Congresswoman Valerie Plame? She rewrites the Scooter Libby scandal history as she runs for the House.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/congresswoman-valerie-plame-11590792699?mod=opinion_lead_pos3
New Mexico’s primary is on Tuesday, and of seven Democrats vying for the open House seat in Santa Fe, Valerie Plame is “considered one of the favorites,” reports the Albuquerque Journal. Ms. Plame’s campaign has spent twice as much as her nearest rival, according to data from Open Secrets.
Ms. Plame is trying to get to Congress by leveraging the notoriety of the 2003 scandal that turned her into a household name, fictionalized in a 2010 movie starring Naomi Watts. Ms. Plame’s campaign has reported out-of-state donations from Hollywood types, such as $2,000 from a Naomi Watts who’s listed in campaign-finance records as an actor from Beverly Hills, Calif.
But Ms. Plame’s campaign has bent the truth of the scandal, starting last fall in a high-octane introduction video. “I was an undercover CIA operative,” she narrated, while hot-rodding a car in the desert. “Then Dick Cheney’s chief of staff took revenge against my husband and leaked my identity. His name? Scooter Libby. Guess who pardoned him last year?” Cut to footage of President Trump, pumping a fist in satisfaction.
This is political pulp fiction. The public record shows that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was not responsible for outing Ms. Plame. The journalist who put her CIA connection into print, Bob Novak, later said the information came from Richard Armitage, then Deputy Secretary of State. A Washington Post fact-checker gave Ms. Plame’s video three disapproving Pinocchios.
In defending the video, Ms. Plame’s spokesman told the Post: “From his trial, it was clear that Libby gave Valerie’s name to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.” But it isn’t clear at all. In a 2015 book, Ms. Miller said that subsequent information had made her doubtful: “It was hard not to conclude that my testimony had been wrong. Had I helped convict an innocent man?”
Today Ms. Miller maintains that, as far as she knows, Mr. Libby didn’t leak the identity. Ms. Miller says that Ms. Plame “keeps pretending that she was outed by Libby or the White House and that some great harm to her and the nation resulted because of the leak. Neither is true. See John Rizzo’s book (he was the CIA general counsel for years) who disclosed in his book that a national security assessment had concluded that the leak had caused no harm to her, any of her sources, or American national security.”
Mr. Libby was found guilty in 2007 of perjury and obstruction of justice, thanks in part to Ms. Miller’s earlier account. No one was prosecuted for the actual leak. A year after Ms. Miller’s book came out, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals gave back Mr. Libby’s law license.
In truth, the Plame affair was another example of a special counsel run amok. The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, knew early on that Mr. Armitage was Novak’s source. Yet he went hunting for Vice President Cheney. Citing an interview with Mr. Libby’s lawyer, Ms. Miller wrote in 2015: “Fitzgerald had twice offered to drop all charges against Libby if his client would ‘deliver’ Cheney to him.”
These facts aren’t buried in dusty court files. Ms. Miller’s recantation was widely reported, including in 2018 when Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Libby. Ms. Plame denounced that clemency in an op-ed, but her language was hedged. “Senior White House officials betrayed my identity,” she wrote, adding only that Mr. Libby was indicted “in connection with the leak.”
Now Ms. Plame, reborn a politician, has told voters that Mr. Libby “leaked my identity” to exact “revenge.” Maybe she thinks playing the Cheney-Trump card is the way to get elected, but her duplicity ought to be disqualifying.
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