Hitchens on Rove.
Christopher Hitchens at Slate has done the contrarian thing (that he does so well), defending Karl Rove's leaking of Valerie Plame's identity to Novak and Cooper. Essentially, he defends Bush and Company on three counts:
1) Wilson was and is a sleazy, glory-seeking braggart with no credibility. After he published his fateful op-ed, the White House needed to make sure the anti-war media had that subjective knowledge before they bought Wilson's take on events in Niger hook, line, and sinker.
2) The 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act that makes it illegal to knowingly out an undercover CIA agent if it could cause her harm is such a "repressive and absurd" law that it would be a mockery to really consider prosecuting Rove under it. And, anyway, his action probably doesn't fall under the Act's narrow and arbitrary definition of a crime.
3) What's really disgusting here is the media's using Rove as a springboard from which to confirm and hammer their false notion that there were never any Iraq-al Qaeda contacts and that Iraq wasn't in the yellowcake market. And the very biggest scandal is the press' acceptance of the "demented premise" of Fitzgerald's prosecution, next to which anything Rove did in his capacity as White House spinmeister is small ethical potatoes.
On count one, Hitch has a point, though he overstates his case when he claims that Wilson's word is "effectively worthless". (Wilson does, in my opinion, look like something of a shameless publicity hound and has been sloppy in his various assertions. Among other things, he also seems to have mistated his campaign contributions over the last two cycles). But, if Wilson was such a total flake, why didn't the White House simply attack him directly through the usual Mighty Wurlitzer channels? Why drag his wife into it, especially given her status? As Tim Noah pointed out, Plame had no authority to do anything more than recommend her (extremely qualified) husband; somebody else in the CIA had to authorize the trip. And Wilson never did claim that it was Cheney's office that did so. Yet Hitchens isn't at all disturbed by the oddness, and the total superfluousness (given Hitchen's view of Wilson's on-the-record credibility), of the Bushies' decision to attack Wilson anynomously as...what? the plaything of his wife?
On count two, Hitch is probably right that Rove doesn't look prosecutable under the 1982 Act, even though, contra Hitch, the Act says nothing about the leaker needing to think the leak is going to cause harm to the outed agent. But even assuming Rove isn't provably guilty of violating the Act, that doesn't mean Rove did nothing wrong. At the very least, Rove's action was sleazy, bone-stupid politics. He took a gamble that, in leaking Plame's relationship to Wilson, he'd never be outed himself. He lost that gamble, embarrassing the White House in the process and possibly even forcing them to nominate a non-wingnut judge to the Supreme Court to stem the bad press. Meanwhile, Bush and McClellan have said (or danced around saying) over and over again during the past two years that they'd fire anybody who turned out to be associated with the leak. They were right to say it because leaking Plame's identity was a nasty and pointless thing to do, as discussed above. They've backed themselves into a corner: there's no justification for keeping Rove on. He screwed up as a political shit deflector, cost taxpayers a lot of money, and has proved himself for the final time to be an irredeemable asshole.
And anyway, the main source of Rove's potential criminality isn't the original leak. It's the squirrelly ass-covering the followed it. Rove most likely lied to the FBI and if Fitzgerald is planning to go after him, that'll probably be the reason. In fact, Murray Waas' latest report for the American Prospect offers more background evidence that Rove did indeed mislead his FBI questioners by not disclosing his leak to Cooper during his first interview with them. If outing Plame wasn't itself a crime (and I accept Hitchens' premise on this), then lying to the FBI most certainly is. Contra Hitch, that's not a "non-storm in an un-teacup".
On point three, Hitchens makes a point to which I'm not, in principle, totally unsympathetic. The Washington Press Corps is inherently scandal-happy and often stupid. They can allow their desire for a good blood-in-the-water story to overcome any semblance of nuance, objectivity or fairness. Also, people in public life sometimes lie when forced into absurd situations, situations arbitrarily concocted by their enemies, and in response to questions about which the public has no right to know the answer. In fact, I can think of one famous case not so long ago that conformed precisely to this description. Coincidentally, Hitchens wrote about that one too, but, oddly, he was somewhat less sympathetic to Bill Clinton's lying under oath about sex than he currently is to Rove's (potential) lying under oath about legally iffy leaks. Maybe moving to the right has made Hitch more sympathetic to these sorts of tactics.
