The editors of the Wall Street Journal cut to the chase today about the political agenda behind l'affaire Wilson-Plame.
We've been knocking our heads trying to figure out how a minor and well-known story about an alleged CIA "outing" has suddenly blossomed into a Beltway scandal-ette. The light bulb went off reading Monday's White House press briefing.Right out of the box, Helen Thomas asked if "the President tried to find out who outed the CIA agent? And has he fired anyone in the White House yet?" OK, the point of this exercise is to get President Bush to fire someone. But whom? That answer became clear when the press corps quickly uttered, and kept uttering for nearly an hour, the name "Karl Rove."
Of course! The reason this is suddenly a story is because Mr. Rove, the President's political strategist and confidant from Texas, has become the main target. Joseph Wilson, the CIA consultant at the center of this mini-tempest, had recently fingered Mr. Rove as the official who leaked to columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson's wife works for the CIA. Mr. Wilson has offered no evidence for this, and he's since retreated to say only that he now believes Mr. Rove had "condoned it." The White House has replied that the charge is "simply not true." But no matter, the scandal game is afoot.
The media, and the Democrats now slip-streaming behind them, understand that the what of this mystery matters much less than the who. It's no accident that Tony Blair's recent and evanescent scandal over WMD evidence concerned his long-time political aide and intimate, Alastair Campbell. We're also old enough to recall what happened to Jimmy Carter's Presidency once his old Georgia friend Bert Lance was run out of town. If they can take down Mr. Rove, the lead planner for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, they will have knocked the props out of his Presidency.
via OpinionJournal
Although there may very well be legitimate concerns about security in all this, the intensity of the pack's pursuit is fueled by politics. There is little or no reason to believe that reporters for the major media or the Democrats have any particular concern for the safety of CIA employees.
Posted by Alan at October 1, 2003 12:16 PM