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9/29/2003

The Plame Game: Update
Did Joeph Wilson just make the whole thing up?

In fact, the cavalier manner which the CIA seems to have confirmed her role in the imbroglio suggests there was nothing particularly secret about her identity in the first place. Despite complaints from Democrats like Schumer that the leak compromised both national security and Mrs. Wilson's safety, the agency told the Post for its Sunday report, "No further harm would come from repeating Plame’s name."

In fact, it's an open question as to whether Mrs. Wilson's identity was supposed to be a secret in the first place, with the Post noting far down in its report that the "CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover." If Mrs. Wilson wasn't undercover, then this is a non-story ginned up by her husband, a unabashed Bush-hater who wrote in the notoriously left-wing Nation magazine earlier this year that under Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness."

White House critics want to paint a picture of Mrs. Wilson as a super secret spy working abroad whose life was endangered because of a White House vendetta, while in reality she was apparently safe and sound working stateside as a CIA weapons analyst at the time of the Novak report.
He's admitting he lied about part of it. As I've long suspected, there's less to this story than the Bush-haters are hoping and hyping. [For more on the Plame Game, click here.]

Meanwhile, Clifford May is pointing out that, A) Valerie Plame's work at the CIA was no big secret, and, B) Wilson is a long-time critic of the Bush administration and opponent of military action against Iraq.