Well with the biggest “no secret” that Armitage is the so-called leaker. Christopher Hitchens calls “Game, over”, and for the part we have been forced to witness so far it is. But there are still so many other questions that remain to be answered and will be answered now that the Plame/Wilson charade has been exposed for what it was and is.

THE REAL PLAME GAME:

Let’s not forget what James Lewis in American Thinker wrote last year in his article, “Valerie Plame and the Rogue CIA” – which was right on the mark (confirmed by sources within the agency), the whole Plame Game was in a way an attempt to discredit the US war effort, but for reasons you might not know about.

“The CIA has to know all about the French forgery, just as it knows that Joseph Wilson‚Äôs famous trip to Niger was pure bilgewater. Nobody sends a has-been diplomat to Africa to drink mint tea with corrupt old President Tandja Mamadou, expecting to discover whether Mamadou has secretly been selling nuke materials to Saddam.

That’s pure Inspector Clousseau.

Valerie Plame’s CIA bosses took care not to ask Mr. Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement, routine in such cases, almost as if they wanted him to make a public fuss. They were not surprised, one might think, when Mr.
Wilson promptly took his story to New York Times Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins, one of the great Bush-haters of all time. As Joseph DiGenova, former US Attorney for DC, recently said, “The CIA isn’t stupid. They wanted this story out.”

It was a publicity stunt from the get-go. Wilson‚Äôs ‚Äúconfidential trip‚Äù to Niger gave him the superficial credentials to publish his ‚Äúexpose‚Äù in the Times. He‚Äôd gone there, talked to the top officials face to face, and by gum, they told him it was all a lie! Not even Gail Collins could possibly believe this banana sauce, but Wilson‚Äôs charges provided a useful stick with which to beat the White House.”

Wilson not only knew full well about the 1999 attempted Niger deal – he brokered it. The fact is that not only was Wilson (JC Wilson International), involved, but several others as well. Simply put there was and had been a secret “yellow cake” smuggling operation on a level never thought and still denied to be possible. There was a reason a rich and rogue CIA wanted to keep Niger a secret – in fact millions of reasons.

The fact is that the entirety of the Plame Game wasn’t only to discredit the Adminstration or even get Karl Rove. It was all a ruse to throw off the dogs that will begin to now circle around the real story.

There is a reason you don’t hear a lot of flack from the Democrats on this story these days. They want it to go away for a least a couple of them know what would happen if the investigation should widen. As Hitchens notes David Corn’s laughable attempt to distance himself as a principle in Hubris, I say, is simply a sample of the back peddling to come.

Related: AJ Strata, ,Tom McGuire, Capt Ed.

UPDATE: Cliff May at National Review:

“It is now clear that the White House did not, as charged, conspire to expose the identity of an undercover CIA agent as a way to punish Joe Wilson and discourage other whistle-blowers.

The truth is that Joe Wilson and David Corn imagined this conspiracy – and brilliantly made it into a major story and a multi-million dollar, tax-payer funded federal case.

Or – this can’t be dismissed — perhaps they knew all along that what they were alleging was false but found it a convenient way to attack and undermine an administration they hated and opposed.

As I’ve written in the past, it is obvious that Wilson has been Corn’s major source from the start, and that Wilson provided Corn with information on his wife, Valerie Plame — information that Bob Novak did not receive from Richard Armitage and Karl Rove. In particular Corn learned of Plame’s undercover status and details about the work she did and the covers she utilized. (Why that leak of classified information to Corn has not been prosecuted is a mystery to me.)

It would be good for an investigative reporter to look into all this but I guess Michael Isikoff is disqualified since he decided to write a book about the Wilson/Plame affairs with David Corn as his co-author. What could Michael have been thinking? Or smoking? “

Corn may yet regret he ever heard of Joe Wilson.