Abstract

Don't You Dare Call It Treason

Presents the author's view on the concept of treason by government officials in light of the controversy surrounding White House political strategist Karl Rove and the identity disclosure of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Treason, no less. A leading Democrat, Henry Waxman, howls in Congress that "the intentional disclosure of a covert CIA agent's identity would be an act of treason. If Rove was part of a conspiracy and intentionally disclosed the name--then that jeopardizes national security." Liberal columnists like Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times join the Waxman chorus. But suppose one of Valerie Plame's covert CIA missions, until outed by Karl Rove, had been to liaise with Venezuelan right-wingers planning to assassinate President Hugo Chávez, possibly masquerading as a journalist and using her attractions to get close to the populist president and try to poison him, just as the agency tried to poison Fidel Castro. In an earlier incarnation Scheer would surely have been only too happy to jeopardize national security by exposing Plame's true employer. To thread one's way through coverage of the Plame affair, the jailing of Judy Miller, the contempt citations of four journalists in the Wen Ho Lee case and the AIPAC/Franklin spy case is like strolling past distorting mirrors in a fun house.