Wednesday, September 13, 2006
On the Armitage Leak
I've now seen much interesting and intelligent discussion in the aftermath of the Wilson / Plame non-scandal. But the discussion seems primarily to revolve around behavior after the publication of Plame's CIA status and her involvement in Wilson's assignment to Niger, and it presupposes hostility to the rest of the Bush Administration. I am interested in two other dimensions: 1) Why did Armitage disclose the Plame / Wilson circumstances in the first place and 2) What are the relevant lessons?
As to the first question, I think Armitage was Powell's loyal servant, and remember that while Wilson was attacking Bush's "sixteen words" from his State of the Union Address, Powell's empassioned and detailed UN testimony regarding Iraq's suspected WMD program put him squarely in the Bush Administration camp on the question of Iraq's WMD. Powell had at least as much credibility, honor and perceived integrity at stake -- at least in his mind -- as the President. In that sense, while some want to paint Powell and Armitage as opponents of Bush on this subject, I think that is far from correct. Powell was just as susceptible to the power of faulty CIA intelligence as the President, the relevant Congressional committees and anybody else privy to the intelligence. And Powell was perceived by the media and much of the world as an "honest broker" of the WMD information to the UN. Ultimately, the mainstream media preserved Powell's iconic media status by characterizing him as an Iraq war policy opponent -- but I don't believe he's ever said that. In some sense, the media has created that impression to buttress their own opposition to Iraq war policy.
Powell has no small ego. Wilson was an also-ran, a has been, a nobody. And here this incompetent do-nothing was taking a run, from Powell's perspective, at his integrity. It strikes me as plausible that Powell authorized Armitage to debunk and decredentialize Wilson as a buffoon on a political mission sent by his wife -- not Cheney -- to protect his reputation. Not Cheney's, not the President's -- Powell's. Remember, everybody had relied on CIA intelligence in the first place on Iraq - Tenet said the Iraq WMD case was a "slam dunk." Now, out of nowhere, this joker Wilson emerges to say the CIA had posted an agent on a mission that called Iraq's pursuit of uranium into question? And the President's most credible spokesman on this issue before the war was Powell? Hard to believe he didn't have a high degree of motivation -- and justified motivation -- to unravel the Wilson storyline. I don't think it's an accident that Tenet and Powell are both gone now.
As to lessons? We've learned this one in business over and over again. Little things snowball unpredictably into big things. Little lies become big lies. Big lies have larger, unpredictable consequences. It would not have been difficult, had the time been taken to do it properly, to build a response to Wilson's op-ed piece that was entirely proper, clearly legal and did not rely on press leaks to achieve the appropriate result. It could have been done away with in a couple weeks time. Once the lawyers get involved, it becomes exceptionally difficult to "come clean" because they don't give practical advice; they give legal advice. As a child, most of us are taught that we are better off to quickly acknowledge doing wrong and set about making things right as quickly as possible. Defense lawyers don't give you that advice, in the face of a prosecutor on a mission.
So silly things happen. In this case, Libby is indicted for perjury and obstruction - his eventual innocence or guilt is hardly meaningful -- and Judith Miller is jailed. These were absolutely unnecessary results which damaged people for nothing.
It really repels one from interest in government service.
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