You remember Valerie Plame, don’t you? And her lying husband, Joseph Wilson? Weren’t they going to make a movie about those two? If they did, it must have sunk like a stone, as I don’t recall hearing anything about it–the Gigli of political thrillers. Valerie Plame, you’ll recall, was the CIA employee who supposedly was “outed” as such by someone in the Bush administration. But it’s not as though she was an agent in the field; she commuted to Langley every day from her home in the D.C. suburbs. So she was more or less “out” already. Nevertheless, the matter became a criminal case that absorbed the loony left for months.
An InstaPundit reader pointed out the ironic contrast between the Plame case and the actual outing of an actual covert agent by the Obama administration. On that story, the latest comes from Patrick Poole at PJ Tatler:
Just a week ago the establishment media was aflutter with news that a CIA double-agent had thwarted a new type of underwear bomb attack targeting U.S. flights in a plot devised by al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.So the Obama administration, desperate to revive its sagging re-election hopes, deliberately put the life of a British agent in jeopardy–not someone who commuted to a desk job in the CIA, but someone who had infiltrated al Qaeda. “Despicable,” indeed. And damaging to American security, as al Qaeda in Yemen now knows it was infiltrated, and by whom; and knows that we know about its latest bomb technology. Heads should roll, but with the Obama administration investigating itself, don’t hold your breath. Who knows? Maybe someday Hollywood will make a movie.
But as the week progressed, a developing bombshell story got buried under President Obama’s gay marriage announcement. Not only is the supposed CIA asset not a CIA asset at all, but the entire operation was exposed prematurely and the double-agent’s life was immediately threatened by an intelligence leak that very well may have come out of the White House for political gain. …
The double-agent hadn’t been recruited and placed by the CIA, but by British intelligence, who also managed the operation. In fact, the Americans had only recently been made aware of the joint British-Saudi effort.
The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.
JOE recalls John’s attention to the 2010 film “Fair Game,” about the hapless couple. “Fair Game” starred Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. It grossed $9.4MM domestically, against a production budget of $22MM. Fewer Americans than anticipated, it seems, wanted to view the sweeping drama of a couple of D.C. mediocrities sipping poorly selected wine at the Four Seasons Georgetown and falling backwards into a glorious victimhood.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/05/remembering-valerie-plame.php
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