Plame Story
Was Discredited

Some of the South Royaton town offices will move across the street to this building, recently known as the Grange Hall but originally, and more exotically, called Knight's Opera House. A proposal to buy the property may appear on the Town Meeting warning in March. (Herald / Tim Calabro)

I am somewhat surprised that you would buy into the Valarie Plame-Wilson story for it has long since been discredited by all except the extreme Bush haters. (your editorial Nov.1)

Fact: She was not "outed," for she was not a covert undercover agent at the time at the CIA, but an overt civil servant in the agency (As was I for a number of years). It is no great secret who works an overt position, although not necessarily advertised. That is why special prosecutor Fitzgerald could bring no substantial case.

Fact: Her name surfaced when she was instrumental in having her husband Ambassador Wilson, sent on the mission to Africa to investigate allegations that Sadam Hussein had purchased nuclear grade uranium in Niger.

Fact: Wilson reported, quite correctly, that Sadam had not purchased uranium. But Wilson omitted the fact that Sadam had investigated the possibility of obtaining uranium from Africa and/or elsewhere, a fact that earlier had been found by British intelligence and transmitted to U.S. intelligence sources.

Fact: When Wilson published his diatribe against Bush and the Sadam contention in the New York Times, Ms Plame's name became common knowledge among several officials and journalists as one who had pressed her husband on the Africa mission. In a sense she "outed" herself by this act. Nepotism is almost always messy!

Probably the phrase on the subject in the State of the Union address could have been better edited. However the crux of the information that both British and U.S. intelligence found was correct.

As for the episode hurting Ms Plame-Wilson's career, she could have continued quietly in the Agency contributing her special talents and knowledge of the Middle East. Instead she chose to go public and join her husband in his hate Bush campaign. Perhaps it was appropriate that she spoke in Burlington, the home of Howard Dean who has done so much to popularize "hate" as a routine political procedure among extremists.

Leigh Wright

Randolph