by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, October 2, 2003 3:17 P.M. EDT

Is She Covert?
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations notes a key limitation in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the 1982 law that Robert Novak's sources supposedly violated by revealing that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA: An employee of an intelligence agency is a "covert agent" for the purposes of the statute only if he "is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States." This makes sense; after all, the CIA isn't supposed to spy in the U.S.

Does Plame qualify? It's not entirely clear, for both the CIA and her publicity-hungry husband, Joseph Wilson, have revealed little about her professional history. But here's what we do know:

• According to Wilson's biography on the Web site of the Saudi-funded Middle East Institute, which lists him as a "media resource," his last overseas assignment, as political adviser to the commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces in Europe, ended in 1997, six years ago. (Wilson's bio, by the way, lists his wife's supposedly secret maiden name.)
  
  
• Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Wilson and Plame have three-year-old twin sons.
  
  
• Maureen Dowd reports that Wilson and Plame met at a Washington cocktail party six years ago.

Wilson's bio says he worked for President Clinton as a special assistant between June 1997 and July 1998, which means he was based in Washington when he met Plame. If their kids are three years old, they would have been born in 1999 or 2000, and it seems reasonable to surmise that she was not stationed overseas as an expectant or new mother. If she has been stationed overseas during the past five years, then, the Wilson-Plame romance would have to have been a long-distance one at least during its first two years. So far as we are aware, no one has asserted that it was.

An Uncertain -Gate
Andrew Sullivan calls it "kind of perfect Washington storm--about something that will never formally become much more than nothing." But journalists are doing their best to gin up the Valerie Plame kerfuffle into a scandal. Today's New York Times reports that "deep political ties between top White House aides and Attorney General John Ashcroft have put him into a delicate position as the Justice Department begins a full investigation into whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer." Pretty sinister, huh? Not until the 15th paragraph do we learn that the investigation will be carried out by career Justice Department lawyers, not political appointees.

The Washington Post's effort is even more absurd. "Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe a special prosecutor should be named to investigate allegations that Bush administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday," the paper reports on the front page. Here are some of the findings of the poll:

• 81% of those polled think this is a "serious" matter.
  
  
• 72% think it is "likely" that someone in the White House "leaked this classified information"
  
  
• 69% favor the appointment of a special counsel.

The Post's article, however, makes no mention of the second question, which is the most important at all:

The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether someone in the White House broke the law by identifying a former diplomat's wife as an undercover CIA agent. The former diplomat claims this was done to punish him for criticizing U.S. policy on Iraq. Have you heard or read anything about this situation, or not?

Only 68% of those polled--less than all the percentages cited above--had heard or read anything about the situation, and one suspects comparatively few of those are following the story closely enough to have a well-informed opinion. That means the answers to the poll questions are largely based on information supplied by the pollsters themselves, in questions that are quite one-sided. For example, in the question above, we learn what "the former diplomat claims" but not that it remains in dispute whether in fact his better half was an undercover operative. This poll seems more an effort to keep the story going than to gauge public opinion honestly.

Predictably enough, lots of people are using the W-word: Republican chairman Ed Gillespie " was asked by MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday evening whether the potential crime involved was worse than Watergate," the Associated Press reports. The Guardian quotes David Corn, the left-wing journalist who first published the claim that Plame was undercover: "Unlike Watergate, this starts with people who are close to the president." And yesterday CNN's Wolf Blitzer, interviewing fellow TV host Bob Schieffer, said, "We're talking Watergate maybe"--though Schieffer said: "This is not Watergate."

Some Bush foes seem downright gleeful about the prospect of "another Watergate," and this is of a piece with quagmire lust--their tendency to hope every war, most recently Iraq, turns out to be "another Vietnam."

What's going on here? Most Americans view Vietnam and Watergate as national tragedies, products of an era that befouled America so much that we endured four years of Jimmy Carter as penance. But for a generation of journalists and liberal activists, Vietnam and Watergate were triumphs, not tragedies. In their worldview, the good guys spoke truth to power, stopped a war and brought down two corrupt presidents, forcing LBJ to retire and Nixon to resign. For partisan reasons, many of these people stopped their scandal- and quagmire-mongering while Bill Clinton was president, but with a Republican in office there is little to inhibit them from trying to relive their glory days.

But the tendency to see all wars in terms of Vietnam and all would-be scandals in terms of Watergate reflects a profound lack of historical perspective. Vietnam and Watergate are both singular events in American history--the only war the U.S. has ever lost, and the only scandal ever to force a president from office.

To be sure, each left a substantial legacy: For the quarter century after the fall of Saigon, American leaders were extremely averse to military casualties, while Watergate gave us campaign-finance "reform" and the late, unlamented (until recently) institution of the independent counsel.

