The press, alas, is getting what it thought it wanted.
Richard Cohen | 12/10/2004
If I were the kind of person who had a patron saint, I would choose St. Therese. It was she who supposedly said that "there are more tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." Just looking at the ongoing and quite chilling investigation of a now-famous Washington leak leads me to conclude that the good lady was on to something. The press, alas, is getting what it wanted.
What it wanted was a robust investigation into who leaked the name of a CIA operative to columnist Robert D. Novak. The operative in question was Valerie Plame, the wife of Joseph C. Wilson, a former diplomat who had been sent to Africa to see if Iraq had been trying to buy yellowcake uranium, as President Bush later suggested in his 2003 State of the Union message. Wilson said he had found otherwise. He put egg all over George Bush's face.
There are two ways to read the Novak column that followed. The first is at face value -- that had it not been for nepotism, Wilson would not have been sent to Africa. He was a rank amateur when it came to nuclear skulduggery.
The other reading is that Novak was used to punish Wilson by hurting his wife, effectively ending her career as a "covered" employee. Either way, it does not matter to me. And either way, it did not matter to the Justice Department. Outing an undercover agent is against the law. It could be dangerous for the agent.
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http://www.memphisflyer.com/content.asp?ArticleID=6&ID=6693Journalists can be really dense when they want to.
"My number's in the book" - that would be the clue phone ringing for you, Dick.
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