Today’s Plame post

In one of the footnotes to Running the World, David Rothkopf has a great quote from former NSC director Anthony Lake:

If something that the government does can either be the product of a conspiracy or an accident, bet on the accident. It’s just far too hard to get elements of the government working together well enough to conduct and execute–and keep secret–a conspiracy.

The flip-side of this argument is that, when an administration does something wrong, and the explanations are either malevolence or incompetence, bet on the latter. The revelations of the last week regarding Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, and the whole Plame Game business makes me wonder if this was a similar story — that it turns out Rove/Libby were clearly involved in the Plame leak, but they didn’t know they were the source, since they claim to have gotten the information from journalists. Indeed, Matt Cooper’s story doesn’t necessarily square with the original version of events, which had the White House aggressively calling reporters left and right to impugn Joseph Wilson and his wife. In my own blogging on the topic, I have wavered between thinking the White House acted maliciously on a grand scale or acted incompetently… and maliciously on a petty scale. All the stuff from last week suggested incompetence — until I came across this Los Angeles Times story by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten:

Top aides to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were intensely focused on discrediting former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV in the days after he wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times suggesting the administration manipulated intelligence to justify going to war in Iraq, federal investigators have been told. Prosecutors investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the identity of Wilson’s wife, a CIA officer who had worked undercover, have been told that Bush’s top political strategist, Karl Rove, and Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, were especially intent on undercutting Wilson’s credibility, according to people familiar with the inquiry. Although lower-level White House staffers typically handle most contacts with the media, Rove and Libby began personally communicating with reporters about Wilson, prosecutors were told. A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said Rove’s interest was so strong that it prompted questions in the White House. When asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove reportedly responded: “He’s a Democrat.” Rove then cited Wilson’s campaign donations, which leaned toward Democrats, the person familiar with the case said.

This story does jibe with the malevolent interpretation of events. In commenting on this story, Kevin Drum points out something that’s been bugging me about the Plame Game for the past week:

there’s a part of the meta-story here that I can’t quite figure out. This anecdote hasn’t been previously reported, which means this is yet another leak from someone close to the case. But it’s a tiny, inconsequential leak. Sure, it makes Rove look petty, but that’s hardly very noteworthy since a quick Google search would turn up a dozen anecdotes about Rove that expose him as far worse than merely petty. This is what’s been happening for several days now. We’ve been treated to a succession of teensy little leaks, which means that multiple people close to this case apparently want to keep the story alive in the press. At the same time, despite the fact that the leakers are presumably privy to some or all of the grand jury testimony so far, they’re either unable or unwilling to provide any genuinely juicy leaks. But which is it? Unable or unwilling? Or is there a third possibility? The answer says a lot about how strong a case Patrick Fitzgerald is putting together and what kind of media game the principals in the case are playing.

I don’t know what’s going on here…. but I’m sure my commenters will.