July 19, 2006

Joe, Val and the Last Stab at Relevance

When last we left Joe Wilson IV and his Vogue cover model wife, Valerie Plame, it was clear that the little relevance they ever had was quickly running out.

Clear to everyone but them, it now appears. All the rest of us know how utterly irrelevant Joe and Val are. But when you descend to the lowest level of relevance imaginable, what is the natural thing to do? You sue. People are forgetting about you! They can’t do that!

So let’s not. Let’s remember why we ever knew about – if not cared about – Joe and Val.

Joe, who had no qualifications whatsoever to make a fact-finding trip to Niger about Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of deadly weapons, made such a trip just the same in 2003 on his wife’s recommendation. He found no facts, but offered some anyway to the CIA, then wrote an entirely different set of “facts” for the New York Times. Quickly selected for a prominent role in the Kerry campaign, Joe was dropped just as quickly when campaign officials started figuring out that Joe’s credibility was too shaky for even their standards.

That was Joe. Then there’s Val. She was a “classified” but not covert employee of the CIA. When Joe went to Niger with Val’s compliments – only to return with preposterous claims against the Bush administration (you know, the CIA’s bosses?) – the media started asking the administration about Joe’s claims.

Hmm. How to explain that Joe Wilson had about as much business making a fact-finding trip to Niger as Ted Kennedy has modeling underwear? Hmm. How indeed? Well, you could explain to the media that Joe only went to Niger in the first place because of nepotism, but that would require you to mention that Val works for the CIA, and that’s classified.

Maybe you didn’t know, and maybe Joe didn’t know, and maybe Val didn’t know, that certain people within the administration – like, say, the vice president – can declassify information, and may very well do so if it would be helpful in impeaching the credibility of a complete and utter liar like Joe Wilson.

Bam. Valerie Plame, come on down, your CIA status is no longer classified! And the next time someone asks you who should be sent to Niger, do us all a favor and say James Bond.

Things just went from bad to worse for Joe and Val. Once her position within the CIA became public knowledge, her dreams of a spy life were over (even if a dream is all it really ever was), because she just couldn’t be in the spotlight, which she explained in detail during the interview for her Vogue spread.

The criminal investigation into her “outing”? You know, the one that Joe hoped would end with Karl Rove being “frog-marched” out of the White House in handcuffs? The poor dears must have been so disappointed when three years of work by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald yielded only a minor process indictment of Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and nothing even close to a charge related to the revealing of Plame’s identity. Indeed, no one was charged with that crime, because no one committed that crime. Because it wasn’t a crime to tell a journalist who Plame was, or why her identity cast doubt on Wilson’s credibility.

Karl Rove? Not charged, not handcuffed, not frog-marched. George W. Bush? Not defeated.

How did Joe and Val get themselves into such a fix? It’s hard to imagine.

Honey, here’s an idea. You can recommend to your boss that I go on a trip for which I have no qualifications whatsoever. Then, when I come back, I’ll make up a bunch of nonsense about what I did there, and use it to attack your boss’s boss! That will definitely make our lives better.

Wow. It’s hard to believe that plan didn’t work out. It really did seem foolproof. And speaking of fools, now Joe and Val are suing Cheney, Libby and Rove for “outing” Val and, presumably, messing up their lives.

Worth a try, right? Granted, the Senate Intelligence Committee looked into this and found that nothing had been done wrong. A special prosecutor, who spent three years of his life doing nothing but looking for a crime in this case, couldn’t find one. But maybe there’s a judge somewhere who will wait all of half an hour before laughing Joe and Val out of court.

They could do a lot of interviews in that half hour. Maybe enough to delude themselves into believing they have briefly reclaimed a tiny modicum of relevance. I wouldn’t expect anyone else to be so deluded, but if Joe and Val need one last chance to preen for themselves, it will be no great imposition for the rest of the republic to simply ignore them as per usual.

This is Column # DC42.  Request permission to publish here.