More on the White House?

Jeff,

In May 1998 I wrote a story for the American Spectator entitled "Where Starr Stands." At the time, everyone was waiting for the Starr Report, and there were a number of conservatives who were speculating that, in addition to the Lewinsky matter, it would include damning information about Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, and a host of other Clinton scandals.

After a lot of reporting, I wrote that it wasn't going to happen. What we knew of as the Whitewater investigation was winding down, was essentially over, when the independent counsel's office learned about Monica Lewinsky. Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, billing records, Webb Hubbell -- you name it -- it was all over. There just wasn't going to be any more.

I think it's fair to say that there were a number of conservatives who just didn't want to hear what I had learned. They chose to keep hope alive, speculating about big, big things right up until the moment the Starr Report was delivered -- with nothing about all those other Clinton scandals.

I sometimes think about that time when I read the hopeful words of the Plameologists about the CIA leak affair. OK, they concede, we've had a big, long investigation, nobody was charged with an underlying crime, and we've heard a lot of evidence in the Lewis Libby trial. But there could be more -- a lot more! Dick Cheney could have said this. Libby could have said that. This might have happened. That might have happened. This investigation is far from over!

Maybe they're right. Maybe there will be some great revelations ahead as Democrats in Congress re-investigate the CIA leak investigation. But I doubt it. Still, we have learned a lot of things in the Libby trial, and as I close out this week, I want to point to just two of them.

The first is that Valerie Plame Wilson was always an important part of the story. Despite all the talk about the administration somehow smearing Joseph Wilson by revealing his wife's identity, everybody knew that you couldn't understand Wilson's trip to Niger without knowing about his wife. The first question many people asked, when Wilson began attacking the administration, was, who sent this guy to Africa? Certainly Libby wanted to know. And so did other people. Just look at what former CIA official Robert Grenier said when he told the court how he responded to Libby's inquiries about the Wilson trip.

"I believe I said something to the effect that Ambassador Wilson's wife works there, and that is where the idea [for his taking the trip to Niger] came from," Grenier testified.

"Why was it you felt that that was a piece of information that should be passed on to Mr. Libby?" asked prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg.

"To me, it was an explanation as to why we had found this Ambassador Wilson and sent him off to Africa," Grenier said. "I thought that was germane to the story."

"How was it in your mind germane to the story?"

"Because not only was she working in the Counterproliferation Division, she was working in the specific unit that had decided to sent Ambassador Wilson," Grenier answered. "There was some question of why -- and the reason of why was because his wife worked there."

Grenier was right. She was part of the story.

My second point is that we've learned some new things about what Joseph Wilson did and didn't find in Africa. We've now seen the CIA write-up of Wilson's oral report on his trip, and what we learned was that reasonable people could read the report in completely different ways.

One way, the way Wilson chose, was to emphasize that Iraq had not bought any uranium in Niger. The other way, the way the vice president's office chose (once it finally found out about the report), was to emphasize Wilson's finding that, just two and a half years before he arrived in Niger, Iraq had apparently made inquiries about buying uranium in Niger.

In his attacks on the administration, Wilson claimed that his findings were definitive. That just wasn't accurate.