It's a shame about Plame, but all the same...

"What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?" -- Alex Leamus, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

I stand (sit, actually) at least somewhat corrected. My previous sense was that the Valerie Plame Wilson CIA status disclosure, the subsequent investigation of White House officials and prosecution of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, while great political theater, was of dubious legal or policy significance. I suppose I should reconsider in light of recent developments. I don't recall ever specifically stating that the question whether Plame was indeed a covert operative or what sort of work she was engaged in was part of my reasoning, which at least gets me off the hook of being embarrassed by Glenn Greenwald now; but I'm sure that some questions in that regard were at least in the back of my mind. (A dangerous, dusty and disorganized place, by the way.) So what now, given apparent confirmation of both her covert status and her work concerning "weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq"?

I wrote "apparent" and will make a tiny point at the risk of sounding like a Creationist demanding every last gap in our evolutionary history be plugged, and that is that the Unclassified Summary submitted by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is unsigned, undated and unauthenticated. Surely, Fitzgerald has made or will make appropriate representations to the judge regarding its bona fides, but I find it at least worth noting that the usual skepticism of the blogosphere regarding such things seems to have gone missing here entirely.

But let's assume now that Plame was indeed a covert operative, moreover, one whose ongoing work for the CIA was both of some importance (we still don't know how much) and badly compromised by the leak and, as a result, U.S. intelligence operations suffered. I agree with Greenwald and others that the extent to which the "bureaucrat desk jockey not covert operative" talking point spread throughout conservative talking head circles now appears pretty thoroughly discredited and (should be) embarrassing to those who pushed it or bought into it on, shall we say, faith-based grounds. It further makes Libby's situation far less sympathetic and intensifies the case for further investigation of Cheney and others.

Very well. I ask this now as what the lawyers call a plea in mitigation of my own obdurate failure still to get it. Aside from the technical legal violations involved in revealing Ms Plame's status, the general import of which is certainly a reasonable concern (we can't just go about outing our spies willy-nilly), is this story still anything more than simply further evidence that, like Le Carre's spies, politicians are "just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards"?

Because, frankly, I already knew that.