PLAME REVEALED. According to David Corn and Michael Isikoff, Valerie Plame was neither a paper-pusher nor a lowly overseas agent at the time of her outing. Instead, she was the operations director for the clandestine Joint Task Force on Iraq, meaning she was in charge of the efforts to flip Iraqi scientists and gather information on Hussein's weapon programs. Over and over, the JTFI would turn a higher-up, only to run into denials of any WMD project whatsoever. The few Iraqis who came forward with evidence to the contrary were found to be fabulists or embellishers, some of whom were sent by Ahmed Chalabi's organization. The JTFI was right, but it had trouble believing its results. Nevertheless, as the war started, their results showed no WMDs and nothing but discredited informants. Valerie Plame and her underlings had gotten it exactly right. A few months later, she was outed, effectively ending her career at the CIA. What bitter irony: She was one of the few officials involved in case for war who got it precisely right, and she was one of the only ones punished as it began to go wrong.
--Ezra Klein