At any rate, Hitchens was wrong about Clinton (at least regarding the Starr investigation) and he is wrong about Rove. The White House deserves every bit of shit it's getting over this and hopefully a lot more.
1) Wilson was and is a sleazy, glory-seeking braggart with no credibility. After he published his fateful op-ed, the White House needed to make sure the anti-war media had that subjective knowledge before they bought Wilson's take on events in Niger hook, line, and sinker.
2) The 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act that makes it illegal to knowingly out an undercover CIA agent if it could cause her harm is such a "repressive and absurd" law that it would be a mockery to really consider prosecuting Rove under it. And, anyway, his action probably doesn't fall under the Act's narrow and arbitrary definition of a crime.
3) What's really disgusting here is the media's using Rove as a springboard from which to confirm and hammer their false notion that there were never any Iraq-al Qaeda contacts and that Iraq wasn't in the yellowcake market. And the very biggest scandal is the press' acceptance of the "demented premise" of Fitzgerald's prosecution, next to which anything Rove did in his capacity as White House spinmeister is small ethical potatoes.
On count one, Hitch has a point, though he overstates his case when he claims that Wilson's word is "effectively worthless". (Wilson does, in my opinion, look like something of a shameless publicity hound and has been sloppy in his various assertions. Among other things, he also seems to have mistated his campaign contributions over the last two cycles). But, if Wilson was such a total flake, why didn't the White House simply attack him directly through the usual Mighty Wurlitzer channels? Why drag his wife into it, especially given her status? As Tim Noah pointed out, Plame had no authority to do anything more than recommend her (extremely qualified) husband; somebody else in the CIA had to authorize the trip. And Wilson never did claim that it was Cheney's office that did so. Yet Hitchens isn't at all disturbed by the oddness, and the total superfluousness (given Hitchen's view of Wilson's on-the-record credibility), of the Bushies' decision to attack Wilson anynomously as...what? the plaything of his wife?
On count two, Hitch is probably right that Rove doesn't look prosecutable under the 1982 Act, even though, contra Hitch, the Act says nothing about the leaker needing to think the leak is going to cause harm to the outed agent. But even assuming Rove isn't provably guilty of violating the Act, that doesn't mean Rove did nothing wrong. At the very least, Rove's action was sleazy, bone-stupid politics. He took a gamble that, in leaking Plame's relationship to Wilson, he'd never be outed himself. He lost that gamble, embarrassing the White House in the process and possibly even forcing them to nominate a non-wingnut judge to the Supreme Court to stem the bad press. Meanwhile, Bush and McClellan have said (or danced around saying) over and over again during the past two years that they'd fire anybody who turned out to be associated with the leak. They were right to say it because leaking Plame's identity was a nasty and pointless thing to do, as discussed above. They've backed themselves into a corner: there's no justification for keeping Rove on. He screwed up as a political shit deflector, cost taxpayers a lot of money, and has proved himself for the final time to be an irredeemable asshole.
And anyway, the main source of Rove's potential criminality isn't the original leak. It's the squirrelly ass-covering the followed it. Rove most likely lied to the FBI and if Fitzgerald is planning to go after him, that'll probably be the reason. In fact, Murray Waas' latest report for the American Prospect offers more background evidence that Rove did indeed mislead his FBI questioners by not disclosing his leak to Cooper during his first interview with them. If outing Plame wasn't itself a crime (and I accept Hitchens' premise on this), then lying to the FBI most certainly is. Contra Hitch, that's not a "non-storm in an un-teacup".
On point three, Hitchens makes a point to which I'm not, in principle, totally unsympathetic. The Washington Press Corps is inherently scandal-happy and often stupid. They can allow their desire for a good blood-in-the-water story to overcome any semblance of nuance, objectivity or fairness. Also, people in public life sometimes lie when forced into absurd situations, situations arbitrarily concocted by their enemies, and in response to questions about which the public has no right to know the answer. In fact, I can think of one famous case not so long ago that conformed precisely to this description. Coincidentally, Hitchens wrote about that one too, but, oddly, he was somewhat less sympathetic to Bill Clinton's lying under oath about sex than he currently is to Rove's (potential) lying under oath about legally iffy leaks. Maybe moving to the right has made Hitch more sympathetic to these sorts of tactics.
At any rate, Hitchens was wrong about Clinton (at least regarding the Starr investigation) and he is wrong about Rove. The White House deserves every bit of shit it's getting over this and hopefully a lot more.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home