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White House Whodunit Your Guess Is as Good as HisBy Rick Horowitz
Somebody's in big trouble. I'm not naming any names, you understand, but somebody in the Bush administration is suddenly in a heap of trouble. That's what can happen when you play hardball -- not to mention spitball. This certain somebody -- and I'm not naming any names -- must have thought he was pretty clever. Clever in what he did, and clever in the way he denied ever doing it. He must have figured people wouldn't get wise, but he figured wrong. I guess I've already told you he's a he, this certain somebody. That's OK, because that's all you're going to get out of me. Anyway, this certain somebody high up in the Bush administration must have figured he'd send a message -- "Nobody criticizes this president." That's because another somebody had done exactly that. And this other somebody had not only criticized the president, but had criticized him about something really important. This other somebody -- and I can tell you his name, it's Joseph Wilson -- had said that one of the president's scariest reasons for going to war with Saddam Hussein (Saddam's supposed nuclear-weapons program) was pretty much bogus. This Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a special fact-finding trip to Africa to check out the president's claims, came back and said, "Nope." He even wrote a big article for the op-ed page of The New York Times and said "Nope" right there in black and white. All of which could have made George Bush look pretty silly -- or even worse, hungry for war for all the wrong reasons. None of which sat well with this certain somebody high up in the Bush administration, whose main job for years and years had been keeping George Bush from looking silly, or even worse. So this certain somebody -- and I'm not naming any names -- apparently decided to hit back and try to discredit Joseph Wilson. And to do that, he started talking secretly to the media, and one of the things he started talking about was Joseph Wilson's wife. This certain somebody high up -- in fact, very high up -- in the Bush administration told at least one reporter that Joseph Wilson only got to go on his special fact-finding trip to Africa because Wilson's own wife had recommended him. And he also pointed out that Joseph Wilson's wife "works at the agency." Which everybody in Washington knows means the CIA, which is exactly where she worked, as an undercover operative. Now, for anyone -- and I'm not naming any names -- to spill the beans about somebody working undercover for the CIA is a really bad thing to do. Depending on the circumstances, it might even be a federal crime. So just a few days later, when the columnist Robert Novak revealed in print that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," lots of people were pretty upset. (And Valerie Plame's undercover career went right down the toilet.) It didn't take long for this certain somebody very high up in the Bush administration to come under suspicion as the leaker. It was just the kind of crossing-the-line, go-for-the-jugular move that he'd been known for all through his career as a political strategist, and becoming the top political strategist in his entire party was no reason to put it past him now. But this top political strategist in his entire party denied he'd done it. Reporters asked him if he'd leaked her name and he said he hadn't. And he was right -- he hadn't leaked her "name." That's because instead of saying her name, he had simply identified her as Joseph Wilson's wife. Wasn't that clever of him? It certainly was! It was clever in the very same way Bill Clinton was clever when he denied a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and then when they caught him, said, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." That kind of cleverness can take you pretty far, and in the top political strategist's case, it took him and his president past the 2004 elections, which was their biggest concern. (After all, sending kids off to war for imaginary reasons could have gotten some voters pretty riled up.) And it took the strategist to even bigger responsibilities in the White House as the president's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff. So when the news recently started coming out that despite all the denials from the man himself and from the White House, this certain somebody had been very much involved in revealing Valerie Plame's identity, it naturally became a very big deal. Because you don't often find a president's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff caught red-handed doing something he absolutely shouldn't have been doing. And because plenty of people would be delighted to see this certain somebody go down for it. Rhymes with Snarl. Rhymes with Stove. Not that I'm naming any names. Posted 7/12/05. When
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Rick Horowitz
