Does That 'I'...

In I. Lewis Libby's name stand for 'innocent' or 'incarcerated'?

A few observations, though...

1) In April 1999, CIA officer Valerie Wilson publicly listed (pdf file) her $1,000 contribution to Al Gore's presidential campaign under her married name, but listed herself as an employee of "Brewster-Jennings & Assoc.", where she was in fact employed covertly as "Valerie Plame", her not-so-covert maiden name.

2) As noted in this amici curiae brief (pdf), "Plame was not given 'deep cover' required of a covert agent" and a Washington Times report pointed to Plame's cover having been compromised at least twice previously. Also, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell and former New York Times correspondent Clifford D. May suggested that Plame's status with the CIA was well-known in D.C. political circles.

3) Joe Wilson publicly identified himself as a CIA employee investigating weapons of mass destruction, his wife's area of expertise, further drawing attention to what former CIA official Fred Rustmann said was an already unraveling cover as a result of his marriage. Wilson claimed that she "was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," but that phrasing is subject to interpretation. The Washington Times did report that she hadn't been a covert agent since 1997.

Perhaps Libby's alleged cover-up is graver than the alleged original crime.

Update: President Clinton's former counsel more-or-less tells everyone to grow up.

Update II: Heh:

This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn't care much about Plame's status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.

The other possibility is that they're so clueless that they did this without any nefarious plan, because they're so inept, and so prone to cronyism and nepotism, that this is just business as usual. If so, the popular theory that the CIA couldn't find its own weenie with both hands and a flashlight would appear to have found some pretty strong support.