I still feel as if I am not quite up to speed on the Plame affair, not so much because I haven’t now been exposed to the story in its current totality, but because the whole thing doesn’t fully track for me. For the example that I cannot understand why anyone would have, as reported in WaPo on Sunday, “outed” Ms. Plame for “revenge.” It isn’t that I don’t see the damage, but rather, of the things that could be done to punish Ms. Plame’s husband, Mr. Wilson (a critic of the administration and a central figure in obviating the claims that Iraq tried to purchase “yellowcake” from Niger), how this was considered to be a efficacious way to do so.

I am not saying that it didn’t happen, or couldn’t have happened, nor am I defending the administration. I am just saying the whole thing makes no sense. Especially the whole calling the media and “shopping” the info. Especially from a notoriously leak-averse White House.

Of interest is an NRO column by Clifford May which asks:

Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?

What also might be worth asking: “Who didn’t know?”

[…]

That wasn’t news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.

The rest of the column is an interesting critique of Mr. Wilson, but one that does not directly, in my view, deal with the Plame “outing” issue.

Now, Mr. May is a pro-administration partisan, but if what he says is true, then that puts a interesting spin on the overall situation, not to mention the “revenge” issue itself. A legitimate question at this point, to me, is what exactly was Mr. Plame’s status? Another question, that is inferred from Mr. May’s critique of Mr. Wilson is this: if Ms. Plame’s status was that delicate, why would the CIA assign her husband to this delicate and WMD-related task (WMD’s is Ms. Plame’s expertise)?

As I have noted, the whole story feels incomplete.