Soccer Dad

Wax-ing and plaming

The Washington Post reports that Valerie Plame will testify before Congress.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who chairs the committee that sought Plame's testimony, has said that today's session will give Plame a chance to talk about the impact of the disclosure, but that his real aim is to determine the White House's role in leaking her name to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists.

For Plame, 43, the repercussions have been intensely personal, including a career cut short. But until now, only proxies -- chief among them her voluble husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV -- have been able to publicly vent the anger and frustration she has expressed privately. "They ruined her whole career," her mother said, echoing a refrain of several of Plame's former CIA colleagues. "She has no job."

(In the next sentence the Post neatly disposes of the pathos by pointing out that Ms. Plame's book deal was for 7 figures.)

Rick Ballard at The American Thinker (h/t KesherTalk) , though, points out:

The primary responsibility for the protection of agents' identities rests with the agents themselves. That is a fact hammered into all CIA employees from the moment they are hired. Valerie Plame Wilson initiated her own ‘outing' by participating in her husband's successful effort to become an advisor to the Kerry campaign. The precise moment in which she abandoned any pretense of being ‘undercover' is difficult to determine, but it is safe to presume it occurred prior to May 2, 2003.

On that day, during a meeting of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, the Wilsons succeeded in inserting Joe Wilson into the electoral political process. They also made contact with New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof.

From Vanity Fair:

"In early May, Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, at which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it, but not name him."

In order to give the narrative that Waxman wants, Plame (and her husband) will have to, shall we say, shade the truth. They insinuated themselves into the politics. For Ms. Plame to cry foul now, is hypocritical.

But then if Rep Waxman claims that he wants "... to determine the White House's role in leaking her name to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists," he's not interested in the truth anyway.

ScrappleFace (via memeorandum) has it about right.

Ms. Plame (aka Valerie Wilson) lived such a secret life that when she and her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, appeared in a photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine, she was compelled by CIA covert spy protocol to wear dark sunglasses.

Do you think that Henry Waxman asked her why her husband lied and said that he was sent by the Vice President's office?

Blogdigger tags: Valerie Plame, Rep. Henry Waxman.