We would venture to say that the attacks of Sept. 11 followed by America's military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq have laid to rest a great deal of the Vietnam legacy. The post-Watergate era began its end with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, after which Congress let the independent counsel statute die. Today the New York Times editorial board twists itself into knots trying to explain its position on reviving that law:

The leak investigation has already prompted calls from Democrats in Congress to re-enact the lapsed special prosecutor law, under which a judicial panel can appoint an independent investigator who cannot be fired by the attorney general. While this page has strongly supported that law, we have seen how tangled up an administration can get under the unrestricted power of an independent counsel, like the meandering Kenneth Starr during the Clinton administration. We do not believe that this case merits having Congress reopen now the issue of possibly resurrecting that law, an effort that would only lead to partisan fistfights and would delay an investigation that should proceed swiftly.

If the Plame kerfuffle ends up withering away because of its own insubstantiality, perhaps Watergate nostalgia will go out of fashion once and for all.

The Bard Weighs In
Does this passage from Act V, Scene I of "Henry V" shed any light on the Plame kerfuffle?

Pistol

By this leek, I will most horribly revenge:
I eat and eat, I swear--

Fluellen

Eat, I pray you: will you have some more sauce to
your leek? there is not enough leek to swear by.

Pistol

Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see I eat.

Fluellen

Much good do you, scauld knave, heartily.
Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your
broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks
hereafter, I pray you, mock at 'em; that is all.

Pistol

Good.

Fluellen

Ay, leeks is good: hold you, there is a groat to
heal your pate.

Pistol

Me a groat!

The Little Dictator
As we noted last week, Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark, a retired Army general, has been talking up something he calls "a new kind of patriotism," an essential element of which is free expression. His Web site has a transcript of his Sept. 17 announcement speech, which includes this passage (capitals in original):

WHY are so many here in America hesitant to speak out and ask questions? (Crowd answers "BUSH"; Clark nods his head

This past weekend, Rush Limbaugh, who'd been moonlighting as pregame football commentator for ESPN, remarked that, as the Associated Press puts it, "the media wanted Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb to succeed because he is black." This was deemed "racially insensitive" by those who've anointed themselves authorities on racial sensitivity, and Limbaugh has resigned. "I love NFL Sunday Countdown and do not want to be a distraction to the great work done by all who work on it," ESPN.com quotes him as saying.

Before Limbaugh quit, the AP reports, Wesley Clark weighed in:

In the letter to ESPN, Clark said, "There can be no excuse for such statements. Mr. Limbaugh has the right to say whatever he wants, but ABC and ESPN have no obligation to sponsor such hateful and ignorant speech. Mr. Limbaugh should be fired immediately."

Are we alone in finding it a little creepy that a general who wants to be president would demand that a private company suppress speech?

Uday Hussein used to torture members of Iraq's soccer team when they lost games, and Kim Jong Il once kidnapped a South Korean film director and held him prisoner for years, forcing him to produce propaganda for Pyongyang. While these crimes were brutal and horrifying, there's also something comical about dictators espousing high-flown ideologies--"Juche," "Arab socialism"--when what they're really interested in is sports and movies.

Now we have Wesley Clark pontificating about the "new patriotism" and then deciding that one of the most pressing issues facing America is the need to ensure sensitive football commentary. Of course, the comparison goes only so far. American democracy is secure, and even if by some chance Clark becomes president, he won't be able to terrorize the entertainment and sports industries into complying with his will. So while he is as ridiculous as a totalitarian dictator, he is nowhere near as fearsome. He's more like Charlie Chaplin's "Little Dictator" or Saddam Hussein in "South Park" than the real thing.

It's Curtains for Clark
Who says Wesley Clark has no experience in domestic policy? Blogger Josh Marshall scored an interview with the general turned candidate and asked Clark to elaborate on his thinking. He cites a few figures who've influenced him--Laura Tyson, Bob Rubin, Gene Sperling and "the wife":

When you run it all through, it's really me. It's my views that have been shaped by a lifetime of public service, traveling across this country, putting a child through school, worried about how much--or how little--money I made, how to survive on very middle [income] wages while moving every two or three years. The wife would come in and say, "Ah, the towels don't match the bathroom and you've got to buy new bathroom mats. And now what are we going to do for curtains? The curtain rods don't fit in this kind of the house." You know, all these expenses of moving on top of not making very much money. It's just a question of who you are.

