It’s sad that I have to check with Marcy before responding to anything the Washington Post publishes on national security. What’s impressive is that it is rare that Marcy hasn’t already analyzed the Post’s work by the time I get to it. And today, per usual, she takes apart R. Jeffrey Smith’s work with ease. Mixing up Dan Bartlett and Ari Fleischer is an amateur mistake.
This particular mistake isn’t of much consequence, but it’s telling that it occurred at all. But then, the Post’s coverage of the Plame Affair was always second-rate, biased, and an institutional embarrassment when compared to Marcy’s reporting. Jeffrey Smith packages non-news as new-news in today’s article. The real story is that the Obama administration is arguing in court against disclosing Dick Cheney’s conversations with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, when no such understanding of non-disclosure was agreed to at the time of the interviews. If Dick Cheney wanted his conversations with Fitzgerald to remain secret he could have simply agreed to appear before a grand jury.
The public deserves to know the whole truth about the Plame Affair. That’s the story the Post should be reporting.