Imagine, if you will, a scenario: you are a "journalist" with gobs of "integrity" and 48 years in "the business." Though it is entirely unclear just what this "business" is that engages you, one thing is certain: your business is not journalism. Despite your history of being used by political operatives as a leaker of sensitive information, stories currently abound that you have been used, yet again, in a smear campaign. You are outraged by these scandalous lies, as you call them.
Imagine further that a CIA spokesman had approached you and requested -- numerous times -- that you not expose the identity of a CIA operative indirectly involved in a story about an intelligence investigation surrounding an alleged attempt by Iraq to secure Niger yellow cake uranium. You, White House stooge that you are, planned to write about this. Imagine further that this same CIA spokesman, upon hearing of a potential story, had said this you:
her name should not be revealed
and that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties."
So, what do you write? Why this, of course:
Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA (Harlow) says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.
Initially, there is outrage that you have exposed a CIA agent's identity but, of course, no one knew at the time who passed this information to you nor that the CIA had contacted you directly and warned you away from doing this very thing. It causes the CIA to request the Justice Department to investigate the leak and then things calm down for quite awhile. Whew! Dodged that one, you think happily.
Except that the man in charge of the DoJ investigation turns out to be a little more -- actually a lot more -- serious than anyone had imagined, least of all you. He appears to be dogged in his search for the leaker and how you had come to know and why you had published sensitive information and revealed the identity of a CIA operative.
In this scenario, you find that you need to defend your actions. What do you do? Why claim ignorance and stupidity, of course, something you fall back on regularly and something that is, quite honestly, entirely believable. As rumours fly, you can't contain yourself any longer and, against the advice of your lawyers, you write a column explaining that you did nothing wrong because the CIA spokesman never told you that exposing the identity of a CIA agent could cause serious harm to anyone:
I have previously said that I never would have written those sentences if Harlow, then-CIA Director George Tenet or anybody else from the Agency had told me that Valerie Plame Wilson's disclosure would endanger herself or anybody.
Ah, ha! Ha ha ha! Vindicated! you say to yourself. Your reasoning seems flawless. Despite a CIA representative expressly telling you not to identify a company agent and that such exposure would cause "difficulties," you are too stupid and clueless to understand what that might actually mean in the world of spying. To you "difficulties" do not translate to "endanger" even though most people would immediately see that, in the upper levels of government and especially the CIA, the two words would be synonymous. But not you. And that, essentially, is your defense in the matter.