Jonah Goldberg: Joseph Wilson Outed His Wife
Breaking news on this St. Patrick’s Day! Jonah Goldberg has a source that says Joseph Wilson outed his wife. The source seems to be another wingnut has just makes it up as he goes. But compare what Goldberg pulled to what his fellow nutcase really said. Goldberg’s excerpt:
Given the chronology and Mr. Armitage’s remarks, it seems quite obvious Mr. Wilson outed his wife when he spoke to the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and then to the subsequent reporters at the Times, the Post and elsewhere, when he was hawking his story about his trip to Niger. Wilson’s motivation for bringing up his wife would have been exactly as Armitage suggested to Woodward. Wilson told the panelists and reporters about Plame’s work at the CIA to give his radically new and dangerous story more credibility. It’s highly probable Wilson used his wife’s position as a WMD analyst at the CIA to bolster his outrageous (and we now know fallacious) claims against a then popular President in a time of war.
The fellow wingnut did not claim Wilson told Armitage. Rather the claim is that Wilson and Nicholas Kristof were at the same May 2, 2003 dinner and had breakfast with Kristof the next day. There is not a shred of evidence that Wilson told Kristof that his wife was a CIA agent. And notice something else that Goldberg omitted:
Why would Richard Armitage have been talking about Wilson and Plame in June of 2003? This was still weeks before Joe Wilson wrote his New York Times editorial, and a month before Robert Novak published his column mentioning Valerie Plame. Armitage brought this up because he is a gossip and it was already common knowledge because Joe Wilson had been calling all of the newspapers trying to get them to run his story about his mission to Niger.
The Office of the Vice President suspected that Wilson was talking to the press, which is why Cheney’s campaign to smear Joseph Wilson started even before Wilson’s New York Times article. After all, we KNOW Scooter Libby told Judith Miller that Valerie Plame was a covert agent back in June 2003. Ah but you protest that Ms. Miller did not run a hit story on Ms. Plame before July 14, 2003! True but neither did Nicholas Kristof. But how cold Kristof run such a story since there is no evidence that Wilson told Kristof what Goldberg’s fellow wingnut is alleging.
Oh well, the liars at the National Review have to attack Valerie Plame with any nonsense they can – even if they look incredibly stupid in the process. No wonder Jonah Goldberg can’t finish his stupid book.