Kudos to La Plame
It took enormous will-power, determination, and vision for Valerie Plame to keep her mouth shut for four years until she could tell her story to Congress. That's not just a cultured CIA "passion for anonymity." It's a very smart, very savvy understanding that she could unleash the maximum retribution on her assailants only in a certain way, at a certain moment. Now that moment's passed, what did she say? Two things: she was a covert officer and she had nothing to do with her husband's assignment to look into the Niger yellowcake report.
So a crime was committed by the administration (we knew that) and the earlier Senate report on Plame was wrong — deliberately so, a clear conspiracy between Republican Senators and the White House to cover up. That blurring of the separation of powers in favor of a "unitary executive" is troubling in the extreme and moreover casts doubt on all the findings of the previous Senate. It may seem like picking nits but Valerie's correction essentially changes a dynamic, a tempo, of interactions among Senators, putting Republicans on the defensive on a host of issues. They're not just advocating different (misguided) policies anymore, they're being fundamentally dishonest. An important battle for the Democrats in 2008 already has been won.
And a note about coverage. While a few media outlets managed to notice the substance of Valerie's testimony most didn't. One particularly egregious NPR report by Andrea Seabrook struck me, as much for its spineless attitude as for its truly inferior sound editing. Knowing what I do now after a year of editing sound files it was painful to listen to an overuse of enhancing filters and noise filters. More natural sound is always better sound but the NPR engineer seems to have been trying for a particular artificial quality. Sort of like Starbucks coffee...
Posted by George Kenney on March 18, 2007 9:33 AM 
« A Tale of Two Movements | Main | Valerie Plame, the Washington Post, and the Ghost of Joe McCarthy »
Comments
This was an important and long overdue hearing. We can only hope that the other committees on the Hill will begin investigating the other malfeasances and failures of the Bush Administration in public and under oath.
I still hold out some hope that the American public, when they are finally able to perceive the truth undoctored by the right-wing media machine, will demand impeachment.
Posted by: Charley Dunaway | March 18, 2007 5:59 PM