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A theory of Plamegate
Zell Miller has a doozy of a theory explaining this complete non-scandal, which the left has turned into, or is at least portraying as, a national political crisis. It’s not just, as some believe, that the French created the forged letter indicating an Iraq-Niger uranium deal, which would sucker President Bush into basing his war argument on the forged letter, which would result in Bush’s war argument being discredited. It’s not just, as the same people believe, that from the moment Wilson, Plame’s husband, was tapped to go to Niger it was with the intent of harming the president. It is that the CIA’s choice of Wilson to go on the mission, followed by their permitting him to write an op-ed in the New York Times calling the president a liar, was done with the intent that Wilson’s attack would naturally require the administration to look into why he was chosen for this mission, which would lead them to the information that Plame was his wife, about which they would then inform reporters, in order to account for Wilson’s mission and his attack on the president. In other words, the administration’s “outing” of Plame was Plame’s object from the start, which she sought in order to undermine the administration.
It seems to me, however, that there is a fatal flaw in Miller’s theory. Plame and her CIA associates could not know in February 2002 that, as a result of the forged letter that had been fed to the administration, President Bush in January 2003 would speak the precise 16 words that would then (the theory goes) give her husband the pretext to write the op-ed calling the president a liar which would lead to Plame’s outing. As with many conspiracy theories, Miller’s theory presumes that the conspirators possessed a superhuman degree of control over, and knowledge about, future events. Email entry |