The spin! It hurts my head!
Okay, kiddies...gather round, and be sure to pop your Dramamine before you click Play. Don't be like Auntie Bina, who got vertigo from watching this:
Unka Karl is claiming Richard Armitage was The Leaker? That's bullshit--a convenient version to be fed to the media because it deflects attention from the real culprit. Armitage was a stooge, a flunky, a man who did nothing without authorization and would have been fired if he were really the one who did it off his own bat; no, someone okayed his leaking. Guess who?
Oh, and get this: Valerie Plame was JUST "a CIA employee". Hey Unka Karl! She was a COVERT AGENT, the most secret kind--a NOC. Non-Official Cover, get it? NOC NOC, Unka Karl, it ain't no joke! That's no mere employee (a term that seems to suggest a paper-pusher at a cushy desk in Langley somewhere)--that's someone who can get killed in the line of duty, and not just she but everyone in contact with her as well. And the White House can wash its hands of the whole mess and say, "Well, since she wasn't OFFICIALLY with the embassy, because she was in a private business, we can't protect her if something goes sour. We don't know this person"--even when that person was ferreting out secret info to be fed to them DIRECTLY.
I don't believe his advisorship to John McCain is really "informal", either. "Informal" means nothing; you can be whispering in someone's ear, with nothing down in writing, and still have your commands followed to the letter. A sweeter scheme for plausible deniability would be hard to imagine--especially if, like Unka Karl, you've finally suffered some unpleasant consequences for your power and associations. But not enough. Oh, not nearly enough.
