Zell/Plame

Zell Miller on Plame:

Former Senator, Governor, and Sergeant of Marines Zell Miller has written a piece on the Plame business. Zell thinks it was Plame and Wilson who decided to attempt to use her position at CIA to influence a domestic election.

It sounds unbelievable, a fiction, perhaps to be called "To Sting a King." But it is no fiction. This is the story behind Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson and the Bush administration. And it appears that Plame and Wilson will get away with the biggest sting operation ever.

No one seems to care that our intelligence agency has crippled our president. Certainly not the media. They are determined to make Wilson a hero. Recall the dozens of times the Washington Post and The New York Times carried his lies on the front page, above the fold. The conclusive story discrediting Wilson was buried 6 feet deep, back by the obituaries.

To the media, it doesn't matter that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence says Wilson lied about what he did and with whom he met while investigating Iraqi attempts to purchase "yellowcake" uranium.

To the media, it doesn't matter that the CIA says what Wilson did actually find supported that Iraq was attempting to buy the uranium — a direct contradiction to Wilson's public claims.

So far, that's my read on the situation as well. Maybe that's just how it looks to folks from the North Georgia mountains. Still, Zell was there in the Senate while this report was being generated. Maybe it's not surprising that he and I tend to see it the same way, as we come from the same part of the country and the same political tradition. All the same, I'm glad to hear him come to the same conclusions independently.

UPDATE: On the other hand, another man I respect comes to the conclusion I've been suggesting we avoid. In a piece called "The Secret Third Party," Froggy puts it this way:

I’m not talking about the Libertarians or the Greens; I’m talking about the CIA party. Partisans in the CIA and the State Department are waging a political battle against the President of the United States while at the same time providing much of the information the President needs to make foreign policy decisions. Have you ever wondered why the White House is so shy about touting the many successes in the Global War on Terror? Me too. The reason is that many bureaucrats at Langley seem to think that they are entitled to set the direction of US foreign policy instead of Chimpy Bushitlerburton the duly elected Commander in Chief and they are not afraid to leak damaging or even false information to make that happen.

Zell Miller has a very interesting piece (h/t Sean) out in the Atlanta Journal Constitution in which he quite convincingly postulates that this entire Niger/yellowcake kerfuffle was the result of a premeditated “sting operation” conducted by Valerie Plame using her husband Joe “Politics of Truth” Wilson as an unaccountable proxy to mischaracterize the situation in Niger publicly in an effort to influence the 2004 election. Unfortunately for the Wilsons, the British Butler Report and the Senate Intelligence Phase One Report on Pre-War Intelligence strongly rebuked their efforts. But a predictably complicit media made things interesting last November and has never stopped carrying the torch for the CIA and the Wilsons. Let’s not forget that George Tenet told the President two weeks before the War that Saddam’s possession of WMD was a “slam dunk”, and yet he allowed an active employee publish a book highly critical of the President’s decisions in the GWOT anonymously in the run up to his re-election campaign.

So, is there a wider conspiracy at CIA to influence American politics -- a 'secret third party'? The case of "Anonymous," which Froggy cites, is a useful way to examine the question.

Anonymous' real name is Michael Scheuer. He appeared recently at Grim's Hall, because of a skit he performed for the Air Force Association. He and Wilson are alike in exactly one way: both used their work for CIA as the basis for activity that was critical of the administration during an election cycle. Beyond that, the differences between them are more important and telling.

Wilson went and published a piece in the New York Times that was at variance with his report to CIA. He somehow -- I agree that exactly how is a question we'd benefit from having answered -- managed to avoid CIA secrecy regulations and agreements. Scheuer submitted himself to agency rules, requested permission for his book, and accepted Agency edits.

Wilson spread a series of flat untruths into the media to try and create a false impression among Americans. Scheuer fundamentally believes everything he has written, and is making an argument to the American people. I happen to believe it is wrong, but it is an honest argument.

Wilson, both before and since, has been an activist. His purpose has always been political. Scheuer, since leaving CIA, has been trying to help the military understand his position. His main purpose is not political change, but improving the GWOT according to his best understanding. As I said in the piece on his AFA skit, I think his central mistake is not realizing how well informed and educated the military actually is already. Still, while he reads disagreement as ignorance, his response is to try and educate. He may be a jackass, but he's an honest jackass who is trying to help America's war effort. Wilson is, as he has always been, trying to destabilize it.

I don't have a problem with people like Scheuer. I think they're wrong, but I respect their work and am willing to consider their arguments -- even if I reject the largest parts of it, as I did with his AFA argument.

If the CIA is full of people like Scheuer, it's a problem, but it's a problem only because it limits intellectual diversity at the Agency. It contributes to the groupthink and stovepiping that were the core problems uncovered in the Senate Select Committee report. It's not a problem because of the fact that they sometimes come to the wrong conclusions, or because they are operating from the wrong premises. Having people who think about these issues differently is a strength, because even when they're wrong they compel those who are right to think their position through more carefully. Plus, no one is always wrong, just like no one is always right. The problem for CIA is a lack of competitive viewpoints, not the inclusion of Scheuer's viewpoint.

Even though my sense is that spies are essentially untrustworthy and dishonorable, I'm not ready to believe that CIA is engaged in a grand conspiracy against its own government. I think most of the people at CIA -- who are not spies but analysts and technicians -- are honest patriots, and that even among the spies there are some who are amoral patriots rather than immoral actors. The CIA, as Zell points out, has strong internal rules designed to control their spies.

For now, I'm not ready to accept that the CIA as an institution is involved in conspiracies. The example of Scheuer seems to me to suggest that even some with strong dislike for the administration and its policies behave honestly and honorably in their actions. Scheuer felt he needed to take an argument to America, out from beyond the wall of secrecy. Good -- we need people to feel they can do that, when they think it's really important. Secrecy is an enemy to the republican nature of the government, and it should be possible for the Agency's denizens to speak directly when they feel they really must. Scheuer submitted himself to the rules and controls. I disagree with him and his argument, but I don't think he did wrong by making that argument.

The case of Wilson, however, appears to be one of genuine bad-acting. How we resolve it will say a lot about how serious we're prepared to be where issues of this sort are concerned. The likelihood of a genuine conspiracy by intelligence officers in the future is greatly increased if the response to this kind of manipulation is muted. To prevent the monster Froggy draws from becoming a reality, we need to treat seriously with this business.