The right wing detractors who have insisted that Valerie Plame was not undercover have some humble pie to feast on.
“In new court filings, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a ‘covert’ CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a ‘cover identity’ in order to disguise her relationship with the agency,” Newsweek reports.
Wilson’s covert status, which is substantiated in an employment report filed by Fitzgerlad, was cited as part of a recommendation to sentence former Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to up to three years in prison.
CIA man, Larry Johnson, who has been adament that Plame was undercover since day 1, is lapping it up.
[Update: David Corn posted the first piece on this Friday night. He needs to do more self-promotion.] Man, the rightwing stooges are getting their collective asses handed to them on all fronts (e.g., a bird shits on Bush, Wolfowitz gets bounced from the World Bank, and rightwing bloggers, Flopping Aces and Charles Johnson in particular, were exposed making fraudulent claims). As Jackie Gleason used to say, “how sweet it is!”
[Note: Fitzgerald says that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) applied to Valerie at the time of her outing. Suck on that you rightwing hypocrites.]
How long do you think we’ll be waiting for the right wing blogosphere’s to issue a retraction and an apology to Plame?
UPDATE 1:
Putz to Salon: I am Instapundit, bitches!
Just talked to a reporter from Salon who wanted to know if I was going to “retract” an earlier blog post in which I said it looked as if Plame wasn’t covert. I noted that one normally issues a retraction for original reporting, not commenting upon other people’s news stories.
There you have it.
It remains to be seen, however, how this new “I can totally make shit up” rule for his blogging will affect Putz’s status as the Official Guardian of Truth and Accuracy in the Mainstream Media.
UPDATE 2: More priceless quotes from the wig nut gallery, care of another excellent article by Glenn Greenwald.
Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, July 15, 2005:
Since it seems as clear as anything in this affair that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent the day before Novak’s column either, I think we can chalk this up to Joe Wilson’s habitual disingenuousness. . . Nobody ever said that she wasn’t working for the CIA — the question is whether she was a covert spy or a paperpusher, and the answer seems pretty clearly to be the latter.
John Hinderaker Powerline, November 5, 2005:
When CIA leaks hurt the administration, these papers have gleefully passed them on. It was only when Scooter Libby mentioned the name of a non-covert CIA employee, Valerie Plame, that the Post, the Times, and other MSM outlets suddenly developed a faux concern about lapses in security.
Robert Novak, CNN’s Crossfire, September 29, 2003 (via Lexis):
According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about? Pure Bush-bashing.
Fox “moderate” Mort Kondracke, Special Report with Brit Hume, September 1, 2006 (via Lexis):
I don’t think we know that Karl Rove knew and I assume that Scooter Libby may have known but he may have — you know, she was not a covert officer, she was not a covert agent, and she was not covered by the intelligence agent’s identities act. So, all of that is beside the point.
Laura Ingraham, Hannity & Colmes, March 7, 2007:
This is bizarre that this case would have gone this far when they knew who leaked this information, and they knew that this was not a situation where Valerie Plame, at this point in time, at least, was a covert agent.
Jonah Goldberg, National Review Corner, September 30, 2003:
Wilson’s wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already.
Another thing these wingnuts have in common. They were all wrong about Iraq.