Over at the National Review's blog, John Podhoretz has a post this morning entitled:
IMPORTANT WORDS ON PLAME FROM AN OLD HAND
The "money" quote according to Podhoretz?
[The leaking of Plame's identity] is still one I would rather not see, but she was working in an analytical organization, and there's nothing that precludes anyone from identifying analytical officers.
What makes this post so ludicrous is that Podhoretz wrote it after reading today's Washington Post article, which contains this information from Bill Harlow, the CIA's spokesman at the time of the leak:
Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative.
But wait, it gets even worse -- Podhoretz wrote his "Plame was a non-protected analyst" post
after reading this
article from Time.com, which includes the following information:
[A] U.S. official told TIME that the CIA still considered her to be under covert status, under a 1982 covert agents protection law, at the time her identity was disclosed in a July 14, 2003, article by columnist Robert Novak.
So who is the "important" source of the "money" quote for Podhoretz's "Plame was a non-protected analyst in 2003" post? A man who's last major position with the CIA ended in 1982.
Podhoretz read the Post and Time articles closely enough to author two entries earlier this morning parsing details in those articles about Wison's Niger trip, but he managed to miss the unambiguous reports in both articles that the CIA considered Plame to be an undercover operative at the time her identity was revealed.
Reading Comprehension -- another victim of the GOP noise machine.