BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
A genuine White House scandal.
It's taken more than two months, but the mainstream media are
finally in full battle cry over the matter of who leaked the name of
former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife to the media -- including,
most prominently, syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a
CIA operative or analyst; precisely which is apparently a matter of
some dispute. Wilson contends that the White House deliberately blew
her cover as retaliation for an op-ed piece he wrote for the New
York Times debunking the Niger yellowcake claims.
Wilson points the finger squarely
at George W. Bush's political guru, and has
been quoted as saying:
I don't think we're going
to let this drop. At the end of the day it's of keen interest to
me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of
the White House in handcuffs. And trust me when I use that name. I
measure my words.
Here is Sunday's
Washington Post story,
which did much to move this nauseating scandal into public view. Here
is today's New
York Times follow-up.
And Josh
Marshall has more on this
than you have time to read -- but scroll down and read his thoughts
on the damage that may have been done to Plame's work on weapons of
mass destruction.
Slate's Jack
Shafer offers some smart
(if overly cavalier) background and context.
And Rush
Limbaugh is desperate.
Another scandal, all but
forgotten. The Boston Globe today runs an op-ed by
Clinton-administration official Jeffrey
Connaughton on the Bush
White House's decision to let some 140 Saudi nationals -- "including
two-dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden" -- flee the US immediately
after 9/11.
Connaughton's column prompts me to
dig up a piece that former Massport executive director Virginia
Buckingham wrote for the Boston Globe Magazine last
September.
Buckingham -- now the deputy
editorial-page editor of the Boston Herald -- wrote about how
stunned she and other officials were over the quick getaway at Logan
International Airport:
The next night, we
experienced another surreal moment: the bin Laden family airlift.
My staff was told that a private jet was arriving at Logan from
Saudi Arabia to pick up 14 members of Osama bin Laden's family
living in the Boston area. "Does the FBI know?" staffers wondered.
"Does the State Department know? Why are they letting these people
go? Have they questioned them?" This was ridiculous. But our
power to stop their arrival or departure was limited. Under
federal law, an airport operator is not allowed to restrict the
movement of an individual flight or a class of aircraft without
going through a byzantine regulatory process that had, to date,
never succeeded. So bravado would have to do in the place of true
authority. [Massport aviation director Thomas] Kinton
said: "Tell the tower that plane is not coming in here until
somebody in Washington tells us it's OK." He then repeatedly
called the FBI and the State Department throughout the night. Each
time the answer was the same: "Let them leave." On September 19,
under the cover of darkness, they did.
Bad company. Boston
Herald sportswriter Ed
Gray today comes out as a
gay man. He writes:
I'm out because I no
longer, in good conscience, choose to ignore the unabashed
homophobia that is so cavalierly tolerated within the world of
sports. I'm out, because the silence of a closeted gay man only
serves to give his implicit approval to bigotry. I'm out, because
I refuse to continue hiding from the truth that an openly gay man
has as much right as a straight man to play sports or report on
them.
Unfortunately, Gray comes out right
next to columnist Gerry Callahan (they're side by side both in print
and on the Herald website), whose WEEI Radio (AM 850) morning
show, Dennis
& Callahan,
specializes in homophobic "humor."
posted at 8:48 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
