Having previously demonstrated his remarkable lack of reading comprehension skills (see,
Fool, Thy Name is John Podhoretz), the Corner's beloved "JPod" takes it one step further today when offering a theory about Miller's "mystery" source.
Here's the relevant information from Miller's article:
My notes indicate that well before Mr. Wilson published his critique, Mr. Libby told me that Mr. Wilson's wife may have worked on unconventional weapons at the C.I.A. . . .
I wrote in my notes [of our first meeting], inside parentheses, "Wife works in bureau? . . . My notes [from a later meeting] contain a phrase inside parentheses: "Wife works at Winpac." . . .
Mr. Fitzgerald asked me about another entry in my notebook, where I had written the words "Valerie Flame," clearly a reference to Ms. Plame. . . . I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.
And here's Podhoretz's
speculation:
Here's a theory:
Joseph Wilson was shopping around his story about his 2002 trip to Niger in May and early June of 2003. . . .
What if Miller got wind of Wilson's effort to get his (false) story out? What if, in the course of normal events, somebody told her that Wilson was well-connected and knew what he was talking about because his wife worked for the CIA? What if she then went to Google to look up stuff about Wilson and found his bio online at the Middle East Institute? That bio (which is no longer available on line--gee, I wonder why) featured the line: "He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has two sons and two daughters."
As I recall, the type on that bio was incredibly small and in sans-serif type. She may simply have misread the surname "Plame" as "Flame."
What if, therefore, she learned about Valerie Plame in part because of Wilson's own efforts to publicize his story from his own bio -- and then, as she was talking to Scooter Libby, threw the name "Valerie Flame" at him? Evidently he did not react to the name, either because he was being discreet or because he had never heard her referred to as anything other than "Wilson's wife."
What if, therefore, Judy Miller's source for the name "Valerie Plame" was....Google?
What if . . . John Podhoretz bought a clue?
- A written biography is not a "whom."
- Conversations identifying covert CIA agents do not come up "in the normal course of events," unless we're talking about conversations with senior Bush Administration officials.
- The notion that Libby might have been showing discretion by repeatedly telling Miller that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, but feigning ignorance of Wilson's maiden name, is ludicrous.
- Most importantly, Podhoretz resorts to distortion in an attempt to cast blame on Wilson. He asks, "What if [Miller] learned about Valerie Plame in part because of Wilson's own efforts to publicize his story." If Podhoretz were being honest, the phrase, "learned about Valerie Plame" would read "learned about the unclassified name of Wilson's wife." The classified information was the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and that fact was in no way disclosed by Wilson's online bio.
Bottom Line:
If Miller got the name "Valerie Flame" from a second human source, Libby may not be the only one in trouble for leaking to Miller, but we would need to know more about Miller's conversation with that second source.
If Miller got the name "Valerie Flame" from Google, Libby is still in trouble, but there is absolutely no basis for Podhoretz's implication that Wilson was partially responsible for the disclosure of his wife's identity as a CIA agent.