Speaking of Miller

Not High Life, although most of these folks do live the high life. No, we're talking about the Valerie Plame post-game show.

The right wing blogosphere seems to be in a collective yawn as evidenced by Glenn Reynolds, Jim Rose and the Powerline guys. As to this blog, my first post just happened to be about the Plame scandal, presented here for your amusement, so please indulge some retrospection. Or if you prefer, a sleep aid.

Not surprisingly the left is reacting like a junkyard dog whose bone has just been snatched by a cat. Take Larry Johnson, for example. All you need read is one paragraph to understand.

That's because the Armitage revelaton seems to have voided the whole thing in the minds of many, making the last three years a complete waste of time and effort. But aside from the fact Libby's still under indictment, the story does seem incomplete.

Everyone (including Fitzgerald) seems to buy one of two ideas, either that Armitage had so turned against the Bushies that he was incapable of smearing the Wilsons by leaking, OR, he was just a big, bald, bumbling gossip. The latter doesn't seem to square with his impressive bio, which is why we are left to believe number one.

Speculation would suggest the INR memo was made available to Armitage by his boss Powell after Tenet and gang realized someone was trying to run a scam. Perhaps team Bush intentionally made that happen so 'the gossip' would run to the media with it, saving them the trouble. But if they tagged him as a useful idiot he certainly turned out to be useful but hardly an idiot, else he'd be in jail right now. Refer to the above bio.

As has been the case quite often during Bush's tenure, those who misfigure the cowboy's (and his team's) gravitas do so at their own peril. Looking back, Joe didn't get very much for his mint tea party trouble. We deposed Saddam anyway, Kerry fired him then lost the election, Val had to retire, and only Scooter Libby was indicted. The left suffered multiple embarrassing cases of premature indictment frog-march syndrome, yet Rove remains scot-free. And to top it off the bulk of the American public couldn't care less.

But what of Judy Miller? She endured several months in jail followed by a New York Times pink slip for not even printing a story and not being involved in any leaking. All the time the prosecutor knew that Armitage had leaked to Novak yet had no intention of indicting him as he paraded other officials and journalists through his Grand Jury. If his mandate was simply to find Novak's source he already had his man. What else was he looking for?

Let's remember that Miller was an expert on germ warfare, had even written a book about it, and had received a letter with fake anthrax in 2001. She had presumably been the administration's conduit to the New York Times and was embedded with an elite Army Special Ops unit after the fall of Baghdad. For a little more prespective here's an excerpt from an interview with Larry King in October 2001 during the height of the bio-terror scare:

MILLER: I have always been concerned about Iraq. I share the concern about Iraq's biological weapons program. I found it very curious indeed that Saddam Hussein was willing to give up information about his nuclear program and his chemical program, but not the biological weapons.

He had anthrax, botulinum toxin, other agents, perhaps, as well. And he fought very, very hard to keep weapons inspectors out and to safeguard that technology. So it is something I am concerned about.

And that brings us to the oddball letter Scooter Libby sent Miller while in jail, the one mentioning the Aspens. Some believe he was referring to the Aspen Institute in which both had been involved.

Speculation ran high on what Scooter was trying to say with his 'roots' comment. Some saw it as a veiled threat, others as a coded message for Miller to hold firm. Miller herself tried to dispell all that in her later testimony but remember, she only agreed to come out of jail if Fitzgerald narrowed his field of questions to her conversations with Libby to the exlusion of all her 'other sources'. We can only imagine who those other sources might have been, but it takes sources to write books and stories. Meanwhile, the leaker of that letter remains a mystery, but Mickey Kaus had some ideas about that way back when.

So, there ya go. The game may be over but many questions remain to be answered. Guess we'll have to wait for the box score.