May 05 2006
Dana Priest Confirms AJStrata On Plame
I got a lot of lefty nonsense when I dismissed NBC’s David Shuster’s comment that Valerie Plame’s loss of employment was devastating to our intel on Iran’s nuclear weapons program (here). Well, thanks to Foo Bar at JOM I find Dana Priest agrees with AJStrata:
Dana Priest: It was reported before that she worked on proliferation issues for the CIA. The leap in this new round of information is that her outing significantly impacted our current intel on Iran. I don’t buy it. First, no one person who quit clandestine work four years ago is going to make that big of a dent in current knowledge. But also, nothing like this came up at the time of her outing and I believe it would have. Think we need some actual details. At present it just doesn’t smell right.
Shuster is a gullible fool. So are Gleen Greenwood and Maha!
“who quit clandestine work four years ago”
If Dana Priest knows this, why is Fitzgerald being so coy about confirming it? If Priest’s statement were true, wouldn’t that make an IIPA prosecution of UGO a bit of a slam dunk? And wouldn’t Wilson be demanding that?
“who quit clandestine work four years agoâ€
Clarification: the IIPA sets a 5 year backwards limit for covert status, and Priest carefully places Plame within that limit. She’s good at leaking, why doesn’t she leak Plame’s covert mission within those 4 years?
Simply being clandestine isn’t enough. Must be clandestine AND stationed overseas, I believe.
She signed a 2.5 million up front book deal, per the NYT. The name, “Fair Game”, what is that based on, supposedly straight from Rove himself in 2003, this is out of control, 2.5 mill. Out in fall of 2007.
Well one point to be considered here is that this whole mess is just collateral damage to the democratic agenda. They have essentially admitted to their weak position by trying to take out their perceived strong points of the administration. Their two main objects of attack are Rove and Delay. If they can shoot at many others in the process, so much the better. In this play unfolding before us, that we will tear to bits piece by piece, does not matter to them. They only wish to have us expend time and energy to thwart progress of the current agenda. They are using our sense of goodness and right, which is our major strength against us to try to derail our progress. If a dem has a problem they shrug it off and move on…don’t defend it at all, the attention will make it stick in the minds of voters.
I disagree. These people seem to have a very consistant method. You create a show that can’t be ignored by the media and then use the media attention to put your message out. Yesterday’s Rumsfeld heckling was an example. McGovern heckles and then he is on all the TV shows.
Now what if in the course of Joe Wilson’s outspoken criticism of the Bush administration, it becomes fairly common knowledge that his wife works at CIA. I suspect most of the people around IPIP and CIP would have known, as probably would have Dana Priest because her husband would probably have known. So now you have this “open secret” floating around. It wouldn’t take long for reporters to try to get some government official to confirm it. Probably someone that didn’t hear it firsthand or overheard cocktail party conversation. Eventually someone does to Novak and he prints the story.
It’s the perfect storm. Fenton Communications swings into action. Joe’s speaking fees go up, Valerie gets a book deal, they play on the whole “Bush administration is out to get us” angle which the admininistration denies, and in fact no proof of that happening is ever found but the damage is done and they have the most wonderful (for them) opportunity to get their message out. They themselves leaking the information would have done more to help them in the long run than anything they could possibly have done.
If this hadn’t happened, Valerie would be making a VIPS salary at CIA, Joe’s demand on the speaking circuit would fade as the issue drifted further back into history and people lost interest in his one-trick pony. Now they are set for life.
They, at this point, don’t care what happens with the investigation. The agenda has already been set. They are in demand to appear hither and yon. Now they have access to all the media they have time for in order to get their message out and that message may change over time. They can now use their pulpit to voice Fenton Communication’s carefully packaged message on any current issue.
After a “decent interval” look for Mary McCarthy to do the same.