The Washington Post column on September 1, 2006 is titled: End of Affair. It was not Karl Rove or some other Bush loyalist that leaked Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novak -- it was Richard Armitage who was opposed to much of Bush policy.
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.
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.
Bush and his advisors may be guilty of other failures, but this is not one of them. I can't get over how much media type and Democrat hype was spent on this issue. My early thoughts of this affair was that it was "much ado about nothing." I am sure most people in the Plame-Wilson social circuit knew she was CIA--most of the time where you work is common knowledge so hundreds of other people may have know.
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