The Lawsuit

Yesterday Valerie Plame decided to sure the Vice President, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and 10 unnamed staffers in civil court for leaking her CIA status and destroying her career. I've heard the lawsuit alternately described as "a strong case" (John Dean) and "a real longshot" (Jeffrey Toobin & Lawrence O'Donnell). I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to argue on the basis of the statute. But the facts of the case that have come out in the grand jury does suggest that there was a whispering campaign to discredit and provide payback to Joe Wilson by outing his wife, to send a message to anyone else in the CIA who would maybe want to speak out against the Administration. The facts are legion, and poking around the Internet you can find those facts assembled in easy-to-read prose.

The timing is not at all surprising, as today is the 3-year anniversary of the infamous Robert Novak column outing Plame, and that's the end point of the statute of limitations. As emptywheel notes, that's why Novakula was trotted out this week, in a kind of pre-emptive strike, to tell his side of the story before the Wilsons came out with their lawsuit to tell theirs. And Novak's defense just doesn't hold up:

Thanks to Tom Maguire for reminding me of this old post of mine in which I cite Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce's Newsday article of July 22, 2003, 8 days after Novak's column outing Valerie Plame was printed, in which he is quoted as saying,

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Now he says he got it from Who's Who and no one in the Administration told him her name.

It also doesn't much matter if Novakula got Plame's name from "Who's Who," as the entry didn't say "Valerie Plame is a CIA agent" on it, and the complaint is about outing her profession, not her name. In fact, this makes Novak look worse, as he look like he's digging around for the dirt himself. In this spirit, the great Eric Alterman calls the Douchebag of Liberty a traitor to his country and his profession:

The upshot here appears to be that Novak lied to everyone in order to betray his country on behalf of Rove and company. First he revealed the name of an active CIA officer, blowing any and all operations with which she has ever been involved, costing the country millions, and possibly endangering lives despite the specific request from the agency that he not do so. That's all here.

Next, he played Joan of Arc by insisting he would never reveal the names of his sources to Mr. Fitzgerald while simultaneously doing just that. Why in the world is The Washington Post continuing to stand by this scoundrel? Is it all because he's a member of the club and insiders protect their own? It worked for Kim Philby and I'm beginning to think it's working here too.

Don't forget that in a later article Novak also revealed that Brewster Jennings was a fron company, endangering everyone in the CIA who used it as cover. The man has no conscience.

I don't profess to know where this lawsuit is going. But I certainly think I know why the Wilsons filed it. Any cash reward will be donated to charity; this is about justice. This is about holding to account those that would damage national security solely because their grip on power was challenged.