Valerie Plame in: 'GoldenLie'

Enough has been said about the Valerie Plame controversy to warrant it a nice spot in the “Why Won’t This Story Die Already?” file. Indeed, after President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail sentence in June and the dismissal of Joseph and Valerie Wilson’s civil suit against Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, Libby, and Richard Armitage (the revealed “outer”) in July, the story had all but completely faded from public discussion. Mrs. Wilson released her own account of the affair in a book titled Fair Game in October, but it was only through her publicity of the book that the issue was even raised again. Thus, the announcement by the Vanderbilt University Speakers Committee (VUSC) that Valerie Wilson would be coming to campus to speak about her experience appears misguided at best and sinister at worst.

As a division of the Vanderbilt Programming Board, VUSC describes its responsibility on its website as “enhancing the quality of student life and the Vanderbilt educational experience by attracting and presenting distinguished speakers to the University.” The description also says that the committee hopes to “encourage thoughtful reflection and dialogue on contemporary issues in order to promote and strengthen the intellectual environment at Vanderbilt.” The committee consists of ten undergraduate student members, two of whom serve as co-chairs. One co-chair, junior Sarah Jackson, informed me that she was abroad this semester and referred me to the other co-chair, senior Reeve Hamilton. Hamilton also serves as the Opinion section editor for the Vanderbilt Hustler. I sat down with Hamilton to find out why Valerie Plame Wilson, a private-turned-public figure whose story of note had already receded into Andy Warhol’s fifteen-minutes-of-fame chapter of history books, was chosen to “encourage thoughtful reflection and dialogue.”

Hamilton related the general process for choosing speakers. The members (usually less than the normal ten due to the absence of study abroad students) meet and throw out ideas for interesting speakers. Hamilton mentioned that Mrs. Wilson’s agent was the same as that of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the namesakes and founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, who were brought to Vanderbilt by VUSC earlier this semester. In committee, Hamilton himself brought up Mrs. Wilson as a possible speaker both because of this fact and his claim that he had foreseen the release of her memoir as a “big news story coming up in the fall.” He cited to me her appearances on CBS’s 60 Minutes, NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as further evidence that Mrs. Wilson was indeed a newsworthy speaker. Much of Hamilton and VUSC’s justification for inviting Mrs. Wilson also stems from the claim that her book and the subsequent publicity tour presents the first opportunity she has received to “speak out” and “set the story straight” about her own experience.

The problem with this explanation is that Mrs. Wilson’s speech offered no new information or insight about the CIA leak affair. While she began with an interesting account of her CIA spy training, Mrs. Wilson spent the majority of the speech recounting the story of the affair from the initial recommendation of her husband to visit Niger to her discovery of the original Robert Novak column revealing her name as a CIA operative. The story, which she herself admitted was a short version of what was in her book (on sale outside the ballroom), was, for the most part, another retelling of what Robert Novak, Joe Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald, Richard Armitage, and Valerie Wilson herself had already communicated. This raises the same question as before; how did inviting Mrs. Wilson to recount an overexposed story fulfill the responsibility of VUSC to “encourage thoughtful reflection and dialogue” within the Vanderbilt student body?

While the applause lines criticizing the Bush administration were well received by the audience, I found the demographics worth noting. VUSC takes pride in its role of “enhancing the quality of student life and the Vanderbilt educational experience”, yet the majority of the audience looked much older than any college-age student at Vanderbilt does. According to Hamilton, the event sold out, though it appears this is due mostly to the large number of professors and adult community members who took advantage of the fact that the speech was open to the public. Of course, when mostly non-students attend a speech sponsored by a committee under the auspices of the Office of the Dean of Students, this warrants VUSC’s speaker choice under even more scrutiny. The credibility of VUSC’s decision has certainly been lost when the most logical assertion is that Mrs. Wilson’s appearance simply provided a night of rhetorical entertainment for Vanderbilt and Nashville’s liberal community rather than a chance to discuss and educate for Vanderbilt students.

The poor choice of Mrs. Wilson can be contrasted with two previous speakers brought by VUSC. Former Senator John Edwards and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke at the 2006 and 2007 IMPACT Symposiums, respectively. While Edwards had left the Senate after his failed bid for the vice presidency and Gingrich had resigned from the House of Representatives eight years prior, both men came to Vanderbilt to speak about their current efforts in improving society. For Edwards, the focus was on his work all over the country to end poverty, while Gingrich spoke about his American Solutions organization, which aims to streamline and modernize the federal government. While both of these speakers can be easily placed in their respective ideological categories, there is no doubt that their presence certainly encouraged the type of intellectual reflection and dialogue that VUSC aims to achieve in its speaking events. Compared with Edwards and Gingrich, Valerie Plame Wilson appears to be a weak attempt by VUSC to bring a much less prestigious speaker under the guise that her speech will somehow engage students in a current, relevant news story.

Indeed, it may be VUSC’s prerogative to bring to Vanderbilt whomever they deem noteworthy. Nevertheless, this committee has failed to uphold its own parameters in choosing a speaker. The winners were the receptive intelligentsia; the losers were the Vanderbilt undergraduates, who have had a prime opportunity to hear a speaker relevant to the issues of today, and tomorrow, carelessly thrown away.

Comments

[John]

You claim “but it was only through her publicity of the book that the issue was even raised again”. I was looking into the Plame outing again due to Scott McClellan's book, not Plame’s.
But, let me guess, Scott is a liberal. Only a liberal would be upset about being lied to. Who did Scott think he was working for anyway?
But really, step back and look at the larger picture. I find insight into the W. Bush administration.

