The Plame Game

As you probably all know, the picture to the left is Exhibit A of Fitzgerald’s latest filing on April 12th in the Libby case. If you follow the link you’ll see that the rest of the exhibits, B-F, are the articles involved in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame. Exhibit A is billed as The Dick’s own scholia on his personal copy of the NYT article written by Joe Wilson on July 6, 2003 that set the entire Plame Game into motion. Rarely do historians (or prosecutors) get to look at such a personal handwritten document. As you can see, The Dick underlined certain passages in the article and also asked some pretty interesting questions at the top of the page. Obviously the big one that’s catching everyone’s eye is the fact that The Dick refers to Wilson’s wife, thus proving he had direct knowledge of her existence and possibly providing a motive for her outing by Novak 8 days later on July 14. Of course if there’s still anyone left on the planet who doesn’t believe that Libby and Rove were given orders by Cheney and probably Bush to leak her identity in retribution and then afterwards lied to cover their and their bosses’ tracks, well they’re wearing rose-lawn colored glasses. In that sense the document only adds further support to what should have already been obvious.

What I find more interesting here is the glimmer of light it sheds upon the mind of the Prince of Darkness while he was sipping his decaf and eating a crumpet on the morning of July 6, 2003. It looks to me as if his royal Dickiness read through the article and while doing so he began underlining passages before he asked his questions at the top. So he starts reading and underlining. The underlined passages read:

I
I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

II
I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake...by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990s.

III
While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono).

IV
...ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq – and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington.

V
It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

VI
...it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq.

VII
...there’s simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired (As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts pointed out...

VIII
Though I did not file a written report...

IX
...and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports...

X
The vice president’s office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

So those are the underlined portions of the article. The Dick then surveys the article and begins to scrawl a series of questions:

1. Have they done this sort of thing before?
2. Send an Amb. to answer a question?
3. Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us?
4. Or did his wife send him on a junket?

What I find most fascinating are the portions underlined (in respect to other passages that were not underlined) and also the questions. I would say he got to the end of the article and then he just asked Question 1 – a sort of general question. Note the pronoun they, as if the CIA were just incompetent boobs and had screwed up. Next he went back and looked at the portions he had underlined. Right beneath Underlined Passage I there is the sentence where Wilson says “For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador.” After re-reading that, The Dick then asked Question 2, picking up on the word ambassador as if were saying: “What? They sent an ambassador!” Now at first glance this may imply that he did not know who was sent and he is reacting with surprise, but of course this is impossible. Otherwise he would not have been able to ask Question 4 – that is to say he already knew who Joe Wilson was and he already knew who his wife was. So why did he ask this question. I don’t think he’s saying “Christ’s sake, an ambassador. They could have a least sent someone from my office.” I think we have to go on to the next questions to maybe get an answer. He then scanned along and came to Underlined Passage III, and he scribbled Question 3 in response to it, which obviously isn’t as important as Question 4 for the case against Libby, but I find Question 3 the most intriguing of all. The Dick asks, “Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us?” The pro bono comment is clearly lifted directly from III and it is just hilarious, almost as if The Dick were thinking, “That’s fishy -- a man going on a CIA mission without pay! There must be something corrupt going on. I never do anything without being paid!” But even more interesting are the italicized words, “we” and “us”. To whom do these words refer? Unless in his mind he had conflated III with lingering thoughts over Passage X, then most logically all of these words were prompted by passage III. Passage III makes clear Wilson was sent by the CIA, so The Dick in his own mind is in effect conflating his royal self or his own office with the CIA! Of course that was the problem to the run up to the war – he and those in his office acted as if CIA agents were their underlings who were expected to do as bid. Finally, after concluding that he himself would never do anything for free, he then suggests a motive: “Aha! His wife sent him on a junket!” This one is pretty funny too. O yeah, I take junkets to Niger all the time. It’s such a hotspot, the uranium mines and all.

Just as interesting as the questions asked, are the questions not asked. Say, for instance if I had underlined Passage II about some “memorandum that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake”. If I had never heard of that memorandum, wouldn’t I ask, “What memorandum? What’s he talking about?” Or take Passage X. If I had read that my office had sent Wilson on the mission, but I had never really received his report saying the uranium story was bunk, verbally or otherwise, wouldn’t I ask “Why didn’t I ever get this report?” Passages IV, V, VI and VII seem to me to be an effort at probing for a weakness in Wilson’s reporting: “Well, here in his own article he’s showing how he was already biased before he left.” VIII and IX seem also to be potential weaknesses in Wilson’s story: “See, he didn’t file a written report, and he assumes I heard an oral one, but no one will be able to prove that! Ha!” In light of this, I believe the wheels of finding weaknesses about Joe Wilson personally already began in Question 1: “See, he was an ambassador – not an expert in WMDs.” In the end it is quite clear that The Dick was not even interested in combating the substance of Wilson’s claims, so he just went into bunker mode and sent his minions to make a ridiculous ad hominem attack on Wilson; Valerie Plame was just collateral damage.

Between Scooter and Rove, who one day will play the part of a repentant Chuck Coulson and who will be the defiant G. Gordon Libby? I suspect Rove will never repent – he knows Bush would pardon him for matricide. A guy nick-named Scooter might still possess a pang of conscience.