William Safire has lost it...

"This whole thing started as an investigation of the violation of a law. And the law that was violated was you must not deliberately out an agent who is undercover. And what the special counsel found is that law was not broken."

This was what William Safire had to say on Sunday's Meet the Press with regard to the release of Valerie Plame's name.

What I want to know is how in heaven's name does Mr. Safire come to this conclusion? What he could have said which would have been legitimate is that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was not able to build a sufficient case to bring charges of a conspiracy to out Ms. Plame.

However, the law in question prohibits the revealing of an agent's identity. Whether a conspiracy existed or not, her identity WAS revealed. Mr. Fitzgerald was very clear on the fact that the amount of lying and purjury going on made it difficult to determine whether the conspiracy was to leak the name, or merely to cover up the leak once it had happened. Nevertheless, we have an agent whose identity was leaked, we have a White House that benefitted from that leak. And we have a Special Counsel who has said that he is still investigating some aspects of the case.

So there are fair statements to be made about this case. It is fair to say that so far no charges have been brought on the matter of outing Ms. Plame. It is fair to say that so far Mr. Fitzgerald doesn't feel he has enough evidence to suggest a conspiracy to reveal her identity. But there is no question that her identity was revealed, and the information that has been released by Mr. Fitzgerald clearly shows that Mr. Libby and others in the Administration knew full well that Valerie Plame/Wilson worked for the covert branch of the CIA.

So for Mr. Safire to say "And so I think we ought to keep that in mind. This was a cover-up of a non-crime" is ludicrous. A crime WAS committed. An agent WAS outed. A cover-up DID happen.

And by the way, if there was nothing illegal or unethical about Administration behavior, why the cover-up? This Administration has shown an almost cocky disregard for the opinions of their opponents. They do not cut and run and engage in cover-ups when they don't believe they did anything wrong.

The facts are:

• They lied to garner support for a war.
• They lied to discredit sources of information counter to their argument.
• They released classified information as part of that discrediting process.

Hardly bringing honor and dignity back to the White House.

Liam.