It was a curious experience typing up excerpts of Al Franken's interview yesterday with John Dickerson, the erstwhile Time White House correspondent, who stepped neatly over and around Franken's probes even as Franken (gently, humorously) tried to box him in. The impression I came away with, having listened to the tones of voice, the careful avoidances on Dickerson's part, that Bush outed Plame. He was not alone in so doing, but he was part of it.
So it's interesting to me to find that Mark Kleiman has come away with the same impression. Here part of Franken's interview with Dickerson. Watch Dickerson's sidesteps.
Franken: The president? Did he out Valerie Plame?
Dickerson: No, not to me.
Franken: Okay. Did anyone else in the White House do it?
Dickerson: Not to me. I never talked about...
Franken: ....Not to you!
Dickerson: ... Wilson's wife or Valerie Plame.
Now look at what Libby has said. You can start at Kleiman's blog and then move on to his amplification at Huffington (with my emphases).
Now it comes out that "Scooter" Libby has testified that his "superiors" authorized him to reveal classified information in an attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson's account of his trip to Africa and thus to defend the idea that the Administration had a basis for claiming that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy uranium in Niger. Libby's boss was Dick Cheney; Libby was Cheney's chief of staff. His only other "superior" would have been ... George W. Bush.
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