Put the blame on Plame – her husband, that is

Yes, the post title is a bad play off the song “Put the Blame on Mame” from the Rita Hayworth movie Gilda, I know. Anyway …

The WaPo revisits l’affaire de Plame and puts the blame for this whole drama squarely where it belongs: Wilson himself. From the WaPo editorial:

WE’RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame’s cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.

Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame’s identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak “in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip,” according to a story this week by the Post’s R. Jeffrey Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House — that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson — is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage’s identity been known three years ago.

[…]

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Indeed. People like the NYTimes editors. Speaking of, haven’t seen anything from their editorial page on this. I’ll keep checking. Considering it was such a hot button topic for them when it looked like Rove was going down for intentionally ‘outing’ a ‘covert’ CIA employee (something Clay Waters NewsBusters noted, too, a couple of days ago), I’m sure they’ll have something up soon. Until then …

Hat tip: ST reader sanity in the comments section of another post regarding pLamegate.

More: Tom Maguire weighs in on the WaPo editorial and gives some background on the primary WaPo journalists involved in reporting on l’affaire de Plame.

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