Compliance in Treason

As always this Salon article is well worth the free pass. Please read it in full...

Back to what Jigga has identified as the premier partisan issue of the moment, and what I believe to be the core ethical issue of the Iraq war: the fact that Karl Rove had a significant hand in the naming of an undercover CIA agent during a time of war as political retribution against an Administration critic; and the attempt to cover it up. [Yes folks, that scent is the scent is the ranky smell of quiet vocies breathing together, or... conspiracy.]

In a Vanity Fair piece that's not available online but is excerpted at CJR Daily, Michael Wolff says that by failing to reveal that Karl Rove had a hand in the Plame leak, the Times and, until recently, Time were complicit in covering up for the Bush administration -- and that they did it in order to stay in Rove's good graces and thereby continue to receive information from him. "Not only did highly placed members of the media and the vaunted news organizations they worked for know it, not only did they sit on what will not improbably be among the biggest stories of the Bush years, they helped cover it up," Wolff writes. "You could even plausibly say that these organizations became part of a conspiracy -- they entered into an understanding that, as a quid pro quo for certain information, they would refuse to provide evidence about a crime possibly having been committed by the president's closest confidant." Wolff says it's time for reporters and editors to ask themselves this: "To whom do you owe your greatest allegiance: sources or readers?"

Ivins, writing in the Progressive, raises similar questions about press protection for Rove. Although she reserves most of her wrath for "Turd Blossom" himself, Ivins argues that reporters "have no more right to withhold information about a serious crime than does a lawyer, a doctor, a psychiatrist, a counselor. If someone tells us they have done or are about to do a serious crime, we are utterly obliged to report it, even in the thirty-one states where we have limited legal privileges of confidentiality."

That message is starting to resonate -- at least in Denver, and at least where Bob Novak is concerned. Novak broke his silence on the Plame case in a selective and self-serving way in a column on Aug. 1, and we said then that his colleagues and editors shouldn't let him get away with it. It's one thing to respect Novak's need to live up to promises he made to his sources, if that's what he's doing; it's another to stand by as Novak spins his story as he likes, without having to answer for it.

Has the media been complicit in this informational stallwort? Clearly it has- Judith Miller has never had problems divulging her double super secret sources before.

The right will look toward the left's perspective as being, once again, one of flip-flopping perspectives. But this is really ridiculous. In the case of Bob Woodward, which the left clearly supported and invoke regularly, the protection of his sources led to enough information to expose a corrupt Administration. This was done for the good of the country- it was protecting the civil rights and liberties of Americans from the over-emboldening power of a President seeking entrenched political power.

In this case, as well, it is for the protection of America. At no point is it ethically viable to manipulate the media and the public for the sheer sake of attacking a political critic. This is exactly what happened to Plame and Wilson; this is why they've gotten so involved in this mess. The Administration was endangered because Wilson's statements, which have proven to be correct, were viable and counter-productive to their ideologue war-games.

And the Times and Time and CNN and everybody who has let the reporters who were complicit in the game continue without reprimand are equally complicit in it.

The Post has a suggestion for Novak's next column: Tell the truth. "It's time for Robert Novak to give a public accounting of what led up to his 2003 newspaper column in which he revealed the identity of a heretofore clandestine CIA operative, Valerie Plame," the Post writes. "Novak put his toe in the water Aug. 1 and should complete his public explanation now."