A Group of Grope Gripes
Columnist George Will has lived up to his future-tense name. On Sept. 4, he made this prediction about the California governor's race:

Ken Khachigian, a veteran Republican strategist, warns that [Arnold] Schwarzenegger should brace himself for what has become the Democrats' trademark tactic. In football it is penalized as a "late hit," but in politics it is often rewarded with success. George W. Bush received such a hit in the final weekend of the 2000 campaign--the revelation of his drunk driving arrest 24 years earlier. That probably contributed to an unusual development: Late-deciding voters, who usually break against the incumbent party, broke for Vice President Gore in 2000.

California Republicans have experienced late hits three times in the past 11 years. In 1992 Bruce Herschensohn narrowly lost a Senate race against Barbara Boxer when it was revealed on the Friday before the election that he and his girlfriend and another couple had visited a strip club. In 1994 Michael Huffington narrowly lost a Senate race against Feinstein when, a few days before the election, it was revealed that he had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. In 1998 Darrell Issa--he is now a congressmen; his $1.6 million funding of the recall petition drive produced this recall election--lost a Senate primary when it was revealed that he had embellished his military record.

A late hit by the Davis campaign against Schwarzenegger cannot come so late that there is no time for another such hit, one against Davis's other problem, Bustamante. This could get even uglier.

Sure enough, the late hit came in a more than 3,500-word report in today's Los Angeles Times that Schwarzenegger has behaved like Davis supporter Bill Clinton:

Six women who came into contact with Arnold Schwarzenegger on movie sets, in studio offices and in other settings over the last three decades say he touched them in a sexual manner without their consent.

Schwarzenegger's response to the charge, however, was decidedly un-Clintonian: He apologized. The San Jose Mercury News reports:

"Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I offended people," he said. . . . "Those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because that's not what I'm trying to do."

Of course, George W. Bush was similarly forthright in owning up to the drunk-driving revelation, and, as Will notes, it seems to have hurt him just the same. Then again, Californians may be sufficiently disgusted with the incumbent that the late-hit strategy won't be sufficient to save Gray Davis or Cruz Bustamante.

Homer Nods
We made two factual errors (since fixed) in yesterday's column. The Condor blog is run by retired journalist David Jensen; it is not anonymous. And Polly Klaas was 12, not nine, when she was murdered.

Environmentalists Find Remedy for Overpopulation
"Global Warming Said to Kill 160,000 a Year"--headline, CNN.com, Oct. 1

Isn't This Putting the Cart Before the Hearse?
"France Debates Euthanasia After Funeral"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 1

Who Says the U.N. Is Useless?
Back in June we noted one of the biggest social problems after insensitive football commentary: children flushing their pet fish down the toilet, inspired by the animated movie "Finding Nemo." The Associated Press reports the U.N. is on the case:

The United Nations Environment Programme and its partners want to discourage the innocent practice, while using the film's Friday opening in the United Kingdom to highlight a new report that tallies exotic fish losses and habitat damage caused by the growing pet trade.

"Parents who already have aquariums need to explain to their children that the fish will not survive if they are flushed," says Paul Holthus, president of the Marine Aquarium Council, a nonprofit conservation group based in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, we're not sure what to make of this headline in London's Daily Telegraph: "Head Assaulted Me With a Fish, Pupil Tells Court."

Zoo Knew?
"Study: Roaming Animals Not Good in Zoos"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 1

No Wonder the British Have Such Bad Teeth
"Caine Says Plaque Better Than an Oscar"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 1

What Have Those Zealots Been Smoking?
Here's a curious letter to the editor of the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader (eighth letter):

Last week, the Bush administration issued new rules that will relax pollution-control regulations for thousands of power plants and factories, opening the door for corporate polluters who will now be able to spew even more harmful chemicals into our air, regardless of the fact that it will harm millions of Americans.

Where is the outrage from our local ant-smoking zealots? Are they only interested in extinguishing an individual's rights?

David Mikulec
Danville

We've heard of eating squirrel brains, but smoking ants is a new one on us.

You Don't Say
"Home-Heating Bills May Rise in Winter"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 2

Say What?
"Feature: Dead Pope Will Not Be Hammered"--headline, United Press International, Oct. 1

Hail to the Redskins
"The Washington Redskins football franchise can keep its trademark name and logo because a group of activists did not provide enough evidence that the team's moniker was disparaging to Native Americans, a judge ruled yesterday," the Washington Post reports:

U .S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly threw out a federal board's 1999 decision to cancel six highly lucrative Redskins trademarks. She said she was not opining on whether the word "redskin" was insulting or not but concluded that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's board had relied upon partial, dated and irrelevant evidence submitted by the activists.

The judge also said Native Americans had little legal grounds to complain because they waited 25 years after the first Redskins trademark was registered to formally object to the team's name and images.

The Redskins will be in Philadelphia this Sunday, facing the Eagles and quarterback Donovan McNabb. Strangely, there's been no comment from the Wesley Clark campaign.

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