:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Sunday, May 23, 2004 ::

Thankfully This One Isn't Going Away

The NYTimes (via Marisacat at Daily Kos) reports that Subpoenas have been issued over the Valerie Plame case.

For those whose memories are shorter than our Commander-in-Chief, after Valerie's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, published an article before the Iraq war showing the Nigerian uranium story to be complete crap, Ms. Plame's indentity as an undercover CIA operative was leaked to reporter Robert Novak. The leak itself was illegal under a law passed under Regan and heavily encouraged by former CIA director and then Vice President George H. W. Bush, Dubya's daddy. Seeing as the CIA protects its own, the entire agency was quite pissed off. After denying the incident the White House stonewalled, possibly rented some shredders from Enron*, and proceeded to try to minimize the millions of dollars (and possibly lives of contacts) wasted on political revenge. Ashcroft, deciding that he was way too deep in shit, recused himself from the investigation and appointed the US district attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, as special counsel. After that the story cooled off for a bit, until the inevitable suboenas start flying. Hopefully one or two will stick. There are standing bets in some circles over which WH Hack actually broke the law in breaking Valerie's cover, and hopefully those will be resolved by August, over a year after the original ordeal occured.


*OK, I admit renting shredders from Enron bit is a tad over the top, but they DID have the WH Counsel "review" all the files submitted to the Justice dept. after building in a 24hr delay between announcing cooperation and ordering all WH staffers not to destroy documents relating to the investigation. You draw your own conclusions there.

:: The Squire 10:52 PM :: email this post :: ::
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