Hope springs eternal

There may actually be movement in the Valerie Plame investigation.

The Justice Department has added a fourth prosecutor to the team investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity, while the FBI has said a grand jury may be called to take testimony from administration officials, sources close to the case said.

Administration and CIA officials said they have seen signs in the past few weeks that the investigation continues intensively behind closed doors, even though little about the investigation has been publicly said or seen for months.

However, the right-wing attack machine is still humming along, shabbily attacking both Wilson and Plame with anything they can find. Exhibit A (or actually more like Q or R or something):

Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.

CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended the meeting.

That fact, however, has not kept the reactionary echo-chamber from blasting it around, including in hostile interviews with Wilson.

What's worse, although no more surprising, is the shamefully passive role the "mainstream" media has played. Let's just suppose, just for the sake of argument, that Valerie Plame did suggest her husband Joseph Wilson for the Niger assignment. There's no reason to think she did, but just suppose.

So what?

So what if she did? First, it would still have to be approved by someone else. Second, no one has seriously argued he was unqualified for the task. Third and most importantly, I'm unaware of anyone who has seriously challenged the accuracy of his report. Indeed, the attacks have been on him and his wife, not on the actual facts supposedly at issue. That is, they have tried to kill the message by killing the messenger.

Can you name a single major news outlet that has said that upfront? Neither can I. Instead, they incompetently allow the reactionaries to determine the coverage by turning it into a he-said-she-said type story as if how Wilson got the assignment is the real story instead of either the contents of the report (which show the administration was told months before the famous "16 words" that the claim was bogus) or the deliberate and illegal outing of his wife for cheap revenge and as a warning to other potential truth-seekers.

To show how bad it's gotten, consider that the same article says

Capitol Hill aides in both parties said Wilson had badly hurt his credibility with his apparently enthusiastic participation in a spread in the January issue of Vanity Fair that includes a glamorous photo of him and his wife outside the White House, a scarf and dark glasses shielding her

as if that was a serious analysis despite the fact that, as Wilson notes, Plame's "cover was completely blown" already.

Still,

FBI agents have told people they have interviewed that they may be asked to testify before a grand jury, according to sources close to the case. That could indicate that prosecutors believe they have a case....

Let's hope for the best.

Revealing Quotes Dept.: From the same article:

Still, the White House is eager for the findings to emerge soon, or wait until after the November election. "The only fear I've heard expressed is that the investigation will be too slow or too fast and will kick into a visible mode in a way that is poorly timed for the election," the Republican said. "If they prosecuted someone tomorrow, I don't think the White House would care. And they can do it in December 2004. They just don't want it to become an issue in the election."

Prosecute, don't prosecute, do it now, do it later, catch the culprits, don't catch the culprits, we don't care. Just don't affect our re-election.