[Mike Warren]

John, I appreciate your comments. For reasons of full disclosure, I will admit that I have not read McClellan's book, but I will venture a guess that you have not, either. Of course, the media was all in a frenzy about the "quote heard 'round the world" from his book about unknowingly passing false information and all of that. Lee Hempfling at the Conservative Voice (www.theconservativevoice.com) has pointed out, among others, that the quote that supposedly is the smoking gun about the President's involvement in the Plame leak doesn't seem to be about that at all.

The quote says that "The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." This is the topic of the quote. Nowhere in the context are Valerie Plame or the CIA leak mentioned. If you or the members of the media that have taken this "story" and run with it had looked at the quote, you would all see that he didn't explicitly refer to Plame, and all we can go on is what he explicitly said. Wild assertions that "he must have meant Plame and such" are simply not based in facts.

I must urge you to follow your own advice and step back to look at the larger picture. Your preconceived notions about the Bush administration have caused you and other liberals to react to any mention of Karl Rove Scooter Libby with emotional cries of scandal without looking at the facts.

And on another note, the Speaker's Committee, with whom I am at most contention in this article, had already hired Plame to speak before the release of McClellan's book. So I was right to infer that the publicity of her book was the only factor that brought her up in the news to warrant VUSC in bringing her to campus. The McClellan excerpt was a convenience that had no bearing on whether or not VUSC would bring Plame.

[John]

I was interested in the “recently published excerpts from a book being written by Scott McClellan, a former White House press secretary. McClellan wrote that five of the highest-ranking officials in the government were involved in passing along false information to the public that presidential political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were not involved in the Plame leak.” And as you and I agree with “McClellan's publisher said the former White House spokesman was not suggesting in the excerpt that the president had lied. Rather, said the publisher, McClellan meant that Bush himself had been misled at that early point in the Plame investigation in 2003, just as McClellan had been misled.” Both quoted from an article from Pete Yost, an Associated Press Writer. The book is due in April and I expect more detail, but the excerpt stands, so get off the read the book indirection game.

In conclusion, you jumped to thinking I said that W. Bush the President lied. I find it to be insight into the W. Bush administration. It reflects on W. Bush, but I don’t think he lied.

(In the business I was in, the CEO’s did not want the facts when the knowledge of the facts made their positions indefensible. They needed plausible deniability. One of their required skills was feigning surprise. Understanding this was a job requirement.)

You say “So I was right to infer that the publicity of her book was the only factor that brought her up in the news to warrant VUSC in bringing her to campus.” I guess you have a right to infer. And I’m not informed as to causality or even scheduling with respect to Scott’s book. But, maybe someone like Scott, but from the VUSC Speakers Committee, will do more to confirm your inference. However, it may be that there is more interest in the story that won’t die than you think.

Again “McClellan wrote that five of the highest-ranking officials in the government were involved in passing along false information to the public that presidential political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were not involved in the Plame leak.” So do you think Scott is incorrect?

John

Bty. You replied with “you and other liberals” I’ve voted in more elections for libertarians than you have, you are not old enough. Also, I don’t tend to have preconceived notions. I have too much experience with being incorrect in first guesses in computer design and architecture. You presume too much.

[Mike Warren]

Considering that the thrust of my article was the poor choice VUSC made in bringing Valerie Plame, what I will first defend is my assertion that VUSC did not choose her based on the terms of their own mission statement, but rather because she would be able to take some nice, applause-worthy shots at the Bush administration. I assume you are not a member of the Vanderbilt community based on some of your comments, so I will inform you that November 22, the day that McClellan's quote became a news item, occurred anywhere from three weeks to a month after VUSC had made the decision to invite Valerie Plame.

As far as the issue with the quote itself, I will say that not once in my response to you did I say that you said that the president lied. I still find a problem with you using the excerpts from McClellan's book as insight into some sort of scandal or wrongdoing within the Bush administration. I have no idea of the context surrounding that quote, what he means by "involved in passing along false information," or even if he is telling the truth. I should not have presumed that you are a liberal and rather should have labeled you as one of the many people who will believe that Bush and his administration are corrupt before all the facts are in. Keep in mind that the grand jury has yet to indict any of those five officials for crimes directly related to the outing of Valerie Plame. McClellan or his publisher may just be trying to get buzz and publicity for his book. I don't presume to know for sure, but I also don't presume to make conclusions beyond the facts that are available. The facts as they stand are that Richard Armitage revealed to Robert Novak that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA agent. That's pretty much the most conclusive evidence in this whole joke of a case.

[John]

OK. I see that the root of your discontent was the “joke of a case” that brought Plame to your campus. But, Mike, what exactly do you mean by “That's pretty much the most conclusive evidence in this whole joke of a case.” I find the words evidence and case to be interesting. I don’t want to assume too much so please explain. I think we may be addressing two different issues and not realizing it.

John

[Mike Warren]

I am talking about the leaking of Valerie Plame's name. The facts are that Richard Armitage mentioned to Robert Novak that Joe Wilson had a wife that worked in the CIA that probably got Wilson the job to go to Africa. This was a stupid thing for Armitage to do, but he did it. Novak did some research with the book Who's Who in America and found that Joe Wilson did have a wife named was Valerie Plame. So her name is leaked. Richard Armitage is responsible. He was an administration official, but in the State Department, and one who was rather non-political. I think that the reason this case is a joke is that media and others opposed to the president have tried to frame this as "the administration wanted to silence a critic of the Iraq War, so they intentionally sabotaged his wife's covert status." There simply isn't any evidence for it. If there were, why hasn't Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Libby, Rove, Cheney, Card, or Bush on charges of treason or anything similar? The CIA leak case may have all of the sabotage and deceit that people who dislike Bush have been hoping for, but if the story doesn't hold up to the facts, then it's simply a joke. I hope I've cleared up my meaning on that.