What did Joe Wilson know and when did he know it? How many dots did he and Valerie Plame reveal on his website or elsewhere? How many adversaries were too stupid to "connect the dots"?

July 15, 2005--

What did Joe Wilson know and when did he know it? How many dots did he and Valerie Plame reveal on his website or elsewhere? How many adversaries were too stupid to "connect the dots"?

As the facts unravel to expose the utter absence of a viable legal predicate for Joe Wilson's allegation that a White House official criminally exposed his wife as a CIA agent operating under cover in her own name, "Valerie Plame," the dominant media act as though the the speciousness of such false allegation doesn't matter. Why? Because the media now believe (hope?) the original investigation will morph into charges of a "cover-up" of such non-crime while ignoring questions the media ought to be asking Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. What are they? Here are a few, for starters:

(1) How long before February 8, 2003, did Joe Wilson and/or Valerie Plame receive permission from the CIA for Wilson to identify her undercover name, Valerie Plame, as his wife's "former" name on his website "bio" page [see here and here] touting his status as a loyal American with international expertise as a former U.S. Ambassador and former National Security Council consultant?

(2) How long before February 8, 2003, did she cease functioning as "undercover" agent 'Valerie Plame"?

(3) What is Wilson's and/or Plame's basis for claiming she was an "undercover" agent at any time after February 8, 2003? Did she lawfully retain or claim such classification after having ceased to function in such capacity for purely administrative purposes unrelated to her non-undercover status as an "analyst"-- i.e., for retirement points-- or did she do so unlawfully, or through administrative error?

(4) How long before February 8, 2003, did she begin functioning as an analyst rather than as an "undercover" agent?

(5) How many of Wilson's and/or Plame's friends and associates within the Georgetown cocktail circuit and Washington D.C. social scene are prepared to deny under oath that Wilson and/or Plame tacitly, if not overtly, made it known that she had formerly served in a covert capacity for the CIA?

(6) In how many communications on the part of Wilson and/or Plame with FBI and/or Justice Department officials investigating the alleged leak of Plame's alleged covert status has Wilson or Plame claimed that before Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, column neither of them had impliedly, tacitly or overtly revealed to anyone not entitled to access to classified information the fact that Plame had previously served in a covert capacity?

(7) With respect to the pre-February-8, 2003, content of Wilson's own website "bio" page, how many foreign-intelligence agents, terrorists or other adversaries (such as anyone who may have previously perceived "Valerie Plame" to be someone other than a person loyal to the United States) with at least a rudimentary ability to use the World Wide Web would have been unable to "connect the dots" between the "former Valerie Plame" identified by Wilson as his wife and the "Valerie Plame" previously known to them in other contexts?

Here are a few answers: (1) well before February 8, 2003; (2) at least five years; (3) naked assertions which most of the media seem unwilling to challenge despite the reasonably obviously specious nature of such assertions; (4) at least five years; (5) few, if any, have yet been asked to answer such questions under oath; (6) Only the FBI agents and Justice Department officials conducting the investigation know the extent to which they have thus far "connected the dots" between the answers to question "(5)" and this question; (7) certainly as many foreign-intelligence agents, terrorists and other adversaries as had the desire and incentive to research the status of a person operating under the quite rare name, "Valerie Plame."

In creating the dots easily connected by all but the most stupid adversary, were Wilson and Plame simply acting ineptly as was the usual pattern of behavior on the part of the famed "Get Smart" duo "Agent 86" and "Agent 99," or were they willing to tacitly use her alleged "covert" name to enhance Wilson's international-affairs expertise touted on his website? When Plame recommended that Wilson, a man her superiors would have remembered as an American diplomat whom President Bush 41 had commended for his service in Iraq during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War in 1991, be sent to Niger to "investigate" intelligence reports about Saddam Hussein's efforts to acquire uranium in Africa, were she and Wilson serving as Boris-and-Natasha Democratic Moles in a Republican administration? Do wild bears do things in the woods that humans do in special rooms? In short, Wilson and Plame were more interested, and initially more successful, in preserving the actual secrecy of her status as a political mole within the administration of which Wilson was a political opponent than in preserving the alleged "secrecy" of her her former, covert status. Thus, the nature of her status that was really "blown" by, or in the wake of, Novak's July 14, 2003, column was her status as a political mole for Wilson inside the administration of which Wilson (and the candidate he was supporting, John Kerry) was a bitter political opponent.