Hitchens Spanks Wilson-Plame-Corn-Isikoff & Unmasks Tenet

Christopher Hitchens has mercilessly spanked the new book Hubris in which two reporters who relentlessly pushed the phony Plame case in the first place now, like Roseanne Roseannadanna, have to admit "Never Mind." Hitchens has heretofore unmasked and discredited Wilson, who overlooked glaring evidence of a 1999 trip by Iraq's "Vatican" ambassador to heavily-Catholic Chad in his "report" on Iraqi uranium quests[!?!] Joe Wilson lied and the NYT went after the bait, hook line and sinker. Hitchens knows this game all too well as he long ago wrote for The Nation, Corn's rad-rag often known to instigate wild-goose chases and red-herring hunts. Then the mainstream pedestrian MSM, epitomized by the pious censorious NYT, in turn plods after the story in its PC fashion using ham-handed journalism based on political biases. Although in their Chutzpah book, Corn and Isikoff never admit wrongdoing, between the lines is ample evidence their own contribution was what the French call a "Coup de Pouce."

Who supplied the "thumb touch" that started the snipe hunt of the Fitzgerald Special Prosecutor fiasco? Hitchens, whose mastermind genius leaves journeymen "radicals" like Isikoff and Corn far back in the dust, has a very interesting theory. Read the piece to get context, but I'm going to be a spoiler and reveal the punchlines:

...the CIA can, in theory, "refer" any mention of itself to the Justice Department to see if the statute—denounced by The Nation and the New York Times when it was passed—has been broken. The bar here is quite high. Perhaps for that reason, Justice sat on the referral for two months after Novak's original column. But then, rather late in the day, at the end of September 2003, then-CIA Director George Tenet himself sent a letter demanding to know whether the law had been broken.

The answer to that question, as Patrick Fitzgerald has since determined, is "no." But there were plenty of senior people who had known that all along. And can one imagine anybody with a stronger motive to change the subject from CIA incompetence and to present a widely discredited agency as, instead, a victim, than Tenet himself? The man who kept the knowledge of the Minnesota flight schools to himself and who was facing every kind of investigation and obloquy finally saw a chance to change the subject. If there is any "irony" in the absurd and expensive and pointless brouhaha that followed, it is that he was abetted in this by so many who consider themselves "radical."

The entire Plame episode leaves everybody looking bad. The MSM will absolve itself by underreporting its numerous mistakes. And will go after the next Bush-bashing opportunity with the same gusto.

But why Tenet asked to apply a spurious law, badly conceived and often poorly applied [in this instance Plame had been non-covert for more than the five years required in the poorly-crafted statute], to the issue will remain just another question in the Plame blame-game that ensued when partisan politics began replacing foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East. Rumsfeld and L. Paul Bremer were already supplying the supervisory mismanagment and clumsy policy decisions which indicated that this might be a longer haul than originally anticipated. Tenet probably heard the train coming down the tracks in his direction and decided to switch to a siding.

One thing is for sure. "Slam Dunk" will never be used again as a foreign policy metaphor.