http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=111138One of the oddest spectacles in contemporary celebrity journalism took place when New York Times reporter Judith Miller recently showed up on television to celebrate her release from prison. Miller had been jailed for 84 days at the behest of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald due to her refusal to testify in the Valerie Plame leak investigation. Plame is the CIA operative whose cover was blown by Bush administration apparatchiks in an effort to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson; also to warn potential whistleblowers that retribution would be harsh and swift.
Joe Wilson is a career diplomat who bravely defied Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War by sheltering persons the Iraqi dictator had threatened to hang inside the U.S. Embassy. But he'd earned this White House's enmity by publishing a New York Times column on July 6, 2003, basically implying that President Bush's claims about Saddam's attempts to buy African uranium for nuclear weapons were known to be false when he made them.
Wilson had traveled to Africa at the CIA's behest to investigate the charge, subsequently shown to be based upon crudely forged documents. The White House had to admit that Bush should never have made it.
But loyalty to the regime takes precedence over all competing values in this White House -- truth, patriotism and honor among them. So Bush staffers leaked anti-Wilson smears to selected courtier journalists (of the kind who gain access to the powerful through flattery and GOP political correctness).
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