I don't know how many of you are following the Joseph Wilson story. Robert Novak, who instigated the story by describing Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, wrote on it again today. "How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who in America" entry."
So he's explicitly following the Clifford May line (referenced earlier) of suggesting that Washington Insiders all knew about the leak anyway. This is an almost perfect example of Bias. There is a key factual element to this story that is unknown; namely was it well known around Washington insiders that Ms. Valerie Plame was a CIA Analyst? If the answer is yes, than what Novak did was no big deal. If the answer is no, than Novak, possibly with the help of the CIA, outed Ms. Plame.
The problem, of course, is that I and, I would assume, most of my my readers are not Washington Insiders. We have no way of verifying this information. So what are we to believe? Well if you are a good Republican you will believe it is well known and if you are a good Democrat you will believe that it was not well known.
Kind of an ambiguous situation, but perhaps information has not finished dribbling out of this story.
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