There’s also this to add to Victoria Toensing’s persuasive response to David Corn’s tortured logic: Corn does indeed begin his now notorious piece with a question:
Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security–and break the law–in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others? It sure looks that way …
But he doesn’t end the piece with a question. He ends it with an accusaiton and a slander::
The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation’s counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security.
Patrick Casey helpfully writes that Corn “is attempting to put the Rove ‘outing’ canard back together” but he “can’t run away from what he wrote.” Casey suggests anyone who is not yet clear on what happened read.
1) Novak’s original column of 7/14/03: Mission to Niger
2) Corn’s column two days later on 7/16/03: A White House Smear
3) And Cliff May’s NRO column of 7/15/05: Who Exposed Secret Agent Plame?
Casey adds:
David Corn attempted to shatter the reputations of several important Republican political operatives in time for the 2004 presidential elections. Now it’s his reputation and honesty that is irrevocably damaged. No one ‘in the know’ will ever be able to hear his name again without chuckling out loud. The irony is sweet. I think that Corn and Isikoff wrote about Armitage as a preemptive move. They knew it was going to officially come out (it was already out on the internet). By getting ahead of the story, they (or at least Corn) thought they’d be able to manipulate the coverage and frame it so that they could continue the Rove conspiracy theory.”