There are myriad examples of Left bias in the news every day. This particular one deserves your attention because it concerns life-and-death, as well as our national security.
And it involves spies, so what’s not to like??
The Power Line blog covered this on Monday, and this post from Libertarian Leanings came the next day. Read them both, but I believe ‘Leanings’ places this in the superior context.
Courtesy of Tom Bowler @ Libertarian Leanings blog:
. . . .
Power Line Remembers…
Valerie Plame. Valerie Plame, for those who may not remember, is the former CIA employee who was supposedly “outed” by the Bush White House in retaliation for a New York Times op-ed by her husband, Joseph C. Wilson.
When George Bush said in a State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein had been trying to acquire large quantities of uranium from Africa, Wilson countered in his editorial that in his opinion the African country of Niger could not possibly have gotten away with selling uranium to Iraq. Therefore George Bush was lying.
The couple have been glorified by Hollywood, but the glory isn’t sticking so well.
“Fair Game” starred Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. It grossed $9.4MM domestically, against a production budget of $22MM. Fewer Americans than anticipated, it seems, wanted to view the sweeping drama of a couple of D.C. mediocrities sipping poorly selected wine at the Four Seasons Georgetown and falling backwards into a glorious victimhood.
As you may or may not remember, it was not the Bush White House who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. A higher up State Department official, Richard Armitage, was the leaker. I don’t think I ever knew exactly why, but he revealed to the late Robert Novak that Wilson’s wife had helped to arrange the trip her husband made to Africa upon which he based his Times op-ed. Armed with that information Novak looked up the double top-secret name of Wilson’s wife in “Who’s Who in America” and published it in a story of his own about Wilson’s trip and his editorial. A witch hunt ensued.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald conducted a grand jury inquisition into possible violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Fitzgerald learned early in the investigation that it was Richard Armitage who revealed the identity of CIA “operative” Valerie Plame, but he concluded that no crime had been committed. Still, he kept the investigation going until he finally netted Scooter Libby, Vice President Richard Cheney’s chief of staff, for lying.
In grand jury testimony Libby said he thought he had first heard of Valerie Plame from the late Tim Russert of Meet the Press fame. He later amended his testimony, based on notes he had showing that he must have heard her name earlier, but he said hadn’t recalled the notes, nor the meetings in which they were made. Patrick Fitzgerald argued that he did, too, recall them. Libby was convicted of lying. Lying about a non-crime, actually.
So why does the subject of Valerie Plame resurface? Just recently another agent — this time a real honest to god covert agent — was outed. But this time, news outfits tripped all over themselves celebrating an Obama administration intelligence coup.
WASHINGTON — The suicide bomber dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow up a United States-bound airliner was actually an intelligence agent for Saudi Arabia who infiltrated the terrorist group and volunteered for the mission, American and foreign officials said Tuesday.
In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the double agent left Yemen last month, traveling by way of the United Arab Emirates, and delivered both the innovative bomb designed for his aviation attack and inside information on the group’s leaders, locations, methods and plans to the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi intelligence and allied foreign intelligence agencies.
Officials said the agent, whose identity they would not disclose, works for the Saudi intelligence service, which has cooperated closely with the C.I.A. for several years against the terrorist group in Yemen.
Apparently there are a couple of problems with that narrative.
As the story broke, the establishment media was more than happy to attribute the intelligence coup to the CIA and the Obama administration, describing the mole as a “CIA informant.”
It turns out that wasn’t true. The double-agent hadn’t been recruited and placed by the CIA, but by British intelligence, who also managed the operation. In fact, the Americans had only recently been made aware of the joint British-Saudi effort.
The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.
Compare press coverage of this blown cover to the trumped-up case over Valerie Plame, a CIA employee who commuted to an office at CIA headquarters in Langley every day, and whose name was listed in “Who’s Who in America.” Ms. Plame, who was in no way endangered by publication of Novak’s story, became a media celebrity, victim of an imagined retaliatory leak from the Bush White House.
This time, though, the life of a British agent is threatened, opportunities for more intelligence have been thrown away, and from all outward appearances it’s because of the Obama administration’s compulsion to score political points wherever they may be had.
And this time the press is too busy touting Obama’s supposed “evolution” on gay marriage to report on anything else.
—Posted by Tom Bowler at 10:28 AM
Two Heads are Better Than One 