Something high5 said in pontificator's "CIA Spokesman Confirms Plame was an Undercover Operative" diary comments got me thinking, and I thought it deserved higher visibility:
high5 wondered aloud whether this whole Plamegate thing could have been a sting operation set up by CIA and State:
The CIA and the INR 'conspiring' to bring down BushCo? They knew BushCo would go beserk and use whatever means to discredit Wilson, so they let him stage the operation by writing his oped, INR provided a memo on Plame as bait, Rove took the bait and leaked the info on Plame to Novak for him to write about it, and the rest follows along. What Rove didn't know was that Novak and INR and the CIA set him up. I'm dreaming...
Maybe not...
The thing that's been bothering me recently is reconciling what Sy Hersh said about the source of the phony Niger info ("the CIA guys were so pissed at Cheney...") that was released through SISMI and was eventually stovepiped into the VP office, where it was taken for gospel, and what appears to be a fairly credibly-documented conspiracy by BushCo to bring down the Wilsons and, more importantly, to "fix the intelligence around the policy" with regard to Iraq. Speculation on the source of the forgeries points at different times, it seems, to both sides in the unfolding drama.
I tend to think this is going to be revealed as a tale of a fundamental struggle between two factions in both the CIA and in the State Dept. Intelligence pros v. the mea culpas at the CIA, Powell (and maybe Rice, though she seems to lack any ability to be "disloyal" to Bush at all) v. Bolton et al. and maybe even Bush I v. Bush II.
Does it seem to anyone else as if there are two essential and almost equally-plausible explanations for the Niger thing at play, or am I missing something that's publicly known? And if I'm right, does anyone else see a way to tie them together in a way that we haven't really examined yet?
I'm thinking a deliberate set-up by the one faction might well be the answer, but going beyond Hersh, that it didn't get out of hand at all but rather is having the desired effect and that the American People are about to get a look at something very ugly that's been going on for quite some time.