The NY Times and the Big Lies about Valerie Plame

When the Left isn't gay-baiting about bogus journalist, they're busy ignoring the reality behind another of their phony scandals - the supposed "outing" of CIA lackey Valerie Plame in supposed retaliation for her Dem hack hubbie, Joe Wilson's pack of lies editorial about whether Dubya should've alluded to Niger yellowcake uranium that painted him as a lonely soul speaking Truth to Power when he was actually Lying For Dollars in the form of a nice book deal and Vanity Fair spread celebrating his faux martyrdom.

Well, as detailed in today's OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today, the NY Times has been quietly backing away from their concentrated campaign of smears and distortions they engaged in during the Election in order to assist their Annointed Feckless Crapweasel in securing a less ignomanious defeat.

The "disclosure" may not have been a crime? Wow, that's a shocker! Well, actually, it's not a shocker to anyone who's been reading this column. In a pair of items in 2003, on Oct. 2 and Oct. 6, we laid out extensive evidence--based on information that was publicly available at the time and on the text of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act--that there almost certainly was no crime at the center of the Plame kerfuffle. The Times' editorialists and columnists, however, were singing quite a different tune, and it's worth reviewing their record of pronouncements on the subject.

There's a lot of links and cites in the original - part of the Blogosphere's "We back it up." policy as opposed to the MSM's standard of "We said so and that's that." - so go check it all out and learn something.

Also check out Powerline's "In Which the Times Plays With Matches" which includes:

While the Times was peddling the bogus Plame "outing" scandal as involving a violation of federal law by administration officials, cooler heads at the time noted the likely inapplicability of the most frequently cited federal law (the Intelligence Identities Protection Act). Among these cooler heads were Slate's Jack Shafer in October 2003 ("Stop the investigation!"), the pseudonymous Edward Boyd of Zonitics in October 2003 (click here and here), and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit in early December 2003 (click here).

According to the New York Times in December 2003, John Ashcroft's appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the adminstration was overdue. Indeed, it was something like an emergency. The Times failed to note at the time, however, that the Times itself was in possession of evidence relevant to the identification of the alleged lawbreakers. And of course the Times has refused to turn the evidence over in response to the subpoenas issued to it by the independent counsel whose appointment it demanded.

Next time you hear the Usual Leftists spewing their bile about how Evil Dubya is trampling on citizen's rights and the Free Press, ask yourself if they're telling you the whole story about who's doing what to whom.