March 13, 2004 - Now let’s get this straight. A former journalist and press aid who had started spying for Iraq who also happens to be White House Chief of Staff Andy Card’s cousin, leaves a letter at Andy’s house on January 8th, 2003 telling him that she is in contact with Iraqi Intelligence and offers to serve as a conduit to Baghdad to help avert war with Iraq. Have I got that right so far?

So Andy reads his cousin’s letter and contacts the FBI. Armed with the letter to the President’s Chief of Staff from the former journalist and former press aid to several Democratic Congress people the FBI lays on a sting operation six months later to catch this fearsome spy.

So the FBI poses as – what else – agents of Libyan Intelligence. They correspond with her through the summer and fall of 2003 and get her to deposit documents in the FBI’s dead drop in Tacoma Heights, her home town. We don’t know what the documents were. I guess it doesn’t matter. She had no access to classified information and she is not charged with espionage.

What is she charged with? Well, the indictment says she is charged along with the two young sons of the Iraqis New York Liaison to the UN Inspection Team with a conspiracy to become an unregistered Iraqi agent and accepting reimbursement of her expenses to travel to Baghdad – money which she brought home in violation of US Currency restrictions.

Sounds like a plot for Dan Ackroyd and Goldie Hawn doesn’t it? The part of the ditzy blonde spy is just made for Goldie. Can’t you just see Ackroyd’s oh so serious FBI agent. Chevy Chase could play the White House Chief of Staff. Gene Wilder would be great as the President. I don’t know who we’d get to do a credible Cheney.

The whole thing has to be a comedy sketch, doesn’t it? It could not be real, could it? Our Justice Department could not be seriously prosecuting someone this seriously disturbed.