Slate on the "Plame Game"

Jack Shafer has a piece in Slate on everyon'e favorite budding scandal.

He reaches this conclusion, which I suspect is correct:

But unless some startling news surfaces about the leakers, their identities, and their motives, I doubt this summer scandal will ripen into delectable fall fruit.

And has this to say about Plame:

Who exactly is Valerie Plame? Corn writes that she "is known to friends as an energy analyst in a private firm," which is not as convincing as Corn writing that she is an energy analyst in a private firm. (It sounds to me as if "energy analyst in a private firm" is the polite cover all of her friends use, knowing that she works at the CIA. It could be that Plame's "secret" is no secret at all.) I find no mention of her on Nexis prior to the current scandal, and the only pre-scandal mention I found on the Web was Wilson's bio sheet on the Middle East Institute's Web site in which she is described as his wife, "Valerie Plame."

Can we really imagine that Wilson's wife used her name, Valerie Plame, to go undercover for the CIA? Children and dogs have Web pages that identify their interests and accomplishments. You'd imagine that an "energy analyst at a private firm" would have left some sort of HTML trail for Google to pick up. Unless reporters and investigators ferret out any new information, the Justice Department is not likely to find that any lasting harm was done to national security. Instead of prosecuting, Tenet might have his druthers this time and fire whoever leaked the information from the CIA and recommend the president do the same at the White House.

The whole piece is worth a read.