Reporters Relevancy Act of 2007

From National Review's Dead Tree edition (12 February):

"Shady characters in the Bush administration were thought to have outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee in relation for the self-aggrandizing (and largely false) anti-Iraq War op-ed her husband Joe had published in the New York Times.

Snip

"We also know that the leaker was not (Vice Presidential aide I. Lewis) Libby but Colin Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, an Iraq War skeptic who let Valerie's name slip out inadvertently. In short, there was no crime, and nothing to investigate.

Snip

"(Special prosecutor Patrick) Fitzgerald is smart enough to know that memory is imperfect, and that any man who works 18 ours a day and speaks with dozens of journalists a week, as Libby did, will mix up a few details. He chose to ruin Libby's life anyway..."

Clear cut case. Right? Well, not exactly if you are either former movie critic Frank Rich of the New York Times and sometime novelist David Ignatius of the Washington Post. They see the Libby case as the uncovering of a monumental cover up where Bush lied in order to go to war with Iraq.

Rich decries the "red herrings" of the case. In fact, he gets one wrong. According to Rich, "The White House is also telling the truth when it repeatedly says that Mr. Cheney did not send Mr. Wilson on his C.I.A.-sponsored African trip to check out a supposed Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. (Another red herring, since Mr. Wilson didn’t make that accusation in the first place.)"

Well, actually Mr. Wilson did make that accusation in the first place when he wrote: In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office." Furthermore, he stated, "The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government."

While it's fair to say that Dick Cheney didn't personally ask Joe Wilson to check the story out, he obviously executed the mission with the thought that this trip was under the aegis of the VP's office.

But this is beside the point. Here's the takeaway -- the case against Libby is much ado about nothing. Fitzgerald knew from the onset that Armitage was the leaker; so I'm not sure what Fitzgerald's motivation is here -- other than trying to score some sort of victory while he's in the limelight. As for Rich and Ignatius -- they're trying to give a non-story some traction and justify the disproportionate media interest in the case as opposed to the public's lack of concern as to who said what to whom when. (And Rich, on a personal level, is peddling a book about the lead up to the war anyway -- think of his writing as free advertising.)

Loopey Prediction

We'll ignore Mike Lupica's snide comment about "war-loving" since it's a gratuitous cheap shot (his stock in trade) but I'll track the following prediction anyway:

"If the current Vice President of the United States, the war-loving Richard Cheney, makes it through this year without resigning or being asked to resign because of everything that's going to come out in the Scooter Libby trial, it's going to be a '69-Mets-type miracle."

Here's the curious thing -- plenty has come out to date on the Libby trial (which is being prosecuted on some very thin reeds) -- but what does Lupica -- a hack sports columnist -- know about what is going to come out?

Given the weaselly nature of the prediction, I suspect that Lupica will ask for Cheney's resignation on 31 December. As if anyone will listen.

Stay tuned.

Stumbling by the Lamppost

You know the story about the drunk looking for his car keys at night, don't you? He's stumbling under a lamppost looking about when a police officer walks up. The cop naturally asks the drunk what's he doing. After the drunk tells him, the policeman then asks why he hasn't found them yet. The drunk replies that the keys were dropped a couple of blocks away but the light was better under the lamppost

Such is the case with network news and here's the most recent example.

Martin Fletcher, the Tel Aviv Bureau Chief for NBC News, reports that Palestinian gunmen are threatening to kill journalists who film the ongoing war between Fatah and Hamas. And in the TV biz, no dramatic film coverage (e.g., gun battles, dead bodies, etc.) usually means no story. So the viewer gets shortchanged as if this civil war isn't happening.

But NBC News has airtime to fill on its Today and Dateline programs, so viewers like you and me get to watch this nonsense.

I'll give NBC credit for permitting Fletcher to report on the shortcomings of the Big Media . Yet in the end, when it comes to TV news, I'm just as dissatisfied as the drunk looking for his lost keys.

The Sequestered Senator Johnson

Right off the bat, we're hoping big-time that Senator Johnson has a full-recovery.

Yet, we're not certain if he'll be back on the Senate floor anytime soon. According to this recent report -- Senator Johnson continues to improve. The focus is on the direction (better to improve than deteriorate, of coure.) However, we're somewhat short on the facts as to his actual improvement. He's reading -- but what is that he's reading; "great strides" are being made -- but what do they consist of?

One has to be considerate of privacy concerns but Senator Johnson's illness is a unique case. If he ultimately opts to resign his seat because he cannot in good faith represent the people of South Dakota, he's likely to be replaced by a Republican. That would result in the GOP taking control of the Senate. Imagine what happens then.

Alas, interminable great strides will not suffice for the people of South Dakota forever. Expect a recovered Senator Johnson or a resignation by 1 April.