In an article plugging Fair Game, the new Sean Penn alternate history movie, the LA Times has some trouble with the facts:
Starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, “Fair Game” is part spy thriller, part domestic drama, and tells the story of Valerie Plame, played by Watts, the undercover CIA operative whose name was leaked to the media by the Bush White House in an effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson (Penn). Wilson had publicly accused the administration of misrepresenting evidence of an Iraqi nuclear arms program in the run-up to the Iraq war. The administration retaliated by “outing” his wife as a CIA operative, ruining her career and, some argued, violating a law that forbids exposing CIA agents on the grounds it jeopardizes the lives of field agents.
Let’s see: Plame’s name was not leaked by anyone at the White House, but rather by Richard Armitage, who worked at the State Department. Armitage was a moderate and leaked her name accidentally, rather than out of any effort to punish anyone. It’s true that Wilson made various public allegations, but the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan report found that he lied. And, it’s awfully rich for the left to pretend, in this one case only, that they care about exposing the identities of CIA agents.
As they say, everything is spot on aside from that.
(Previous post.) (Via Big Government.)
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