Vindication

Cheney and Rove outed Valerie Plame Wilson, working as a CIA agent under non-official cover.

[See UPDATE AND CORRECTION below: there was no “shredding”]

Now that (1) Scooter Libby’s defense team plans to blame everything and Karl Rove, and (2) Patrick Fitzgerald has revealed that poor, confused Scooter Libby was so busy fighting the global battle to save civilization that he shredded notes from his conversations with Cheney (conversations in which Cheney told Libby precisely how to run the counteroffensive against Joseph Wilson) before the FBI could get to them, can we expect apologies from all the right-wing flacks, pundits, and bloggers who (1) made fun of the notion that the top people around GWB had outed a CIA NOC and were lying about it and (2) accused Fitzgerald of making politically motivated baseless charges against an utterly innocent man?

No, I guess we can’t. Silly me! Just thought I’d ask.

Update and correction I seem to have mistaken a metaphor for a literal claim; there’s no evidence that Libby shredded anything.

As to the involvement of Rove and Cheney in outing VPW &#8212 something all the Bushoids vigorously denied at the time &#8212 the evidence is now overwhelming. And though the jury isn’t allowed to hold Libby’s refusal to testify against him, you do have to wonder why an innocent person (and one without a criminal record that could be introduced on cross-examination) wouldn’t want to explain his innocence to the jury. I’m still waiting for an innocent explanation of “I didn’t even know that Wilson had a wife.”

Still waiting for Right Blogistan to say, “Well, yes, in fact the President’s senior political adviser and his Vice-President were both involved in revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent, just as Joe Wilson said, and as Bush and his spokesgeeks vehemently denied.” But I expect to wait a long time.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com