--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips@philodox.com Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 06:48:56 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips@philodox.com> From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Christopher Hitchens: What Goes Around Comes Around Reply-To: rah@philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces@philodox.com <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB113072864998883959.html> The Wall Street Journal ? October 31, 2005 COMMENTARY What Goes Around Comes Around By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS October 31, 2005; Page A16 The Republicans who drafted and proposed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in the early days of the Reagan administration, in a vain attempt to end the career of CIA defector Philip Agee, could not have known that their hasty legislation would one day paralyze the workings of a conservative wartime administration. Nor could the eager internationalist Wilsonians who rammed through the 1917 Espionage Act -- the most repressive legislation since the Alien and Sedition laws -- have expected it to be used against government officials making the case for an overseas military intervention. But then, who would have thought that liberals and civil libertarians -- the New York Times called for the repeal of the IIPA as soon as it was passed, or else for it to be struck down by the courts -- would find these same catch-all statutes coming in handy for the embarrassment of Team Bush? The outrage of the left at any infringement of CIA prerogatives is only the least of the ironies in the indictment of Lewis Libby for discussing matters the disclosure of which, in and of itself, appears to have violated no known law. To judge by his verbose and self-regarding performance, containing as it did the most prolix and least relevant baseball analogy ever offered to a non-Chicago audience, Patrick Fitzgerald is not a man with whom the ironic weighs heavily. Nor does he seem discountenanced by his failure to find any breach in the IIPA or even the more broadly drawn Espionage Act. Mr. Libby stands accused of misstating his conversations with almost every journalist in Washington except for the only one -- Robert Novak -- who actually published the totemic name of Valerie Plame. "We have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly and intentionally outed a covert agent," Mr. Fitzgerald contentedly confirmed. If -- and one has to say "if" -- the transmission of any classified information is a crime, then as Mr. Fitzgerald also confirmed, one would be in the deep waters of the Espionage Act, which is "a very difficult statute to interpret." Actually, it is a very easy act to interpret. It declares that even something very well-known is secret if the state defines it as secret: the same principle as the dreaded British Official Secrets Act. As to the critical question of whether Mr. Plame had any cover to blow, Mr. Fitzgerald was equally insouciant: "I am not speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert." In the absence of any such assertion or allegation, one must be forgiven for wondering what any of this gigantic fuss can possibly be about. I know some apparently sensible people who are prepared to believe, still, that a Machiavellian cabal in the White House wanted to punish Joseph Wilson by exposing his wife to embarrassment and even to danger. So strong is this belief that it envisages Karl Rove (say) deciding to accomplish the foul deed by tipping off Robert Novak, one of the most anti-Iraq-war and pro-CIA journalists in the capital, as if he were precisely the pliant tool one would select for the dastardly work. And then, presumably to thicken the plot, Mr. Novak calls the CIA to confirm, as it readily did, that Ms. Plame was in the agency's employ. Meanwhile, and just to make things more amusing, George Tenet, in his capacity as Director of Central Intelligence, tells Dick Cheney that he employs Mr. Wilson's wife as an analyst of the weird and wonderful world of WMD. So jealously guarded is its own exclusive right to "out" her, however, that no sooner does anyone else mention her name than the CIA refers the Wilson/Plame disclosure to the Department of Justice. Mr. Fitzgerald, therefore, seems to have decided to act "as if." He conducts himself as if Ms. Plame's identity was not widely known, as if she were working under "non official cover" (NOC), as if national security had been compromised, and as if one or even two catch-all laws had been broken. By this merely hypothetical standard, he has performed exceedingly well, even if rather long-windedly, before pulling up his essentially empty net. However, what if one proposes an alternative "what if" narrative? What if Mr. Wilson spoke falsely when he asserted that his wife, who was not in fact under "non-official cover," had nothing to do with his visit to Niger? What if he was wrong in stating that Iraqi envoys had never even expressed an interest in Niger's only export? (Most European intelligence services stand by their story that there was indeed such a Baathist initiative.) What if his main friends in Niger were the very people he was supposed to be investigating? Well, in that event, and after he had awarded himself some space on an op-ed page, what was to inhibit an employee of the Bush administration from calling attention to these facts, and letting reporters decide for themselves? The CIA had proven itself untrustworthy or incompetent on numerous occasions before, during and after the crisis of Sept. 11, 2001. Why should it be the only agency of the government that can invoke the law, broken or (as in this case) unbroken, to protect itself from leaks while protecting its own leakers? All worthwhile information in Washington is "classified" one way or another. We have good reason to be grateful to various officials and reporters who have, in our past, decided that disclosure was in the public interest. None of the major criticisms of the Bush administration would have become available if it were not for the willingness of many former or serving bureaucrats to "go public." But this widely understood right -- now presumably in some jeopardy -- makes no sense if supporters of the administration are not permitted to reply in kind. Logic and history suggest that there will be a turn of the political wheel, and that Dems will regain control of the White House or the Congress. Will they be willing to accept the inflexible standard of secrecy that they have exacted in the Wilson imbroglio? Will they forbid their own civil servants to put a case, in confidence, to members of the press? Will they allow their trusted loyalists to be dragged before grand juries, and the reporters to be forced to open notebooks to the gaze of any prosecutor? The answer today is presumably "yes," which brings me back to where I began, and to the stupid acquiescence of Republicans in the passage of a law that should never have allowed to hollow out the First Amendment in the first place. Mr. Hitchens, columnist for Vanity Fair, is the author of "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America" (Eminent Lives, 2005). -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips@philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'