Big media two-step needs to stop

As the "secret agent" status of CIA bureaucrat Valerie Plame has become increasingly questionable, the time has come for the government to justify continuing the costly investigation that started under the premise that Plame's alleged covert status was illegally exposed.

Big media has been hammering this story like an anvil for months now, suggesting that someone in the Bush administration has done something horribly wrong, but there never seems to be a dent in the anvil. Instead, we learn more and more every day to suggest that Plame has for years been a desk jockey rather than a covert operative for the CIA. There likely would be a crime if she had been a true spook in the five years prior to her "exposure" by columnist Robert Novak.

But that's simply not the case.

That's why it's high time for Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to say precisely what crimes he suspects occurred, along with some explanation to justify his investigation. This fiasco could quickly deteriorate to a disgrace if it turns out that an expensive, two-year, high-profile probe is likely to produce nothing, or say, some meager perjury charge.

The media hammering continues, now with the outright suggestion that Bush adviser Karl Rove is the culprit who revealed Plame's name to Novak and at least one other reporter.

Maybe so, but who cares, if it was not a crime?

Does the Washington media really want to put pressure on their "high-placed inside sources" to stop feeding information to reporters? Or are they just trying to bash Karl Rove because he is President Bush's right-hand man?

You do the math.

But let's say this. In an incredible display of hypocrisy, 36 news organizations led by Rove chasers have filed an amicus brief in the defense of two reporters who refused to say who told them of Plame's identity. A judge sided with Fitzgerald's investigation, and ruled that the reporters had to reveal their sources. And so the gang of 36 circled the wagons, with their main argument being: No crime has been committed.

Their brief goes into considerable detail, outlining how Plame's covert status was compromised in the mid-1990s by the CIA itself, and continuing with the logic that Plame was not a covert agent in the years that followed because of her assignment to a desk job at Langley.

If the media really believes that, then why are they trying to bring down Rove like pit bulls snapping at his heels?

Every day, the Plame game takes on a stronger stench of scandal manufacturing. At this point, if there is any slim shred of evidence left that some crime has been committed, Fitzgerald should say so.

Neither the media, nor the special prosecutor, should be playing games with people's lives.