Reply #31: No.

[Igel]

As I've said elsewhere, if a person simply told Novak that "Wilson's wife wrote a recommendation for his trip", you get to Novak's story in 2 or 3 easy steps.

The only thing you need to do is confirm that Plame was CIA; you don't need to confirm 'covert' or 'undercover' status. And he got that.

Now, this may not be how it happened; it may have been a vast conspiracy that set out specifically to undermine Brewster Jennings. But it's consistent with everybody's story, and plausible; it requires no assumptions but a certain level of basic inquisitiveness in pursuit of undermining Wilson, which we knew existed anyway. Moreover, it's consistent not with how RW thought is portrayed on DU, but with how RW writers wrote and argued at the time, and is consistent with plausible motives.