QUE PEREZA da leer un artículo (que me envía Jahd) cuando empieza con una falsedad tan evidente:

De estar en la sombra durante 20 años como agente encubierta de la CIA, Valerie Plame pasó a convertirse en el centro de un escándalo político en 2003, cuando la Casa Blanca filtró su nombre y su identidad a la prensa.

Lástima que no fuera la Casa Blanca sino Richard Armitage, subsecretario de Defensa y, por tanto, del Pentágono (y, por cierto, junto a Colin Powell, del grupo que dentro de la administración Bush más intentó evitar la guerra de Iraq porque creían que no era una buena idea).

Los lectores de Barcepundit ya sabíais esto desde hace tiempo. Y cualquier periodista mínimamente competente habría simplemente visto lo que el propio Armitage dijo hace unas semanas en la CNN:

VALERIE PLAME WILSON: Mr. Armitage did a very foolish thing. He has been around Washington for decades. He should know better. He's a senior government official. Whether he knew where exactly I worked in the CIA, he had no rights to go talking to a reporter about where I worked. That was strictly off-limits.

BLITZER: Those are strong words from Valerie Plame Wilson.

ARMITAGE: They're not words on which I disagree. I think it was extraordinarily foolish of me. There was no ill-intent on my part and I had never seen ever, in 43 years of having a security clearance, a covert operative's name in a memo. The only reason I knew a "Mrs. Wilson," not "Mrs. Plame," worked at the agency was because I saw it in a memo. But I don't disagree with her words to a large measure.

BLITZER: Normally in memos they don't name covert operatives?

ARMITAGE: I have never seen one named.

BLITZER: And so you assumed she was, what, just an analyst over at the CIA?

ARMITAGE: Not only assumed it, that's what the message said, that she was publicly chairing a meeting.

BLITZER: So, when you told Robert Novak that Joe Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador's wife, worked at the CIA, and she was involved somehow in getting him this trip to Africa to look for the enriched uranium, if there were enriched uranium going to Iraq, you simply assumed that she was not a clandestine officer of the CIA.

ARMITAGE: Well, even Mr. Novak has said that he used the word "operative" and misused it. No one ever said "operative." And I not only assumed it, as I say, I've never seen a covered agent's name in a memo. However, that doesn't take away from what Mrs. Plame said, it was foolish, yeah. Sure it was.

BLITZER: So you agree with her on that.

ARMITAGE: Yeah. Absolutely.