For over a year I have told you that Valerie Plame was not in a covert or protected status when her name was published by Bob Novak in the Summer of 2003. This of course was verified by the fact that Patrick Fitzgerald couldn’t indict anyone on the original point of investigation and instead trumped up charges against Scooter Libby to cover his ass.

Byron York of National Review recounts this fact here about how Judge Reggie Walton instructed the jury not even to discuss or consider her status or more appropriately her lack of status. It was irrelevant.

“For the last few days, the two sides have been fighting over news articles from 2003 that portrayed Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert CIA officer and the leak of her identity as a criminal act. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald argues that the jury must see the articles, which Libby read at the time, to understand Libby‚Äôs frame of mind when he first talked to the FBI. The defense argues that allowing jurors to read the stories would leave them with the false impression that Libby committed a crime for which he is not charged ‚Äî that is, leaking the identity of a secret agent.

Whatever Judge Reggie Walton rules, the argument has exposed the underlying dilemma in the case, one that arose on the very first day of the trial, when Walton gave the jury this instruction: “No evidence will be presented to you with regard to Valerie Plame Wilson’s status. That is because what her actual status was, or whether any damage would result from disclosure of her status, are totally irrelevant to your decision of guilt or innocence. You must not consider these matters in your deliberations or speculate or guess about them.”

Of course, Mrs. Wilson is the woman at the center of the CIA-leak affair. The case began with the allegation that the Bush White House illegally leaked her identity in an effort to get back at her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for his high-profile criticism of the administration’s case for war in Iraq. Everything in the investigation grew from that seed, and ultimately Libby, the vice president’s former chief of staff, was charged with lying to investigators who were trying to determine who had leaked Mrs. Wilson’s job status. And yet, in his instructions, Judge Walton told jurors that they were not to consider — not even to think about — Mrs. Wilson’s job status.

Walton repeated his admonition several times in the next few days, and then, on January 29, made a statement that seemed stunning in its implications, although it received virtually no attention outside the courtroom. Walton announced that not only did the jurors not know Mrs. Wilson’s status but that he didn’t know it, either. “I don’t know, based on what has been presented to me in this case, what her status was,” Walton said. “It’s totally irrelevant to this case.” Just so there was no mistake, on January 31 Walton said it again: “I to this day don’t know what her actual status was.”

If Judge Walton who has more than just casual knowledge of the case cannot decide whether she was or is or wasn’t, then it shouldn’t be a brain trust for anyone else. Of course as Byron notes Fitzerald has consistently broken the judge’s order by bring her non-status into the questioning of witnesses.

Which leads to the most important question unanwered. How in the hell did we get this far with essentially no case to begin with?

The fact of the matter as we all know is that Valerie Plame along with her cohorts in the agency to embarrass the administration by exposing a forgery that they in fact had a hand in performing. The motive? Yes, to stop the push into Iraq, but more insidious it was also to hide an elaborate yellow cake proliferation operation that had been ongoing since the early 90s.

It might have all slid under the radar if Joe Wilson’s ego and big mouth hadn’t met up with “help” to get his tale published. It was THAT article which triggered the expected push back of the Administration and rightly so. Wilson was telling lies and any administration would have gone after that with everything they had.

This case isn’t such much a travesty - as it is for Libby - as it is a dangerous precedent for future detection of illegal activity within the bowels of the agency. This is what they do when they get their hands caught in the cookie jar - they are masters at it.