valerie plame wilson was outed as a CIA agent way before richard armitage and scooter libby got involved in this mess. the original claim didn’t come just from the bush administration, but also from the media.

andy mccarthy(nro):

Specifically, she was exposed by a Russian spy in the early 1990s. Thereafter, the CIA itself “inadvertently” compromised Plame by not taking appropriate measures to safeguard classified documents that the Agency routed to the Swiss embassy in Havana. According to Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, “the documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but [unidentified U.S.] intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them.”

As I wrote here nearly two years ago, this is not my claim. It is the contention made in a 2005 brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit by the Times along with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, AP, Newsweek, Reuters America, the Washington Post, the Tribune Company (which publishes the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun, among other papers), and the White House Correspondents (the organization which represents the White House press corps in its dealings with the executive branch). The mainstream media made the contention in an attempt to quash subpoenas issued to journalists — the argument being that if Mrs. Wilson’s cover had already been blown, there could have been no crime when an administration official (who we now know to be Richard Armitage, not Scooter Libby) leaked her identity to journalist Robert Novak, and thus there was no need to compel reporters to reveal their sources.

read the rest here.

to find valerie and joe credible, you would have to totally discredit the findings of the senate intelligence committee. they concluded that instead of debunking the claim of iraq’s possible yellowcake purchases, joe wilson’s report actually supported that claim. the evidence was also there that, despite what plame and wilson say, she did recommend him for the niger trip. joe wilson has lied from the very beginning, so it’s hard to believe anything he says. he’s a hero on the left for opposing the iraq war, but he’s not someone who can make a convincing case that the american people were intentionally misled by the bush administration to get us into war with iraq.

as i’ve said before, if the left wants to make that case, joe wilson’s not the right guy to champion that cause.

tags: joe wilson, valerie plame, iraq