Evan Thomas on Alito and on Plamegate and Risen

The always interesting Charlie Rose had a fascinating discussion on his show last night concerning the President’s Constitutional prerogatives during wartime, including the hot topic of the NSA eavesdropping.

Both lawyers, a Mr. Yoo from UC Berkeley Law School and a Mr. Feldman of NYU Law School defended their respective perspectives well, but agreed that the right of the President to wiretap phones in the USA might come up before the SCOTUS some day, which of course brought up the subject of the Alito hearings.

Then Charlie had the always perspicacious Evan Thomas from Newsweek give his rundown of Alito’s chances after the first two days of Senate Hearings. Thomas gave Alito high marks for answering the Senators’ questions with just the right mixture of respect and evasion. Thomas believed Alito will get through the hearings, barring an unforeseeable event, pretty much unscathed, though not virtually untouched as was his predecessor John Roberts, now CJ.

But Thomas had an interesting take on the new Risen book on the NSA wiretaps. Evan believes that the DOJ investigation may not turn up the government leakers to Risen, which would then put Risen in the same position as the Plamegate reporters who failed to reveal their sources, namely jail-bound. Thomas believes that the Special Prosecutor drama of the Plame Affair might play out again for much higher stakes, since real issues of national security are involved, and not the identity of a desk-jockey in Langley.

Lastly, Rose asked Thomas the identity of the original leaker to Novak. Thomas said the same person leaked to both Novak and Woodward, as my two blogs of November 20th had mentioned here and here. Thomas believes that Richard Armitrage is the perp [as I did not at the time, but now concede is probably true], although he certainly did not leak the Plame name with any malice aforethought, as the paranoid leftist press has proclaimed ever since the leak.

It is becoming more and more apparent, as Woodward realized from the start, the entire Plame affair was a manufactured coup de pouce by the Artful Prestidigitators of the NYT and the WaPo and other usual suspects. Scooter Libby was a fall-guy for a victimless non-crime.

And now that Risen and a real set of crimes are coming to the fore, the same crew that manufactured Plamegate will attempt to deconstruct Risen's revelations of criminal leaks from highly serious threats to national security down to mere First Amendment issues.