TOLD YA SO

Hm...who said that there was something odd about the way Clueless Joe Wilson was handling the way his CIA wife was outed? Who, looking at all the available data (which isn't much)--the former ambassador's skin-deep survey of Niger's uranium industry, the nearly giddy way he's been out and about turning his wife into a martyr, the odd story that he divulged to MoDo in which Ms. Plame outed herself to him on or near their first date, the fact that the only CIA agent on record about Plame's NOC status has been retired for years--concluded that it's nearly impossible that some White House operative actually outed a real live secret agent to Bob Novak? And who was apparently proven right by a Nick Kristof column?

Um, that would be me. Hold your applause; I've got more.

We learned last week that Ms. Plame was apparently outed in 1994 by none other than Aldrich Ames. He gave her name, along with many others, to Soviet and Russian agents, thus wrecking Plame's NOC status. She met Wilson some time in 1996 or 1997, and by that time was already on her way out of NOC. By the time whoever outed her to Bob Novak this spring, Plame hadn't apparently been under cover for something like 9 years (the Kristof column says she was taken off NOC this year before being outed, but that makes little sense--why would the CIA leave a compromised agent under cover for so long?) So for you Dem types who are hot to make this issue into a crime, you're out of luck.

So who outed her? My gut feeling is it's about 65% that Wilson himself outed her to Novak. It fits with the known facts, and with the logic of the case.

Wilson got sent by someone in the CIA on a mission apparently designed to discredit one rationale for war, namely that the Iraqis had tried to obtain uranium to build a nuclear weapon. He was not sent on a serious mission of inquiry, just a junket to provide the CIA with some cover once the question rose to the forefront. Wilson was singularly unqualified for this mission, as he demonstrated in the way he conducted it, the way he reported it to the CIA, and the way he wrote about it after the fact. His sole qualification was that he had connections in the region, which isn't much of a qualification, and secondarily that his wife was a WMD expert for the CIA. The one card he had to play to make his mission look more legitimate was to bring his wife--the WMD expert--into play. She had the very expertise that he lacked. So he spilled to Bob Novak, a reliably anti-war conservative columnist, telling him about her as a way to lend credibility to himself. He outed her, and has been running around charging the Bush administration with some kind of crime ever since. He knows the truth; Plame hasn't been a bona fide secret agent for years.

How would the White House benefit from this disclosure? I don't see a benefit for them in outing Plame, as it makes Wilson's credibility on WMD rise slightly. Further, this White House seems to understand how, when and why to keep a secret, unlike the previous security sieve of an administration. That doesn't discount the possibility that some White House dunderhead outed Plame on the mistaken impression that it would help their cause, but it just doesn't make logical sense. Wilson's outing her does.

I'm 65% sure of this, which leaves lots of weasel room to be wrong. And we'll probably never know, because for Wilson to come forward now would destroy him, his wife, and whoever within the CIA decided to send him on a sensitive mission of the highest importance for which he was wholly unqualified and which he obviously did not take seriously for some reason. Novak should talk, either on his own or under oath if necessary.

And that's the real crime here, to the extent that there is a crime at all. Someone in the CIA apparently ran a rogue operation designed to discredit the President they are supposed to serve. In a time of war. If you're looking for a mole, look no further than whoever sent Joe Wilson to Niger. And in outing his wife as I suspect, Wilson may have unintentionally forced the CIA to shut down some of her operations that even he knew nothing about. That fits what we know about how Wilson operated in Niger, oblivious and less than skilled, but ultimately full of himself.

Another question--why is the CIA just now getting around to assessing the damage from this episode? Plame was outed months ago; is the CIA in the habit of waiting until something makes headlines before looking into it?

Oh, and I'm still not back from haitus. Really. And Rush was apparently right all along about Donovan McNabb being overrated. He stunk up Texas Stadium on Sunday, which is obviously fine with me.