelled with her or resided in-country with her. Oddly, to my mind, there have been zero leaks about her, from anyone. In Washington, that makes this aspect of the story about as rare as the dodo bird. The sheer lack of any information about her suggests a couple of things.
What bothers me the most about this affair is that the entire story is constructed by the news media using anonymous sources. In the blogosphere, we insist on links, and sources, so that we can "fact check your ass". We have done that on many occasions and revealed factual and philosophical errors, and plagiarism, among other "crimes of fact". Here we have an allegation that may or may not be a crime, but with no government official on the record providing any facts. We have Bob Novak's word for the original story, and wronged husband Wilson's complaint about it, and that is all. If this were a story originating in the Internet, it would have died a long time ago for lack of sourcing. Why is it that the news media can do this, over and over with many stories, and not be called on it? It's not news if it cannot be fact checked, is it? It's quite clear that someone may be lying here. Absent names and job titles, we cannot know who. And, of course, news people cannot be forced to name their sources by law. So where can any investigation go? An anonymous smear, originating with complaints from an avowed anti-administration source, Wilson, and not a single fact to back it up. This could be much-ado about nothing, but without names we will never know. As has been suggested elsewhere, a Novak spin on a story does not guarantee that it's 100% accurate, any more than a Rush Limbaugh spin does. They like being in the ballpark too much, and inconvieniant little things seem to slip out of their stories. -- posted by Chuck at Monday, September 29, 2003 | E-mail | Permalink | Main | 0 comments
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