Armitage, Novak, Plame, Wilson, and the never-ending questions

I previously wrote about just how bad the New York Times coverage of Plamegate was. Now, it looks as though there still may be more mystery to the controversy, not that the Times will bother to cover it (what with Rove in the clear now and all). Richard Armitage has still not come completely clean.

Armitage previously admitted being the source of Bob Novak's initial reporting that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA and was responsible for causing her husband, Joe Wilson, to be sent to Nigeria on a "fact-finding" mission. As we all know, Wilson used this status to publicly attack, falsely, President Bush. In admitting his role, Armitage described the leak as "inadvertent", an offhand comment. Further, he justified the fact that neither he nor Secretary Powell informed the President of his actions on the grounds that prosecutor Fitzgerald asked him to keep quiet.

Bob Novak eviscerates both claims in his column, "The real story behind the Armitage story". Novak had been trying to interview Armitage without success for years, when he was suddenly invited, out of the blue, for an off-the-record interview. During the course of the interview, Armitage told Novak specifically the division of the CIA where Plame worked and said flatly that she had "recommended" the mission. Armitage, in his admission to the Washington Post, claimed he only told Novak that he "thought" Wilson's wife worked "out there" [at the CIA], and he didn't know why Wilson was sent.

Further, Novak points out that Armitage knew perfectly well he was the leaker for three months before Fitzgerald's appointment. During that time, there was an intense battle in the media over the source of the leak, and Karl Rove was being wrongly accused as Novak's source. The President was promising to fire anybody who acted illegally. John Ashcroft was taking a lot of heat about whether the Department of Justice could do an impartial job at finding the leaker. Through it all Armitage, who told the Washington Post he considered resigning, kept his mouth shut and let others take the heat for his actions.

Why? Armitage has a long and distinguished career record, as does his former boss, Colin Powell. Both are generally respected as honorable, honest men. I can think of several scenarios, but none of them really seem to fit. I analyze them below the fold.

The leftist conspiracy theory would be that Armitage is a closet partisan gunslinger, or was willing to be used as one. Under that theory, Rove would have gotten word to Armitage to make the leak. All the nasty claims about Rove would be true, and Armitage today would be making a personal sacrifice to "take one for the team" by claiming an inadvertent disclosure. This theory doesn't seem right for a couple of reasons. One, I've never heard anyone, even Wilson, claim that Armitage is a partisan hack or would be willing to roll over and do something he considered unethical just because he was told to. Two, if it were the case, why would Novak (a compliant, part-of-the-conspiracy journalist according to most Bush critics) call attention to Armitage by writing this column calling him out?

The conservative conspiracy theory would be that Armitage and Powell are as Machiavellian as Rove is painted. They carefully leaked the Plame name to Novak, knowing that his conservative credentials would cause the leak to be pinned on the White House and Rove, whom Powell disliked. This doesn't work for two reasons. One, I don't think Secretary Powell would do something like that; his love of country is too deep to intentionally cause damage to a war-time President like that. Two, it relies on a certain element of chance in the story becoming the perfect storm that it did. It relies on Novak's discretion, and would further rely on a prosecutor like Fitzgerald being appointed and being willing to keep Armitage's role quiet while continuing his investigation into Rove and Libby.

Another possibility, which I think may be closer to the truth, is that Armitage really didn't realize how big a story Plame's identity might be, so his disclosure to Novak was, in some sense, "inadvertent". Once it caught fire, however, Armitage and Powell started thinking about the memo circulated around the State Department from which they learned Plame's role. They may have come to believe that Rove or Libby caused that report to be generated and circulated among just enough people that the word was likely to slip out. Embarassed at having been duped into participating in what they considered a partisan attack, they may have kept quiet to let Rove et al stew in the juices created by the leak. Still, I think Armitage had too much experience in Washington to not realize how explosive the disclosure of Plame's name would be.

The most likely scenario to me, though, is simple human vanity and embarassment. Armitage (and Powell) believed they were right and Bush was wrong in deciding to go to war. Thus, they believed they needed to stay at State to provide a check on the White House. Armitage mentioned the name to Novak without realizing that Plame had ever been a covert officer, thinking she was just a normal, non-covert CIA employee in the nuclear non-proliferation office. He realized that admitting to the leak would force him out of his job immediately. His ego in his own importance, his belief that he was right and the President wrong, provided the justification in his own mind for letting others take the heat for his wrong-doing.

And of course there may be some other explanation entirely. We may never know.