October 4, 2003 - Karl Rove is reported to have said that Ambassador Wilson’s wife was “fair game” in the political attack on the Ambassador’s public statements casting doubt on the Bush justification for a pre-emptive war against Iraq I suppose that when a candidate or public officer takes a public position, as for example holding himself out as a paragon of “family values” and morality, he makes members of his family “fair game” should their behavior stray from the values he espouses. Billie Carter was “fair game”. Edward Nixon was “fair game”. Ronald Reagan had his family embarrassments as did George Herbert Walker Bush. Neil Bush, with his Silverado Savings and Loan, was and is certainly “fair game”. Hillary Clinton made herself “fair game” as did Eleanor Roosevelt before her. But it is hard to see how the wife of Ambassador James Wilson became “fair game” when her husband spoke out.

Let us be clear about one thing. Even if you consider the Ambassador’s family legitimate targets of weapons of personal destruction as a result of the Ambassador’s public embarrassment of the Bush administration; the operations, intelligence gathering missions, and assets that his wife had cultivated under her Agency cover as a private energy consultant were not “fair game”. Valerie Plame’s name was not a national security secret. Neither was her marriage to the Ambassador. Perhaps she, and even their three year old twins, could be regarded as legitimate targets of political retaliation in the twisted political calculus of the Bush Administration. But feeding her role as a covert agent of the Central Intelligence Agency to Novak went beyond the politics of personal destruction in vogue in our partisan establishments.

This is more than a leak and far more than a personal attack on Ms. Plame and far more than lives were put at risk as a result. When the “Senior Administration Official” fed the information to Robert Novak and the “Prince of Darkness” published the fact of Ms. Plame’s national security role it was not only her future career in the Agency that was destroyed. It went well beyond that. The network of contacts and informants she had constructed over 18 years of covert service was destroyed. We will never know the extent of the damage this act of ruthless political warfare has wrought; partly because the value of information she and her contacts might have developed in the years to come is unknowable; and partly because national security considerations will prevent us from learning the value and extent of the intelligence she has been able to gather in the past.

The “Senior Administration Official” and Robert Novak did what no foreign intelligence agency had been able to do. And they did it at a time when the United States is engaged in not one but two unfinished wars. We have a word that describes their offense. Use it.