http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/031707.htmlThe testimony of Valerie Plame destroyed some of the long-standing myths about her outing as a covert CIA officer that have been circulated for more than three years by George W. Bush’s apologists, including Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.
Indeed, Hiatt and his editorial page cohorts have made trashing Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, and mocking the seriousness of Plame’s exposure almost a regular feature, recycling many long-discredited White House talking points, including an attempt to question whether Plame was in fact “covert.”
After the March 16 hearing before Rep. Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee, those pro-Bush falsehoods stand in even starker disrepute – as should the reputation of the Post’s editorial page, which has never quite reconciled itself to how thoroughly it fell for Bush’s Iraq War deceptions.
Based on testimony before Waxman’s committee, it also now is clear that while the Post was busy defending the Bush administration on the Plame affair, the White House was conducting a systematic cover-up of its role in the leak.
Though Bush declared in September 2003 that he was determined to get to the bottom of who blew Plame’s cover, it was revealed at the March 16 hearing that the White House never even undertook an administrative review to assess responsibility for the leak.
James Knodell, the hapless director of the White House security office, was forced to concede that no internal security investigation was performed; no security clearances were suspended or revoked; no punishment of any kind was meted out to White House political adviser Karl Rove who is now known to have revealed Plame’s classified identity to at least two reporters.
Knodell, whose job includes assessing Executive Branch security breaches, said that what he knew about the Plame case was “through the press.”
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