Isn’t the Scooter story old news?

I had an odd experience as I climbed into bed last night: The BBC World Service news led with Scooter Libby’s claim that the president told him to "leak." The BBC World Service news generally acts as my reality check. I might have spent the day obsessing over the latest piece of Beltway chatter, but ...

I had an odd experience as I climbed into bed last night: The BBC World Service news led with Scooter Libby’s claim that the president told him to "leak."

I had an odd experience as I climbed into bed last night: The BBC World Service news led with Scooter Libby’s claim that the president told him to "leak."

The BBC World Service news generally acts as my reality check. I might have spent the day obsessing over the latest piece of Beltway chatter, but come midnight the BBC sets me straight by reminding me that developments in some far away land of which I, too often, know too little are the really important story.

So, I was surprised to hear them lead with this; because it seems to me that we didn’t learn anything new yesterday. I thought it was already out there that Libby had been authorized to reveal certain parts of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. The only thing that’s different this time is that Libby mentioned Bush by name, rather than just talking about his "superiors." But seeing as he was an assistant to the president it always seemed like a reasonable assumption that the term included Bush.

Also, it’s not like Bush told him to disclose Valerie Plame’s identity—or even told him to reveal any parts of the NIE directly, Cheney passed the message on. Having said all this, I can see why the Democrats want to bang on about this story. Indeed, now that Delay has gone the Libby case has become all the more important for them politically. I’m just surprised that even non-Beltway journalists are hyping this story.

James Forsyth is assistant editor at Foreign Policy.

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