When the Political Gets Personal
Rove-a-Palooza

Here's a great op-ed from USA Today by a neighbor, friend, and legal advisor to Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame (Wilson); the story also has a very good timeline of this whole fiasco in a sidebar:

When I first met Joe and Valerie, I quickly got to the classic Washington question: What do you do? Joe explained that he was a former ambassador to a number of African countries, who had worked in both the Bush I and Clinton administrations. Valerie's answer was more than a little vague. She quickly said she was a consultant. As a fourth-generation Washingtonian, I have learned that when someone says, "I'm a consultant," that is a cue to back off, as it usually means the person is unemployed or "between engagements." [...] Joe said he wanted to show me something he had just written. When we returned home, he handed me the draft of an article he said was going to be published in Sunday's New York Times entitled, "What I Didn't Find in Africa." When I read it, I knew this was going to be news: the first real challenge to the administration's rationale for war. That surprise was nothing compared with the shock I experienced 10 days later. On that sunny Monday morning, I was sitting outside at the table on my deck, having breakfast and reading The Washington Post. When I turned to the op-ed pages, I noticed a column by Novak entitled "Mission to Niger," addressing Joe's op-ed the previous week. I was stunned to read that "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," citing two administration officials as sources. As I finished reading the column, Joe ventured out onto his deck and offered a neighborly hello. I held up the paper and yelled over, "I had no idea about Valerie!" Joe looked stricken and gestured to me to keep my voice down. I immediately realized the "outing" of Valerie as a covert CIA operative had had a devastating effect on the Wilson family. In the weeks to follow, I came to understand just how harrowing the disclosure was. Obviously, the identification of Valerie meant an end to her decades-long career. It also meant the country had lost an essential part of the services provided by someone who was an expert on weapons of mass destruction. Much more than that, it meant — along with the danger faced by Valerie's secret sources because of her exposure — the Wilson family was in danger. There is no shortage of crazies in the world who blame the CIA for their problems. What a tragedy that the Wilson kids cannot play in their yard without their parents having some degree of worry because of this episode. [...] The purported justification for the "double super secret" leak by the White House was to allege that Valerie was responsible for Joe's trip. Even if true, and it is not true, the allegation makes no sense. There would have been nothing untoward about a CIA expert on WMD arranging an unpaid trip for her husband, an expert on Iraq and Niger, to examine whether there was an Iraq-Niger uranium connection. The more important point is that the CIA has denied that Valerie was responsible for the trip, a fact Novak has acknowledged. As recently reported in The New York Times, Valerie wanted to set the record straight about how Joe's trip came about and her peripheral role in the arrangements, but the agency will not permit any public comment from her. What a shame that in addition to the personal harm she has suffered, Valerie cannot address the bum rap again being circulated by Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and his allies now doing the bidding for the no-comment-mode White House. Though I am a lifelong native Washingtonian, the White House leak episode has been eye-opening. I have witnessed how an abstraction such as political payback has real personal consequences. Real people get hurt and are put in danger. I have seen up close from my window the profound personal effect a very public "outing" has had on the lovely woman next door.