From A. Barton Hinkle at reason.com:
Few might remember it now, but there was a time when certain members of George W. Bush’s administration were denounced as traitors. Virginia’s current governor, Terry McAuliffe, was among the denouncers.
Back then—in 2004—McAuliffe headed up the Democratic National Committee. In an Oct. 15 interview on CNN, McAuliffe said Bush adviser Karl Rove had just spent “two and a half hours before a federal grand jury today answering questions about who in the White House committed treason by outing a CIA operative.”
McAuliffe was referring to a scandal known as Plamegate. The backstory is complicated, but it boils down to this: During the run-up to the Iraq War, a fellow named Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times undermining a key administration claim about Iraq’s quest for weapons of mass destruction. This made the administration most unhappy. Not long afterward, someone told columnist Robert Novak and a few other members of the media that Wilson was married to one Valerie Plame, a CIA employee.
Plame was supposed to be undercover; her role as a CIA operative was classified. True, she was working in Washington at the time, but you still don’t blab about these things. Outrage ensued, and suspicions coalesced around the theory that someone high up in the Bush administration had outed Plame to undermine Wilson’s story. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, became the chief suspect.
To say this intrigue consumed Washington would be putting it mildly. A special counsel was appointed. Reporters went to jail for not revealing sources. The thing dragged on for years. The news coverage alone bordered on obsessive, for obvious reasons. “Villainous War-Mongering President Violates Sacred Tenets of National Security to Slime Truth-Telling Critic of War” must have been auto-saved on a thousand newsroom computers for easy repetition.
Libby eventually was convicted of lying to the FBI and a couple of other things, but Bush commuted his sentence. Anyway, by then it had been learned that a State Department official, Richard Armitage, was the original source of the leak. He had “casually disclosed” Plame’s identity at the end of an interview with Novak.
Nevertheless, rage continued to simmer over the disclosure. It was—as The New York Times put it—”a serious offense, which could have put (Plame) and all those who had worked with her in danger.” Wilson and Plame called it treason.
When he was asked if Karl Rove “is guilty of treason,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said, “Yes, I think so.” Rachel Maddow and others agreed. The word got tossed around so much Plamegate was sometimes referred to as “Treasongate.”
Which brings us to Hillary Clinton.
To continue reading: None Dare Call It Treason
