The Forkes Report

Just when you think a lie has stopped revolving through the media, up steps the gamblin’ man Bill Bennett, to say once again, when Valerie Plame-Wilson’s name was mentioned in Robert Novak’s July 14, 2003 column, she was not a covert agent and no damage was done to national security by revealing her identity.

Bennett was on CNN’s “The Situation Room” April 26, discussing, among other things, Tony Snow as the new White House press secretary and Karl Rove’s fifth appearance before the grand jury. Thankfully, host Wolf Blitzer challenged — if only meekly — Bennett’s assertions.

— Just a short tangent here. You may remember Bennett’s now infamous remark, uttered on his radio program, “if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Man, the guy’s got some gall!

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald stated in his indictment of Scooter Libby Ms. Wilson was indeed a “classified” asset of the C.I.A. Many have contended that she was not a “N.O.C.,” a Non Official Cover agent. Some Joe Wilson critics like to point out that during her career with the C.I.A. she once listed the U.S. Embassy in Italy as her address; and yet, the C.I.A. itself still insists her identity was classified.

Part of Mr. Fitzgerald’s investigation was to determine whether or not Ms. Wilson’s secret identity was common knowledge, and sent investigators out to her neighbors to find out if any of them knew of her job with the agency. None did. In fact, all of them seemed quite surprised by the revelation.

So, why do the smear merchants continue with this line of slander? It’s one thing when mere bloggers such as myself write scurrilous entreaties, but quite another when public figures with some repute regurgitate the lies. It muddies the water; those who might not follow the case too closely — those who might have a life outside the spell of Washington (and let us not assume that spell, by the miracle of our inventions, does not drift beyond the Beltway) — they with a life, hear Bill Bennett, once the Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration, repeat a lie, the uninformed person might assume the lie is truth.

The “Echo Machine,” as it is called, will repeat this lie over and over again, with as many different voices as possible, until one day — they hope — it will be “common knowledge” Valerie Plame-Wilson was not a covert agent. Then, should you ever get into a conversation with one of the uninformed, they will utter the ubiquitous phrase, “It stands to reason ...”

This is what they hoped when the lie first began circulating back in 2003, when the investigation was getting underway. The common lie told at that time was that Plame’s identity was “known to every reporter inside the Beltway.” The reporters named in the investigation — to a person — said they had never heard of Valerie Plame-Wilson, or if they had, did not know she was a C.I.A. officer.

Logic would dictate then, the lie would stop once Mr. Fitzgerald and the agency itself clearly indicated her identity was classified. But then, logic and reason haven’t been character traits of conservatives these past few years; wrong on WMD in Iraq, wrong about a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Queda, wrong about how to occupy Iraq after Saddam was toppled ... and these are just the lies and miscalculations related to the war in Iraq!

Here is a man, Bill Bennett, once charged with the duty of overseeing the education of our nation’s students, spreading lies on national television. Call him and those he mimics for what they are — liars.

There is no ambiguity in this matter; both the C.I.A. and the special prosecutor have determined Ms. Plame’s identity as an agent was classified. Someone in the White House, most likely I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Karl Rove, revealed the classified identity of a covert C.I.A. spy and in the process, blew the cover business — Brewster-Jennings — Plame used when traveling abroad for her job. It will be interesting to read the C.I.A.’s assessment of the damage.

It’s purely speculation at this point since no damage assessment has been made public — not even to know if one took place — but some close to the C.I.A. say the agency did its assessment and rather than submit the report to congress, the agency referred it to the Justice Department because they felt someone had broken the law, specifically, the Agent Identities Protection Act. What some close to the intelligence community are saying — unoffically it must be noted — is that Plame and her team were working on nuclear proliferation issues in Iran. If that is true, the implications are staggering and the fact that the president has done nothing but muddy the waters himself in this investigation must send shivers down the spines of every covert agent working outside the United States.

To his credit, former Attorney General John Ashcroft (he who clothed the statues of government) assigned the investigation and prosecution to a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The question is, will we ever know definitively who outed the C.I.A. agent? Libby is lying, the source of his legal woes (perjury and obstruction of justice charges) and we can only speculate at this point the nature of Rove’s testimony. At this juncture we can only hope to know, if only anecdotally, who actually revealed the name to reporters.

Last night (April 29) C-SPAN broadcast live the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner (Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central rarely got a laugh) and Ambassador Wilson was in attendance with his wife, the former C.I.A. officer. The irony is that they were in the same room with some of the very people who continue to slander their names with the “Big Lie” concerning her once classified status. Washington, D.C. is an odd place, where heroes and villains can mingle so freely and might even exchange pleasantries. Maybe we are civilized when it comes to political discourse in the nation; maybe we have become too weak in our denunciation of the liars, lest we be called “unpatriotic.”

Well, I’ll write it here: former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett is a liar.