Old Media and Their Short Memories

It seems the activist old media is a lot older than originally thought – they’ve already forgotten one of their favorite stories during the George W. Bush Administration. Anybody remember Valerie Plame?

Ah – Valerie Plame and her hubby Joe Wilson. She was the super-secret covert CIA agent who was “outed” by somebody in the Bush administration. Certainly it had to be Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or perhaps even Bush himself who must have been pouring over his enemies list and said, “Go get ‘er boys, take ‘er down!” This story had a solid 3-4 year life span and was the main theme at MSNBC during that time. Chris Matthews and that other guy would’ve had nothing else to talk about back then were it not for this horrific scandal that rocked the nation and threatened our safety, if not the very fabric of the Union (no, I am not exaggerating there). There were special reports, special “CIA Leak Investigations,” opens built, dramatic new music cast for the “scandal that rocked the White House.”

Whoops. Flameout.

I think of this story in the context of Julian Assange and the Wikileaks case. While this same activist old media worked their collective butts off to try to connect the Plame leak to the White House, they have been almost absent in asking Barack Obama how something a million times worse could happen under his watch.

Just for fun, let’s examine the way the media has covered these two leak stories. Certainly, all things are not equal, but a leak, is a leak, is a leak and a president, is a president, is a president and the activist old media is still the activist old media. We have a lot in common here.

A government employee was the leaker in both cases, Richard Armitage from the State Department and Bradley Manning, a Private First class who works for the US Military. Many in the media knew from the beginning that Armitage was the leaker of the Valerie Plame name because the leak went through the media (duh.) Armitage admitted to CBS he was the leaker. Patrick Fitzgerald, who conducted the Plame investigation, knew early on that Armitage was the leaker, but he kept going full speed ahead after the White House. By the way, Fitzgerald also said she was not a covert agent but a “classified” agent, there is a big difference, but covert sounds so much more sinister to the media—heck, I used it earlier in this column because it sounded better than “classified.”

What drove the media during the Bush Era was the fact that they had nothing else to blast Bush on, so they literally had to make something up. They had unloaded all their guns on Bush and the Iraq War and he was still standing and they were now out of bullets. Reload. Valerie Plame.

The entire story line was fabricated. The White House never leaked the name of Valerie Plame. There were many other smaller details that went south of the facts. Who can forget David Shuster proudly proclaiming on MSNBC that Rove was going to be indicted over this? It was Christmas—er, oh—I mean the holidays, at the network when that news broke.

Whoops. Flameout. Rove was never indicted. Shuster moves on to the next exclusive report.

I recall one weekend where CBS did a story on the danger that other CIA agents felt because the WH could have been involved in the leaking of a CIA agents name. Legitimate story, had the White House actually been involved in the leaking of the agents name.

Eventually Scooter Libby was busted on a process crime because after years of interviews he didn’t recall exactly what he might have said, about what he thought somebody might have said, about what he may have remembered that somebody said. Got that? Somebody had to be busted for something. A lot of people had a lot invested in something bad happening to somebody.

As for the legitimate Wikileaks story, that is probably 10 million times worse than the Flameout story, the media doesn’t dare connect Obama’s name to anything. Now, like the Bush WH with Plame, the Obama WH has nothing to do with any of this, but that never stopped the media in the past, besides there are legitimate questions that could be asked. What does Obama think about the leaks? What is he doing to prevent further leaks? He’s running the show now, does the buck stop with him? What about the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that Manning said is the reason for the leaks—-Obama has had two years to remove that policy and he has not, what if he had?

The activist old media decides which issues they want to try to stick on which political figures. They worked overtime to try to attach the Plame story to Bush and they succeeded with perception but failed miserablywith the facts. They are working hard to protect Mr. Teflon in the WH today to make sure he is not even put on the hot seat…..and this story is at least 100 million times worse than Flameout.