A very sharp column today by Eli Lake in the New York Sun on the doublethink of MSM reporters and editors.
Great lede: “The big irony to savor at the center of the Valerie Plame case is that everything everyone thinks they know about Patrick Fitzgerald’s leak investigation has been leaked.”
Also: ” Where would the president’s critics be without anonymous and classified disclosures from CIA analysts, diplomats, and military officers unhappy with the president’s policy? Without these intelligence leaks the public would never have learned that, say, Ahmad Chalabi allegedly fooled the entire American intelligence community into believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Valerie Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, was a leaker when he, acting anonymously, shared his story of a secret trip to Niger with the New Republic. A whole literature devoted to demonizing the neoconservatives is at risk.”
And: “The editor of the trade publication, Editor & Publisher, Greg Mitchell, called for the New York Times to fire Ms. Miller, complaining that he found it hard to believe Ms. Miller could not remember who told her the name “Valerie Flame,” as she wrote in her notebook. Let’s get this straight. The editor of a publication devoted to covering newspapers is angry that a reporter didn’t disclose enough of her confidential sources to a grand jury in a criminal prosecution.”
One more: “Mr. Wilson also said that Mr. Cheney authorized his trip to Niger and therefore the vice president knew that it was false to claim Iraq had sought uranium from Africa. Based on the accounts of reporters Ms. Miller and Matthew Cooper, it appears that if there was a mention of Mr. Wilson’s wife by Messrs. Rove or Libby, it was an effort not to burn an official at the Central Intelligence Agency but to correct Mr. Wilson’s own misstatement about Mr. Cheney’s knowledge of his secret mission.”